Sunday, June 22, 2025

Skepticism Of Scientific Particulars

What many people really mean by "scientific confirmation" amounts to reading an online article or literary work claiming scientists have discovered something, often something that could not possibly be proven logically—because it does not follow from strictly necessary truths, more fundamental to reality than matter and how it behaves could possibly be—or proven scientifically—because science cannot prove anything.  Logic is a set of necessary truths that cannot be false without still being true and thus are inherently true, and epistemological science is a method of subjective observation that might not correspond to real environments and events; the material world our senses allegedly perceive through the likes of sight, smell, and so on can only be known to exist through a very particular proof, which is by nature a matter of logic [1].  

Even then, it is not as if the majority of sense experience has any inherent connection to what the real laws of physics objectively are like, though we can know they must be logically possible and hence consistent with logical axioms; also, the nature of the external world is first and foremost a matter of broader metaphysics more than it is one of science specifically.  I have seen an increasing tendency over the years in many around me to rely on the epistemological fallacies or outright errors of scientific hearsay and sensory empiricism instead of rationalism.  Yet more than simply not being able to prove the existence of quantum phenomena or that the laws of physics are the same on another planet as they appear to be on Earth, no one can prove to me or to themself, unless they are omniscient or closer to it than myself, that as much as a table they see really exists because this is not logically necessary in itself or in light of anything that must be true and therefore can be known.


And if one cannot know that one's sensory experiences are accurate in that they match with a material world outside of one's mind, then to engage in scientific examination with the intent of deriving knowledge of anything beyond subjective perceptions is intrinsically delusional.  Of course, this is what many non-rationalists who sincerely turn to science do, including scientists themselves.  It only compounds the errors when hearsay from a journal or respected authority figure is accepted in the place of the direct experience of their own senses.  Entire worldviews and careers are built on this illogical belief that science is in any way primary or knowable, except for logical truths about science and mere perceptions of the cosmos.  To their adherents, true rationalism would seem bizarre or false, or perhaps as if logical necessity is somehow unverifiable instead of the scientific laws that actually have this status.

Having never properly turned to reason, they are adrift in stupidity and assumptions.  They see environments and objects; they hear noises that correlate to these visual stimuli.  Scents, tastes, and sensations are before their senses, and so they, lacking either absolute certainty or valid caution, assume that these experiences must reflect reality rather than some sort of mental construct or illusion.  They could know in the case of sensations that physical substance exists as addressed here [1], but many seem to just assume.  Some go further to believe what is false either way by assuming that these sensory stimuli are all there is to reality, though even aside from neglecting the real nature of the laws of logic, they fail to distinguish between matter and the mind that perceives it.  A sight or sensation, like a memory, can only exist within a mind, which is necessarily separate from the actual physical stimuli (if the two even correspond to each other!) in the world.

Logic could not be false without some sort of logically necessary reason why, rendering it true in itself.  Because it cannot be false, even the fools who ignore or deny it rely on it, and consequently it is self-evident.  Science has no such nature.  Indeed, it depends on reason.  Something contrary to logic cannot be true of the natural world, and no knowledge can be had of the natural world that does not stem from knowledge of reason.  It is just that beyond objective possibilities and what does and does not follow from a scientific idea, only subjective, fallible perceptions of scientific events and correlations can be known.  Only the perceptions themselves are knowable, never if physics operates as they would suggest or if objects really exist as seen or even exist whatsoever.  As difficult as it truly is to discover this fact, there is an external world, as I have written about.  The particulars of how this world really functions, whichever logical possibilities are the case, are locked away from verification for any mind with human limitations.


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