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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   32922 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 2024

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What is "anti-empiricism"?

It's a bit difficult to define, because the idea I had in mind is a loose federation of beliefs and attitudes, and doesn't really have any specific criteria. In terms of concrete beliefs though, I would say that the core of it would be something like an openness to entities and propositions that we don't (or can't) have direct empirical confirmation of, like God, souls, ghosts, UFOs, etc. In more rarefied territory, it would be an affinity for philosophical positions like: hostility to logical positivism, belief in abstract (non-spatiotemporal) objects, belief in non-naturalistic moral facts. But independent of any concrete beliefs about the existence or non-existence of specific entities, I think it's also a psychological disposition to see things as being suffused with meaning and significance.

And is this an example of it?

Not really. Lots of people are recalcitrant in the face of new evidence when it contradicts their deeply held beliefs. That's more of a human trait than a left-right trait. But, if someone just has an overriding commitment to making sure that children have access to puberty blockers for some reason, I don't think there's anything metaphysically there that doesn't fit into a purely materialist/naturalist worldview.

"Anti-empiricism" is in no way intended to be an insult of course. I personally have a strong anti-empirical streak.

I'm still hoping to get some replies written to your recent posts on art, BTW. Keep up the great work.

Thank you! I really appreciate that.

What is a "non-naturalistic moral fact"? Like categorical imperatives that aren't related to facts of the world?

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/

Most often, ‘non-naturalism’ denotes the metaphysical thesis that moral properties exist and are not identical with or reducible to any natural property or properties in some interesting sense of ‘natural’.

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