• Manuel
    3.9k


    I'm a bit unclear on the point you're making. Is it that we have to analyze appropriately certain events? So the argument would be that many people don't analyze events appropriately...



    It can be very annoying, especially people who say "that's what I said!": [insert what you said for them]".
  • Valentinus
    1.6k

    Pardon me. I am cryptic by nature and my efforts to improve are in a rudimentary stage.

    I meant that there is a sequence of causes that all experience but we understand them from different points of view. Some look at that difference as a departure for skepticism and others see methods of acceptance to what must be. As a matter of daily life, both elements are essential.

    So, it is an approach of sufficiency. We must provide in real time what our plans do not.
  • Manuel
    3.9k


    Yeah, there's a virtually endless variety of perspectives people can take on the very same event or circumstance.

    It seems to me that what you are proposing is difficult to train for. Essentially to have better intuition. I wonder how that would work out as a training exercise.
  • Valentinus
    1.6k

    A forensic attitude is always helpful.
    Why is the situation the way it is now?
    When did the thing I am looking at happen?
    Intuition is better at response to a crisis than answering questions.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    To start with premise (1), how do you figure its verity? For: If good justifications exist, then Agrippa’s trilemma indeed matters, this because it is of itself concluded from good justifications. And until the trilemma is solved, it presents the fallibly proven truth (fallible because the trilemma can be applied to the trilemma’s own justification) that no infallibly proven truth can be obtained as far as we (fallibly) know. Which, apropos, is the only rational way I can make sense of Nietzsche’s mindset of there being no (infallible) truth.javra

    My argument gets to that part in lines 1 to 4 which basically states that If good justifications exist then, if Agrippa's trilemma doesn't matter then, Agrippa's trilemma matters!

    The skeptic, it seems, is in a quandary because the moment he tries to justify his position that knowledge is impossible because of issues with justification, he shoots himself in the foot. The skeptic believes justification is no good. Then the skeptic attempts to justify that but then to do so he assumes justification is good.. Thus, the skeptic contradicts himself: justification is good & justification is no good. More on this later...

    However, things don't look so good on the other side as well. To justify that there are good justifications, one has to presuppose there are good justifications. A circulus in probando.

    Now, let's look at another way of approaching this issue.

    Good justifications exist = G
    Agrippa's trilemma matters = A

    1. G -> (A & ~A) [that's what you said]
    2. G [assume for reductio ad absurdum]
    3. A & ~A [1, 2 MP]
    Ergo,
    4. ~G [2 - 3 reductio ad absurdum] [assume for reductio ad absurdum]
    5. ~G -> G [the justification for ~G is a good justification]
    6. G [4, 5 MP]
    7. G & ~G [4, 6 Conj]
    Ergo,
    8. G [4 - 7 reductio ad absurdum]

    The argument loops:

    9. G -> ~G [2 - 4]
    10. ~G -> G [4 - 8]
    11. G -> G [9 - 10 HS]
    12. ~G v G [11 Imp]
    13. G v ~G [12 Comm]

    13. G v ~G is exactly what skepticism is. A skeptic doesn't commit to either p or ~p for any proposition p. A skeptic would never even dream of saying there are no good justifications - a mistake that I and perhaps you committed.

    What exactly has the skeptic achieved here? All fae's done is show that G v ~G and that's precisely what's required to undermine the belief that knowledge is possible, a position that would require G to be true but assuming G to be true leads to the possibility that ~G as in 13. G v ~G. The skeptic's job is done!
  • javra
    2.4k
    13. G v ~G is exactly what skepticism is. A skeptic doesn't commit to either p or ~p for any proposition p.TheMadFool

    Don't want to derail the thread, but this in no way describes Academic skeptics such as Cicero, who committed himself to a multitude of, some would say, very important propositions. And even Pyrrho, founder of Pyrrhonism, committed himself to the proposition that skepticism leads to eudaimonia. Which is to say, something's amiss. For my part, I'll leave it at that.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k


    No True Skeptic...would commit faerself. I'm not sure though.
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