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Stupid_Idiot413 t1_ir1qv28 wrote

Reply to comment by CatJamarchist in Empiricism — the philosophy of Locke, Berkeley and Hume that argued knowledge was derived only from sensory experience (against Descartes’s Rationalists) and provided the philosophical foundation for the scientific method by thelivingphilosophy

You can experiment with a lens and light to gain information about how light behaves. Then, by seeing how electricity behaves, making basic circuits, and then more advanced sensors... you can get information on things you can't normally see.

Each sensory experience helps contextualize the next. And besides, our eyes are sensors, a camera is only a few more steps removed.

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CatJamarchist t1_ir1tlpr wrote

>... you can get information on things you can't normally see.

Isn't this just the process of createing knowledge through deduction instead of direct observation?

>Each sensory experience helps contextualize the next.

But what about things that are impossible to directly sense? Regardless of how powerful the sensor is, we'll never directly observe a black hole - it just not how physics works. Instead we can only observe indirect evidence of a black hole - such as an accretion disk, or the rapid, unexpected movement of stars - to deduce the existance of a black hole.

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Stupid_Idiot413 t1_ir20hbp wrote

>Isn't this just the process of createing knowledge through deduction instead of direct observation?

All knowledge is based on some combination of observation and deduction, except for the fact of our own existence. For example, I believe that other people have minds, or that a room still exists when I'm not there, but there is no direct evidence of that.

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