Does Science Work Because It Is True? — Ali Shukri Amin
First published on my writing site: www.aliamin.info/2026/09/does-science-work-because-it-is-true/
By Ali Shukri Amin. I first wrote this as a comment on r/PhilosophyMemes, in the thread “No acausal mechanisms in the brain? No problem.”, copied here as written.
Yes a typo on my part. Richard Dawkins famously, ignorantly, gaffed that science is true because it works.
Efficacy is not truth. It’s just that simple. If you want to operate solely on efficacy you can do so, but you have to give up claims of absolute or objective truth.
It seems like your argument is that objective truth is irrelevant because we can only evaluate efficacy but that’s not the case at all. Even within an empirical framework you can evaluate truth outside of efficacy, albiet to a far more limited extent than in philosophy.
You’re basically arguing, “why should we do philosophy at all if science works?” the answer is that science cannot lead to objective truth and is itself dependent on a philosophical framework which must be justified for you to ever reach the conclusion that the natural sciences “work.”
You have the benefit of inheriting that framework as a part of cultural hegemony & capitalist realism, but it is predicated on a lot of assumptions & axioms. Even if you are unaware or choose not to acknowledge them, you’re still accepting an entire philosophical framework.
I am telling you that I have evaluated this default, capitalist realist/culturally hegemonic, secular empirical framework, and found it lacking. You’re saying “but science works so that’s all that matters” without realizing that science cannot just “work” in a vacuum without that assumption stack.
Posted September 13, 2026. Read it on Reddit.
Follow-up replies in the same thread
I don’t see what Agrippa or Munchausen have to do with anything. Physicalism and materialism require an entire weltanschauung underpinning them and don’t exist in a vacuum. Your non-engagement with that philosophical tradition doesn’t mean your worldview is either coherent or accurate, just because science has efficacy. The efficacy of natural sciences is the last step in a long line of philosophical assumptions, and is itself problematic due to the black swan & problem of induction, non-reproducibility of many scientific studies, and deeper issues of radical skepticism.
Again, not sure how the Agrippan trilemma is relevant here at all.
The “now what” is you need a transcendental philosophical tether or you go into radical skepticism or you concede that you want to have an irrational anti-philosophical worldview because you personally are not that invested in truth. That’s why Ghazali & Decartes went down the radical skeptical path and then chose a metaphysical “God” to tether their epistemology onto, because the choices are either: don’t do philosophy and have a poorly thought out worldview (seems to be your approach) or accept radical skepticism
You’ve taken the physical world as axiomatic when it is among the least justifiable axioms philosophically speaking. Almost everything that is one level or higher more abstract is better justified. You don’t understand what metaphysics, epistemology, or ontology are
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