Logical positivism [split: A splendid video about evolution]

But the principle itself demands something it cannot provide then?

It seems we can only assess it based on our rationality...which then leads to the question of what grounds rationality itself...the mysterious "groundless ground of Reason" as Schelling would say...

You make a valid philosophical point about the self-referential challenge of logical positivism - it's indeed one reason why strict logical positivism isn't considered the final word in philosophy of science.

However, in the specific context of intelligent design, I think the demand for empirical verification is entirely justified. ID proponents are making specific claims about the natural world - that certain biological structures require a designer, that complexity cannot arise through natural processes, etc. These are empirical claims about how the world actually works, not abstract philosophical principles.
If ID wants to be taken seriously as science rather than philosophy or theology, it needs to meet the same evidential standards as any other scientific theory: testable predictions, empirical evidence, falsifiability. The fact that the philosophical foundations of empiricism have their own complexities doesn't excuse ID from providing actual scientific evidence for its claims about biological systems.

[Laird]

ontological statements are meaningful only if they can be verified through empirical observation or are analytically true (such as logical or mathematical statements).

This is not so much a claim as an idiosyncratic, context-limited redefinition of "meaningful" (the limited context being that of ontological statements).

Do you accept this?

In the absence of a response, I'll take it as established. Here's what I wanted to draw from it:

I think we should be very suspicious of movements that rely heavily on redefining words. It's not always inappropriate - for example, technical contexts sometimes require technical variants of common terms - but often, as here, it is manipulative.

Rather than grappling intellectually - through evidence and argument - with those aspects of reality to which these people have an emotional aversion, they simply declare statements about them to be literally meaningless - ironically (and perversely) by redefining the meaning of meaningful - thereby wiping them off the table: erasing them from the very bounds of conceivable thought.

This is an Orwellian move.

In any case, let's reframe @sbu's position statement, using words that don't have to be redefined, into something (slightly) more reasonable:

"Ontological statements are only epistemically relevant and due consideration if they can be verified through empirical observation or are analytically true (such as logical or mathematical statements)."

There is still a host of problems with this epistemic position.

For a start: verified by whom?

Strictly speaking, only sbu can verify through empirical observation (introspection) that he is conscious. Therefore, by his own standards, the ontological statement "Sbu is conscious" is not epistemically relevant to, and due consideration by, the rest of us. Very clearly, though, whether or not sbu is conscious very much is relevant to - and due consideration by - the rest of us, because if he isn't, then we don't owe him any moral consideration. One would assume that that very much matters at the very least to sbu himself.

Secondly (and which the first is implicitly tied up with): verified according to which standard?

It is well known that in principle, even the most well-established of scientific theories is only provisional: as the article that @Valmar shared in post #125 points out didactically, the empirical theory that all swans are white is contingent on the non-existence of a single black swan, a proposition that cannot itself be verified with certainty.

We can only, then, have a certain degree of confidence that any given ontological statement has been "verified". As (re)stated, sbu's position statement doesn't stipulate which in-principle attainable degree of confidence qualifies a given statement as "verifiable", nor how we might go about assessing in the first place - i.e., prior to starting our observations - which in-principle degree of confidence is attainable.

This brings us back to the ontological statements that it attempts to erase from consideration: as Valmar has affirmed a couple of times in his own responses to sbu, many people have verified through their own personal experiences with a certain degree of confidence that some such statements are true. I expect that the degree of confidence that they have attained exceeds that which empirical science has attained for some of the theories that I expect sbu would accept as "verified".

Summing up:

Verification lies on a spectrum and to some extent is relative (to persons or groups). Thus, among its other problems, and even after correcting for its sinister thought control, sbu's epistemic position mistakenly reduces a subjective spectrum to an objective dichotomy.

I think we should be very suspicious of movements that rely heavily on redefining words. It's not always inappropriate - for example, technical contexts sometimes require technical variants of common terms - but often, as here, it is manipulative.

This is another statement that makes me feel the need for an "agree x 100" button!

Also, when words are redefined, logically all related arguments that use those words would need reevaluating - which is obviously absurd.

David

In the absence of a response, I'll take it as established. Here's what I wanted to draw from it:

I think we should be very suspicious of movements that rely heavily on redefining words. It's not always inappropriate - for example, technical contexts sometimes require technical variants of common terms - but often, as here, it is manipulative.

Rather than grappling intellectually - through evidence and argument - with those aspects of reality to which these people have an emotional aversion, they simply declare statements about them to be literally meaningless - ironically (and perversely) by redefining the meaning of meaningful - thereby wiping them off the table: erasing them from the very bounds of conceivable thought.

This is an Orwellian move.

In any case, let's reframe @sbu's position statement, using words that don't have to be redefined, into something (slightly) more reasonable:

"Ontological statements are only epistemically relevant and due consideration if they can be verified through empirical observation or are analytically true (such as logical or mathematical statements)."

There is still a host of problems with this epistemic position.

For a start: verified by whom?

Strictly speaking, only sbu can verify through empirical observation (introspection) that he is conscious. Therefore, by his own standards, the ontological statement "Sbu is conscious" is not epistemically relevant to, and due consideration by, the rest of us. Very clearly, though, whether or not sbu is conscious very much is relevant to - and due consideration by - the rest of us, because if he isn't, then we don't owe him any moral consideration. One would assume that that very much matters at the very least to sbu himself.

Secondly (and which the first is implicitly tied up with): verified according to which standard?

It is well known that in principle, even the most well-established of scientific theories is only provisional: as the article that @Valmar shared in post #125 points out didactically, the empirical theory that all swans are white is contingent on the non-existence of a single black swan, a proposition that cannot itself be verified with certainty.

We can only, then, have a certain degree of confidence that any given ontological statement has been "verified". As (re)stated, sbu's position statement doesn't stipulate which in-principle attainable degree of confidence qualifies a given statement as "verifiable", nor how we might go about assessing in the first place - i.e., prior to starting our observations - which in-principle degree of confidence is attainable.

This brings us back to the ontological statements that it attempts to erase from consideration: as Valmar has affirmed a couple of times in his own responses to sbu, many people have verified through their own personal experiences with a certain degree of confidence that some such statements are true. I expect that the degree of confidence that they have attained exceeds that which empirical science has attained for some of the theories that I expect sbu would accept as "verified".

Summing up:

Verification lies on a spectrum and to some extent is relative (to persons or groups). Thus, among its other problems, and even after correcting for its sinister thought control, sbu's epistemic position mistakenly reduces a subjective spectrum to an objective dichotomy.

I disagree completely. Statements like ‘I saw four spiritual dimensions’ belong in the same category as much of what clutters the spiritual bestseller lists: unverified claims dressed up as insight, designed to entertain a willing audience rather than inform. Without objective evidence, they aren’t profound, they’re just words. I’ll hold off on further comments until the weekend, but I won’t pretend such claims carry any real weight.

I disagree completely. Statements like ‘I saw four spiritual dimensions’ belong in the same category as much of what clutters the spiritual bestseller lists: unverified claims dressed up as insight, designed to entertain a willing audience rather than inform. Without objective evidence, they aren’t profound, they’re just words. I’ll hold off on further comments until the weekend, but I won’t pretend such claims carry any real weight.

Do you feel the same way about a Multiverse? Or the extra dimensions of String Theory?

Do you feel the same way about a Multiverse? Or the extra dimensions of String Theory?

Yes, obviously, at least regarding the ontological question. Without empirical verification, the multiverse and the extra dimensions of string theory remain speculative frameworks rather than realities. The mathematics of string theory may well be sound, but mathematics alone doesn’t grant existence — otherwise, every internally consistent fantasy would be real.

[Laird]

Without empirical verification, the multiverse and the extra dimensions of string theory remain speculative frameworks rather than realities.

Are ontological statements about the multiverse and the extra dimensions of string theory meaningful?

I disagree completely. Statements like ‘I saw four spiritual dimensions’ belong in the same category as much of what clutters the spiritual bestseller lists: unverified claims dressed up as insight, designed to entertain a willing audience rather than inform. Without objective evidence, they aren’t profound, they’re just words. I’ll hold off on further comments until the weekend, but I won’t pretend such claims carry any real weight.

Remember that chemistry developed from alchemy. If someone like you had just swept away all mention of phlogiston etc, that would not have cleared the way to a wonderful truth, chemistry would just have been stuck.

Some people use sciency ideas in a horribly vague way. However this is in part because science itself grabbed ideas from everyday language and redefined them. For example, when normal people talk about energy, they aren't talking about something measured in Joules, they may for example describe someone as full of energy - what does that mean? It clearly means something, but because the word was redefined to cover one specific physics concept, it isn't quite clear what.

Somehow we all muddled through the confusion created by all those redefinitions, but it sure leads to confusion when we try to combine consciousness with conventional science!

What are "spiritual dimensions"? I must say I'm not quite sure, but I do know that the word "dimension" had a meaning before science messed it up by redefining it. For example, the Cambridge online Dictionary offers the following sentences to illustrate its meaning:

His personality has several dimensions.

new dimension These weapons add a new dimension to modern warfare.

There is a spiritual dimension to her poetry.

Special Relativty could have been discussed in terms of the three dimensions of space plus time - the sort of thing you find in elementary textbooks on the subject, but I suppose it was sexier to describe it in terms of 4-vectors, and talk about four-dimensional space-time. This redefined the normal concept of space in a subtle way because there is either a sqrt(-1) or a 'metric' smuggled in there.

Ninety percent of this muddle is the fault of physicists.

David

Are ontological statements about the multiverse and the extra dimensions of string theory meaningful?

In ordinary conversation, of course talk about the multiverse or extra dimensions can be meaningful, we can all imagine them and discuss them as ideas. But in the stricter sense of logical positivism, a statement is ‘meaningful’ only if it is verifiable in principle. From that perspective, musing about the existence of multiverses is fine as speculation, but when we move beyond that into ontological claims, they lack empirical content and so, in that technical sense, are meaningless. It’s not a dismissal of imagination or philosophy, just a reminder that meaning in science is tied to verification.

Speculating about superstrings is meaningful from a mathematical perspective, after all, they can reproduce the known physics we already have. But whether superstrings actually exist is an entirely different matter, and without empirical verification, that question has no scientific footing.

Speculating about a designer may be comforting, but it has no backing, neither from empirical evidence nor from logical argument. Without that, it remains a belief, not knowledge (almost like multiverses - but at least we know of one universe so logically there could be more)

Special Relativty could have been discussed in terms of the three dimensions of space plus time - the sort of thing you find in elementary textbooks on the subject, but I suppose it was sexier to describe it in terms of 4-vectors, and talk about four-dimensional space-time. This redefined the normal concept of space in a subtle way because there is either a sqrt(-1) or a 'metric' smuggled in there.

Ninety percent of this muddle is the fault of physicists.

David

That's a solid point! It's why you really need to understand the mathematics to truly grasp physics. Only in the elegance of mathematical descriptions can misunderstandings be avoided.