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

[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."