The Empirical Stance

I've just finished reading Bas van Frassen's The Empirical Stance.

Within, he tries to defend empiricism. One classic objection to empiricism goes like this:
However you state empiricism, it must amount to a statement itself not supportable by empirical evidence. So empiricism is self-refuting. So, for instance, if empiricism is the doctrine that empirical evidence is the only good justification there is, then this statement demonstrates itself to have no justification, for it cannot be justified by appeal to experience.

van Frassen avoids this by characterising Empiricism as a stance, which is a sort of combination of emotional and non-emotional attitudes, rather than a belief as such. Attitudes like this don't need justification in the same way that beliefs do, and so may not undermine themselves.

But he admits that stances may require beliefs - the empirical stance might just be a strongly favourable attitude towards the scientific method, but this attitude might also require the belief that this method is the most justified method there is. But if it requires that belief, then empiricism remains self-defeating.

So that's objection one: The self-refuting nature of empiricism only require that certain beliefs are necessary, not foundational. But van Frassen admits this much.

Another worry (perhaps incompatible with the first?) is that rational debate over stances is going to be impossible. If one's stance determines what counts as rational, justified, warranted, and so on, then debate between holders of differing stances will be impossible, because they hold differing standards of how to argue over their stances, and what counts as a merit in a stance. On the other hand, if there are some standards of rationality, justification, and so on, before holding stances, then empiricism is false: There are non-empirical standards of justification.