Back on November 4th, I went on a tear because someone in my class was obsessed with empiricism and insistent on the existence of an “empirical truth”. I wanted to punch him in the face then and I might still feel the urge now, but the gods answered an unspoken prayer to preserve my fists and shut the guy up in one fell swoop: he dropped out of the class. And that’s the truth, too.
“There’s a reason the empiricists died out.”
I’ve taking classes at Augsburg for less than a year, so that might be the reason why I’ve never felt such a strong compulsion to turn around and punch someone in the face before. When someone is so resistant to a rational concept and won’t shut up about it… [Insert strangling noise here.]
I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned Peter Stark in here before, but he was the instructor for my Leadership class and is striking back for Organization Behavior and Development. He’s a smart guy. Smart enough to know that you can only teach so much about system theory, quantum theory and empiricism in a four-hour class before people’s neurons start shooting sparks out their ears. He let us out 45 minutes early, but it might have been earlier if not for the douchebag who was intent on defending the concept of empiricism to the point of lunacy.
He seemed so proud of it, too. He didn’t openly state, “This is what [blank] said!”, but pointed out that he’d read David Hume, John Locke and a couple other empiricists. As he was doing so, I was thinking, “Congratulations on your Philosophy degree! I got one, too! Shut the hell up!” But of course, he wouldn’t.
And “but” was a word he was very reliant on. Peter would say something…
“But…”
“No buts!”
“But…”
“No buts!”
“But…”
The discussion (or lack thereof) keeps making me want to beat my head against a wall. Or beating that guy’s head against a wall if that was an available option. Here’s the deal: There is no empirical truth. Sensory experience is an individualistic process, something that goes on in your head. Someone else might see the same thing, but the way they perceive it could be completely different.
Assume there’s an object that’s purple. You and another person look at the object and agree, yes, it definitely looks purple. So what if you agree? Does that mean you’re seeing the same purple? No two brains are identical, so no two people are guaranteed to experience “purple” in the same manner. If you’re an empiricist like this guy? Everyone does. Period.
If you need another example, consider speed. Sprinting the 100 meter dash. Biking down a mountain at 55 mph. Driving a car at 150 mph. Flying a jet at… a really fast speed. Your proximity to other objects. Running into the wind versus being in an enclosed space. All of these variables influence the way you experience speed (feeling the wind, seeing passing objects, tasting the dust that people are leaving in your face, etc.). So which one is the correct one? Which one is “fast”?
Hume and Locke lived in the 18th Century—you think they had the same standards as you? If there’s such a thing as an “empirical truth”, they’d enjoy a smooth drive through the countryside like you do instead of spending the entire time screaming their lungs out. It’s like saying there are an infinite number of possibilities in any given situation, but there’s one “correct” one.
“But…”
“No buts!”
“But…”
*WHAP!*
According to empiricism, the pain I’d feel in my fist combined with the whining I’d hear from his mouth would have made the situation much simpler and a lot less irritating. And that’s the truth.
