If your principle is actually that circular justification must be minimized, then why aren’t you an anti-realist about both scientific and moral claims? Surely that would involve less circular justification than your current position. You wouldn’t even have to commit yourself to the one circularly justified position assumed by empiricism.
In any case, scientific reasoning as a whole does not just reduce to the sort of minimal empiricism you describe. For starters, even if you assume that the input of your senses is trustworthy and will continue to remain trustworthy, this does not establish that induction based on the input of your senses is trustworthy. This is a separate assumption you must make. Your minimal empiricism also does not establish that simpler explanations of data tend to be better. This is a third assumption. It also doesn’t establish what it means for one explanation to be simpler than another. It doesn’t establish that the axioms on which the mathematical and statistical tools of science are based are true. I could go on.
Scientific justification as it’s actually practiced in the lab involves a huge suite of tools, and it is not true that the reliability of all these tools can be derived once you accept that you can trust the input of your senses. A person can be an empiricist in your sense while denying the reliability of statistical methods used in science, for instance. To convince them otherwise you will presumably present data that you think establishes the reliability of those methods. But in order for the data to deliver this conclusion, you need to use the same sorts of statistical methods that the skeptic is rejecting. I don’t see how your shared empiricism helps in this situation.
Our schemes of justification, both scientific and moral, have developed through a prolonged process of evolutionary and historical accretion. The specific historical reasons underlying the acceptance of particular tools into the toolbox are complex and variegated. It is implausible in either case that we could reconstruct the entire scheme from one or two simple assumptions.
If you’d like to separate the axiom about the reliability of the senses from the axiom that sensory input will remain consistent, I won’t actively resist—I think reliability of the senses implies consistency of the sense, but I’m not certain my formulation is more technically correct.
Regarding Ockham’s Razor—I’m not sure that is a fundamental principle or a useful rule of thumb. If MWI and Copenhagen really are in evidentiary equipose, I’m not sure I should have a preference for one or the other (that’s obviously not the consensus position in this community).
It doesn’t establish that the axioms on which the mathematical and statistical tools of science are based are true.
I think deductive reasoning produces necessary truths—so in a sense, I get statistics “for free” as long as I accept the Peano axioms. Other than that, I don’t understand the quoted assertion.
More generally, empirical philosophy provides a place to stop the recursion. I don’t think circular justifications work at all, so I think a separate justification for using this stopping place is required—I have memory of consistent sensory impressions, and that is difficult to explain except by believing that consistency is true. One could object that I can’t justify reliance on my memory—so I’m being hypocritical to allow my memories to justify themselves. Maybe so, but there’s no other principled stopping place for recursion—and continuing recursion past this point devolves to the point that I don’t think coherence is a workable concept.
To return to the comparison with morality, I suggest that all the axiomatic assertions in the empirical program are at a fundamental level. When you start doing object level science, recursion goes away entirely. By contrast, object level morality never gets away from [EDIT: recursion]. As you noted, it is impossible to say whether we’ve made moral progress without referencing what moral position is better.
If progress (scientific, moral, etc) really is possible, we ought to be able to get away from recursive reasoning. That we can’t when dealing with moral reasoning is not a good sign that moral reasoning is talking about some objective fact.
When you start doing object level science, recursion goes away entirely. By contrast, object level morality never gets away from morality. As you noted, it is impossible to say whether we’ve made moral progress without referencing what moral position is better.
I don’t know what you mean by “object level morality never gets away from morality”. Read literally, that’s tautologically true, but I don’t see the relevance. Is this a typo?
Also, I’m not seeing the distinction here. When I’m engaged in object-level moral reasoning, or when I read examples of object-level moral reasoning on blogs or in newspapers, I very rarely come across recursion or circular justification. There’s usually an assumption that everyone in the community agrees that certain sorts of fundamental moral inferences are justified, and the debate is about whether those inferences can be made in a particular case. Here is a classic example of object-level moral reasoning. MLK offers a number of justifications for his moral stance on this particular issue. None of these justifications, as far as I can see, are circular. I don’t think this is atypical. Of course, if you think that every moral argument must also simultaneously justify the whole enterprise of objective moral evaluation, then every moral argument will have a circular component. But this places a disproportionately large burden on moral justification.
It’s true that if I want to argue that we have made moral progress I need to take for granted certain moral standards of evaluation, but if I want to argue that we have made scientific progress I need to take for granted certain scientific standards of evaluation. The only difference I can see is that the moral assumptions are as a matter of fact more contentious than the scientific ones, so perhaps moral debate breaks down on disagreement about foundational assumptions more often. But this is at least partly because most scientific debate is usually conducted in an institutional setting that has various mechanisms for consensus formation and weeding out sufficiently recalcitrant dissenters. Outside this setting, debate about descriptive issues is often just as contentious as moral debate. I know a number of new-agey people who have completely bizarre standards of epistemic justification. My discussion with them quite often breaks down on disagreement about foundational assumptions.
There’s usually an assumption that everyone in the community agrees that certain sorts of fundamental moral inferences are justified, and the debate is about whether those inferences can be made in a particular case.
That’s not my sense at all. Moral inferences are fairly easy (compared to cutting-edge scientific inferences). Toy example: If God wants us to attend church, the inference that church attendance should be compelled by the government follows quite easy. There are secondary negative effects, but the only reason to care about them is if the moral assertion that God wants church attendance is false.
When I read political arguments, they almost always operate by assuming agreement on the moral premise. When that assumption is falsified, the argument falls apart. Even for fairly ordinary moral disputes, the argument is usually based on moral principle, not facts or moral inference.
By contrast, equivalently basic scientific questions are fact and inference based. To decide how much weight a bridge can carry, knowing the strength of the steel and the design of the bridge is most of the work. In practice, those types of disputes don’t devolve into arguments about whether gravity is going to work this time.
There are secondary negative effects, but the only reason to care about them is if the moral assertion that God wants church attendance is false.
Unless the secondary effects were that people are more likely to eat bacon for breakfast that day now that they aren’t able to sleep in and it also happens that God doesn’t want people to eat pigs.
If your principle is actually that circular justification must be minimized, then why aren’t you an anti-realist about both scientific and moral claims? Surely that would involve less circular justification than your current position. You wouldn’t even have to commit yourself to the one circularly justified position assumed by empiricism.
In any case, scientific reasoning as a whole does not just reduce to the sort of minimal empiricism you describe. For starters, even if you assume that the input of your senses is trustworthy and will continue to remain trustworthy, this does not establish that induction based on the input of your senses is trustworthy. This is a separate assumption you must make. Your minimal empiricism also does not establish that simpler explanations of data tend to be better. This is a third assumption. It also doesn’t establish what it means for one explanation to be simpler than another. It doesn’t establish that the axioms on which the mathematical and statistical tools of science are based are true. I could go on.
Scientific justification as it’s actually practiced in the lab involves a huge suite of tools, and it is not true that the reliability of all these tools can be derived once you accept that you can trust the input of your senses. A person can be an empiricist in your sense while denying the reliability of statistical methods used in science, for instance. To convince them otherwise you will presumably present data that you think establishes the reliability of those methods. But in order for the data to deliver this conclusion, you need to use the same sorts of statistical methods that the skeptic is rejecting. I don’t see how your shared empiricism helps in this situation.
Our schemes of justification, both scientific and moral, have developed through a prolonged process of evolutionary and historical accretion. The specific historical reasons underlying the acceptance of particular tools into the toolbox are complex and variegated. It is implausible in either case that we could reconstruct the entire scheme from one or two simple assumptions.
If you’d like to separate the axiom about the reliability of the senses from the axiom that sensory input will remain consistent, I won’t actively resist—I think reliability of the senses implies consistency of the sense, but I’m not certain my formulation is more technically correct.
Regarding Ockham’s Razor—I’m not sure that is a fundamental principle or a useful rule of thumb. If MWI and Copenhagen really are in evidentiary equipose, I’m not sure I should have a preference for one or the other (that’s obviously not the consensus position in this community).
I think deductive reasoning produces necessary truths—so in a sense, I get statistics “for free” as long as I accept the Peano axioms. Other than that, I don’t understand the quoted assertion.
More generally, empirical philosophy provides a place to stop the recursion. I don’t think circular justifications work at all, so I think a separate justification for using this stopping place is required—I have memory of consistent sensory impressions, and that is difficult to explain except by believing that consistency is true. One could object that I can’t justify reliance on my memory—so I’m being hypocritical to allow my memories to justify themselves. Maybe so, but there’s no other principled stopping place for recursion—and continuing recursion past this point devolves to the point that I don’t think coherence is a workable concept.
To return to the comparison with morality, I suggest that all the axiomatic assertions in the empirical program are at a fundamental level. When you start doing object level science, recursion goes away entirely. By contrast, object level morality never gets away from [EDIT: recursion]. As you noted, it is impossible to say whether we’ve made moral progress without referencing what moral position is better.
If progress (scientific, moral, etc) really is possible, we ought to be able to get away from recursive reasoning. That we can’t when dealing with moral reasoning is not a good sign that moral reasoning is talking about some objective fact.
I don’t know what you mean by “object level morality never gets away from morality”. Read literally, that’s tautologically true, but I don’t see the relevance. Is this a typo?
Also, I’m not seeing the distinction here. When I’m engaged in object-level moral reasoning, or when I read examples of object-level moral reasoning on blogs or in newspapers, I very rarely come across recursion or circular justification. There’s usually an assumption that everyone in the community agrees that certain sorts of fundamental moral inferences are justified, and the debate is about whether those inferences can be made in a particular case. Here is a classic example of object-level moral reasoning. MLK offers a number of justifications for his moral stance on this particular issue. None of these justifications, as far as I can see, are circular. I don’t think this is atypical. Of course, if you think that every moral argument must also simultaneously justify the whole enterprise of objective moral evaluation, then every moral argument will have a circular component. But this places a disproportionately large burden on moral justification.
It’s true that if I want to argue that we have made moral progress I need to take for granted certain moral standards of evaluation, but if I want to argue that we have made scientific progress I need to take for granted certain scientific standards of evaluation. The only difference I can see is that the moral assumptions are as a matter of fact more contentious than the scientific ones, so perhaps moral debate breaks down on disagreement about foundational assumptions more often. But this is at least partly because most scientific debate is usually conducted in an institutional setting that has various mechanisms for consensus formation and weeding out sufficiently recalcitrant dissenters. Outside this setting, debate about descriptive issues is often just as contentious as moral debate. I know a number of new-agey people who have completely bizarre standards of epistemic justification. My discussion with them quite often breaks down on disagreement about foundational assumptions.
Yes, typo corrected.
That’s not my sense at all. Moral inferences are fairly easy (compared to cutting-edge scientific inferences). Toy example: If God wants us to attend church, the inference that church attendance should be compelled by the government follows quite easy. There are secondary negative effects, but the only reason to care about them is if the moral assertion that God wants church attendance is false.
When I read political arguments, they almost always operate by assuming agreement on the moral premise. When that assumption is falsified, the argument falls apart. Even for fairly ordinary moral disputes, the argument is usually based on moral principle, not facts or moral inference.
By contrast, equivalently basic scientific questions are fact and inference based. To decide how much weight a bridge can carry, knowing the strength of the steel and the design of the bridge is most of the work. In practice, those types of disputes don’t devolve into arguments about whether gravity is going to work this time.
Unless the secondary effects were that people are more likely to eat bacon for breakfast that day now that they aren’t able to sleep in and it also happens that God doesn’t want people to eat pigs.