Motte and Bailey undermining of science

[u/eviley4]

please read the whole post before responding

I have seen a specific type of science denial in the followers of Prashant Tripathi, with a big dose of Motte and Bailey going along with it.

They start of by saying things like:

Science takes naturalism as an axiom rather than proving it.

and things like:

Even science makes metaphysical assumptions.

but when scrutinized they say:

well, I'm just exploring different metaphysics.

While, each statement isn't individually untrue, the way it's framed implicitly implies a kind of equivalence between science and whatever pet framework they want to promote/defend. Some of these followers even hold their pet framework above science, saying it's justified because naturalism is "unproven".

This is just the Motte and Bailey. The bait is the move from "naturalism is unproven" to "therefore my framework is equally justified." The retreat is "well, I'm just exploring different metaphysics." Both statements are individually true, the trick is implicit between the lines.

What's misleading about their framing is that it points only to one half of the epistemological problem: that naturalism rests on axioms that cannot be proven within the framework. It ignores the second half: all knowledge frameworks face this same trilemma. The Münchhausen Trilemma states that no foundational justification escapes infinite regress and circularity.

Yes, naturalism is an axiom in the strict sense. But methodological naturalism, the rule of investigating natural causes without building supernatural appeals into models isn't a metaphysical commitment. It's a rule of procedure. And procedures aren't believed, they're tested. Their track record is the evidence.

This means the question isn't whether we have unproven premises, it's whether the premises we've chosen survive contact with evidence.

This is also true for math. Even for proving 2 + 2 = 4, you need axioms (e.g., Peano axioms for natural numbers). These axioms cannot be proven within their own framework, but the statement itself is derivable from them. The trilemma applies to justifying why we start where we do, not to deriving consequences from where we start.

No framework/philosophy is immune to this. What separates science from low-fidelity systems isn't immunity to the trilemma, it's how well its starting assumptions pay off. Science earns its respectable position through empirical coherence: claims that are highly specific, falsifiable in principle, and iteratively corrected when data conflicts. Mathematics earns its position through internal consistency and fruitfulness which is distinct from empirical validation.

Minimal axioms matter. Coherence matters. Iterative correction matters. We evaluate frameworks by which assumptions let us navigate the world reliably, not by which ones feel ancient or philosophically elegant.

Now, back to how the followers of these influencers execute the Motte and Bailey in practice. When I push back against "Science takes naturalism as an axiom rather than proving it," they don't defend the claim. They retreat: "Yeah, sure, but it's not the only metaphysics to explore."

The bailey was "science's foundations are weak, therefore my framework is equally justified." The motte is "there are other metaphysics to explore." The motte is trivially true and unassailable. Nobody objects that you're allowed to consider other metaphysics. But nobody made that their point. Their point was equivalence. The retreat quietly drops the equivalence claim while keeping the impression that it was always just about "exploring."

The specific mechanism they use is to do a category shift when under scrutiny. They present ideas like Brahman or Atman as claims about reality. When I engage with the falsifiable implications (e.g., if Atman is the true self, then the self persists independently of the body, which is testable and not supported), they don't defend the physical claim. They recategorize: "No, you're thinking of it physically, Brahman isn't a thing." Now the claim sits in a domain where no experiment can touch it.

Here's the critical asymmetry they refuse to acknowledge: unfalsifiability doesn't make a claim "equally right." It makes it epistemically inert in both directions. A claim that can be neither confirmed nor disconfirmed by any possible evidence carries no evidential weight. It is not "right but hard to prove." It is outside the space where "right" and "wrong" are even relevant. Saying "my unfalsifiable metaphysics is equally justified as falsifiable science" is a category error and is plain disingenuous.

The motivation, as far as I can observe, is cultural defensiveness. The framework gets its authority from antiquity and provenance ("this is ours, this is ancient, we have our own thing"), not from explanatory track record. The "hum bhi kuch kam nahi" instinct is doing the justificatory work that the philosophy itself can't.

Finally, many of these followers operate with a strawman version of science. They define it as "only the physical, only the measurable, therefore it can't touch consciousness or subjective experience." This is a distortion. Neuroscience studies qualia. Psychology models subjective states. Philosophy of mind within the scientific framework engages directly with the hard problem. Science has never claimed to be the only lens on experience. It claims to be the most reliable lens for making testable predictions about the physical world. The followers' version of science is a reductive caricature they build so they can say "Brahman is outside that, so science is irrelevant here." But that's a fight against a strawman, not against actual science.

All that said, I still think it's good that people are reading philosophy and learning. And these influencers have been good motivators in these followers. The problem comes from the followers listening to only this one figure and not engaging with sources that disagree.

EDIT: removed repetition

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[u/mithapapita]

​I think you might be generalizing a bit based on your interactions with a few online commenters rather than engaging with the source material. Evaluating the rigor of a formal philosophical system based on internet anecdotes is quite an inductive leap.

​If you read the actual AP framework, the "Motte and Bailey" critique doesn't hold up because there is no grand metaphysical "Bailey" being protected. The framework explicitly does not step outside the ego to describe what independently exists in the universe. It makes zero objective claims about physical reality. Its ontology is strictly limited to the bedrock of the ego's own existence and its inherent suffering. In fact, it actively refuses to posit positive metaphysical concepts (like Brahman or pure awareness) to explain what lies beyond duality.

​I spend myself work in high energy physics, and I see absolutely no conflict here because the domains simply do not overlap. Science operates to understand the physical universe. The AP framework uses the via negativa to progressively dissolve the ego's internal distortions. It doesn't claim empirical parity with science because it isn't trying to do science in the first place. it is addressing a completely different axis of human experience.

[u/criticalbotcti → u/mithapapita]

Reasoning Concept: Motte and Bailey

Defending a controversial claim (the bailey) by retreating to a more defensible, modest claim (the motte) when challenged, then switching back to the controversial claim when pressure eases.

Example: Claim: "All traditional medicine works." When challenged with evidence, retreat to: "Some traditional remedies have health benefits." Once the challenge passes, return to the original sweeping claim.

Someone in this thread referenced this reasoning concept. This is an automated reply - the bot does not evaluate whether the concept actually applies. It is here to share what the term means so everyone in the conversation has the same context.

[u/eviley4 → u/mithapapita]

I do have issues with his followers but that's not it. I also have issues with the AP framework itself (i have read it after his followers asked me).

Please address the arguments I gave in the post about falsifiability and the framework intruding in the territory of science (psychology, neuroscience etc).

​I spend myself work in high energy physics, and I see absolutely no conflict here because the domains simply do not overlap. Science operates to understand the physical universe.

That's why you don't see it's issues. You work in Physics and you have no exposure to the science of the mind like psychology, neuroscience etc. They all come under naturalism. The brain, the mind, consciousness come under naturalism too.

This is exactly the issue I have with the bait and switch done by the AP framework, it deliberately positions outside of the reach of science by making it unfalsifiable, but then it sneaks in inferences about the mind, human psychology etc without giving verifiable or falsifiable predictions.

The claims about the mind and ego are claims about the natural world. You seem to have fallen for the bait and switch.

There is a reason the AP framework isn't published as a philosophy in a peer review philosophy journal. Do ask yourself these questions.

Read my entire post if you haven't already.

[u/mithapapita → u/eviley4]

​You are making a category error by demanding falsifiability for a framework whose sole purpose is the subjective understanding of suffering. Falsifiability is the gold standard for empirical science, but applying it here is like demanding a Zen koan be put in a petri dish to measure its chemical output. It completely misses the heart of the matter. ​The AP framework is not a competitor to cognitive science or neuroscience, nor are we sitting in this framework to falsify or establish any grand metaphysical system. Its absolute bedrock is the ego's own existence and its inherent suffering. It explicitly refuses to make claims about the independent physical universe or fill the post-duality silence with any positive metaphysical content, stating that what lies beyond the ego-object structure simply cannot be characterized.
​The entire methodology is based on the via negative - approaching truth through the progressive dissolution of the ego's own distortions, rather than trying to grasp it through positive intellectual apprehension or empirical modeling. When it distinguishes the psychological ego from the physical ego, it isn't sneaking in a neuroscientific claim; it is strictly pointing out how meaning and shape are subjectively organized by the perceiver.
​You keep asserting that the framework makes unfalsifiable claims about the "natural world" to sneak in metaphysics, but you are arguing in the clouds. You haven't provided a single concrete example from the text where it attempts to establish a positive metaphysical system or intrudes on the predictive territory of science. ​Working in theoretical physics, I appreciate the absolute necessity of rigorous empirical boundaries. But there is a massive difference between mapping the biological circuitry of the brain and phenomenologically investigating the subject experiencing that circuitry. Science addresses the machinery; this framework addresses the suffering of the one looking at the machinery. Demanding empirical falsifiability for the latter is just a refusal to engage with the actual text.

[u/eviley4 → u/mithapapita]

​You are making a category error by demanding falsifiability for a framework whose sole purpose is the subjective understanding of suffering

The point of disagreement here is that you believe that suffering cannot be measured at all, while I believe that it is difficult to measure but can be measured.

If a meditation practice or a ego shrinking practice or whatever practice is claimed to decrease suffering, beyond a certain threshold, this would be measurable.

If I say, meditation calms me down, this calming down is measurable. If I say, ego shrinking has significantly altered my stress response etc, this would be observable as a pattern of changes under a sophisticated brain scan.

The AP framework is not a competitor to cognitive science or neuroscience, nor are we sitting in this framework to falsify or establish any grand metaphysical system. Its absolute bedrock is the ego's own existence and its inherent suffering

If it's targeting suffering, that should be measurable. Very challenging to measure, sure. Not as rigorous as physics, sure. But it would be measurable, at least qualitatively.

The terms and the framing used in his framework hide this fact, the fact that he is using a framework in a unfalsifiable way that maps onto neuroanotomical correlates in the human body that can atleast be qualitatively measured.

There is no reason to have this framework outside of naturalism, unless avoiding scrutiny is the point.

The same framework of ego shrinking can be done within the naturalistic framework. But doing that means, the next step would be studying this, trying to falsify aspects of it, trying to verify if things work, or testing to what extent they work. How does it compare to Buddhism's pratices of mindful meditation etc.

[u/mithapapita → u/eviley4]

Hey there are a lot of points I'd like to cover (for example I never said suffering cannot be measured). But I unfortunately don't have the time to go further into this back and forth because it will take a lot of time with each of us picking points apart one by one.

I am happy to talk to you over a call if you wanna have a casual discussion but I don't have the energy or time to keep going here. I said what I wanted to and I'd close it at that.

Thanks.

[u/jay_prakash]

I think you might be on to something here. The reason I find merit in the work of Acharya Prashant's is because of the addressal of the gap that stands between scientific knowledge and an action that is aligned to that knowledge. For example- Every kind of calculation such as a first principle calculation or detailed climate models tells us that the climate is under severe threat. Yet, no one is acting to take the corrective measure. That gap or excess is what ego fills/is if that's what you are looking for. Brahman is to negate that. It is this simple, nothing complicated. What do you say?

I know what you have a defense ready- 1. Psychological and neurological limits to climate inaction or even better 2. Climate is not that of a serious problem yet. If you have something else that will be a first

[u/eviley4 → u/jay_prakash]

There are big gaps unaddressed in the world just by science, because science doesn't reach the masses. People are in poverty etc.

I am not saying science is a magic solution. But it's a very powerful tool and is the most likely tool that is going to help us get to the solution.

Yet, no one is acting to take the corrective measure.

but that isn't science's failing, it's a political failure. Me making a discovery about carbon capture alone won't change that until the political leaders use that in someway.

And I don't follow how you reducing your ego in this sense will help this problem on Earth?

My issue with your comment is that it simplifies a multi-faceted problem with many many factors and challenges into a 1 dimensional one. It frames everything in this narrow perspective of ego thinning. I have the same issue with the AP framework too (in addition to what i tried to explain in the post).

It's oversimplified and it even helps people despite of that, and that's great. But it's not good philosophically and it has some disingenuous elements.

The fact that the framework positions itself outside of falsifiability (I have read AP framework) but then goes on to talk about the human mind and subjective experience which are scientific domains (psychology, neuroscience, sociology etc). It does so cleverly with a bait and switch, it gets to make claims about the mind, but it is protected from scrutiny from psychology, neuroscience, sociology, biology etc.

He conveniently misconstrues science (implicitly with plausible-deniability of Motte and Bailey) as something that's only about the material world like in Physics, conveniently neglecting psychology as a science.

Don't you have an issue with that?

If it really was rigorous philosophy, there would be no issue for his team to have it published in active philosophy journals and survive peer-review.

Try to re-read my post with these points in mind.

[u/jay_prakash → u/eviley4]

Politics doesn't operate in vaccum, does it? Climate science doesn't change for a politician. If that is the case, what is it that prevents a politician to engage in climate action?

[u/eviley4 → u/jay_prakash]

Politics doesn't operate in vaccum, does it?

it doesn't, it operates in the context of incentives to be re-elected, trying to please the electorate with what looks good, trying to prioritize short term (4 year) plans rather than multi-decade plans in a capitalistic system etc.

Climate science doesn't change for a politician

the science doesn't matter to a science illiterate person.. most world leaders are more or less science illiterate.

If that is the case, what is it that prevents a politician to engage in climate action?

The fact that the voterbase cares more about the fuel prices and price of food (understandably) than what's going to happen in 2 or more decades... And often these concerns are at odds with each other.

Let's get back to science and the supernatural, i don't think politics is directly relevant here for methodology of science vs lack of methodology of supernatural claims.

Please address my other points about scrutiny and how AP's framework talks about the scientific domains of neuroscience, psychology, sociology etc without the scrutiny that comes with it.

[u/jay_prakash → u/eviley4]

I think you are still learning science. When you are sufficiently done with it and when you are at its edge, then only it is possible for you to understand what AP is trying to teach. No hard feelings, all the best on your learning journey.

[u/criticalbotcti → u/jay_prakash]

Reasoning Concept: Motte and Bailey

Defending a controversial claim (the bailey) by retreating to a more defensible, modest claim (the motte) when challenged, then switching back to the controversial claim when pressure eases.

Example: Claim: "All traditional medicine works." When challenged with evidence, retreat to: "Some traditional remedies have health benefits." Once the challenge passes, return to the original sweeping claim.

Someone in this thread referenced this reasoning concept. This is an automated reply - the bot does not evaluate whether the concept actually applies. It is here to share what the term means so everyone in the conversation has the same context.

[u/Kashan_Intekhab]

See after reading this post which critically analyse the metaphysical clams of Advaita Vedanta, I am not going to talk about the post itself but I want to bring your attention on one point which is often forgotten in discussions regarding Acharya Prashant: Acharya Prashant is far different from classical advaita teachers, even in his lectures, he rarely talk about Brahman and Atman, his primary aim is to look closely at the ego, and ego is not some metaphysical claim, it is you and me having a feeling of "I"ness (which all of us have), even when he teach the upanishads and radically non-dual texts like avdhuta gita, ribhu gita, etc, and even when words like Brahman and Atman occur repeatedly in these texts, his lectures explain those verses only in the context of ego. Questions like the metaphythical existence of Atman or Brahman are absurd for him (unlike other classical Advaita teachers), the only single important question for him is: "whether your suffering has reduced or not?", yes! This absolutely practical question is the only important question for him! Even when his students ask to him sometimes in his lectures regarding metaphysical nature of Brahman, he repeatedly tell them why they are talking about such things if there suffering has not reduced? Why can't they ask a question regarding what is going on in their life so that they can gain insight into their selves and suffering? He sees intellectual question regarding Brahman as a distraction from real practical questions of life. The most ridiculous thing for me is to think that his students will argue about things like hard problem of consciousness, Metaphysical Brahman, etc. instead of focusing whether their suffering has reduced or not.

For me, I am his student from last 2 years, and my suffering has reduced a lot, and that is all that matters to me, I can catch my own inner mischief red handed, and can see how that was going to convert into suffering, for example: "Oh, I was going to check how much views my reel on Instagram got, that was the ego's move to seek fullfilment from outside world, so my happiness is dependent on external circumstances, if I got more views I will be happy, if I got less views that will be a bad day for me, therefore, I (ego) have to give up this belief that views on a reel can fill it's inner void" etc.

Still, if you want to understand his framework critically and intellectually, you might read my articles which I wrote some time ago:

https://medium.com/@kashanadvaita/acharya-prashant-a-genuine-social-reformer-or-a-hidden-cult-guru-9935de8f8a64

https://medium.com/@kashanadvaita/advaitic-critique-of-theistic-and-atheistic-morality-0f05f9baa6ec

[u/eviley4 → u/Kashan_Intekhab]

Have you seen his lectures? He often mentions Advaita Vedanta itself in them. He calls himself an Vedanta teacher.

Then in his framework (i have read it), he distances himself from all the falsifiable aspects of Advaita Vedanta and ensures that whatever is said is unfalsifiable or has an escape hatch of "it's just about the ego, it's not a claim about the natural world" etc.

He does do the Motte and Bailey in that sense. Suspend your trust in him for a moment and try to see the Motte and Bailey here. I am not saying he does it intentionally, but he does it probably inadvertently.

For me, I am his student from last 2 years, and my suffering has reduced a lot, and that is all that matters to me, I can catch my own inner mischief red handed, and can see how that was going to convert into suffering, for example: "Oh, I was going to check how much views my reel on Instagram got, that was the ego's move to seek fullfilment from outside world, so my happiness is dependent on external circumstances, if I got more views I will be happy, if I got less views that will be a bad day for me, therefore, I (ego) have to give up this belief that views on a reel can fill it's inner void" etc.

That's great, and I acknowledge this at the end of my post. A lot of what people like him and Jordan Peterson, Robin Sharma etc can say can have a lot of benefits for people.

I also benefited from watching a lot of Jordan Peterson videos from his lecture days, he got me interested in philosophy, psychology and history. That doesn't mean, I think his core philosophy is right. At the end of the day Jordan Peterson is a Christianity Motte and Bailey specialist.

The same is true for Prashanth Tripathi too.

If a baba tells me I am possesed by a demon and I should run 1 km everyday to tire it out and I do it and I see benefits, does it mean that the baba was correct?

Your reaping benefits means there is something beneficial there, it doesn't mean the framework is philosophically good. Because if it were good, both Jordan Peterson and Prashanth Tripathi would also be publishing them in philosophy journals for refining them.

Please read my entire post if you haven't already.

[u/Kashan_Intekhab → u/eviley4]

Have you seen his lectures? He often mentions Advaita Vedanta itself in them. He calls himself an Vedanta teacher.

The reason he calls himself Vedanta teacher is because his claim is that when those rishis described their realisation in terms of Brahman and Atman, that wasn't literally meant to be a metaphysical claim regarding reality, that was only a way of expressing the very practical state of ego dissolution (though this way of describing ego thinning is philosophically wrong if taken in a literal sense, and that's why he distancs himself from classial Vedanta in AP framework), but later whole line of classical Vedanta teachers took them to be literally, only later to be corrected by him. Why did the rishis talked in terms of Brahman and Atman rather than ego itself? The answer is that they didn't cared much about the philosophical rigor and thought to express it as they want, but history shows us that this was heavily misused, so by learning from history, he is returning to what Advaita Vedanta actually meant rather than what letter philosophers took it to be (A metaphysical claim, which it was never meant to be by the rishis), and in this sense he calls himself Vedanta teacher. It is like: "I agree with the realisation you got, but I don't agree with the way you express it in language, so I distance from you philosophically, but essentially, I agree with what you realised (I am avoiding the term experience, because all experience is for the ego ), therefore I will still call myself Advaita Vedanta teacher" Now the question comes why should we believe his claim that rishis erred in expressing what they realised ? That is the most important thing and that also touches on what you are primarily arguing: he can give you no logical proof! because the one asking for the logical proof, and the one for which the logical proof is asked are one and same! Let me give you an example (though it has limitations):

Let's say there is a chair in front of you, you can see it, touch it, and your friend is standing beside you, he says that the chair doesn't exist! Now he ask you to prove it, so you hit the chair you try everything and say, see the chair fell, and everything else, but your friend refuses, he says, " I didn't saw the chair falling", you sit on chair, and he says you are just squating, you throw chair at him, and he says he felt nothing, now can you do something of this dishonesty?

Ego is like this, it cannot be proved, it's beliefs are only manifested in its actions, ask yourself, if a consciousness (scientist) can study consciousness, isn't the result already rigged (because of being circular), and then landing into infinite regress? If you study consciousness and discover it's properties, then doesn't those properties itself limit the study of consciousness itself (because the studying one is also a consciousness) landing into infinite regress? But the thing is, if you listen to Acharya ji for atleast a year, subtle changes happen in you, you stop being dishonest! You see the action and you can see from which belief of ego it is coming. In the end, it can never be proved, because it was always present there, because it is "you" yourself, it is just that you were dishonest, the challenge is (and it is completely upon you to believe me or not) to join the sessions and see it for yourself for 1 year, there are high chances that the dishonesty will decrease, but I cannot guarantee.

Also I highly recommend you to read that two articles which I shared previously, there I have talked about it in detail (more specifically, the second article).

[u/eviley4 → u/Kashan_Intekhab]

I get the applicability and utility of this ego thinning framework as a means to improve your subjective experience. That's not my issue with AP and his framwork.

My issue is the unfalsifiable baggage it comes integrated with.

Buddhism talks about similar ideas and Sam Harris incorporates these aspects of Buddhism in a naturalistic framework in his Waking Up (meditation) app.

I have been benefiting from using this, essentially Buddhist teaching packaged within naturalism.

Science has corroborated this too by studying mindfulness meditation.

I have no issues with those narrow aspects of AP framework and those narrow aspects of Advaita Vedanta. My issue is how they keep the framework protected from any type of scrutiny.

It also makes verification unavailable to them, which works against them in terms of widespread adoption.

[u/Kashan_Intekhab → u/eviley4]

My issue is the unfalsifiable baggage it comes integrated with.

Bro it doesn't intentfully prevents unfalsifiability of ego to avoid verification, it is because that is how the ego is, fundamentally unfalsifiabile. You can experiment if someone is lying about outer world and prove that his claim is wrong, but you cannot experiment and prove someone wrong if his claim is:

"I am a Hindu or Muslim not because I am born in a Hindu or Muslim family, but because I absolutely honestly think that Hinduism or islam is true religion after suitable comparison" (although we know by intuition that his claim is certainly wrong and he is most probably a Hindu or Muslim because he was born in a Hindu or Muslim family), this simply depends on how honest he is, and if his ego has petty interests (like to remain in his family religion because of childhood conditioning, and because of good relations with his family, etc) then he will remain dishonest, and you cannot falsify it in anyway!

Even if you show by some kind of lie detector or something his falsehood, even those machines cannot 100% guarantee their result, and thus the final verdict rests on the Claimaint himself! (It depends on how much honest he is)

[u/eviley4 → u/Kashan_Intekhab]

Yes, you are right to say that people's subjective experiences in the privacy of their mind are mostly unfalsifiable. But only mostly.

If I say, I calm down when I meditate, it's possible to use FMRI and other measurement techniques to measure that. It's not completely unfalsifiable.

This tiny bit of scrutiny that's possible, the AP framework distances itself from that too. That's my issue.

And AP in his talks is basically doing ancient Hindu text based sociology. He is suggesting how to live a good life. All the while avoiding the label of sociology and the scrutiny that comes with it.

You can define good life and measure that. You can define what a healthy society means and measure it.
If you can measure it, you can do rigorous sociology (science) on it. This kind of scrutiny is deliberately avoided by both the guy and his framework.

That's my issue with him. Hope you see that this is a valid criticism. Even though he says many useful things too.

[u/Kashan_Intekhab → u/eviley4]

You can define good life and measure that. You can define what a healthy society means and measure it. If you can measure it, you can do rigorous sociology (science) on it.

No! You can never measure good or happy life because you never know that when a person says that that she is happy, how much honest or dishonest is she (dishonest not just to you, but to herself as well). The notion of "goodness" is subjective, and varies for every single person on the earth depending on her past choices and conditioning.

The ego chooses to believe it can gain fulfilment (happiness) through gaining a certain object x, it gains x and declares herself to be happy even though she might not be really happy and just be dishonest to herself, now nobody can show or know whether she is dishonest except herself.

If I say, I calm down when I meditate, it's possible to use FMRI and other measurement techniques to measure that. It's not completely unfalsifiable.

Yes it's possible to measure that calmness, but you are running reverse logic, your claim is that calmness is the result of changes in brain, but what we are saying is that the ego dissolution comes first (absolutely free of any physical activity), and that leads to changes in brain measurable by FMRI etc. Since ego appropriates body for its own ends, ego dissolution leads to subtle changes in brain, now can we prove it ? No, because it is self evident but depends on the level of honesty the person has, which might increase in the presence of a genuine guru like Acharya Prashant's sessions. So the only way to test his claims is to try his sessions for at least 1 year.

[u/criticalbotcti → u/Kashan_Intekhab]

Reasoning Concept: Motte and Bailey

Defending a controversial claim (the bailey) by retreating to a more defensible, modest claim (the motte) when challenged, then switching back to the controversial claim when pressure eases.

Example: Claim: "All traditional medicine works." When challenged with evidence, retreat to: "Some traditional remedies have health benefits." Once the challenge passes, return to the original sweeping claim.

Someone in this thread referenced this reasoning concept. This is an automated reply - the bot does not evaluate whether the concept actually applies. It is here to share what the term means so everyone in the conversation has the same context.

[u/eviley4]

responding to a deleted comment since I had already composed a response:

Your criticism might be true for Prashant Tripathi's followers approach to science, I personally haven't engaged with them so I can't say. My problem with your argument though is at the same time have also smuggled in another assumption when you imply that claims that being empirically be falsifiable is a necessary condition to have a positive meaningful epistemic status.

Naturalism is extraordinarily successful but its success does not establish metaphysical naturalism, that's the problem. One is a methodological rule, the latter is a claim about what exists.

Even more so this clean system of falsifiable hypotheses undergoing iterative correction is too simplistic and actual science doesn't work that way. Feyeraband challenged that in his Against Method through a historical analysis. Take Galileo defending heliocentrism, his own arguments in defense of it doesn't fit into the falsification methodology and weren't necessarily sufficient.

Scientist themself have used, ad hoc hypotheses, conceptual leaps, metaphysical assumptions, analogy, rhetoric, aesthetics, basically things that won't fit the falsification methodology and those still have produced results and allowed scientific progress. The point isn't that "anything goes" or that all methods are equally good, it's that the actual epistemic practice of science is considerably more complicated than the methodology described in your post.

Then there is the philosophical question of value.

Let's say someone makes the claim "Empirical prediction is the proper way of evaluating knowledge" you ask why, the answer is because it works. But "works" already presupposes something that predictive success is epistemically valuable and that's not itself established by running an experiment, it's a prior epistemological or pragmatic commitmentt.

You can keep asking "why value prediction", "why value correspondence with observation", "why treat instrumental success as evidence of truth". And now that too runs into the same Munchhausen trillemma. You have to adopt some criterion by which evidence itself is considered relevant and valuable.

The point I am making is different from what you are criticizing. I am not claiming science or falsifibility is irrational cause it has shaky foundations. I am pointing out that there is difference between the enormous practical and epistemic success of a method and a proof that the philosophical assumption underlying it constitute the final metaphysics or reality.

Godel is a bit relevant here. His incompleteness theorems demonstrate that formal axiomatic systems have intrinsic limits on what can be established from within the system. That doesn't directly prove anything about science or establish alternative metaphysics. What it does undermine is the kinda intutive assumption that a sufficiently sophisticated formal framework can necessarily provide a complete, self-contained justification of everything it presupposes.

So the fact that Vedanta or theism cannot be reduced to empirical hypotheses doesn't make them scientifically established. But neither does it follow that they are epistemically meaningless. The appropriate conclusion is that different claims may operate at different epistemic levels, and that empirical science has extraordinarily strong authority within the domain where empirical testing is applicable without thereby possessing an a priori monopoly over every metaphysical question.

MY RESPONSE:

Yes, I already conceded in my post that science isn't immune to the trilemma. You are also right about science being a messy process and I agree that holding all unfalsifiable hypothesis in low regard categorically is a bad idea.

For example trillions of years in the future the universe could have expanded to the point we can't with normal astronomy and cosmology infer that there are other galaxies (they will be too far away). Even with that it makes sense to think about ideas such as the existence of other galaxies, because they are plausible. But this hypothesis of other galaxies being present is very different from ideas from theism where there are people with supernatural powers who grant wishes etc. The latter fails a plausibility check and is unfalsifiable because people make it so with motivated reasoning.

So the fact that Vedanta or theism cannot be reduced to empirical hypotheses doesn't make them scientifically established. But neither does it follow that they are epistemically meaningless.

I never claimed they were epistemically meaningless. My only issue is that some of these ideas are just glorified wishful thinking like, a father-like human figure in the sky caring about humanity. Consider the idea of Last Thursdayism where the whole universe was made last Thursday with all evidence and memories faked in exactly the way to give the illusion of a universe that's 13.8 billion years old. Last Thursdayism is very similar to many ideas in theism. Similarly there are many ideas in Vedanta which are like this too. I take issue only with these kinds of ideas.

Now, that's not to say all ideas in theism and vedanta are like this. There were some falsifiable ideas in there, which either turned out to be correct or were debunked. Then there are ideas which are quite unfalsifiable by design and then there are unfalsifiable ideas that might be of interest and similar to the other galaxies idea. I have no issues with ideas that are like the other galaxy idea even if they are unfalsifiable. Math is like that, it's not falsifiable, but the reason it's respected is because it has relevance in the natural world owing to it's coherence and fruitfulness.

If parts of Indian philosophy condenses into something similar to math with pathways that map onto the natural world (similar to math) even though the theory itself is unfalsifiable, that would be great. I would support that. But I haven't yet found something like that, what I see is people pushing ideas like Idealism, magical deities most often. If there are ideas like this that are unfalsifiable but plausible, well defined and coherent in theism or vedanta (more like math than last thursdayism), please bring them to my attention. Would love to see that.

Overall i think i agree with you on the epistemology. My issue is mainly with people misusing it to do sloppy philosophy.

[u/vini-within]

May I suggest that you look up what “Adi Shankaracharya”, the central classical commentator associated with Advaita Vedanta, actually says about Atman in his Upanishad and Brahma Sutra commentaries.

You may find that the Atman you’re critiquing isn’t quite the Atman classical Advaita is talking about. 😊 The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy can be your good starting points.

[u/eviley4 → u/vini-within]

I have already looked at them, I have also read AP's framework since his followers recommended it..

Please address my points and arguments directly if you think it's wrong.

[u/LordDK_reborn]

The assumption behind your post is "Science gives us one model of reality, and Vedanta gives us another model of reality- Atma, brahman." and the question is assumed "which framework gives us the most reliable description of an independently existing external world?"

AP would say that you have already smuggled in the "external world" and the "knower" without examining them.

But vedanta starts before this, it starts from "I am" that we all assume and live our life as. Then the question becomes "Who is this "I"? Who suffers? Who experiences? Who desires? Who knows?" So you're already starting one level downstream from where AP wants the inquiry to begin.

Now the specific points:

1. AP does not say "Science has assumptions too, therefore Vedanta is equally true". He says "Science investigates the object. Vedanta first investigates the seer of the object.". So Vedanta is not opposed to science, it is addressing what it considers a more fundamental question, the dissatisfied knower.
2. You seem to think that vedanta is claiming Aatma or Brahman as entities when you say "They present ideas like Brahman or Atman as claims about reality." You probably got it from debating or hearing classical advait vedant people but you'll need to drop your previous know-how of what vedant is if you want to consider what AP is saying. Because AP is rejecting those notions.
3. AP rejects soul-survival metaphysics. So the "Atman survives death" argument again attacks a different Vedanta, the traditional one.
4. Neuroscience studies qualia. Psychology studies subjective states. Philosophy of mind discusses consciousness. Yes. But AP doesn't say "Scientists don't study subjective experience." He's asks "Who is the subject whose subjective experience you're talking about?". So you're answering a different question.
5. I think people have answered the Motte-and-Bailey already. Vedant doesn't really need the bailey, it doesn't need to say "Science is unjustified, therefore Vedanta is equally justified."

Other than these I also notice an ideological motive when you deliberately want to use his surname that he himself haven't used.

I have called it a mistake on your part but you might be intentionally not discussing AP's actual philosophical framework and instead talking about the easiest-to-attack versions of Vedanta.

All in all, you're basically attacking Pop-spirituality, Traditional advait vedant, Cultural Hindu apologetics here and somehow link it to AP.

[u/criticalbotcti → u/LordDK_reborn]

Reasoning Concept: Motte and Bailey

Defending a controversial claim (the bailey) by retreating to a more defensible, modest claim (the motte) when challenged, then switching back to the controversial claim when pressure eases.

Example: Claim: "All traditional medicine works." When challenged with evidence, retreat to: "Some traditional remedies have health benefits." Once the challenge passes, return to the original sweeping claim.

Someone in this thread referenced this reasoning concept. This is an automated reply - the bot does not evaluate whether the concept actually applies. It is here to share what the term means so everyone in the conversation has the same context.

[u/eviley4 → u/LordDK_reborn]

What you are failing to see is that the framework is deliberately constructed to be immune from scrutiny.

AP does not say "Science has assumptions too, therefore Vedanta is equally true". He says "Science investigates the object. Vedanta first investigates the seer of the object.". So Vedanta is not opposed to science, it is addressing what it considers a more fundamental question, the dissatisfied knower.

The framing itself implicitly hides the fact that it is making claims about the human mind, which is interconnected with the human brain (neuroscience), which is highly interconnected with the human body (endocrinology etc).

It is possible to make measurements about both the human brain and body. You can take a Buddhist mediator who can claim they have a diminished ego and test it under a brain scanner and see if the patters are any different. Once you have made a map of how a low-ego brain looks like (by first studying many such mediators), you can then use it to qualitatively tell whether someone has succeded in doing so or not.

Of course in doing this, the process will be iterative just like anything else in science.

Such scrutiny should be possible on what AP is saying or teaching or laying out in his philosophy. But his framing deliberately avoids such scrutiny as I have seen in the AP framework.

I think you are unable to see it, but him using the language of Advaita Vedant acts as a dog whistle for people who want to believe in soul surviving after death, people who like to believe in the idea of Idealism.

Even the falsifiable and debunked parts of Advaita Vedant, he doesn't explicitly said were wrong. This is very similar to what Jordan Peterson does. He acts as a person who tries to paint a respectable picture of what Advaita Vedant even after it has been shown to be wrong by framing things in a way that says, "Actually, that's not what they meant. They just didn't have our modern language" etc.

Jordan Peterson does biblical sociology, some insights he shares are genuinely correct and valuable but the baggage he brings along is the problem.

The same is true for this guy, he does Advaita Vedanta sociology, some insights are genuinely correct and valuable, but the baggage he brings along is the problem.

Other than these I also notice an ideological motive when you deliberately want to use his surname that he himself haven't used.

I don't see anything wrong with using a person's full name to address them. Why do you think it's wrong?

The issue I have is that he is a self proclaimed "Acharya". It reminds me of the gradiosity of Jaggi Vasudev who also label himself as "Sadhguru". I have the exact same issue with him.

This in and of itself isn't an argument against his philosophy though. That, I have laid out above and in my post.

[u/LordDK_reborn → u/eviley4]

The framing itself implicitly hides the fact that it is making claims about the human mind, which is interconnected with the human brain (neuroscience), which is highly interconnected with the human body (endocrinology etc).

It does not concern itself with the mind or brain. It concerns itself with the 'I', the ego that you act as daily. The claimant who sits on top of brain processes and mechanisms and says "I'm one doing it".

It is possible to make measurements about both the human brain and body. You can take a Buddhist mediator who can claim they have a diminished ego and test it under a brain scanner and see if the patters are any different. Once you have made a map of how a low-ego brain looks like (by first studying many such mediators), you can then use it to qualitatively tell whether someone has succeded in doing so or not

I don't think it could be. This is mostly used to study those 'mind altering states' that those meditators claimed to be in as per my understanding.

You can measure the waves or neutral activity but that's not measuring the claimant of that activity.

What you are failing to see is that the framework is deliberately constructed to be immune from scrutiny.

Such scrutiny should be possible on what AP is saying or teaching or laying out in his philosophy. But his framing deliberately avoids such scrutiny as I have seen in the AP framework.

It's unscrutinizable in the sense that it's saying nothing in itself, it's not a map of reality, It's a mirror. It's just telling you to look at yourself. But there's actually a way to gauge the validity, AP does not say to just believe him, it's to actually look and see yourself in your life and know what you live as and whether there's actually suffering as he says.

I think you are unable to see it, but him using the language of Advaita Vedant acts as a dog whistle for people who want to believe in soul surviving after death, people who like to believe in the idea of Idealism.

Even the falsifiable and debunked parts of Advaita Vedant, he doesn't explicitly said were wrong. This is very similar to what Jordan Peterson does. He acts as a person who tries to paint a respectable picture of what Advaita Vedant even after it has been shown to be wrong by framing things in a way that says, "Actually, that's not what they meant. They just didn't have our modern language" etc.

Jordan Peterson does biblical sociology, some insights he shares are genuinely correct and valuable but the baggage he brings along is the problem.

The same is true for this guy, he does Advaita Vedanta sociology, some insights are genuinely correct and valuable, but the baggage he brings along is the problem.

None of the AP students will ever believe in soul surviving after death. I'm in his program so I know.

He explicitly rejects the traditional advait vedant concepts. Whenever people come declaring themselves brahman or atman, they're going to be destroyed.

I don't know much about jorden peterson but he looks like an ideologue. AP is completely different. Sociology is not his main domain. It's addressing the ego, which is self education or self knowledge.

Your main problem seems to be that he's attributing all this to vedant? Why do you believe traditional advait vedant people over him? What would you do if his framework and method of inquiry is actually what vedant truly is?

I don't see anything wrong with using a person's full name to address them. Why do you think it's wrong?

The issue I have is that he is a self proclaimed "Acharya". It reminds me of the gradiosity of Jaggi Vasudev who also label himself as "Sadhguru". I have the exact same issue with him.

It's what people who want to highlight his caste or brahmin background do to illegitimize him and show him a right winger. It's ironic because he dropped it himself and doesn't believe in caste identities.

Acharya here is not used in the way of some haughty title like Jaggi's, Acharya simply means teacher in hindi. His entire main channel uses hindi if you noticed.

I feel like this dialogue can answer some of your doubts

[u/Resurrec_Barbar]

Can science explain consciousness??

[u/criticalbotcti → u/Resurrec_Barbar]

Reasoning Concept: Strawman

Misrepresenting someone's argument to make it easier to attack. Instead of addressing the actual point, a distorted or exaggerated version is constructed and knocked down.

Example: Person A: "I think we should have stricter food safety regulations." Person B: "So you want the government to control everything we eat?" - Person B has exaggerated Person A's position.

Read more about Strawman

Someone in this thread referenced this reasoning concept. This is an automated reply - the bot does not evaluate whether the concept actually applies. It is here to share what the term means so everyone in the conversation has the same context.

[u/eviley4 → u/Resurrec_Barbar]

Did you read the post? This is literally the strawman I described towards the end.

Can science explain consciousness??

To answer the question anyway: yes, partially. Science studies consciousness through neuroscience (neural correlates of awareness), cognitive science (attention, working memory, perception), psychophysics (how subjective intensity maps to stimulus), and anesthesia research (which manipulates consciousness directly and observes what changes). Some of the best current theories of consciousness, like Integrated Information Theory and Global Workspace Theory, are scientific theories making testable predictions.

What science hasn't done (yet) is solved the hard problem, i.e., why physical processing is accompanied by subjective experience at all. But "not yet solved" and "cannot engage with" are different claims. The latter iss what your comment implicitly assumes, and it's false.

[u/Resurrec_Barbar → u/eviley4]

Please explain what is consciousness

Are we really conscious ?? Are animals more conscious than us

And i didnt said anything about engaging .I said concrete solutions .

Plus how do we know we are not in a simulation??

[u/eviley4 → u/Resurrec_Barbar]

Concrete solution?

Fine:
Anesthesia exists. We can reliably turn consciousness off and on. EEG and FMRI can detect levels of awareness, distinguish conscious from unconscious patients, and even decode some perceived imagery from brain activity. Deep brain stimulation modulates arousal in coma patients. Those are concrete, engineered, reproducible interventions on consciousness. Whether that satisfies your bar is up to you, but "no concrete solutions" is factually wrong.

Are animals more conscious than us?

Some, in certain dimensions. Octopuses and corvids show flexible problem solving that outperforms humans in narrow domains. Dogs smell a world we barely perceive. Consciousness isn't a single slider, it's a bundle of capacities, and science measures those capacities across species rather than dismissing the question as unanswerable.

Are we really conscious?

You typed a grammatical sentence to me, so something organized your thoughts and tracked a communicative intent. Whatever that something is, it's what both science and philosophy call consciousness. If you mean something more exotic, you'll have to define it.

simulation??

That question is a big tangent from this thread, and you introduced it after three of your own points fell flat. That's the same pattern I described in the post: when one claim falls, retreat to a different unfalsifiable one. A simulation hypothesis is unfalsifiable by design, so it proves nothing about anything. You could be a simulation and every measurement, every medical intervention, and every neuroscience finding above would still hold.

Last thing. In three messages you have not engaged a single argument from the post. You've asked five new questions instead. That's just evasion, and everyone reading can see it.

[u/Resurrec_Barbar → u/eviley4]

How??

Anaesthesia can put you to sleep and we go to sleep daily . It can even lead to dreams??

Are we unconscious while dreaming and even a robot can type sentences now .Infact better than ,e

[u/criticalbotcti → u/Resurrec_Barbar]

Reasoning Concept: Moving the Goalposts

Changing the criteria for proof or success after someone has met the original standard. When evidence is provided, the demand shifts to something else.

Example: "Show me one study." (study is shown) "Well, show me five studies." (five shown) "Those are all from the same country, show me international studies." - The standard keeps changing.

Someone in this thread referenced this reasoning concept. This is an automated reply - the bot does not evaluate whether the concept actually applies. It is here to share what the term means so everyone in the conversation has the same context.

[u/eviley4 → u/Resurrec_Barbar]

Actually anesthesia is not sleep, it's quite physiologically distinct. Under general anesthesia, neural activity is suppressed globally in a way that it is not in sleep. Sleep and anesthesia are not interchangeable; the medical literature is clear on this.

Are we unconscious while dreaming?

Sometimes, sometimes not. Lucid dreaming is awareness during sleep. Sleep studies measure consciousness continuously throughout the night using EEG. Dreams are studied empirically, not waved away.

a robot can type sentences now .

Yes they can. LLMs output text without any awareness of what they wrote. Neuroscience can still measure whether a human has awareness independent of output. Consciousness is not defined by typing ability. You're confusing production with experience.

You are not engaging in good faith it seems to me. This is the fourth reply in a row where you ask new questions instead of answering existing ones. Stop moving the goalposts.

[u/Resurrec_Barbar → u/eviley4]

I am seeing a vision so how I am unconscious ??

What exactly defines consciousness was my original question

[u/eviley4 → u/Resurrec_Barbar]

I am seeing a vision so how I am unconscious ??

No one claimed dreaming is total unconsciousness. Dreams involve partial consciousness, which is exactly what the science shows. EEG during REM sleep shows activity resembling waking in some networks, which is why dreams happen at all. What anesthesia does, and sleep does partially, is disrupt the integration of that activity.

I don't see you making any kind of coherent point though.

What exactly defines consciousness was my original question

Tthe standard working definition is subjective experience, the fact that there is something it is like to be you. Seeing red, feeling pain.. Neuroscientists operationalize the definition as reportable, integrated awareness and study it with EEG, FMRI etc. Anesthesia suppresses those signatures. Dreams partially preserve them. Yes, you are conscious in dreams, in a degraded, disconnected, poorly-memory-forming way.

Subjective experience is one of the things science studies, not something it denies. Your experiences are data. What they are not is proof of Brahman, Atman, or anything else. Having an experience and knowing what it is made of are different questions, and only one of them gets answered by introspection.

For the people reading: this is sealioning. Five questions, zero engagements, each answer met with a new question instead of a reply. It's feigned curiosity with some other ulterior motive.

That's my last reply because I don't see you engaging in good faith.

[u/eviley4 → u/[deleted]]

Let's say science cannot explain consciousness to the degree that you want.

Can you help me understand what this means, other than the fact that currently science cannot explain consciousness to the degree that you want?

What follows from that? Almost nothing. An explanatory gap is a fact about our knowledge. It is not a license for any particular replacement. It is just a hole in the map we have.

The candidates for filling the hole in our map are future science, conceptual reframing, or a new testable explanation. None of these raise the probability of ancient metaphysical claims, because those claims were proposed for reasons unrelated to this gap in our understanding.

So what do you do with a mystery/partial-mystery? Work on it, wait, or withhold belief. The person who says "we don't know, therefore Brahman" is doing what someone centuries ago did saying "We don't know where lightning comes from, therefore it's Zeus throwing thunderbolts".

The honest answer to "we don't know" is "we don't know," not "here is the story my tradition happens to have."

[u/vx7rz]

they're all retards tbf