I think a combination of science and philosophy alone leads to closer to truth.
Why is it that it is wrong to think that science alone leads to truth? Isn't empirical truth the only one we can be sure about? If there is any absolute truth at all, isn't it to be uncovered through the scientific method?
The problem with scientism is that it's generally philosophically incoherent. Examine your own statements of scientistic dogma:
Isn't empirical truth the only one we can be sure about? If there is any absolute truth at all, isn't it to be uncovered through the scientific method?
Laying aside the thin veil of casting these as rhetorical questions, neither statement is an empirical truth, nor has been uncovered through the scientific method (if you disagree, describe to me the experiment that confirms them). They are therefore self-undermining statements of belief. You could have instead said "The only truths I accept are the ones that have been empirically confirmed," or "The scientific method has been the most valuable method of intellectual inquiry for the human race," but those statements rescue themselves from self-negation only at the price of making their value judgments more explicit.
There isn't necessarily anything demonstrably wrong with affirming science as your own personal belief system, as long as you understand that is what you're doing. But the belief that science itself confirms scientism, or is even capable, structurally, of confirming scientism is incorrect. That's not the kind of thing it was designed to do --those are exactly the kinds of pronouncements it withholds.
While the notion of reproducible results under specific conditions does redeem science from having its methods be entirely faith-based, initial presuppositions are always necessary in order to form a coherent paradigm. So, if you start with one (or many) axioms, then you've imported several implications from the axioms into the paradigm itself, which means that it does include some form of untested or "untestable" belief.
You might enjoy (or be driven mad by) this podcast between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson on epistemology.
Your question is confusing and badly written. Your first sentence:
I think a combination of science and philosophy alone leads to closer to truth.
contradicts your second paragraph:
Why is it that it is wrong to think that science alone leads to truth? Isn't empirical truth the only one we can be sure about? If there is any absolute truth at all, isn't it to be uncovered through the scientific method?
Your position is that there is a process called "science" that leads to something called "empirical truth" by the "scientific method". There are several problems with this argument.
Let's consider this process that you say leads to truth. You have some set of facts and some rule that you apply to them that produces truth somehow. The results of that process are only correct if your facts and rules are correct. But then you have to know that the facts and rules are correct or your conclusions may be wrong. At this point you face a problem. You either (1) say the facts and rules are correct by fiat or (2) say the facts and rules are shown to be correct by some other process. If you choose option (1) then you're a just a guy saying stuff on the internet. If you choose option (2) then you have to show the truth of the facts and rules used in your new process: process 2. You then have the same dilemma with process 2, and with whatever process you use to show process 2 is correct, so you get an infinite regress. There is no process that guarantees truth or correctness, and that includes science.
There is a further problem with your position. To decide what is true according to your position, you have to distinguish between science (true) and non-science (false). But whatever process you use to make that distinction isn't science since you can't tell science from non-science before you have it. So your worldview can't consist solely of science.
Philosophers say a lot of stuff about induction and justification of science, and almost everything they have written doesn't answer the problems I have pointed out above. One philosopher whose work does not suffer from this problem is Karl Popper. Popper proposed that all knowledge is created by spotting a problem, guessing solutions and criticising guesses to eliminate bad ideas. This doesn't require any process of showing ideas to be true. If you have two conflicting ideas, then at least one of them is false. In two books "The Fabric of Reality" and "The Beginning of Infinity" physicist David Deutsch elaborated Popper's ideas pointing out that when you set up an experiment you need an explanation of what is happening in reality in the experiment to interpret its results and without such an explanation your 'results' are worthless. This means that the empirical truths are all guesses too: they are not a secure foundation for certainly true ideas. You can improve your ideas indefinitely, but you can't have proof or certainty. For a guide to Popper's writings, see
Chris Sunami's anwer is excellent. I would like to add to it by pointing out the fact that "the scientific method" isn't as well defined as you may think, and defining this method is in the realm of philosophy.
While some people argue that you should just "Shut up and calculate", others (notably Nancy Cartwright) would argue that the Scientific Process isn't just the building of a mathematical model, but also the building of a philosophical model and understanding how the two relate (explained quite well in this book).
Technicalities as to how the scientific method works means that you not only have divisions between philosophers arguing on the subject, but even people who say they believe in "scientism" also have contentions on. For example, you have the split between the people who think that all scientists are discovering something about reality and those that disagree that anything they discover is "real", since it is not the final Fundamental Unification theory.
As you study more science, you discover that interpretation of theories (and choice of the theories you deem worthy to interpret) cannot be based on any ground truth implicit to the theory without resorting to some philosophical principles.
Sorry, I had to make my comment into an answer. In short:
Did you just ask an epistemological question wondering whether we need epistemology? The Vietnam generation had a similar paradox regarding peace and reproduction.
Many excellent answers here, but I just want to address this one question in your post:
Isn't empirical truth the only one we can be sure about?
No. Not even close. Empirical confirmation is a form of inductive reasoning. We run many tests, and if they consistently pass, we accept the hypothesis as true. But inductive reasoning has a fundamental weakness: it is never absolute. It is always, always, always susceptible to new information coming to light.
Incredibly famous examples are the rise of quantum and relativistic physics. After several hundred years of studying Newtonian physics, we started to discover situations it could not explain: the orbit of Mercury and why atoms didn't collapse from constantly radiating electromagnetic waves are good examples. Yet up until this point, the empirical evidence suggested Newtonian physics were fully correct. And even though Newtonian physics isn't really wrong (It's really good at solving problems at the scales humans normally work at.), its incompleteness means that its predictions are not absolutely true. Quantum and relativity are also incomplete: quantum cannot predict cosmological scale events, and relativity cannot predict subatomic events.
In other words, embracing empiricism means you're never completely sure your existing knowledge applies to any new situation you encounter. You never know if your empirically confirmed model is missing some important factor you've never needed to account for before. Empirical evidence is only a useful tool in gradually reducing the flaws in your understanding; it can't eliminate all of them.
Why is it that it is wrong to think that science alone leads to truth?
Simple counter example: the problem of induction. We have no reason to believe that inductive reasoning is valid, except for our past observations that inductive reasoning had proven useful to us. Extrapolating these past successes to claim that "induction will continue to be valid", is itself an argument using inductive reasoning, making it a circular argument.
In other words, there's no non-inductive proof that proves that inductive reasoning is valid. Science is all about classification and discovery of the world through observation and inductive reasoning. There's no way the scientific method could be applied to prove that the scientific method is valid.
Of course, these are extremely skeptical view points. You could never live your life under the belief that induction isn't valid, it just isn't possible. The mere existence of human memory, learning, education, etc. is reliant on the idea that the mistakes of the past can be learned from to better inform decisions of the future. Nonetheless, from an abstract/philosophical perspective, the issue remains.
Scientism is also scientifically wrong in so far as it is (at least partially) a scientific question how homo sapiens acquire knowledge. "Through science alone" is not a good scientific hypothesis for how knowledge is obtained.
I am not decided on the issue. What I will do here is attempt to work out a consistent and non-absurd scenario in which moderate empiricism is true and we come to know it. After developing an account, I will see if it holds water. I'll be happy to receive improvement suggestions. Note that I am at best familiar with the discussion.
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I. Suppose moderate empiricism is true. Here is a relaxed, impressionistic attempt at formulating it: Our only source of justification for matters of fact (and not of definition) comes from repeated interaction with reality. I suggest that a creature inhabiting this scenario could conceivably learn about its brain, its reasoning capabilities, and features of the world it inhabits in general. Then it could infer moderate empiricism as the best explanation for what it has learned.
Of course, the creature could only do that if it knew (or was epistemically justified in believing) that its explanatory judgments are reliable, i.e., that the theories they judge to be great explanations are very often true. How could this occur?
If there couldn't be any simple set of experiments to confirm them, then the creature could learn of the reliability of its own explanations by observing that they very often lead to predictive theories.
Quine proposed something similar to account for how we are justified in believing certain fundamental statements in mathematics, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics, but not justified a priori. His point is that these statements are central to the way we reason when interacting with reality, and that since we interact successfully with reality, it must be because they reflect something of reality. The argument given for the creature's explanatory practices above follows a similar trail.
Finally, the creature's modes of explanation could conceivably lead it to discover moderate empiricism. It is difficult to work out how, since it would require spelling out what kind of evidence would call for moderate empiricism as the best explanation. However, all I needed to show is that basic tools of reasoning could be justified in a moderate empiricist scenario. This opens the possibility of arguing we do live in this scenario. Have I at least suggested how such showing could be done?
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II. The problem with the above account is that it does not seem the creature could get off the ground. The creature in question would need to employ a set T1 of reasoning tools in getting from (a) its immediately-known empirical knowledge that, by using a set of reasoning tools T2, it has come to be a successful predictor and controller of reality, to (b) the conclusion that tools T2 are truth-conducive. Having established 'b', the creature would be many steps closer to being justified in the conclusions it draws out by employing T2.
Yet, a b-like statement is necessary for having epistemic justification in employing any set of reasoning tools. Thus, a b-like statement for T1 would need to be obtained (probably from an a-like statement that mentions it). Yet, that would require a previously-justified set of reasoning tools T0. Since this obviously leads to an absurd regress, it follows that the creature has no justification for any of the tools of inference it employs, and so no justification in drawing out its conclusions!
So it seems it cannot learn about moderate empiricism after all. It cannot learn about anything it does not immediately perceive. Perhaps it can barely do any interesting empirical psychology (which Quine thought was integral to empiricist epistemology), since it cannot immediately perceive many of the entities and mechanisms postulated in good psychological theories.
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III. Could the above conclusion be averted for the creature? I can imagine three possibilities.
(1) Perhaps the tools' reliability can be discovered non-inferentially. Maybe just observing them work in varied situations, plus the fact that they do work, is already direct acquaintance with their truth-conduciveness. It needn't be inferred using tools of reasoning, and so regress does not surface.
(2) Perhaps a moderate coherence theory of justification is correct. Given a web of beliefs full of direct observational knowledge of the world, and given that the web is stratified by tools of reasoning, the mere fact that it managed to stay consistent, let alone coherent, is already an immense signal that such tools are correct. Coherence theories have been developed, AFAIK, in which an agent can acquire justification from coherence without being previously justified in believing the coherence theory. (The agent needn't even know that its set of beliefs is coherent or consistent, given objectively correct standards of coherence and consistency.)
(3) Maybe a holistic theory of justification is correct, and a creature's belief-system obtains justification as a whole when the creature employs it in engaging successfully with reality. This way, the reasoning tools the creature uses could acquire derivative epistemic justification, since they are an integral part of that web of beliefs.
The regress of section II might be avoidable given '1', '2', or '3'. What do you folks think?
If there is any absolute truth at all, isn't it to be uncovered through the scientific method?
No. The scientific method focuses on observable "objective" truths and presumes that the set of observable truths and truths yet to be scientifically proven are the entirety of "absolute truths". This results in modes of thinking and mental frameworks that eventually result in deviations from actual underlying truths and can be observed in science's failure to accurately and consistently predict and anticipate observable outcomes in marginally complex systems.
For example, a byproduct of this mode of thought is that characteristics and qualities of a thing are contained within that thing. For example, elements have innate qualities, animals have innate qualities and... people have innate qualities.
But what's the innate quality of an "In-N-Out" burger? Or a Chick-Fil-A sandwich? Is it good b/c of the balance of saturated fats and salt? Or is there some element of quality that exists between the observer and the observed? Two individuals may observe a favorable taste in either. Two hundred thousand may observe the same. But apart from surveys and statistics, science is, at best, a blunt tool in measuring the "burger-ness" of the In-n-out double double or Chick-Fil-A Deluxe Sandwich.
Yes, science has broken down the beef patty to the extent that we can recreate a plant-based version to a surprising level of similitude (Impossible Burger yum!). But what about presentation? What about the employee's level of service? What about the supply chain that delivered that burger? How do those factor into this feeling of quality that some of us feel towards In-N-Out (or pick your favorite restaurant chain)?
This is where science starts to strain itself as it tries to break down each of those component mechanisms and factors and back into some quantifiable sum of the parts. Whereas we, as observers, can simply and factually say whether a particular restaurant is good, ok or bad quality.
Science would counter by saying our observation in that case is merely subjective opinion and not scientifically valid. It is not a "truth" by absolute and objective means. But what if it was? If they could predict the elements of success, why wouldn't a scientist want to be able to predict whether a chain or store or product would be massively successful? Wouldn't this be a worthwhile area of study? I think they would it's just that science, as currently practiced, is hamstrung and fundamentally unable to do so.
Why? B/c it too often conflates quality with measurable innate-ness, whereas, in truth, quality exists between things, it exists in the relationships between things.
To date in history we have pursued measurable innate truths to their logical ends where deeper discoveries require orders of magnitude more time and energy to reap infinitesimally smaller benefits. At a micro level we are bumping against quantum behaviors and the inconsistencies that creates. At a macro level our current technology can only see so far into the distance.
Personally, I think we are at a critical juncture in history where, if we accept a more holistic framework for reality, one that includes both the subjective and objective within the same model and with the same level of validity, it will open up a whole new world of discoveries and truths for us to explore.
