Logic, gnosis, and the scientific method

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. I have another treat for you this week, a conversation with my brother Bill and myself concerning what is knowledge? How do we know what is true? This is a field of philosophy known as epistemology. My brother Bill was a philosophy professor. He taught this at the university level for many years. I hope you enjoy this conversation and you learn something from it.

[Cyd]

Okay, recording in progress. Here we are. Hi, Bill. Welcome back to Gnostic Insights.

[Bill]

Well, it's nice to be back. I thought of a topic here that we've considered for a while. Let's get it done.

[Cyd]

All right!

[Bill]

Okay. So the question is, what is knowledge? And what is it to really know something to be the case?

[Cyd]

Wait a minute. Is this epistemology? Is that what is meant by epistemology?

[Bill]

That's right. Theory of knowledge, epistemology. It's as old as the hills. In fact, the conflict was back with Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle's saying we can get knowledge, and I'll explain kind of how we do it, theoretically do that. Plato said, no, you can't get it that way. You have to know it from the beginning. How about that? That's what we call our gnosis, right?

[Cyd]

Right. That's why Plato is included in the scrolls of the Nag Hammadi. Yes.

[Bill]

So the question is, where does gnosis fit in with regard to the knowledge? Okay. That's the point. So I thought, okay, let's just take it from the point of the scientific position, because the presumption is, isn't it, that science gives us knowledge, right? That's the presumption. So the debates that take place out there, someone says, well, that's not science, and so therefore they're negating what's being said. Okay, let's get this one answered.

It's a common belief that scientists believe that scientific method gives us knowledge. And so anything that is gained outside of science is not known. In other words, the word sometimes is dogma, right? The idea, you hold a position, but you can't verify it scientifically, but you hold it, so you're being so dogmatic. So let me make this point here.

So here it is. The best that science can really give us is well-founded belief, and I'm going to argue that. So that's the best. So why do I say that? Well, the scientific method is based on logical principles of modus ponens and modus tollens, okay? And let me explain what that means.

[Cyd]

How do you spell that?

[Bill]

M-O-D-U-S, modus ponens, P-O-N-E-N-S, okay? And tollens, T-O-L-L-E-N-S.

Now, symbolically, okay, I'm going to use words like this, and you'll get it. You'll get it for your listeners, by the standards. If P gets you Q, and if you have P, then you have Q. That's modus ponens. The idea, conditional. If P gets you Q, and you got P, then you have Q. That's the conclusion.

[Cyd]

So if you're saying if P is obliged to bring Q along, then if you don't have Q, you don't have P.

[Bill]

Exactly, that's well said. So in science, the problem occurs, you could put it this way. A problem is created, say that the science, there's a problem out there that science is trying to resolve. And so it creates a hypothesis, in other words, an explanation for a problem that's occurring out there, okay? And then science says we test the implications of that hypothesis. What does it tell us to look for?

Okay, so we go looking for that. And it tells you, you got it, okay, you should find an R, an S, a T, a Q, or whatever, right? Whatever it needs. So you'll go out looking for those implications, and they show up, they're there, okay. So what you're doing is supporting the hypothesis. The reason being, how this is, remember back, if P gets you Q, and you don't have Q, you don't have P, we understand that. But if P gets you Q, and you have Q, you can't conclude you have P, you can't come backwards.

Example, if it's raining, then the streets are wet. Oh, look, the streets are wet. Well, it must be raining. No, because they can get wet other ways. You can't come backwards on the conditional, right?

So if the hypothesis implies a bunch of things, and those things are found, you're supporting your hypothesis, but you can't come all the way back and say it's true.

[Cyd]

Hmmm. You're supporting it, but not proving it?

[Bill]

That's it exactly, that's beautifully stated.

All right. So what then occurs, thinking about this now, is that that's the case for any hypothesis that science proposes, is it can be rich with consequences. It can be rich with what to find. And so what happens is, okay, it's, look, it's working out. That implies that, and look, it's there, and it's there, and it's there, it's there, anything you put, it's there. S