This module was supported by national science foundation grants 9981217 and 0127561. Empiricists acknowledge that we are born knowing how to do certain things due to our instincts and reflexes e.g. But insofar as knowing that anything is true, empiricists believe that the mind is a blank slate or tabla rasa echoing the view championed by the empiricist philosopher john locke in his an essay concerning human understanding 1690.

So, if we are not born with knowledge about the world, how is it acquired? in a word, experience from our observations and perceptions, as well as those of others. Science contributes to our empirical knowledge by providing the theoretical frameworks and research methods within which we are able to describe, to explain, and to predict the nature of the world successfully. Yet despite the deep understanding of the world that we have gained through science, there is an important feature of empirical knowledge that is worth noting at the outset. It is expressed as the claim in the following argument: so, what should we conclude from this? that we do not know anything about the world? that science is unreliable? that we should not believe what science textbooks teach us? it may be comforting to hear that none of these things follow. But to see why this is so, you need to understand something about empirical claims assertions about how the world was, is, or will be. And the first thing to note is that every empirical claim is a contingent statement an assertion that is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false.

And whether a contingent statement is true depends on or is contingent upon whether what it asserts accords with the way the the world is. To put it baldly, if what a contingent statement asserts corresponds to the world in terms of either meaning for words or reference for objects , then the statement is true. While this accounts for whether a contingent statement or empirical claim is true, it does not account for how we know it. Since our knowledge about the world empirical knowledge depends on our ability to tell whether a contingent statement is true, a great deal hinges upon the answer to this question: how do we know whether an empirical claim is true or false? unsurprisingly, experience. Experience provides us with the evidence justification for believing that certain statements about the world are true while others are false.

For example, consider the following empirical claim: if someone 146 s brain leaves his body, he will die. is this claim true? yes, we believe so. How do we know? well, for starters, there has not been a single documented case in human history where an individual lost her brain and continued to live. And since experience has also taught us that brains regulate the respiratory and other bodily systems that are necessary for life, the evidence for the truth of this claim is overwhelming.

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However, does all our overwhelming evidence guarantee that this claim will remain true in the future? no. After all, in much the same way that we can now replace a real heart with an artificial one, is it not possible that we could one day replace a real brain with an artificial one? the point is not whether such a procedure is probable, but whether it is possible. Given what we know about human history and the present state of brain transplant technology, the above claim is true.

Here is the rub: the same can be said for every empirical claim. the reason for this is that no accumulation of empirical evidence experience will ever guarantee that events in the future will occur as they have in the past. consequently, not one empirical claim or fact about anything in the world is guaranteed to be true. And with respect to knowledge about the future based on past experience as evidence, it is insurmountable. Rather, it also applies to empirical claims about both the present and the past. For instance, the best empirical evidence currently available leads us to believe that the following empirical claim is true: neil armstrong was the first human to walk on the moon. while the evidence for the truth of this claim is overwhelming, even overwhelming evidence can lead us to believe that a claim is true when it is in fact false. Such was the case with this claim: earth is the center of the universe. although the best evidence for centuries led people to believe otherwise, they were mistaken nevertheless. And as there are many fields of science that are littered with bodies of evidence that misled people to believe claims that were in fact false, there is every reason to believe that some of what we now believe to be true will be proven false as well. Nevertheless, as it is possible that nasa perpetrated an elaborate hoax, it is possible to refute the fact that neil armstrong was the first human to walk on the moon.