(3) Argument in debate: Experience vs. Authority

Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from sense experience. An authority is an accepted source of information. You can look these up yourself or accept that I have already done so. In either case, you will accept either my authority or the authority of whatever source you use as reference.

When it comes to argument in debate, very few people will fall exclusively into one of these two camps. A person may contend that they prefer empirical evidence over authority; but this often only means they do not recognize your stated authority. They either disagree with whomever you have quoted or they do not consider you an expert and therefore wish to refute your argument without argument. Similarly, those who point to an authority to support their argument but forgo any attempts to carry the argument further either have reached a logical impasse in the argument—where the starting point or underlying assumptions of his opponent precludes further debate—or, is just lazy and wishes to refute your argument without argument. In short, both authority and experience are valid sources for establishing facts and necessary for civilized debate. Any empiricist that denies the validity of authority as a means of determining fact is lying, and any rational person that denies all empirical evidence is not rational at all but a lunatic. The question therefore becomes what limitations exist for each method of establishing facts, and when are they appropriate.

Of course, I don’t expect you to take any of that on my authority. I’m no expert! So before I change the question, we can first challenge the statements put forward. Much can be said about the differences and similarities of rationalism, empiricism, intuitionism, etc. but they are not important. Right now, (because this argument was put forward in the debate) I am concerned with ascertaining facts through experience (relying entirely on our senses) versus accepting stated facts on authority. I maintain that empiricists are liars, when they deny acceptance of stated fact and only accept observed facts as true. Let’s consider an example: Mark is an empiricist. Mark has watched a person get sawed in half, then put back together and emerge completely unharmed. Mark determines this is impossible and decides to disbelieve what his eyes witnessed. Why? He takes it on authority that no person can be sawed in half without injury. He certainly isn’t going around chopping people up to test this empirically. He arrives at the truth through intuition and authority because it is widely held and accepted. I saw David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear. I took it on authority that mirrors and refraction of light were capable of creating the illusion. I was maybe seven years old. I’d never observed such an illusion before, I didn’t see his mirrors or perceive exactly how the illusion was created, I just accepted that what I saw was impossible and believed my Mom’s explanation. She was a trusted authority.

In a short essay by C.S. Lewis, “Why I Am Not A Pacifist,” he asserts that few people have followed the reasoning behind which even 10 percent of the truths they believe are based. Can I know this to be true empirically? My experience is limited to me. I could ask a handful of people but that isn’t scientific enough to consider as empirical evidence. Ultimately, I determine whether it is true according to my own intuition, and accept on authority that this statement is a fact on which I can base an argument. The same is true of any historical fact and a majority of scientific facts.

I’ll use gravity to further illustrate my point, since it came up in the debate that prompted all this. We believe gravity is a fact. I have fallen and skinned my knee and thus have empirical evidence to it as a fact. I assume you have similar experience with gravity, but the fact that unsupported objects fall is not the only fact we believe about gravity. We believe gravity is consistent enough for us to predict trajectory. We’ve both shot a basketball and we’ve seen that some people are pretty good at making their shots. Here is where empirical evidence stops for many. But this is still not all we believe about gravity. We know that falling objects accelerate at a rate of 9.8 feet per second? Have you ever attempted to measure this? We know that every object has its own terminal velocity derived from its weight and wind resistance? I have not conducted experiments on every object to determine this fact, but you would not argue the fact with me if I utilized it in an argument. If I assert that Fred will suddenly awaken some unknown ability of the brain and begin to fly the moment he reaches his terminal velocity, we might have plenty of things to debate. For instance: A) Fred does not utilize all of his brain or B) such a thing as levitation is possible or C) survival is a catalyst for innovation or D) evolution is not gradual but explosive. These are all areas around which the debate might focus, but terminal velocity or gravity would not be among the things under contention. We would not argue about how high we need to be before dropping Fred from your plane to test the theory. A few calculations will suffice. Not because they are empirically known by us but because we both accept them on authority and our intuition confirms them.

So back to what the question becomes. What limitations exist for each method of establishing facts, and when are they appropriate? The simple answer to the second part of the question is always. Our experience does not occur in a vacuum. It always involves some measure of extrapolation based on facts we accept on authority. As in the example with Mark, we are aware that our senses can be deceived, so all experience gets filtered through the lens of our worldview. What is possible? When you see a UFO, do you think of little green men or weather balloons? It depends on whether your worldview includes the possibility of little green men. As to the part of the question dealing with limitations, the answer is more complex. Sometimes personal passions exist that hinder us from accepting facts no matter how they come to us. When such passions exist, neither authority nor experience is sufficient to alter the facts we will accept. In those cases, argument is impossible.

You can give a man new facts. You can invent a simpler proof, that is, a simpler concatenation of intuitable truths. But when you come to an absolute inability to see any one of the self-evident steps out of which the proof is built, then you can do nothing. . . . . You cannot produce rational intuition by argument, because argument depends upon rational intuition. Proof rests upon the unprovable which has to be just “seen.” Hence faulty intuition is incorrigible. It does not follow that it cannot be trained by practice in attention and in the mortification of disturbing passions, or corrupted by the opposite habits. But it is not amenable to correction by argument.
(C.S Lewis – The Weight of Glory: and other addresses, 1949, pp.66-67)

That’s it for today. If you still haven’t watched the debate that prompted all this, I am linking to it again below. Next we will examine what Lewis describes in the text above as “disturbing passions.” It will most likely make specific reference to the debate, so this may be the last of this series you will want to digest without watching it.

Debate on YouTube, posted Dec 17, 2012 by Athanasius TV

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