Philosophy is an absolute joke
Here's a summary of the past 2000 years of philosophy:
- Philosophers are still unable to determine whether they're dreaming or not.
- Philosophers are still unable to provide a non-circular justification for the reliability of their cognitive faculties (senses, memory, reason, intuition, etc.)
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in free will.
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of other minds.
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of a mind-independent external world.
Philosophy has failed, miserably. Skepticism has won; by a rather large margin.
The absolute failure of philosophy is a great example of how unaided human reasoning leads to nothing but absurdity.
Why does anyone still continue to study this nonsense?
- Philosophers are still unable to determine whether they're dreaming or not.
- Philosophers are still unable to provide a non-circular justification for the reliability of their cognitive faculties (senses, memory, reason, intuition, etc.)
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in free will.
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of other minds.
- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of a mind-independent external world.
Philosophy has failed, miserably. Skepticism has won; by a rather large margin.
The absolute failure of philosophy is a great example of how unaided human reasoning leads to nothing but absurdity.
Why does anyone still continue to study this nonsense?
Comments (78)
Some things can still be valuable even if you never actually finish it.
You provide, what, five examples (a big number, five! wow!), and apparently this "disproves" the value of philosophy?
Skepticism hasn't won by being right, it's won by those practicing it being lazy. If there was a better way of getting answers we'd being doing it already. Unfortunately, there isn't, but some of us still find value in thinking about these sorts of things anyway to the scoffing dismay of our capitalist overlords.
Quoting lambda
Quite ironic how you use human reasoning to come to an absurd conclusion...
If you don't know whether your cognitive faculties are reliable, whether you're dreaming, whether the people around you are conscious, whether you are truly morally responsible for your actions, or whether the walls of your room continue to exist when you're not experiencing them, then you are in a state of total intellectual paralysis.
There's no 'value' that can come out of such a state.
Judging by what you say here:
Quoting lambda
I'd say we need a lot more philosophy.
Because lamda was unable to prove any of lamda's claims about philosophy.
Quoting lambda
"We must act in such [vital] matters; and the principle upon which we are willing to act is a belief ... matters of vital importance must be left to sentiment, that is, to instinct."
Quoting lambda
"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."
Quoting lambda
Really? So, you would contend that the world would be no worse off intellectually or morally had no-one ever engaged in philosophy?
Comments need a thumbs up button
Because they understand philosophy better than you do.
Staring at the wall seemed like a better use of my energy.
Philosophers do seem uninterested in progress, so much so that, when they have the solution they prefer to ignore it. I suspect that part of this is that they think that once they have the solution, they will have nothing to do. Scientists on the other hand, know that new knowledge always reveals new and interesting problems to solve!
Anyway, Critical Rationalism provides the solution to all the problems you cite.
All of your statements are arguably false. I'm not sure whether the weakest one is the one about dreaming or the one about other minds. I think that both are false. Not only are philosophers, like virtually everyone else, able to determine whether or not they're dreaming, it's actually easy. And there is no plausible alternative to the fact that there are other minds. What would these other people be if they are mindless? Illusions, A.I., p-zombies, figments of my imagination...? Yeah right. That's what you should be scoffing at.
Finally, you contradict yourself by exploring all of these philosophical topics, concluding that scepticism has the right answers, and then eschewing philosophy. That [I]is[/I] philosophy! You're relying on philosophy to argue against philosophy. And doing so [I]is[/I] doing philosophy. Without philosophy, you wouldn't have been able to reach this "revelation" of yours.
Philosophy isn't an absolute joke, but what you've said is much like a joke. Extreme scepticism is [i]full[/I] of comedic material. If for any reason philosophy is an absolute joke, it is surely in no small part [i]because[/I] of extreme scepticism.
If you tell people that you don't know whether or not you're dreaming, or whether or not there are any other minds, many of them will laugh. I think that that's a natural reaction to hearing something absurd.
Where else would this occur?
In my view the point of philosophy isn't to come to conclusions so much as it's the process of looking at things philosophically, or "doing philosophy."
At that, I'd agree that a lot of philosophy, and particularly a lot of philosophers, have been a "joke."
Sometimes it seems like the history of the field consists largely of Aspie-like, highly-educated morons with a variety of OCD-ish obsessions and other neuroses who might otherwise wind up in a loony bin. On the other hand, that's also a large part of what makes philosophy so entertaining.
Quoting lambda
Yes they are, because they do know the origin of "to dream" and thus know its meaning. We get the meaning of dreaming from the experience of going to sleep, meeting with events and happenings which are somewhat disconnected from our daily life, and then waking up again to daily life. Hence, the meaning of "to dream" is tied to the context of daily life. Dreaming only exists IN RELATION to daily life. But if you cut this relation by saying that daily life is itself a dream, then dreaming itself doesn't make sense anymore - you have emptied it of meaning. If life is a dream, then you are also only dreaming that life is a dream - and thus your assertion is meaningless. As meaningless as dreaming that it is raining, while it is in fact raining - if you wake up at that point, you won't say "Oh I knew it was raining!", you'll say "I dreamed it is raining!"
Quoting lambda
And can any reasons be offered for NOT believing in other minds? Is the mere logical possibility of something a reason to believe it? Absolutely not. Thus AT BEST for the Skeptic we ignore the question - we suspend judgement. At worst, we conclude it is more probable that there are other minds given the behaviour of all these other people which we don't control, and are not aware of at a distance. A priori you would expect, if there was only one mind - your mind - that you would be able to control a lot more aspects of reality than you currently do. Just like your mind can clearly control your body, so too you'd expect it to be able to control other people's behaviour as well. But it doesn't. Therefore, the scenario is unlikely. The behaviour shown indicates that other people are capable of intelligence - hence mind.
Quoting lambda
So? What's the big deal? You still feel yourself to be free no? That's what matters.
Quoting lambda
Well what kind of justification would you expect? All justifications are within the framework created by the cognitive faculties. In fact, even the concept of reliability and unreliability comes from within this framework. Remove the framework, and you have removed the possibility for reliability or its opposite. For example - I only say that my eyes are unreliable, in relation to an experience when they were reliable. Truth is the standard for itself. For example, in normal conditions I see a stick as being straight. If I put it in water, I see it being Crooked - like Hillary. Therefore I conclude that in that particular situation - when the stick is in water - my eyes are deceiving me. But in relation to what are they deceiving me? In relation to me seeing the stick as straight when it's not in water. I take that experience as the standard of truth. Thus if I, like you, turn against my own cognitive framework, and start doubting it, then certainly I am also rendering the very act of doubting impossible - because the very act of doubt arises and exists only within and relative to that framework.
Quoting lambda
If the world wasn't "mind-independent" what difference would it make? I guess we'd expect to be able to control a lot more things - like when the sun rises, when it rains, etc. with the mere power of our thought. So the fact we can't control such things - that's all we mean when we say the world is mind-independent.
Yeah, too bad that most of you don't ever tell anyone and explain why it is easy... :-}
I find this despicable. He's bringing a fairly reasonable quandary with philosophy - and he's seeking for answers. So give him the answers. The problem philosophy has is that it hasn't collected all those answers against skepticism in the same place. So you have some in Kierkegaard, some in Spinoza, some in Wittgenstein, some in Schopenhauer/Kant, some in Plato/Aristotle - they're all over the place. And most philosophers don't even know the fucking answers themselves, that's what's really shameful.
I say it's both. It's a means to an end, and both the means and the end are important. The end, for me, is knowledge of the truth, or greater clarity or understanding, or wisdom, or even just entertainment. And the means or method of philosophy could be compared or contrasted, favourably or unfavourably, with religion or science, for example. There's a reason why I "do" philosophy rather than religion or science or something else.
Really some people, take Banno's comment, and even want to give it thumbs up. Is this for real? Like why should that deserve thumbs up? Is that a grand philosophical refutation or something? >:O Scoffing at those who disagree won't convince them otherwise. Neither will one-liners.
Okay. I find that an overreaction.
Quoting Agustino
I agree that it's a valid issue. But he was making a general point about philosophy, and just using those points as examples, so when you say "give him the answers", I could of course elaborate, but one could dedicate an entire lengthy discussion on just one of those points, whereas I was responding to his brief general point in kind.
And how do you know that the views on this topic of some of the big names in philosophy haven't been collected in one place? There's a vast amount of philosophical literature out there, and this may well have already been done.
You might be right about philosophers not knowing the answer themselves, but that's more a problem with philosophers than a problem with people. Most people know when they're not dreaming. I ain't dreaming right now.
Yeah, I can see that--I meant more with respect to the discipline as a whole. I wouldn't say that it's not important to come to conclusions personally. It's just that the nature of the enterprise on a broader scale means that conclusions aren't going to wind up being cemented in the same way that, say, many scientific and mathematical "conclusions" are. The gist of philosophy as a discipline is to critically examine assumptions, to skeptically challenge views, etc. If we reach a conclusion that we all agree on and say, "Well, that's that--we're done with that bit now," we're not really doing philosophy (collectively).
Yeah, I agree.
I say that because I, for one, haven't come across such a text. Or if I have, the text excluded exactly the most important pieces of the puzzle - as if the writers of it haven't even read the philosophers themselves. So sure, it might exist, I just haven't come across it, and I've been interested in these problems for quite some time.
Quoting Sapientia
How do you know that you're not dreaming? And most people don't know they're not dreaming, the question doesn't pop up into their heads in the first place.
Didn't Wittgenstein say the very same thing? But he wasted a lot more time saying it. I guess that's the point, "proving it" is a waste of time. I guess what lambda points to, is that proving something is itself an absurdity.
Of course you don't see that here, to this guy. That's because my understanding, which I believe is correct, is that this guy didn't start a discussion on multiple issues, but was just using them as examples.
Quoting Agustino
So you're accusing me of being an ass towards him. I think that that's unfair. I've been no more of an ass than he has. I mirrored his own terminology and attitude.
And his complaint in its entirety isn't fair, hence my criticism. He merely raised some interesting and arguable points, but he didn't go into detail. Yet you seem to expect only me (and not him) to do so. The burden doesn't work like that.
Quoting Agustino
No, they're not hard to find. You must not have looked hard. Right of the cuff, G.E. Moore comes to mind, and there are plenty more realists and others who have made non-sceptical arguments along those lines.
Quoting Agustino
Laugh at their expense?! Don't try to twist this into something personal. It's about the position, not the person. Look at the title of this thread, for Christ's sake. He called philosophy an absolute joke, and said that scepticism has won, whereas I think that it's more the other way around.
He didn't pile me with arguments in favour, so I'm under no obligation to do all of the work, and as is clear, he was just using them as examples. If he wants to present an argument on one of his examples, he can so. Don't see why I should do all the work. It's his thread after all. I didn't raise the topic.
Quoting Agustino
Because it was a very good, very concise point. I completely agree with him.
Quoting Agustino
Tell that to the original poster, who you're clearly biased in favour of.
My definition of a philosopher: Someone who would rather ask the right question, and not be able to answer it, than give the right answer to the wrong question.
The irony is that this is why Banno's point was a good one. You made a general claim that actually told us more about you. So did the original poster, except that he made a whole bunch of 'em.
My understanding is that he threw a bone, to let the dogs fight. The truth may emerge from the fight.
Quoting Sapientia
Yes his post isn't fair. He's throwing you a bone. He's challenging you. That's why it's insulting and derisive. He doesn't want to make a point himself - he wants YOU to make a point. He is merely putting words there in order to provoke you. But you shouldn't react violently to that, because it is an opportunity for you to showcase your understanding, and share your understanding with others. You're here to do philosophy afterwards, not to deny challenges, but to take them head-on.
Quoting Sapientia
I didn't find Moore convincing at all for example. Wittgenstein in "On Certainty" sent Moore back to school.
Quoting Sapientia
Yes, what did I tell you? It's the bone. It's a challenge to prove it otherwise. Take it! Stop complaining that he's challenging you. He called philosophy a joke not because he believes it, but to outrage you, so that in your outrage you may show him the way.
Quoting Sapientia
When I'm thrown a bone, I bite it and prove my point. That's what a philosopher does - fights the good fight, and shows the way. What kind of a philosopher are you if you never fight?
Yes I know. So what? Everyone knows what Banno said. There's nothing worthy or great about his comment. That was self-evident.
I agree with the gist of that, but you're exaggerating.
Quoting Agustino
I do, but I only brought him up as an example, not to suggest that I agree with his arguments.
Quoting Agustino
I do do that, when I'm in the right mood, or when I feel like they've earned it. Currently I'm at work and shouldn't even be on my phone. :D
LOL me too but my work is slow today (and this week, since clients are already wrapping up and going on Holidays, and I've postponed a project till after) >:O - I don't have much to do.
It was correct and concise. What more do you want? That's a good reply in my book.
In the case of the original post, the "why" of the situation unknown. (Why is this question asked and what are the questioner's motives.) The "what" was a fairly standard philosophical question. The "how" in this case might be the key to understanding the situation and determining how to respond, if a response is warranted. It is difficult to miss the tone of the OP with words like "nonsense", "absolute failure", and "absolute joke". Little subtlety there. If i were to yell at someone "hey you! tell me now what time is it?!?", they would be right to glare at me and walk away. If someone wished to ignore the tone, and proceed with their response, that is their choice. But to ask others to close their eyes to the dominant factor in the situation risks acting in bad faith, as Sartre would describe it. What on the surface appears to be merely a question of metaphysics, becomes a question of ethics when all given factors are considered.
Then don't you think we should keep trying to figure them out?
Quoting lambda
False. Life is filled with assumptions. You will keep on living and breathing even if you don't know if anyone else exists. Much has been written about this.
You may say that philosophy is an absolute joke, but this is quite silly as your own statement is philosophical. So you have to constrain your view to a certain kind of philosophy, but you haven't.
Furthermore, the worthiness of some things is dependent upon what you personally find to be valuable. If you value finding something that can be implemented in the capitalistic society in which you live, then maybe philosophy isn't for you. But philosophy isn't itself constrained by capitalism and so those who study it don't really give a damn what anyone else thinks. That's called free-thinking.
I like this quote but at the same time dislike it. It can be seen as a pragmatic way of bypassing tedious debates, or it can be a way of affirming the status quo. What we "know" in our hearts is oftentimes "socially constructed". We see this a lot in ethics.
Peirce's main point is that we cannot "manufacture" genuine doubt.
"We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial skepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt ... A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim."
We do not need a reason to believe that we are not dreaming, that our cognitive faculties are reliable, that we are truly morally responsible for our actions, that the people around us are conscious, and that the walls of our rooms continue to exist when we are not experiencing them. Our common-sense instincts justify these beliefs, such that we would need a compelling reason in order to doubt any of them.
Skepticism is a philosophical movement, so you are saying philosophy has failed while a sub-field of philosophy has won?
Brevity has its benefits.
Quoting lambda
And yet skepticism is a philosophy.
Hence Lambda's critique defenestrates itself.
I do solemnly swear that I had not seen your post before I posted mine. You made a good point.
While I like your enthusiasm, I'll just note that those are not the main charges against dogmatism. Anyway, why study philosophy? Many reasons. One might not be a pyrrhonic sceptic. Ataraxia might not be very high on your list. One might agree with academic scepticism, where the notion of "truth" is abandoned but "probability" is embraced. One might want to learn about other philosophers who started their investigations from a dubitative as opposed to dogmatic stance. Or one might want to study more dogmatic philosophers simply because they might have something to say.
Well then, perhaps we're dreaming, perhaps there is no "external world," perhaps there are no "other minds," and perhaps there is no free will. And now, back to living.
The sommelier hands them the wine list, and Jeanne asks to order the most expensive bottle on the list.
"I think not!" exclaims an indignant Descartes, and *POOF* he disappears.
:D lol! The philosophical comedy stylings of Mongrel, ladies and gentlemen!
I'll be here all week. Try the Plato' fries! Whatya a bunch of Stoics out there?!
X-)
That is a bummer, mind if I ask why?
Thanks.
Just curious, How much difference would it make if philosophy were merely a failure, and merely a joke rather than an "absolute failure" and an "absolute joke"? Are absolute jokes especially funny?
Huh? Philosophy in general has failed, but a form of philosophy known as Skepticism has won?
Is it just me or does it seem odd that a skeptic would use the term "absolute"?
Meow!
GREG
Name something more humorous than ourselves. And if it is true that we are the funniest things in the Universe than the joke is that we take ourselves seriously at all.
A donkey playing the piano with one of those little cone-shaped party hats! :D
But philosophers are still unable to determine whether life is worth living or not.
Well, as I have proven to you that philosophers have actually answered definitely your skeptical problems, I am now skeptical of your skepticism on other matters ;)
Let's go back to the future of the new romantic movement! Don your cosplay and engage the public.
You're being evicted from the armchair and the cybernetic prison that is this forum.
In what sense, and to whom? This isn't a question to which there is no one, absolute and universally applicable answer. You require too much from philosophy if you seek such an answer; too much from most things I think, including science, which in many cases can't determine things absolutely. There are circumstances where life isn't worth living or where one's death will be of more benefit than one's life.
So true. Somehow the assumption crept into various skulls that everything should and could be justified from scratch. Presuppositionless self-evolved absolute and final truth. It sounds a little like God. Hegel tackles this too. We are so afraid of error that we forget to consider that this fear of error may be the error itself.
I'd say that we all as at least implicit philosophers demonstrate our varying answers to that question every day. If some crusty professor assured me that after a life of research he had determined that my life was or was not worth living, I'd feel embarrassed for him. I'd say that the reading of philosophy tends to the dispel the myth or prejudice that experts have genuine authority on questions of value.
Skepticism is a philosophy. See Popkin's Skepticism anthology and his History of Skepticism, for instance. Or The Outlines of Pyrrhonism by Sextus Empiricus. Or the full-grown Hume's Enquiry.
Accordingly, I suppose when you say "skepticism has won", you mean to assert that skepticism is more correct or useful than other philosophies -- perhaps, more specifically, that it reigns supreme among epistemological attitudes.
I agree that skepticism is powerful philosophy, and I call myself a sort of skeptic.
Accordingly, it doesn't sound quite right to me, to say "philosophers can't offer any reasons to believe in" free will, or other minds, or a mind-independent world. Philosophers can and do offer such reasons, and also offer reasons for the contrary beliefs. Skeptics most of all, if they follow Sextus, pile justifications on either side of a controversy, aiming to surpass even the partisans, in an exercise aimed at the suspension of judgment by a sort of exhaustion of the power of belief.
More recent efforts in philosophical "diagnosis" and "therapy" aim to persuade us that enduring traditional problems like those you've cited are vestiges of philosophical confusion and anxiety rooted in outmoded prejudice. Such therapeutic philosophy may have a skeptical character or tendency.
What's left when such therapy has worked its cure? The aim of training is not merely to avoid or remove ills, but to promote a state of wholesome fitness and optimal performance.
The miserable noise of our public discourse is a symptom of maladies that would be cured by more of the right kind of philosophical activity, not less. The “crisis of humanities” is political and fiscal, not methodological.
I agree with you, that cure should mean more inculcation of the habits and attitudes associated with wholehearted skepticism.
Quoting lambda
Skeptical philosophy is a sort of human reasoning. What is it aided by? The same thing that all philosophy and human reasoning is aided by, human experience.
I'm biased as a skeptic, and it's hard for me to resist the thought that skepticism (properly understood) shows the tracks of human rationality, traces the form of reason, marks the outlines of a discipline of reasonableness, and is that very discipline.
I've asked myself this question many times.
When I started reading philosophy, in my youth, I had some vague, untutored notions about theological agnosticism and moral absolutism, and I was attracted to the art of Socrates. Within a few years, partly under the influence of confusing encounters with Hegel and Nagarjuna, I was drawn to a sort of metaphysical idealism. Increasingly dissatisfied with the seeming arbitrariness of that position, I drifted toward a sort of Kantian-inflected phenomenology, influenced especially by Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer. I kicked aside the last vestiges of idealism somewhere between Bergson and Fichte, chewing on a "problem of matter" that set me on the road to what I'd eventually call "a sort of naturalism". I got a nice kickstart down that way when I stumbled into McDowell, and Anscombe, and Wittgenstein, and began to get acquainted with the analytic tradition we trace through Russell to Frege. And I suppose that sent me back to Hume.
In retrospect, the trip suggests one good reason for the social practice of philosophy: Some of us start out lighting candles in our parents' basements, inventing prayers and meditations and wandering the bookcases. We all start out in different places, exposed to who knows what customs and prejudices in the media, in the schools, in libraries and religious institutions, among strangers and friends and family, mixing like marbles in an urn, crowing like birds around a tower of Babel. The social practice of philosophy is inevitable and essential, not only as the expression of the great diversity of views sure to crop up in culture like ours, but also, more tendentiously, for the integration of all that dissonant activity into a more or less unified, harmonious, and organized conversation. Along these lines, I suppose there's some analogy between the philosophical fitness of an individual, and the philosophical fitness of communities and civilizations.
If skepticism is sound and valuable philosophy; if, as some of us are tempted to suppose, it belongs somehow to the form of human rationality; then another reason for the practice of philosophy is to educate the people and train them in a skill as useful and universal as algebra, physics, medicine, athletics, and meditation.
I've only lately come to that whole way of thinking. I rode my naturalism over a decade, sometimes casually and at a distance, other times in fits of energy. Through most those years, I thought it a waste of time, even regretting the Socratic enchantment that overtook me in youth and sent me on that strange distracted journey, even wondering at what seemed an irresponsible dissembling by the professors who promote this useless art as if there were something to it.
What's the point of practicing philosophy, I used to ask, once you've already got your bearings? You've lived on Earth a few years already, got a pretty good idea what to expect, what sort of actions, what way of life, those expectations most firmly recommend. You might be a naturalist, a Christian, an atheist, an idealist, a fan of Castaneda... what's the point of talking about it once you're sure enough that talk won't change your mind? In those years I treated philosophy like something between a filthy habit I'd inherited from my youth and ought to quit, and a pleasant pastime like music, or basketball, or dancing.
Since I never did kick the habit, my naturalism continued to take shape, pressed on all sides in conversations with friends, and strangers, and texts, and in solitary dialogues. On the one hand, I came to recognize the deeply skeptical character of the phenomenological foundations of my naturalism, and the close connection of the skeptical and phenomenological tendencies in our tradition, too hidden in the discourse of our times.
Why should anyone be introduced to philosophy by way of Descartes, without a glance at Bacon or Gassendi; or by way of Plato and Aristotle without a tour through the stoics, and skeptics, and cynics, and epicureans, the great schools of Hellenic philosophy in its most developed ages, in its most reasonable, social, and pragmatic forms? So you've read Chrissypus....
One reason might be, it's the more metaphysically encumbered texts that catch all the flies. Metaphysical controversy is the gateway to epistemology; epistemology is the threshold of skepticism. Surely there's room for that sort of branding without tilting the whole enterprise off kilter.
On the other hand, all those conversations informed me of the great diversity of views among the people. By sincere and earnest reflection on themes raised, and claims persistently asserted, by others -- so many of which are ruled out of court in the schools by no more than a well-placed snicker -- I became persuaded there are no "proofs" or facts or calculus by which the most fundamental disagreements may be definitely resolved. That realization coincided with my new appreciation of the power of skepticism, and these new insights reinforced each other. For where disagreements are most stubborn, it's skepticism that clears the way to common ground, no matter whether every party in a conversation adopts a skeptical attitude, or only one.
It takes a knucklehead like me a quarter century to get from lighting candles to the sort of skeptical naturalism I’ve come to practice. My views keep shifting while I’m at it, though I follow the same thread the whole time. I’ll bet most old philosophers agree it can take forty years of life or more before a body reaches what we might call philosophical maturity. How much of this time do we spend just figuring out what all this talk’s about, to say nothing of what’s at stake in it and what it’s for?
The philosophical activity we take up more or less responsibly in conversations like this, is ceaselessly at work in all hearts and minds, whether or not it’s noted, however it’s construed, however misdirected, ever shaping us through time.
Skepticism is not a matter of fact that one discovers by observation. It's an outlook and a custom that must be achieved and preserved and cultivated, or left to rot in the back alley of tradition. The cultivation of such customs is the work of philosophical activity. The personal and social value of such customs is the justification for the allocation of resources to that work.
If you’re so sure that skepticism is the true philosophy, misunderstood and undervalued in our time, and that we’d all be better off if the custom were more firmly rooted in our culture, then you might recognize an obligation to promote the cure yourself, or at least pay it lip service on the right occasions, as each of us has here by speaking his own mind.
It's why 1 + 1 equals 2 but the Fibonacci sequence (which seems like a insignificant sequence of numbers) applies to many things in our universe. Mathematical constants define the universe we live in, but we only have access to those mathematical constants if someone has the will power to bring them into existence.
The only reason why we even know of names like Jesus, Plato, Picasso, Tesla, Hitler, etc. is because they willed themselves into history, and the universe allowed it. Think about it. The (debatable) incident with Henry Tandey. The world would have been a very different place if Hitler never rose to power and you would have never known his name. He would cease to exist apart from the memory of his friends and family. Hitler would have never rose to power if he did not will it himself. No one could have put him in power just by choice. He would have had to work for it. You cannot be something if you do nothing. But being able to choose is what makes us inherently human. Dogs never cared about their ancestors or math or why they exist. They live to survive and then die - nothing more. We live to survive beyond life itself.
We're creating tools to evolve. You see it in the technology industry, pharmaceutical industry, industry itself. All human creation seeks to benefit mankind as a species. We're moving towards evolution at an alarming rate.
Inventions and new understandings happen every day. Thank the curiosity called philosophy that has enabled them to be birthed.
Philosophy helps to understand the joke
Funnily enough, Epictetus wasn't a skeptic though ;)
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
What exactly do you mean by the habits and attitudes associated with wholehearted skepticism? If you look through the history of skepticism, these have been very different, varying with the time in which the skeptic lived. Skepticisim, precisely because of its non-assertive nature, can lend itself to a multitude of values and practices, including religion (see Johann Georg Hamann) or atheism (Hume), etc. even in the same time period.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
What is this "form of reason"? Have you been reading Livingston's Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium where he goes on explicating exactly this line of thought traced from Hume, in a somewhat Hegelian/dialectical fashion?
Wasn’t he a stoic? One of the great schools I mentioned.
You’re not suggesting we cite only those speakers with whom we’re in complete agreement on every point? In that case I might never cite anyone, including myself.
Quoting Agustino
"Wholehearted skepticism" is a phrase I picked up from McDowell. Like many epistemologists in the schools, he persists in arguing against an old academic character called "the skeptic", a moldy straw man who's made to utter antiskeptical absurdities such as "No knowledge is possible". My employment of the phrase is ironic and emphatically critical in this respect, as I believe the old straw man should be laid to rest in a museum, not misleadingly cast as the chief antagonist in public discourses on skepticism and knowledge. On the other hand, I mean it quite sincerely, once we kick the straw man to the curb, the way is open to a wholehearted skepticism informed in part by encounters with prominent skeptics in the tradition, including Sextus, Gassendi, and the full-grown Hume.
Quoting Agustino
Quite so. When Gothic tribes who displaced Rome in the West at last discovered Sextus, the encounter with skepticism induced some Christian apologists to use skeptical arguments in defense of Christian faith. It seems one tendency was along these lines: If reason and science lead us to doubt the truth of scripture, the defense may employ skeptical arguments to make such reason and science seem doubtful.
We might say skepticism is always practiced from a point of view in a cultural context. Even if it were true in theory that, given enough time to move from alpha to omega, skeptical practice always tends toward the same sort of philosophical view; life is short, and cultural contexts various. So it should come as no surprise if two practitioners speak differently or hold different views while engaged in a similar practice.
I distinguish between the "habits and attitudes" most closely associated with the practice of skepticism, on the one hand, and whatever vestiges of belief may remain in a practicing skeptic who’s made some progress learning how to "follow appearances quietly" -- no matter with which cults the skeptic may have associated before his conversion.
I was a naturalist before I was a skeptical naturalist. That naturalism had phenomenological foundations I felt I did not adequately understand and that I hoped to work out. In the meantime, the view promoted strong inclinations in me along the lines of metaphysical materialism. Working on the phenomenological foundations led me to skepticism. In the transition to skepticism and skeptical naturalism, the disposition to metaphysical thinking was replaced by wholehearted skeptical epistemology. I now reject those materialist inclinations in theory, and argue against them along with all other metaphysical inclinations. But it seems vestiges of those inclinations stir in me still, perhaps influencing my thoughts, my expectations, my actions. As a skeptic I'm disposed to treat those vestigial inclinations as prejudices of reason, though bound to report them as among my appearances, until such time as the disciplined practice of skepticism should grind them out of me completely.
I suppose a Christian who becomes a wholehearted skeptic and skeptical Christian apologist might be similarly disposed to his own vestiges. But if he goes on to give explicit assent, even in his private thoughts, to claims like "A benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal deity created the world", and "Scripture is revealed truth", then perhaps his skepticism is not wholehearted.
For it's not clear how such claims would be supported by the balance of appearances. Clearing the way for a conceivable possibility is not the same thing as giving a positive reason for assent.
I also distinguish between any metaphysical inclinations and the sort of phenomenologically grounded, metaphysically agnostic naturalism that seems, to me, entirely consistent with wholehearted skepticism.
Quoting Agustino
An excellent question, the resolution of which is far from clear and likely to cost a great deal of conversation.
I might distinguish a practice of “giving and taking reasons”, including reasons for belief or action, from the more basic condition of rationality we seem to share with dogs and other nonhuman sentient animals. It seems the human practice is supported by a greater capacity for abstraction, reflection, objectivity, imagination, and like those capacities closely connected to our power of speech. Along such lines, I might say the art of “reasoning” involves something like an ability to identify, evaluate, and construct justificatory and inferential relations among, for instance, perceptions, beliefs, memories, intentions, hypotheses, judgments, utterances, and other actions. The practice of this art seems to involve something like a capacity for thinking about thoughts, for reasoning about reasons.
Skeptical reasoning aims to correct the unruly impulse to unreflective judgment and belief, to strengthen the habit of critical thinking, by testing the justifications for any claim, by tracing doubt to its theoretical limit, by showing the joints at which conceivable alternatives sprout up for any claim, by thus clearing a path along which one may learn to “follow appearances”.
It seems the way to skepticism begins as soon as we learn a practice of “giving and taking reasons”. For arguably it is that very practice, taken to a sort of rigorous extreme on all sides.
Quoting Agustino
I don’t think I’ve heard of him. I’m no scholar and don’t read much nowadays, apart from conversations like these.
Interpretations of Hume aside, I like the grand distinction I just read in a blurb on the piece, between “false philosophy” leading to melancholy at groundlessness or to delirium at transcendence, and “true philosophy” leading to wisdom. I wonder if “wisdom” would consist merely in avoiding delirium and melancholy, or also in avoiding the correlate views on transcendence and groundlessness.