On one hand, skepticism is a legitimate philosophical view with no good arguments against.
Which version of scepticism? Even the article you link to concedes there is,at least one form of scepticism that’s refutable through self defeat.
If extreme scepticism is self defeating, and certainty is unobtainable, then what you are left with is moderate scepticism—AKA fallibilism. What you need to try is the right amount if the right kind of scepticism.
We can even see how this kind of reasoning makes some sense with the ultimate goal of adding philosophy up to normality
If the world is weird, I wish to believe that the world is weird.
The goal is to add up to truth.
If normality means supporting all your intuitions, then you are going to have to
disbelieve much science and maths.
If it means something else …what?
If the brain has an amazing “a priori truth factory” that works to produce accurate beliefs, it makes you wonder why a thirsty hunter-gatherer can’t use the “a priori truth factory” to locate drinkable water. It makes you wonder why eyes evolved in the first place, if there are ways to produce accurate beliefs without looking at things.
Something can work in some contexts, but not in in others.
Empiricism doesn’t work for things you can’t see, eg:-
Modality, Counterfactuals, Possible versus Actual.
Normativity, Ought versus is.
Essence versus Existence, hidden explanatory mechanisms.
A priori truth could have a naturalistic basis. Many organisms can instinctively recognise food, predators, rivals and mates. But even the broadest evolutionary knowledge
must that operate within the limits of empiricism .. not the “invisibles” I mentioned. And of course it is a rather different kind of apriori knowledge than analytical kind, based on language and tautologies.
Emanuel Kant came to the conclusion that there is no way to justify the existence of space and time with observations, as space and time are prerequisites for any observations in the first place. Therefore, they have to be justifiable “à priori” in a matter, suspiciously resembling cyclical reasoning:
Unless “à priori” justifications are true, space and time are not justifiable. But space and time has to be justifiable[1]. Therefore “à priori” justifications has to be
Space and time don’t need to be justifiable, because they are not propositions. they are aoriori, but not apriori propositions. They are, for Kant, preconditions for having any experience, and therefore apriori. Geometric truths are apriori propositions. They need justification, which for Kant, is the apriori nature of space.and time—for humans.
There is an extra level of irony here that, among other things, Kant has “à priori” figured out that space and time are absolute, which we now know not to be the case
I think you meant Euclidean.
Note that no claim is made that space is Euclidean in itself. The tower of.justification is only rooted in the operation of human perception.The
Kantian issues about how much of what we perceive is out there, and how much how.much our form of representation are still live, and crop up within science. Just looking doesn’t solve them, because you can only look from within the mind-world relationship … you can’t look at it from the outside.
And so most philosophers are really into certainty.
What does that mean?
″ Almost all contemporary epistemologists will say that they are fallibilists”
It’s deeply entangled with the view that philosophy (or at the least some part of it) is a separate magisterium that lies beyond the empiricism of sciences
Half of science lies beyond the empiricism of science.
ETA
Engineers building rockets do not sweat about Cartesian Demon and yet the rockets seem to works fine. If something is good enough for building rockets maybe it’s good enough for our reasoning in general?I
On the other hand, maybe it isnt. There’s no guarantee. Maybe forms of reasoning that depend on visible feedback about whether something happens or works can’t extend to areas where there is no such feedback—areas like “what is the ultimate nature of reality”. There is no direct test for correspondence-to-reality. So truth is different to usefulness.
The usefulness cluster of concepts includes the ability to make predictions, as well as create technology. The truth cluster of concepts involves identification of the causes of perceptions, and offering explanations, not just predictions. Usefulness corresponds to engineering, truth to philosophy, and science straddles both. Usefulness corresponds to phenomenal, truth to noumena.
The usefulness cluster corresponds to scientilfic instrumentalism , the truth cluster to scientific instrumentalism. The truth cluster corresponds to epistemological rationalism, the usefulness cluster to instrumental rationalim. Usefulness corresponds to practice, truth to theory.
Truth is correspondence to reality , which is not identical to the ability to make predictions. One can predict that the sun will rise without knowing what the Sun really is. “Curve fitting” science is adequate to make predictions. Trial and error is adequate to come up with useful technologies. But other means are needed to find the underlying reality. One can’t achieve convergence by “just using evidence” because the questions of what evidence is, and how to interpret depend on one’s episteme. One also can’t because ruling out empirically reconfirmed theories generally doesn’t leave you with a single candidate.
Science straddles both. Science is not just a matter of making predictions, it’s a matter of of answering “how” and “why” questions, of finding explanations. That can’t be done by stamp -collecting observations … It requires the conscious and creative conjecture of explanatory hypotheses, something beyond empiricism.
Which version of scepticism? Even the article you link to concedes there is,at least one form of scepticism that’s refutable through self defeat.
If extreme scepticism is self defeating, and certainty is unobtainable, then what you are left with is moderate scepticism—AKA fallibilism. What you need to try is the right an by if the right kind of scepticism.
I think you’ve just answered your own question more or less.
If the world is weird, I wish to believe that the world is weird.
The goal is to add up to truth.
If normality means supporting all your intuitions, then you are going to have to disbelieve much science and maths.
If it means something else …what?
We are in agreement here. And if you read to the end of the post you’ll see the answer to your question:
After all, science is the normality to which we would like philosophy to be adding to
Something can work in some contexts, but not in in others.
Empiricism doesn’t work for things you can’t see, eg:-
Modality, Counterfactuals, Possible versus Actual.
Normativity, Ought versus is.
Essence versus Existence, hidden explanatory mechanisms.
A priori truth could have a naturalistic basis. Many organisms can instinctively recognise food, predators, rivals and mates. But even the broadest evolutionary knowledge must that operate within the limits of empiricism .. not the “invisibles” I mentioned. And of course it is a rather different kind of apriori knowledge than analytical kind, based on language and tautologies.
I’m sorry I’m not going to spend time untangling this confusion in the comments. I hope that if you keep reading my posts you’ll eventually have enough insights to figure this out for yourself.
Space and time don’t need to be justifiable, because they are not propositions.
Their existence and properties are proposition.
I think you meant Euclidean.
That’s too, though I was mostly hinting to relativity.
Curious how our understanding of things that some people may assume are beyond observations are then happen to be changed by scientific discovery, isn’t it?
Almost all contemporary epistemologists will say that they are fallibilists
That’s nice. Though the key words here are “contemporary” and “epistemologists”.
There are still minor nuances with fallibilism like the fact that people still manage to be confused by the possibility of Cartesian Demon, but I’ll get to them in time.
We are in agreement here. And if you read to the end of the post you’ll see the answer to your question:
I have, and I still haven’t seen a definition of normality.
I think you meant Euclidean.
That’s too, though I was mostly hinting to relativity.
It’s general.relativity that implies non euclidean space.
Curious how our understanding of things that some people may assume are beyond observations are then happen to be changed by scientific discovery, isn’t it?
Not once you realise scientific discovery isn’t pure empiricism.
Almost all contemporary epistemologists will say that they are fallibilists
That’s nice. Though the key words here are “contemporary” and “epistemologists”.
So where are the philosophers obsessed with certainty? In the past, or in other departments?
Which version of scepticism? Even the article you link to concedes there is,at least one form of scepticism that’s refutable through self defeat.
If extreme scepticism is self defeating, and certainty is unobtainable, then what you are left with is moderate scepticism—AKA fallibilism. What you need to try is the right amount if the right kind of scepticism.
If the world is weird, I wish to believe that the world is weird.
The goal is to add up to truth.
If normality means supporting all your intuitions, then you are going to have to disbelieve much science and maths.
If it means something else …what?
Something can work in some contexts, but not in in others.
Empiricism doesn’t work for things you can’t see, eg:-
Modality, Counterfactuals, Possible versus Actual.
Normativity, Ought versus is.
Essence versus Existence, hidden explanatory mechanisms.
A priori truth could have a naturalistic basis. Many organisms can instinctively recognise food, predators, rivals and mates. But even the broadest evolutionary knowledge must that operate within the limits of empiricism .. not the “invisibles” I mentioned. And of course it is a rather different kind of apriori knowledge than analytical kind, based on language and tautologies.
Space and time don’t need to be justifiable, because they are not propositions. they are aoriori, but not apriori propositions. They are, for Kant, preconditions for having any experience, and therefore apriori. Geometric truths are apriori propositions. They need justification, which for Kant, is the apriori nature of space.and time—for humans.
I think you meant Euclidean.
Note that no claim is made that space is Euclidean in itself. The tower of.justification is only rooted in the operation of human perception.The
Kantian issues about how much of what we perceive is out there, and how much how.much our form of representation are still live, and crop up within science. Just looking doesn’t solve them, because you can only look from within the mind-world relationship … you can’t look at it from the outside.
What does that mean?
″ Almost all contemporary epistemologists will say that they are fallibilists”
https://iep.utm.edu/fallibil/#H1
Half of science lies beyond the empiricism of science.
ETA
On the other hand, maybe it isnt. There’s no guarantee. Maybe forms of reasoning that depend on visible feedback about whether something happens or works can’t extend to areas where there is no such feedback—areas like “what is the ultimate nature of reality”. There is no direct test for correspondence-to-reality. So truth is different to usefulness.
The usefulness cluster of concepts includes the ability to make predictions, as well as create technology. The truth cluster of concepts involves identification of the causes of perceptions, and offering explanations, not just predictions. Usefulness corresponds to engineering, truth to philosophy, and science straddles both. Usefulness corresponds to phenomenal, truth to noumena.
The usefulness cluster corresponds to scientilfic instrumentalism , the truth cluster to scientific instrumentalism. The truth cluster corresponds to epistemological rationalism, the usefulness cluster to instrumental rationalim. Usefulness corresponds to practice, truth to theory.
Truth is correspondence to reality , which is not identical to the ability to make predictions. One can predict that the sun will rise without knowing what the Sun really is. “Curve fitting” science is adequate to make predictions. Trial and error is adequate to come up with useful technologies. But other means are needed to find the underlying reality. One can’t achieve convergence by “just using evidence” because the questions of what evidence is, and how to interpret depend on one’s episteme. One also can’t because ruling out empirically reconfirmed theories generally doesn’t leave you with a single candidate.
Science straddles both. Science is not just a matter of making predictions, it’s a matter of of answering “how” and “why” questions, of finding explanations. That can’t be done by stamp -collecting observations … It requires the conscious and creative conjecture of explanatory hypotheses, something beyond empiricism.
I think you’ve just answered your own question more or less.
We are in agreement here. And if you read to the end of the post you’ll see the answer to your question:
I’m sorry I’m not going to spend time untangling this confusion in the comments. I hope that if you keep reading my posts you’ll eventually have enough insights to figure this out for yourself.
Their existence and properties are proposition.
That’s too, though I was mostly hinting to relativity.
Curious how our understanding of things that some people may assume are beyond observations are then happen to be changed by scientific discovery, isn’t it?
That’s nice. Though the key words here are “contemporary” and “epistemologists”.
There are still minor nuances with fallibilism like the fact that people still manage to be confused by the possibility of Cartesian Demon, but I’ll get to them in time.
I have, and I still haven’t seen a definition of normality.
It’s general.relativity that implies non euclidean space.
Not once you realise scientific discovery isn’t pure empiricism.
So where are the philosophers obsessed with certainty? In the past, or in other departments?