A guest post from The Invincible Horse
You’re standing next to the road, about to cross it. Cars are coming from both directions. You look one way, then the other. You listen for traffic. You feel whether there’s a truck rumbling in the distance. If you could taste or smell cars before they hit you, you’d be doing that too.
Then, out of nowhere, a kind and intelligent stranger taps you on the shoulder, “Hang on, it’s really dangerous to rely on your 5 senses to cross the road. I just want to warn you about the inherent dangers of empiricism.”
Has that ever happened to you? No? Didn’t think so.
Empirical evidence is incredibly useful. Evolution has imbued us with five senses to gather all kinds of useful information about the world (six if you count proprioception – Google it). We rely on these senses all the time, and they help us navigate our way through life.
Over the years, I’ve had many fascinating discussions with very intelligent Christians over the issue of whether Christianity is true, and how we might know it if it was. In these discussions, I’m quite often warned about the dangers of relying on information from our senses. This warning has come up so many times that I’m giving it a name: the Argument from the Dangers of Empiricism (ADE). Here’s something I was told in a recent discussion:
I agree with providing a testing model that can be verified. I’m cool with this, so long as we don’t over extend ourselves and accept only empirically verifiable tests. I think empirical testing is good for empirical data, but using it beyond that is asking for trouble.
I hear this type of warning regularly. The ADE is often formally presented in this way: Empiricism, by definition, says that the only way to discover truth is by acquiring sensory information. How do we know this is the only method? Can we rule out every other conceivable means of learning? The ADE proponent argues that empiricism requires circular reasoning because there is no empirical evidence that can demonstrate empiricism to be true. Empiricism does not pass its own test.
I think this is a fair argument. There is definitely a circular element to strict empiricism as defined above. For this reason, I must stay open to the possibility that there may be other ways to learn about the world which don’t involve our senses. It seems incredibly unlikely, and I’ve never seen a legitimate example, but logically I can’t rule it out. The problem is that the ADE takes a big logical leap from here. It says that empiricism is unprovable, therefore we should consider other “non-empirical” ways of knowing the truth, otherwise we’re “asking for trouble”. This step is completely unfounded. The argument above never showed that non-empirical methods actually exist. It only showed that empirical evidence cannot prove the non-existence of these other methods. That’s a much smaller achievement.
Since I agree that we can’t prove the non-existence of non-empirical methods, let’s follow the logic and accept the possibility of other ways to know about the world. What new methods will be added to our tool belt? The main ones I hear about are intuition, scriptural revelation and the witness of the Holy Spirit. These phenomena may be logically possible, but if they are to be considered reliable ways of attaining truth, they must be subject to the same ruthless skepticism that empirical evidence endures. Does every person with a revelation from the Holy Spirit agree with every other? Does every verse of the Bible agree with every other? Do both of these agree with everything else that we know? Even if we accept the possibility of non-empirical ways of knowing the truth, every proposed non-empirical method must prove its own worth. For now, empirical evidence is the best source of truth that we have. Every time a new, non-empirical method has been proposed, it has been shown to be incredibly unreliable. Although such methods might sometimes lead to a correct conclusion, they cannot be relied upon to do this consistently. Empirical evidence may not be the only tool on our belt, but it’s the only one we know of that works reliably.
Here’s my second problem: I’ve only ever heard the ADE argued in one particular context – when Christians argue that Christianity is true. The ADE, therefore, seems to be ad hoc. No one warns us about the dangers of empiricism when DNA or CCTV evidence is presented in court. No one invokes the ADE when archaeologists dig for physical evidence of an ancient civilisation. Would you watch the news if it included stories researched with “non-empirical” means? Empiricism may be philosophically unprovable, but that doesn’t mean it’s dangerous to rely on physical evidence. Rather, it’s dangerous to ignore it. There’s plenty of evidence for that!
This brings me to the crux: The Argument from the Dangers of Empiricism seems to be a shameless excuse for a lack of evidence. It’s used in an ad hoc way, and it does not provide us with any new ways to discover the truth. It does not even show that any of these non-empirical methods actually exist. For the ADE proponent, the only dangerous thing about empirical evidence is that it doesn’t point to their particular belief system.
One day, someone may actually warn me not to rely on my senses when crossing the road. Should this ever occur, I’ll politely say, “If you’ve got a better way, I’d like to hear it.”
