First of all, your argument falls prey to the tu quoque fallacy.
I dont see how.
Shminux is (seemingly) criticizing non-empirical discussion and, by extension, most of philosophy. You responded that he/she is still espousing a philosophy: empiricism. This statement, whether true or not, has no bearing on the validity of his/her argument; instead, it is simply saying, "Well, if philosophizing is a crime, you're doing it too, you hypocrite!", ignoring the fact that if philosophizing is bad, it doesn't matter if shminux is doing it or not. (Likewise if philosophizing is good.)
Even a second best philosophy could be used to "denigrate" one theory as compared to another, empirically equivalent one.
This is true, which is part of the reason I said I disagreed with shminux. That being said, your original objection was that his "anti-realism was still a philosophy", which didn't really bring up that particular point.
Note that philosophies emphasizing empiricism famously have problems with self justification, eg L.P..
That's because the justifications have typically been of the armchair variety. Of course you won't be able to come up with a justification for, of all things, empiricism just by sitting there and thinking. Empiricism, however, is easily justified if you look at it empirically: empirical studies work, as shown empirically by the tremendous success of science in predicting observations. I'd say that's pretty good as justifications go, no?
The point is not whether philosophy is morally bad or good, but whether it is epistemically bad or good. Shmimux has not provided an empirical justification for empiricism, and cannot consistently provide any other.
Empiricism, however, is easily justified if you look at it empirically: empirical studies work
Please publish that result. Lots of things are claimed to work, and formalising handwaving claims of "working", so they are not a free-for-all has proven extremely difficult.
Note that pragmatism, the fullest exploration of the "it works" philosophy to date, was intentionally inclusive.
Sean Carroll, physicist and proponent of Everettian Quantum Mechanics, has just posted a new article going over some of the common objections to EQM and why they are false. Of particular interest to us as rationalists:
Very reminiscent of the quantum physics sequence here! I find that this distinction between number of entities and number of postulates is something that I need to remind people of all the time.
META: This is my first post; if I have done anything wrong, or could have done something better, please tell me!