appolose said:
OK, I'll answer your boiled-down version: There's a few reasons: I don't know why I have it, I just do OR I don't havea choice in the matter (as one part of my presupposition might lead me to believe that I was forced to accept empiricism). And, for a better meaning of certainty: I mean it in contrast to assumption; that is, there is no way I can tell if I am right or wron about reality, so I have to assume I am in order to make any statements about it. Whereas, certainty would be having a premise of which there can be no denying ("Something exists"). I'm not sure if that cleared anything up, but I gave it a shot :) |
All right, here's where I think we are (please correct me if I'm wrong):
You advocate skepticism. However, since your belief amounts to "no belief is better or worse than any other," you cannot give any good reasons for skepticism, or say that it's better justified than the empiricism I support.
At one point, you did appear to try to make arguments as to why skepticism makes sense... but now we're at a point where we realize that, to make arguments as to why skepticism makes sense is to implicitly agree that belief is not arbitrary.
In other words, defending or arguing for your skepticism is self-contradictory.
More than arguing, we also now realize that for you to feel like you have good reasons for your own positions is also self-contradictory. In an earlier response, you appeared to make it sound like your skepticism was based on your making sound judgements...
Through definition and logic: when considering the question, "How can I know?", I would answer "Because of...", but when I examined that because of, I realized it contained propositions that I didnt know for certain, either.
...but you've insisted that judgements, as such, have no basis or merit.
And so now, in "support" of skepticism, we simply have this:
I don't know why I have it, I just do OR I don't havea choice in the matter
In a nutshell:
I am an empiricist. I insist that I have good reasons for my belief in empiricism, and that your skepticism is incorrect and should be abandoned. You have no way of disagreeing with me about any of that, because 1) according to you, my beliefs are as good as any other, including your own; and 2) any argument that you might make would be an admission on your part that you have the capacity to make sound judgements, which is consistent with my worldview but contrary to your own.
You are a skeptic, but you feel that you have no good reason to be one--that your beliefs are, in fact, totally arbitrary--and therefore you can't explain why they make sense, or whether they even do.
Am I close?
***
Regarding "certainty," I believe that, taken together with your belief in skepticism, it is a meaningless concept. Allow me to explain why.
This is our exchange from earlier:
appolose said:
Through definition and logic: when considering the question, "How can I know?", I would answer "Because of...", but when I examined that because of, I realized it contained propositions that I didnt know for certain, either. |
Let us say that I claim that the sky is blue.
I have sensed data, I have made a judgement. You claim that my judgement is flawed in that it is inherently "uncertain."
What would "uncertain" mean in this context? Would "uncertain" mean that it is possible that the sky is not blue? That it might actually be pink? Or taupe? (Or that there may be no sky at all?)
If we say that no person can trust their own judgements, then there is no way for anyone to ever establish that the sky is not, in fact, blue. There are no means by which a person could ever know that I was wrong, either now or in the future, and therefore no reason to suspect that I might be wrong.
"Uncertainty" and, moreover, "being wrong" would become meaningless.
They become meaningless because no one could ever say that the sky was pink, taupe, or anything other than what I've said it is; the only way that "uncertain" makes sense is if we posit that there are conditions under which I might be wrong--that the sky could, in fact, be some color other than blue, and that some person could conceivably be in a position to know it.
But if there are conditions under which I could be wrong, justifying a lack of certainty, then those conditions will assume that non-arbitrary judgements can be made.
In short, by insisting that all judgement is arbitrary, you make the distinction between "certain" and "uncertain" arbitrary as well--if no one could ever tell the difference, it's just as well that we consider the sky "certainly" blue.
As Joel would say to the Mads, "What do you think, Sirs?"
