Argument against phyrronian skepticism

[rachmaninoff_forever]

So I'm taking this philosophy course and they told me to think about this over break...

There are the three ways we jutify ourselves in believing something to be true.  Knowing something...

1.  You think a is true because b is true.  You think b is true because you think c is true.  And it goes on to infinity.

2.  You think a is true because you think b is true.  And you can stop there or you can keep going to some arbitrary number of reasons and stop there.  It doesn't matter.

3.  You think a is true because you think b is true.  You think b is true because you think c is true.  And you think c is true because you think a is true.  So in other words you think a is true because you think a is true.

Now phyrronian skepticism says that those are horrible ways of justifying your beliefs.  And since those are the ONLY ways we justify our beliefs, it's impossible to find a good justification of our beliefs.  1 is bad because it's humans impossible to have infinite reasons.  2 is bad because in order to have an arbitrary number of reasons, the last reason must have some special property that makes it the last reason.  But once you find that special property, you open up a whole new chain of reasons for why that last reason has a special property.  You see what I'm saying there.  3 is obvious that's just circular logic. So the conclusion is that nobody knows anything.  You don't know anything, I don't know anything, we don't know we exist, we don't know that we don't know we exist, blah blah blah you get the picture.

Does anyone have an argument against this?  I'm having trouble with this.

[Bob]

pyrrhonian    Typo.  Haha.

How about...
The world's bigger than just the three options they provide.  "Here are events A, B, C... All of those are bad, and you agree with it, so..."  Something along those lines.
Depends what they mean by true.
And how about something just "is?"


If A, B, C are bad, and that means we know nothing, wouldn't it mean we don't know about that statement either, since we can't know for sure?

[hardy_practice]

Yeh, I'll by it.  We know 'is', what more do you want?

[rachmaninoff_forever]

pyrrhonian    Typo.  Haha.

How about...
The world's bigger than just the three options they provide.  "Here are events A, B, C... All of those are bad, and you agree with it, so..."  Something along those lines.
Depends what they mean by true.
And how about something just "is?"


If A, B, C are bad, and that means we know nothing, wouldn't it mean we don't know about that statement either, since we can't know for sure?

When you say something just "is", you have to provide justification for why that "just 'is'" has a special property such that you don't need to provide a reason for it.  It falls under method of reasoning 3:  a is true because a is true.  And that's bad because that's circular logic.

And the last thing you said...  Yep you're right.

[Bob]

Just get another pharaoh to argue against the first one.  Both lose because they'll never be able to say anything is definite. 


Nope.  I'll define "just is" as being true.  It just is.  Already true.  Doesn't need anything to justify it.

[hardy_practice]

Nah mate, you can't say 'just'.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Just get another pharaoh to argue against the first one.  Both lose because they'll never be able to say anything is definite.  


Nope.  I'll define "just is" as being true.  It just is.  Already true.  Doesn't need anything to justify it.

But what's the special property that 'just is' posses that make it not need any justification
That's the same thing as saying a is true because a is true.  Which is a bad way of reasoning according to the skepticism.

[hardy_practice]

Are you?

[j_menz]

Pyrrho of Ellis is dead.

[swagmaster420x]

I think you can argue that there are fundamentally abstract concepts we know to be true, such as 1+1=2. I suppose this can be classified as circular reasoning by realizing '2' is the object we implicitly define to possess a value of twice that of '1,' so to say 1 + 1 = 2 is using the definition we've 'arbitrarily' come up with to circularly create a "truth." Thing is, I wouldn't say math is so arbitrary, and the conclusions drawn from the field of math are definitely nontrivial. In a sense, all math has to be true, because everything operates under the automatic assumption that so-and-so principles hold true. If this, then that. If this, then that. When we reach the first truth, it isn't after an infinite number of truths, although there are a lot. Furthermore, the first truth turns out to be valid. In my opinion, the first truth is us bringing into existence abstract notions we are then able to expand upon and manipulate, like the array of objects that comprise the natural numbers.  

[j_menz]

I think you can argue that there are fundamentally abstract concepts we know to be true, such as 1+1=2.

I pay my accountant good money to avoid coming to that conclusion.

[Bob]

Pyrrho of Ellis is dead.

But... We don't really know that for sure, do we?  Haha.


I bet these Pyrrhonians would get pretty annoying.  Could they ever do anything?  At some point, you have to make a decision based on the information available.  These guys would always, always, always be saying, "Well, we don't really know that for sure.  We can't be certain."  I'm picturing another philosopher reaching over and stealing their cookies (because what doesn't kill them makes them stronger, so it's doing them a favor).  If you want to trip them up before or after that, you just ask them, "Well, there really wasn't a cookie there for sure, was there?  And you don't know for sure that I took it, right?  Or even that I'm still here or even talking to you?" 

It sounds a like a perpetual type of a check.  Nothing is ever 100% sure.  So you could always keep justifying things, and then you'll know exactly why you're doing something, what the reasoning is, etc.  That's good to a point but... I glanced at something about this before when I googled a bit and saw a post about not being sure if there was a cliff, not being sure if they walked off it.... Someone in the afterlife would be greeting them, "Are you sure now?"

The infinite part is standing out to me now.  I suppose theoretically, you can be perpetually unsure and neverending with questioning things.  But we don't exist theoretically.  We exist in reality.  And in that reality, there would be a point that you become sure.  Maybe an A because B because CDE type of situation.  And that's good enough if you're existing in reality, until someone discovers there's a little more detail to the context of reality, but then you still have A because B because CDEF.



That's just me thinking.  I only glanced around at articles since I'd never heard of this idea before.  I could be completely off in my understanding of what this is.   (Which is a way of saying, "I'm not sure...")

[8_octaves]

I think you can argue that there are fundamentally abstract concepts we know to be true, such as 1+1=2. I suppose this can be classified as circular reasoning by realizing '2' is the object we implicitly define to possess a value of twice that of '1,' so to say 1 + 1 = 2 is using the definition we've 'arbitrarily' come up with to circularly create a "truth." [...]

Hi swagmaster,

yes. ( as far as I understood. )

And / but that's why we find maths in logic, too! Look:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_quantification

Some problems there seem to exist, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

How can we be sure, that it, what we assume to BE, really IS ? Perhaps it's only something else, in disguise? (Ok, a mathematical number will have difficulties to disguise / mask itself, if it doesn't want to have its true nature be detected / revealed by us ....   )

But imagine, you go camping with friends, in the dark woods, and suddenly this figure leaps from behind a tree, right into the middle of your campfire-evening!  



https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Devil

And it snarls angrily at you all!!  

But then, after a while, staring at the anxious spectators, it says: "Give me a beer, too, I'm thirsty!", and then it takes off its mask, and reveals to be the father of one of your friends, only having played a trick on you! Everybody laughs!  

___

Or, imagine this little modification of the scene:
The figure this time leaps from behind the trees, and snarls!

Everybody thinks: "hahaha, it's just a joke!" But then it grabs one of you (one who laughed very loud) , and flaps its wings, and flies away with him / her.
Nobody ever saw both of them again.

And now, nobody laughs any longer.
___

We would conclude, in my opinion: What we assume to BE, might not always be REAL...

But perhaps it's valid for this assumption, too?  

Very cordially, 8_octaves!

[hardy_practice]

I think you can argue that there are fundamentally abstract concepts we know to be true, such as 1+1=2.

You're confusing truth with knowledge.  Besides, Brouwer would have something to say about that.

[lostinidlewonder]

So I'm taking this philosophy course and they told me to think about this over break...

There are the three ways we jutify ourselves in believing something to be true.  Knowing something...

1.  You think a is true because b is true.  You think b is true because you think c is true.  And it goes on to infinity.

2.  You think a is true because you think b is true.  And you can stop there or you can keep going to some arbitrary number of reasons and stop there.  It doesn't matter.

3.  You think a is true because you think b is true.  You think b is true because you think c is true.  And you think c is true because you think a is true.  So in other words you think a is true because you think a is true.

Now phyrronian skepticism says that those are horrible ways of justifying your beliefs.  And since those are the ONLY ways we justify our beliefs, it's impossible to find a good justification of our beliefs.  1 is bad because it's humans impossible to have infinite reasons.  2 is bad because in order to have an arbitrary number of reasons, the last reason must have some special property that makes it the last reason.  But once you find that special property, you open up a whole new chain of reasons for why that last reason has a special property.  You see what I'm saying there.  3 is obvious that's just circular logic. So the conclusion is that nobody knows anything.  You don't know anything, I don't know anything, we don't know we exist, we don't know that we don't know we exist, blah blah blah you get the picture.

Does anyone have an argument against this?  I'm having trouble with this.

Well one would just have to determine how this Phyrronian skepticism believes it is correct for it would be rather ironic if they use the same verification principles that they are arguing against lol.

[swagmaster420x]

this could be relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems

[compline]

Pyrrho seems to have adopted a kind of pre-stoic.  He didn't write anything  so we are reliant on other authors for an account of his thinking.  He asked the fundamental question by way of a challenge to the 'scientific' approach that prevailed and challenged it by asking the question, 'What are things like by nature?'  His answer apparently is that things are indifferent in a kind of random way and that ''for this reason, neither our sensations nor our opinions tell the truth , or lie.''
This is important in the quest for happiness, because by being balanced about things, there is an absence of the trouble and anxiety that constitute human unhappiness.   
So you have to remain in sense indifferent to what happens to preserve one's equalibriam and contentment.