Misunderstanding Empiricism

The way I see it, there are basically two forms of "knowledge" - that which was reached by some method known to give reliable results, and that reached by some method not known to give reliable results.Science is one of the former. Obviously, things like revelation are the latter.Is personal experience (just personal experience) one of the former, or the latter? Much evidence from psychology indicates that it not a reliable means for generating accurate knowledge. For instance, the Asch conformity experiment - where subjects literally experienced a hallucination simply because they were under the impression that everybody else was, too - makes it clear that our own perceptions are not so reliable that we can trust them above all.Certainly a skeptic is one who says "show me", but a skeptic also understands that it's not enough to simply show himself, everybody else must be shown, as well.Personal experience, obviously, is the most immediate source of knowledge we possess. Nonetheless, it is not an end to knowledge - it is rather the first step on a path that, ultimately, should end with a more verifiable means of gaining knowledge. Our own experiences in isolation are simply not to be trusted - as everyone who's ever dreamed must surely understand.

And I'm telling you that the judgment of the scientific community is more reliable than your own personal experience.How could it not be? The scientific community is the encapsulation of a multitude of personal experiences; yours is but one.But other than that, I agree completely with what Taz said. It's hard to understand how you could ask the questions you asked after what I had written. Are you sure you're making an effort to read for comprehension?

Only if you're choosing not to listen to those around you. Why would you be limited to only the things you yourself specifically experienced? Oh. So when you said "only your personal experience", you didn't actually mean only your personal experience, you meant your personal experience plus information about the scientific consensus. Which is exactly what I've been fucking talking about this whole time.If this whole thread is simply going to be based on saying the exact opposite of what you mean, Java, why didn't you say so in the beginning?And I'm wondering, too, why the evidence of the unreliability of your own personal experiences isn't a part of your consideration. You seem to have completely ignored that.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

I'm asking you to treat your personal experience in the same way. It's obvious that you don't, though, but it's known that personal, anecdotal experience is even less "holy writ" than the scientific consensus.But for some reason, the same calculation of uncertainty doesn't enter in to it when the anecdotes are happening to you. Why is that?

You listed the factors that entered into your decision."My own personal experience could be irrelevant, or worse yet, completely misleading, because I'm not an expert on this subject" was not one of them.That's what gave me the "impression." Since you don't, apparently, take the uncertainty of your own experience into account, why would I get the impression that you did?

But that's exactly what does make the results of scientific inquiry more certain than just lay knowledge and experience.How could you miss that?

Right, but empiricism is a logical fallacy too, as is argument from fallacy.Crazy, I know.