Acute porphyria

According to an atheist named porphyryredux:

The reason this philosophy [i.e. empiricism] is likely true or else the best one within the competing marketplace of ideas is that those who attack it, cannot do so unless data comes to them via one of their 5 physical senses, and they send out data intending to stimulate one of the 5 physical senses. If you are using empirical data to disprove empiricism, that is sort of like biting the hand that feeds you, isn’t it?

I should start by saying: although there are probably more sophisticated arguments for empiricism, at this point I'm just assuming porphyryredux means traditional empiricism. After all, it's not as if porphyryredux offers anything more.

1. Who uses "empirical data to disprove empiricism"? Who does he have in mind or what arguments does he have in mind?

2. As others like William Lane Craig have pointed out, empiricism is too narrow. It would exclude logical truths, mathematical truths, moral truths, aesthetic truths, etc.

3. Why should we think our sensory experience is a reliable source of knowledge anyway? Something like Plantinga's EAAN could be relevant for the atheist, for instance. What about arguments for solipsism, to take another example?

4. Why couldn't empiricism coupled with atheism logically lead to a denial of morality, value, meaning, purpose, etc.?

5. Also, what if the empirical data give us conflicting facts or truths?

6. Likewise, there's no empirical data for the existence of certain objects (e.g. the mutliverse, theoretical sub-subatomic particles). Presumably there never can be empirical data for the existence of say sub-subatomic particles either, at least short of building a particle accelerator the size of the solar system.

7. Finally, here is another way to look at empirical knowledge, and if true then it seems our knowledge is mainly a matter of probabilities rather than proofs. If so, then I presume probability type arguments for theism or against atheism would be relevant (e.g. Tim and Lydia McGrew, Richard Swinburne).

Parsing Parsons

Keith Parsons recently wrote:

neurons are classical not quantum objects

What's Parsons attempting to say here? Is he referring to classical mechanics in physics as opposed to quantum mechanics?

If not, I'm not sure what he's talking about.

But if so, then presumably he's attempting to say something like (in his own clumsy way) the physiology of neurons or neurophysiology isn't best explained by quantum mechanics, but rather by classical mechanics?

If so, for starters we can say that, generally speaking, quantum effects are more pronounced the smaller an object is. But just because neurons (i.e. nerve cells) aren't, say, atomic or subatomic particles doesn't necessarily mean QM has zero effect on neurons. A quantum effect could still be present but simply not observable. At least not by our current instruments or technology.

Further, neurons are obviously comprised of smaller constituents which could be measurably subject to QM (e.g. perhaps some proteins, perhaps the electron transport chain in the mitochondrial membrane).

Besides, isn't Parsons a reductionist who also subscribes to emergent phenomena in their lower level constituents? If so, wouldn't Parsons think lower level constituents in neurons could influence the higher level neurons themselves in some fashion?

Also, even if we don't head down to a low level like the atomic or subatomic level but instead stick with the molecular or cellular level, we know nerve signals are transmitted via nerve cells or neurons electrochemically (i.e. via electrical action potentials and chemical neurotransmitters). And I don't see why certain events in this electrochemical transmission process between neurons couldn't be explicated in terms of QM? (Well, maybe only if the time scale isn't short enough.)

Of course, none of this is at all to suggest I agree with the position that QM fully explains consciousness. Rather, I'm just responding to Parsons on his own terms.

This article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy may also be of interest to some.

Good gap arguments?

From Angus Menuge ("Against Methodological Materialism," Waning of Materialism, p 381):

[E]ntirely materialistic science employs gap arguments routinely when explaining unlikely historical events. The most widely accepted explanation of the geologically rapid, widespread extinction of dinosaurs invokes a rare, but fully materialistic event: asteroid impact. Part of the evidence for this event is that none of the processes believed to be going on at the time (including likely diseases - initially a competing hypothesis) are sufficient to account for such a catastrophic extinction. In other words, there is a gap between these processes and the fact of extinction. Asteroid impact was then hypothesized as a possible cause, leading to independent predictions of shocked quartz in the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, which were subsequently confirmed. Not only is this gap argument completely materialistic, it is also a good one, because it depends on the confirmation of independently testable predictions that discriminate between the asteroid hypothesis and its competitors.

In fact, historical science of all kinds is filled with gap arguments. There is a gap between the unloaded military antique mounted on a wall and the deceased Colonel Mustard who was somehow killed using the antique, and this gap may be best explained by the intelligent agency of a murderer. There is a horrific numerical gap between the population records for Jews and Slavs before and after the Second World War that is best explained by deliberate genocide. There may be a gap between a student's own creative ability and the spectacular slide show on impressionism he presented, best explained by the artistic skill of impressionist artists. Evolutionary scientists themselves frequently employ gap-arguments, claiming that there must have been intermediary creatures between those whose fossils have actually been discovered, for otherwise there is no suitably gradual explanation of the presumed transitions. In general, a good gap argument is based on a careful assessment of what the normal course of nature is capable of doing, thereby providing evidence of an objective gap in nature, not merely a gap in our knowledge, and this leads to the postulation of some additional factor or agency whose causal powers are known to be capable of filling the gap. Good gap arguments are therefore not arguments from ignorance but arguments from knowledge, both of what nature is normally capable of doing, and of the resources capable of doing more.

Medicine and the Meaning of Healing

(Jean Bethke Elshtain)

Multiverse mayhem

Jim S. at Quodlibeta points out several problems with the multiverse theory of the universe. I don't agree with everything, but he does make some fine points.

Of hospitals and universities

The following two papers are from David Naugle:

• "Of Hospitals and Universities: Comparing the Work of Medical Doctors with Patients and University Doctors with Students" (pdf)
  
  
• "Of Hospitals and Universities: Lessons for Professors by Comparing Medicine and Education" (pdf)