Skepticism in Philosophy

[Suiram]

It's also a decimal representation of the number represented by "1". By the way you guys are doing the OP a real disservice by letting this thread derail into the .9999 thing.

[Maxxthepenguin]

Fractionals and decimals are interchangeable, they mean the same thing.

In any case, you still haven't shown why to think that saying infinity doesn't mean what it is defined to mean.

[Zosi]

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.

That's actually mostly correct, I just took issue with the completely invalid and wrong way that took to get there. Maybe you're sobering up a little now, but your previous posts were waaaaaaay off in left field. In any case, please stop now, you're just shitting up the thread trying to disprove the 1 != 1 fallacy that you introduced which had nothing to do with anything in the first place.

[Kaylia]

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.

Math on their own are meaningless. You will never be able to make the jump from math to a real life argument without some postulate or axioms (something you assume true). Math themselves are built on a set of axioms that we assume to be true


Sciences are built around the principle that the laws of the nature are the same everywhere. If one accept accept this, than it's easy to refute skepticism using the scientific method. If he doubt about his own existence and the world around him...than there isn't much to do with him.

[Plow]

That's actually mostly correct, I just took issue with the completely invalid and wrong way that took to get there. Maybe you're sobering up a little now, but your previous posts were waaaaaaay off in left field. In any case, please stop now, you're just shitting up the thread trying to disprove the 1 != 1 fallacy that you introduced which had nothing to do with anything in the first place.

I didn't bring it up, and it's the same thing I've been saying all along I just suck at explaining shit it ways that make sense to people.

[Zosi]

To get back on topic... I think that the best response one can give to Hume's extreme skepticism is to view it as a kind of proof-by-contradiction of causality, which his condemnation of shows is necessary for a world that makes any sense whatsoever. In order for the philosophy to have any meaning, the doubt has to stop somewhere, some principles must be assumed to be true even if there's no external proof of their correctness. If your system has enough axioms, it runs the risk of being logically inconsistent due to the necessity of picking them empirically, but if you refuse to admit any axiom that doesn't have non-empirical proof, you'll end up trapped by Hume's logic in a system that's incapable of even proving (presumedly) basic things like causality.

[guartz]

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.

To conceptual this idea helped me a lot to understand it.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/guartz/mind.jpg

1. Mind exists in material reality, it is the result of material reality. Our Brains, bodies etc. That is, no evidence of consciousness existing outside material reality.
2. Perception is the link or the result, between mind and reality.
3. Not the entire material reality is perceived.

Note: Things that can exist in our mind, don't necessarily exist in material reality. Example, pink talking elephants. You can imagine them, but it doesn't make it true.
God, etc.


obviously, diagram is not to scale.

This might help too, basic introduction to knowledge
YouTube - Intro to Philosophy 3: Knowledge #1

[Gwynplaine]

Skepticism in philosophy is really a shallow one trick pony. Basically it comes down to what axioms a philosophy accepts or rejects, specifically, how it deals with existence and consciousness. So I suppose my recommendation to you would be to see what you can dig up in regards to the different philosophies axioms.

Skepticism does not accept existence as an axiom. And so you get the classic case of Descartes' malicious demon. He invents an arbitrary demon out of no where, considers the implications if said demon is manipulating his brain, and then concludes that he can't be sure of anything his senses tell him. Essentially skepticism is a circular attempt to validate the use of the human senses, while at the same time using the senses to come to such a conclusion.

There is a great quote in that regard:

"If you don't think that logic is a good method for determining what to believe, make an attempt to convince me of that without using logic. No one has even bothered to try yet." - Brett Lemoine

As far as the case of the "demon" actually having any material credibility, the answer is the same as in any attempt to prove a negative. The onus of proof is on the person making the claim. The same goes for a sense manipulating demon, "the Matrix", bigfoot, space aliens, koreans who don't play MMO's, or God.

No sane person actually accepts such ideas and chooses to live by them. In cases where someone does act on their belief, there's a good chance for him to end up like this guy.

[Zosi]

Descartes is full of stuff like that, which is why the constructive part of his theory of knowledge is much less interesting than the destructive part. His cogito succinctly expresses the only thing that a thinking being can be completely sure of, but after that very clever start, the rest of his arguments (such as his proof of God, and the subsequent use of it as justification for believing the senses) are quite weak. He introduces the "evil demon" that may be manipulating his senses, but then writes it off because after "proving" the existence of God, he claims that God would not be so cruel as to let a demon manipulate his senses in such a basic way. His skepticism (and refutal of that previous skepticism) is very half-hearted.

[Arrmani]

Thanks for the replies. I guess math isn't so good. I figured if I always had two objects, putting them together would make 2 objects, never considered combining them to be 1, but its a good point.

I checked out a book with a bunch of Descarts' essays and my one text has the meditations. I find the idea, God or no God, that someone manipulating what I sense is pretty bogus. I know The Matrix is a kinda good example, but even if its true, I don't believe it.

I started reading a book of essays from this guy who says he really believes skepticism. He even says, and I read someone else saying it, that if skepticism is right, there's no way to prove it, and if it's wrong, nobody should care.

I'll try to get my thoughts together, and if I get any good ideas, I'll try to post them again. Thanks again for the help/insight/direction.

Would a camera be a good idea? Technically, it captures an image and puts it on film. What we say is technically interpreted through our sense, but I think it would still just capture the material world as it is.

I hate philosophy

[Suiram]

I checked out a book with a bunch of Descarts' essays and my one text has the meditations. I find the idea, God or no God, that someone manipulating what I sense is pretty bogus. I know The Matrix is a kinda good example, but even if its true, I don't believe it.

Whether or not you personally believe something shouldn't be relevant to your criticism of a philosophy. I'm not sure what kind of class this is that you're writing it for, but if it's an introductory Philosophy class you're going to cause much consternation to your Professor or TA or whoever it is that will be evaluating your paper, if you approach it from that angle. It's usually better to look for inconsistencies, or for ways in which what is concluded does not follow from what is presumed quite so certainly as the philosopher in question would have it. Bertrand Russell put it this way,

In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. [...] Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view that seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true.

[Zosi]

That's one of my favorite passages in his "History of Western Philosophy". Whole book is a great read if you're interested in a nice overview of philosophical systems, although its limited to things that Russel himself understands, as he doesn't do a particularly good job of explaining the few things he doesn't. I don't think that's a particularly uncommon feature of wide-ranging histories, very few have a truly comprehensive understanding of every major philosopher and philosophical system.

[Ziphor]

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.

^ this. Descartes is exactly what you need.

edit:bah, nvm already covered.

[Suiram]

That's one of my favorite passages in his "History of Western Philosophy". Whole book is a great read if you're interested in a nice overview of philosophical systems, although its limited to things that Russel himself understands, as he doesn't do a particularly good job of explaining the few things he doesn't. I don't think that's a particularly uncommon feature of wide-ranging histories, very few have a truly comprehensive understanding of every major philosopher and philosophical system.

Russell is easily my favorite philosopher, probably approaching the reverence he warns against in the passage I quoted lol My main criticism of the History of Western Philosophy (although I've only read Book One) is that he tends to pass from the exposition and from the relevant philosopher's reservations and qualifications over to his (Russell's) own criticisms of it, in a way that I don't think would be entirely clear where one leaves off and the other picks up were I not so personally familiar with his style of writing. This was especially the case in the sections on Plato.

[Dmitry]

Math isn't good, because 2+2 can equal 10.

In base 4.

Surprised noone brought that up, but it is also general.