empiricism

In the history of these debates over the nature of consciousness, the element of the subjective is often either dismissed as a casualty of empiricism, or downplayed as though it’s not as valuable.

When your congregation zealously overestimates the epistemological functionality of empiricism in the work of logical positivism, you trap the conversation of science and consciousness in your lethally boring Vienna wagon-Circling.

Only Democrats, they insisted, could be trusted to defer to experts in a crisis, restore empiricism to its proper place, and safeguard the environment and public health against the troglodytic masses.

In short, empiricism dominated philosophy and psychology until the second half of the 20th century, when nativist-friendly thinkers such as Noam Chomsky swung the pendulum back toward Plato.

“It’s potentially very healthy if these investigations are animated by an empiricism — an ability to get to the facts,” he said.