Now, where do we go from here? Do you believe that there are things that exist but whose existence cannot be proven by the scientific method?
Here’s the point you’re not understanding: I am not championing the scientific method as the only path to knowledge.
I am asserting that evidence-based inquiry is the only reliable way to come to conclusions about the world. Science and the scientific method provides
one kind of evidence for reason to operate on, but it’s not the only kind.
I don’t need to do some scientific experiment to know that love feels good to me – because my knowledge of that fact comes from the evidence of observing my own emotional state and my reaction to it, and for that claim, those observations are sufficient evidence.
Similarly, I don’t need to do a scientific experiment to be reasonably sure that my car will start when I turn the key. All I need is the evidence of my own experience with cars and the use of inductive reasoning.
Your list of ways of coming to knowledge is really just a list of kinds of evidence.
Scientific Method
Philosophical constructs
Personal experience
Credible testimony of others
Recorded sources (books & other media)
There is scientific evidence, evidence gathered from personal experience, evidence drawn from testimony, evidence drawn from books (another kind of testimony). “Philosophical constructs” are the exception, as they are really part of the reasoning process, not evidence per se (it is possible to reason a valid conclusion that is unsound because there it is not based on evidence).
The way we come to conclusions is that we take evidence gathered from those sources, use reason to determine what claim is supported by this evidence, and use reason to measure how good this particular evidence is to support the claim.
So, on the basis of evidence – the fact that, for example, the vast majority of human beings also report feeling various kinds of good emotions in their interpersonal relationships (similar to mine, though not identical, judging from their descriptions) – it is fair to say that that the variety of emotions we label with the word “love” are a universal experience. No science required…but evidence
is required.
Now, if we want to know something about the
nature of this emotion ( “Is it natural or supernatural?”), we’d have to gather evidence outside of our minds, and for this, scientific experiments would serve us admirably. And not only is there no evidence that love is supernatural, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it comes from brain chemistry.
If you were going to seriously suggest that love is some kind of force that is external to individuals, you’d have to, at the very least, be able to measure its operation outside of the human consciousness… because that’s what forces are – they tangibly manifest in regular, predictable ways.
Your explanation for “love is transcendent” is inane. That an emotion can serve as the basis of action (and actions do generally involve a “subject and an object”) is in no way an indication that the emotion is “transcendent” (in the sense that it transcends the physical world; with some judicious use of equivocation, you can switch over to a different meaning of “love” (relationships) and argue that it “transcends” the individual in some sense – in the same sense that drinking coffee “transcends” the boundaries of me because it unites me with an “object” – but that’s not remotely supernatural or unexplainable. Hatred equally prompts actions between a subject and an object, and it too fulfills itself in a relationship with another – a hate-filled relationship.)
If you’re simply claiming that emotions affect the ways that people act, then you’re not claiming anything special, and you’re certainly not making any claims that can only be explained with supernatural means.
EDIT: I forgot to mention the way that my post connects back to my overall argument on the thread. The point I’m making is that different claims require different kinds of evidence. Most claims don’t require scientific evidence…in fact, most claims about my own feelings don’t require any external evidence at all…but extraordinary claims about the external world – and certainly asserting that a supernatural intelligence exists qualifies as an extraordinary claim – require some compelling evidence culled from the world outside of our heads.
For this purpose, science would be an admirable aid in demonstrating how this supernatural intelligence manifests in detectable ways, thus indicating that it exists.
