Methods of Perception

Which demonstrates the greater reality, our philosophy established by our principles through reason and deduction or that which is established by our research through empirical information gained by the senses? Most people would say the latter because they believe that philosophy and the deductive method are only one step above faith and faith is believed to be the lowest level of reality or method of establishing truth. Besides, everyone knows that “seeing is believing” (empirical information). Empiricism has gained the upper hand on most fronts. Reason and deduction are expected to be subservient to the empirical method. It is my opinion that B.J. only wanted science and empirical research to corroborate what he already knew from the deduction of the chiropractic philosophy. Somehow empirical research has moved from the corroborative position of Newton to the primary position in establishing the validity of chiropractic. How did that come about? Was it the widespread acceptance of the Theory of Empiricism? Was it the increasingly materialistic philosophy that permeated modern society? Or was it the ego of man that accepted only what he himself could establish as truth and did not depend upon an authority that existed above self…definitely not one starting with a Major Premise that gave rise to and depended upon a principle, an authority above self and drew deductions from that Major Premise also establishing principles above the educated mind. Ironically, the original scientists were men of strong faith who corroborated their already established truth by faith with their science. Now, science presents information that they believe needs no corroboration and in fact is expected to stand alone in place of any other system (faith or reason). What should have been a check and balance at worst and a two-pronged argument at best, has become a battleground for supremacy with each side arguing for their position and against the validity of the other. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each method? Faith (authority) is the simplest and most commonly utilized in most organizations, whether it is king and country or CEO and company. Of course, when it comes to the authority of a country or a company, we know that its weakness is the fallibility of the monarch or the CEO. Monarchs/dictators are overthrown and CEOs fired.
Reasoning (rationalism) is an excellent method especially if it uses deduction as its primary method. Deduction uses the truth embraced by the a priori of a major premise. Of course, the weakness is that the a priori statement must be a truth, the major premise correct and the deductive process must be accurate. It is very difficult to come to a correct conclusion when your reasoning process is false. It is impossible when your major premise is false. The last method of establishing truth is the empirical method, that which is gained through the experience of the senses. Anyone who has watched a number of football games (and now baseball) and has seen the use of the instant replay and knows that the senses can be fooled. Seeing is not always believing, at least when it comes to reality and truth. The fallibility of empiricism is especially evident when the subject is a living organism. A good biological example is a fever which may be a perfectly normal innate response in one person but may prove to be fatal in another. We just don’t know. That is why a thirty-second commercial designed to get you to buy a specific prescriptive medication while showing you pictures of people whose lives appear to have been improved by their use is at the same time quietly informing you of all the detrimental side effects. Why don’t they tell you about the “life-enhancing benefits” of the medication in a quiet voice-over while showing you in full color the people experiencing serious or deadly effects of the drug? If seeing is not always believing, it is still a lot more powerful than hearing. That’s the principle of television advertising and the drug companies are using it to the maximum. In chiropractic, because the human organism is not a test tube, there are as many variables as there are human beings. Some of those variables may not be significant. The drug companies are counting on that. We use reason and deduction to demonstrate the validity of what we do. We also keep our claims to a minimum, only promising that which we can honestly produce by reason and have corroborated by 120 years of experience, the simple fact that the body works better without vertebral subluxation.