Empiricism--belief that all knowledge comes from experience
Sensory empiricism--belief that all knowledge comes from sense experience
Rationalism--belief that certainty and knowledge come from logic and reason
Empiricism itself simply holds that all knowledge comes through experience of some sort, which is inescapably true. To know that I can think and reason I must experience the acts of thinking and reasoning, for instance. Claiming all knowledge involves a component of experience is not problematic at all, for all knowledge does inseparably require an experience of some sort, but the claim that all knowledge comes from the senses is still self-refuting and impossible. This is because while all sense perception is a type of experience, not all experience is a type of sense perception. So, if the word empiricism refers to the claim that all knowledge involves experience, the claim is inescapable true and I am indeed an empiricist, but sensory empiricism (I will use this phrase to refer to the belief that all knowledge comes from the senses) is self-refuting, objectively false, and not at all what I mean whenever I identify here as an empiricist. The kind of empiricism I have shown true is not at all opposed to rationalism! I am both a rationalist and an empiricist. Without either internal experiences of consciousness and my mind or external experiences of my senses, I would have nothing to reason about, and without reason, I would be lost in unintelligible experiences!
With the definitions clear, I will now address the inadequacy and falsity of sensory empiricism. Sensory empiricism is impossible to intellectually justify, for it cannot be proven, it is self-refuting, and it can it never assure sensory empiricists that they are correctly perceiving reality or that their experiences will remain constant in the future. By this I mean that a sensory empiricist might wake up after 60 years of believing that experience and the senses are the sole or major revealers of truth to discover that he or she has awoken to a world with drastically different laws of physics which he or she now perceives through 39 senses instead of the 10 main human senses [1]--a world in which much or, according to some types of empiricism, all previous knowledge must be abandoned. There is no way for the majority of our sensory experiences to ever confirm themselves; just because we perceive or seem to experience something does not mean that our perceptions or experiences are valid (meaning they do not necessarily conform to reality).
Also, to say that all knowledge comes from the senses is to make a claim that the five senses cannot verify, and in the same way to say that all knowledge comes from experience is to make a self-defeating claim. However, to claim that logic grounds all knowledge is to make a claim that is not only self-verifying, for apart from reason no one could even process their sensory inputs or experiences, but one that no one can oppose without using logic in the attack, meaning that they are trying to use logic to discredit logic. See the inconsistency and stupidity of such an endeavor? If someone arguing against logic is right, then logic is correct, and if they are wrong, logic is correct!
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| It is objectively true and provable that all knowledge does not come from our sensory experiences. No one can escape the unconcealed and blatant fact that the claim "all knowledge comes from the senses or experience" is, ironically, a claim that the senses and experience cannot verify. |
One will never encounter the problem of sensory empiricism, that is, self-refutation, with rationalism and logic, for logic applies to all possible worlds by necessity and remains inviolable and supremely authoritative regardless of all circumstances or experiences. I have paraphrased each of the three laws of logic below:
Law of identity--something is what it is (I am I, not my brother or mother)
Law of non-contradiction--something cannot be and not be a specific thing at the same time (I cannot be married and a bachelor at the same time)
Law of excluded middle--something is either true or not true (I am either conscious or not conscious, but I am not in the middle)
Anyone who denies these logical laws will inescapably end up using them in his or her arguments or statements, proving that they are true by pure necessity--it would be impossible for them not to be true. There is no possible way that logic is not true. Logic starts with what is axiomatic, self-verifying, and true by necessity ("truth exists" [2], "deductive reasoning is reliable" [3], etc), including the reliability of deductive reasoning, and then allows a thinker to rationally approach, falsify, verify, or remain skeptical about a claim. Without logic we could not know anything. In its absence we would at best merely take in arbitrary perceptions we could never make sense of. In fact, experience would be unintelligible and epistemologically meaningless without the illumination and guidance of logic.
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| Logic--reason--is the ultimate basis for knowledge. Even if not all knowledge is derived from pure deductive reasoning (some of our knowledge does come from sense perceptions and experience), logic is required to even make any sense of any other input. |
Basing epistemology and beliefs around a foundation other than logic is the most damaging thing one could do to his or her worldview. That is why I am a rationalist, someone who understands that at the very least the majority of all knowledge originates from logic. Sensory empiricism is an erroneous philosophy that I would expect to be found more in laboratories and the beliefs of those who practice scientism than the worldviews of average laypeople, but wherever it appears it represents an obstacle to knowledge and truth.
[1]. I have at least 10 senses (although my sense of smell has not functioned properly in years). This claim really isn't as controversial as it may sound:
https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/more-than-five-senses.html
[2]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-self-evidence-of-logic.html
[3]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-error-of-presuppositions.html
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