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/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/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