It isn't the definition in the dictionary I just looked at. What I found was use of the scientific method, not the perspective of the senses of the individual.

You aren't using a reliable dictionary, what is that, Oxford?

As many times as it takes for you to present something other than a snapshot of your ignorance. You haven't presented a reasonable argument against empiricism, so let's start there.

I proposed that it's possible for empiricism to find some answers and that it's impossible for metaphysics to find any answers, and you chimed in with responses empty of meaning and off the mark. We could start there too.

I respect some of what's called philosophy, and philosophy by definition fits what I'm practicing here. If you don't like what I'm saying, then argue against it.

But it isn't groundless, so everything you said was emptiness and a failure. You can't just arbitrarily pull a vacuous argument out of your ass and expect it to hold weight under scrutiny.

The same questions aren't being asked within empiricism. Very different questions are being asked, and progress is evident. The same questions are being asked within philosophy because philosophy is a refusal of evidence. It's defiant and nurtures socially inhospitable and ill-compassioned tendencies.

The final outcome of empiricism is some possible understanding of things, — whollyrolling

What is wrong with this statement, what's unclear about it?

Let me make it more clear, let me spell it out: the final outcome of philosophy is its origin. The final outcome of empiricism is separate from its origin.

If by saying that I need to read things more closely, you mean you're admitting that you didn't read my commentary prior to attacking it, and I've read and written in good form, then we agree.

I have never said that experience is any kind of magic ingredient, and I have never said that science is based on individual experience. I'm not sure where you're even coming from, are you okay?

Are you aware of them being self-aware?

How can you possibly equate experience of any indeterminate kind with an aptitude for science based on an awareness of self?

It would follow suit, given a praise of any kind of philosophy, that someone would defy science--science is the death of reason. Something more powerful than reason has come to the surface, and philosophy hates it for exposing the method behind all the little slight-of-philosophical-hand tricks.

Nowhere did I say that metaphysics provides knowledge, and you can't pretend that any of the things I've listed did not come from empirical research and development. Now you're beating around the bush because you have no legs to stand on.

We cannot achieve any such knowledge via empirical inquiry or pure reason. — Janus

The point is that my experience or intuition is only a good reason (if it is a good reason) for my own metaphysical attitude or disposition, and convincing others would be more a matter of rhetoric than of rigorous argument. — Janus

Maybe you can stand on your own two metaphysical legs and tell me specifically what you're not buying. Tell me I'm not standing on solid ground while you say nothing about anything.

How about skyscrapers, bridges, medicine, space travel, psychotherapy, economics, popular music, transcendental meditation, professional sports, agriculture and evolution, just to start this somewhere. Tell me, what has metaphysics done to benefit humankind apart from handing its mistakes over for real intellects to resolve?

To call something groundless, you have to first take the ground from beneath it, Do your worst. You haven't said anything yet.

Actually, you are wrong, the final outcome of empiricism is some possible understanding of things, as I just said earlier.

Everything that has been determined about our surroundings has been through empiricism. Please feel free to explain what philosophy has done for humanity apart from its isolation of wealth as the epitome of knowledge.

Elaborate on what you just said, it sounds a bit like when people laugh loudly in the back of a movie theatre while punching themselves in the face.

Metaphysics tries to understand the physical by applying the idiotic to it. The final outcome of empiricism is some possible understanding of things, while metaphysics is as futile as anarchism.

"Pure reason" is an empty fist flaunted at unanswerable questions.

We cannot achieve any such knowledge via empirical inquiry or pure reason. — Janus

This.

Every atheist is an individual. Stop acting like there's an atheist manifesto.

So what you're saying is that Kant was living in a fantasy? Oh, and that you are as well?

We don't know that the earth will take care of itself. Evidence seems to point to the contrary. The solar system will inevitably fizzle out, and the only way we'll survive it is by manipulating ourselves and our environment in precisely the correct manner without any idea as to what that manner is.

I don't think anyone who's genuinely looking for an answer ends where they thought they would.

Which book? I'm currently reading The Gay Science, and it's dense and addresses complex issues in an absence of one- or two-liner aphorisms. I get what you're saying about the aphorisms, but they're a small portion of a very well-written legacy and have only lost value due to misinterpretation, ever-changing bias and the commoditization of existence. Much of the material you're referring to was extracted from his personal journals by his sister and other family after his death, and I'm sure they didn't know quite what to do with it.

He also wasn't a conventional philosopher by any means. He appeared more often as a common man in contrast to the self-aggrandizing and pedantic rhetoric of his contemporaries.

And I do realize the irony in my saying that others were self-aggrandizing--but Nietzsche was psychologically undressed in a way that others around him were not.

Why never has a reasonable answer.

The ordinary man doesn't know what he knows either, just accepts his fate by letting it go for the sake of a common good, and the philosopher, an expert, accepts his fate by verbosely clinging to it, or to some defiance of it, on behalf of a common evil, and there is no ordinary man, and there is no philosopher, so all musings are vanity.

Because God. There is no excuse apart from origin, and our self-awareness compels us to attempt to explore it.

Humanity has been in existential crisis for maybe 4,000-15,000 years of recorded history, and we don't understand much more than we did when we began to record ourselves trying to understand ourselves and our environment. A territory is a human concept. A map is a human concept. It all seems sort of like painting a moustache on a painting of a unicorn and saying "I finally figured it out".

Experts extract complication from simplicity.

That is a direct contradiction.

The map doesn't exist either. And I think the problem is simpler than confusion, it's a willingness to jump headlong and blind into complacency, the safety of refusal and denial and the egoism of overcoming the invention of doubt. It is the egoism of purpose. Confusion is too open-ended and complex.

How is the human mind supposed to reconcile the vast emptiness of being except by turning itself into the meaning of life?

If only it was so simple as looking at the track record of religion and weighing pro against con.

But if we were doing it correctly = Utopia because God = exists. And because I don't understand anything God = exists.

Education is weaponizing oversensitivity.

I disagree with Sam Harris on many topics, but on free will, he used an illustration involving a mass shooting in which the shooter was afflicted by a tumour. The tumour placed pressure on his brain in such a way as to alter his disposition, and he became violently aggressive toward his family and eventually his society before shooting several people and then himself.

I don't remember whether this was a fictitious example or a true story, but either way, it's possible for this to happen. You can force someone to experience certain sensory perceptions by manipulating portions of their brain. You can certainly change someone's disposition through torture, medication, indoctrination, etc.

I don't believe we would respond correctly to environmental stimuli, and by correct I mean conducive to survival, if we had free will.

Everyone is subject to the same natural laws. Some would argue that no matter how much willpower might be lost, the initial choice to consume such an addictive substance was based on free will. Some would argue that there is no free will regardless, and I'm in that category. Some people consume copious amounts of addictive substances and don't become enslaved by them. Perhaps addiction is as debatable as free will.

Does a person who lives a healthy lifestyle exhibit free will, or are they enslaved by an irresistible compulsion to eat well and exercise?

How can hard work or difficulty be associated with morality?

Good one, good argument, you got me. Touché. Thank you for bringing to my attention that ancient Greeks did not live in caves because I had meant it literally--that they literally lived in caves.

I dismiss these cave men on the grounds of thousands of years of human history and on the grounds of rudimentary statistics and probability, on the grounds of their very narrow writing, not a narrow reading of it. I can assure you it's more reckless to argue on behalf of something you don't understand than to argue against something of which you have some understanding.

Are you going to demonstrate the fallacy of my criticism of exclusivity in education or just casually slough it off while ironically calling my view narrow?

I'm not dismissing them from such a narrow view as you suggest.

Let's get out of the way that to claim that someone who has been given something is inherently superior to someone who has not is false, obviously. We're not talking about aptitude for learning here, we're talking about virtue of birthright.

Exclusivity resulted in "founding Western philosophy" on bad ideas. That they were the only ideas available in writing neither makes them sacred nor a solid foundation. The "foundation of Western philosophy" is a meticulous correction of ancient mistakes. Where did I say that I disregard all Western philosophy, please quote it.

Have you read the ancient Greeks? They admit to this openly in their writings, it's not my interpretation or my "agenda". They literally spell it out.

If I did have an agenda though, it would be to argue on behalf of honest and genuine "higher education" for all people regardless of their circumstances. Although I'm aware that in many cases this won't help on an individual level.

Ironically in "free" or "developed" nations today, it's those who cry "more freedom" who inspire the most extensive social and cultural damage, who speak and act most oppressively, who have a stranglehold on much of our legislation, media and education. If "freedom" got excessively drunk one night and had an intense hangover the next morning, that hangover would be far left politics.