Skepticism in Philosophy

[Arrmani]

As BG seems to have posters of many expertise, I'm hoping to find some philosophers. I'm writing a paper arguing against skepticism on the point that skeptics believe that no knowledge can be deemed absolutely true unless observed or learned without using our senses.

My main point I'm going to argue will be math. I can't think of a way where 2+2 isn't going to be 4 among other things. After that, I'll just argue other things I believe to be definitely true through my own experiences.

I'm going to present points from Descarts and Hume, but they're the only two philosophers I found any good info on. If anyone knows some more philosophers for or against philosophy, that would be awesome. Also, I'm open to any other ideas or opinions on the subject, but I'm not expecting anyone to write this paper for me.

[kuronosan]

Aristotle and Plato are always good places to start.

Skeptics think that, eh? That's a pretty stupid train of thought since most everything we learn is brought about by what our senses take in.

You learn that fire burns through touch. Fire would still burn you whether you felt it or not, but you don't know unless you touched it.

You could also learn that fire burns by using your eyes to see the effects that it has. Or you could smell searing flesh.

Without getting too far off-track, we can safely say this:

Do you think someone who couldn't see, hear, speak, smell, or feel anything, could learn anything through observation? There's nothing to observe without the senses.

The senses are there for observation. That's how we learn. Skeptics can shut the fuck up.

Don't use the math one - I lost an argument about that against someone here earlier this year where they managed to prove some crazy shit like 1 doesn't really equal 1. Math is a bad example. Logic, however, is a good example provided you don't lead towards non-sequitr logic.

[Suiram]

I think most philosophy takes for granted that we can't have immediate knowledge of the physical world, or even that there is one, but where you go from there is what characterizes a particular "-ism". Whether you say "we must be able to deduce facts about the world logically" or "we can only have probabilistic knowledge from experience" or "there is no material world" or "nothing is knowable" (my crude paraphrasing of Skepticism) determines your philosophy in these regards, and you would do well, I think, to criticize Skepticism in that context, as compared to the alternatives, rather than at the premises where it--and so much else in philosophy--rests.

Although, I agree that Math (but also Logic for the same reasons) will probably make bad examples, just due to the nature in which we know truths about them.

[Zosi]

Math makes a very bad example indeed. It's instructive to divide math into two components. The first is axiomatic number theory. The second is the correspondence between our observations in the physical world and the basic axioms of our axiomatic theory. Looked at that way, it's clear that if the first is entirely abstract, an exercise in definitions and words with no relevance to the world without the second. Of course, the second is wholly empirical, and thus it's silly to argue that math is somehow "known" without experiencing it, because without the experiential base, you have no way to determine whether the axioms you're using are right or wrong. Similar arguments apply to logic, largely due to the fact that formal logic basically *IS* a form of math.

Edit: I feel that I should add that I'm not an extreme Humian skeptic as my replies may indicate. I'm playing devil's advocate because I find the skeptical position interesting, even if I disagree with it personally. My own personal reason for disliking it (which is certainly not philosophically rigorous) is because when taken to its logical extreme, it leads to a conclusion that's either false or irrelevant to life, most likely the latter. If skepticism proves that knowledge is impossible, then there's not much use worrying about it, because we'd be destined to live without what Hume calls "knowledge" with very little say in the matter.

[Plow]

Don't use the math one - I lost an argument about that against someone here earlier this year where they managed to prove some crazy shit like 1 doesn't really equal 1. Math is a bad example. Logic, however, is a good example provided you don't lead towards non-sequitr logic.

Math actually is a relatively good example, you can win the "1 doesn't really equal 1" argument based on the fact that it's only through our available methods of representation that the claim works.


Here's the deal:

1 doesn't = 1 because 1/3 of 1 = .3333 repeating forever, which x3 = .999 repeating forever


However, this is purely through representation-- let's take a 3 pound brick of weed, since it's pretty obvious I'm really high while writing this. Make that 3 pound brick your "whole," i.e. 1. Now take away 1 pound. If you take that one pound, and multiply it by 3, it's 3 pounds, showing that 1 does in fact equal 1.


It's only our methods of display that err on this problem, the reality is that 1 does in fact equal 1.

[Maxxthepenguin]

2 + 2 isnt 4 because math is a modeling construct we use to conceptualize and describe the world around us. The 2 doesn't really exist, nor does the 4. Defining something, anything, as one is utterly simplistic. I may be one human being, and my finger is part of that one human being, but if I remove that one finger, I am still one human being. The meaning of one human being is then, clearly, conceptual, not real. As you study pretty much anything, you recognize that the fact that numerical definition is false is true of all things. There is always some more precise definition of pretty much anything. We don't know the smallest things in existence and, frankly, considering how every time we clearly define something smaller than the smallest thing we find something smaller, it seems like there is no smallest. This means that numerical value is a construct that doesn't reflect the truth of reality because it means that any numerical value we find in reality implicitly rounds something off, broadening the definition to not be the actual truth.

Therefore 2 + 2 doesn't always equal 4 because they all lack actual definition.

Or, in a less heady way and less general way, you can explain it by using non-measurement units. IE: If you have two pepsis, and you pour them together, you end up with one pepsi. Therefore, in this situation, 1+1=1.

I don't know any original philosophers for this stuff though, I thought it up on my own

[Maxxthepenguin]

Math actually is a relatively good example, you can win the "1 doesn't really equal 1" argument based on the fact that it's only through our available methods of representation that the claim works.


Here's the deal:

1 doesn't = 1 because 1/3 of 1 = .3333 repeating forever, which x3 = .999 repeating forever


However, this is purely through representation-- let's take a 3 pound brick of weed, since it's pretty obvious I'm really high while writing this. Make that 3 pound brick your "whole," i.e. 1. Now take away 1 pound. If you take that one pound, and multiply it by 3, it's 3 pounds, showing that 1 does in fact equal 1.


It's only our methods of display that err on this problem, the reality is that 1 does in fact equal 1.

Part of number theory as I understand it defines a number as a value with no values in between itself. IE there is no value between 1 and 1, so 1 equals one. There is no value between .9999 repeating, so .99999 repeating equals one.

[Zosi]

I'll provide another take on the math argument, just for variety.

The fundamental problem is that it's very hard to show that "real math" involving axioms and numbers exists in a physical world where there's no objective way to derive numbers. For example, the only reason we can say that we have two pears is because our brains have categorized a certain group of events in space-time as "pears" with distinct boundaries between "pear" and "not-pear". How can you prove that those boundaries a) exist and b) are the correct ones? Only by appeal to your senses. Without perception and experience, can you prove that plurality exists, and more specifically, that we can divide up the plurality into the correct pieces based on some kind of objective standard?

[Zosi]

Part of number theory as I understand it defines a number as a value with no values in between itself. IE there is no value between 1 and 1, so 1 equals one. There is no value between .9999 repeating, so .99999 repeating equals one.

Dedekind cut - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Plow]

Part of number theory as I understand it defines a number as a value with no values in between itself. IE there is no value between 1 and 1, so 1 equals one. There is no value between .9999 repeating, so .99999 repeating equals one.

Again, that's simply because we have no way to represent the value. Infinity, etc.

There is a value in there, it just happens to be .9999 to infinity + 0.infinite 0's followed by a 1.


Or, what he said.

[Maxxthepenguin]

Again, that's simply because we have no way to represent the value. Infinity, etc.

There is a value in there, it just happens to be .9999 to infinity + 0.infinite 0's followed by a 1.

No, there's a 9 there. There is no infinity + 1. That's still infinity. Infinity is not a number. You can't use it like a number. It is a concept. Then again all numbers are concepts.
There is nothing beyond infinity because part of the definition of infinity is that there is nothing beyond infinity. If there's something beyond it, it's not infinity.

[Demetrius*]

I dunno if you have much knowledge on these guys yet, but you might want to use St. Anselm's ontological argument as an example of a priori, and St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologic as an example of a posteriori(to argue against skepticism is to favor the a priori)

[thestalkmore]

Arrmani. Descartes' stuff on hyperbolic doubt is exactly what you're looking for. Look it up.

Edit: Don't go online for it either. I just searched around and in my 2 minutes of looking I didn't find anything that accurately summarized it. Go read his original stuff.

[Zosi]

Again, that's simply because we have no way to represent the value. Infinity, etc.

There is a value in there, it just happens to be .9999 to infinity + 0.infinite 0's followed by a 1.

There actually are well-defined ways to deal with the concept of infinity in mathematics, however, that isn't one of them, it's the equivalent of the schoolyard argument:

"I'm better than you!
No you're not!
Yes I am, infinitely times better!
No way, I'm infinity times infinity times better!
Nuh uh, I'm infinity to the infinityith power times better!
Fuck, you win because we haven't learned any hyper operators higher than 3 in grade school..."

Infinity does not behave as you'd expect, in particular, talking about a what's after an infinite number of sequence elements is basically nonsense.

Descartes's method is aptly named "Cartesian doubt", and you can find voluminous writings on the subject online including, most likely, his complete works. If you're interested in that in particular, read his "Meditations". However, I will warn you, he takes the cheap way out and escapes his extreme doubt by "proving" God's existence, then using that to prove that everything he experiences and sees is real because he claims that God wouldn't deceive him. It's a real let-down after his great start, like going to see Star Wars Ep 1, then just as things start getting good, Jar Jar appears and fucks it all up.

[Plow]

No, there's a 9 there. There is no infinity + 1. That's still infinity. Infinity is not a number. You can't use it like a number. It is a concept. Then again all numbers are concepts.
There is nothing beyond infinity because part of the definition of infinity is that there is nothing beyond infinity. If there's something beyond it, it's not infinity.

Which is where it falls apart, because for it to be infinite it can never stop increasing, but since it can't be greater than 1 there has to be an infinitely decreasing number in between, which would be 0.1 with infinitely more 0's appearing before the 1.

Like I said, it's a problem with the fact that .999 repeating forever is a byproduct of our representation, it's not reality.

[Maxxthepenguin]

If the 0 stretches to infinity then there can be no 1 after it. Know why? Because there would be a 0 there. Indefinitely. Because of the definition of what infinity is. As a purely conceptual structure, infinity only exists by its definition, therefore if you are breaking the definition, then you aren't talking about concept of infinity.

[Zosi]

Which is where it falls apart, because for it to be infinite it can never stop increasing, but since it can't be greater than 1 there has to be an infinitely decreasing number in between, which would be 0.1 with infinitely more 0's appearing before the 1.

Like I said, it's a problem with the fact that .999 repeating forever is a byproduct of our representation, it's not reality.

Which is why infinitesimals are gone from basic number theory, relegated only to specially constructed algebras where they're basically asserted to exist. You're arguing based on math that hasn't been accepted for centuries, and has been completely replaced in modern math.

[Plow]

That's the problem...


The number can't exist because it's... not a number that exists lol... that sounds so stupid, but it's the best way to put it. It's the decimal system's inability to to convert to a base 10 that's the issue. There is no .99999 repeating infinitely, it's simply a representation of a failure in our number system.

You can't create .9999 to infinity of something, the number is a result of attempting to convert the "perfect" number system to a system the human mind can read easily.

[Maxxthepenguin]

Our number system can represent .9 repeating to infinity easily.

It's 3/3.

Or, in other words, it's one. The numbers we can't define in fractional, definitive forms are called irrational. Our number system doesn't properly use those (no, base doesn't matter.)

Then again numbers don't really exist, so who cares?

[Plow]

Our number system can represent .9 repeating to infinity easily.

It's 3/3.

Or, in other words, it's one. The numbers we can't define in fractional, definitive forms are called irrational. Our number system doesn't properly use those (no, base doesn't matter.)

Then again numbers don't really exist, so who cares?

It's not 3/3, it's the decimal representation of the decimal representation of 1/3 multiplied by 3.