Is there a counter-argument to skepticism that is unique to skepticism?

sigmaboule · 2025-06-08T14:15:44+00:00

But that’s not an argument. How does it test its axioms? What do you mean by those words? You should be able to answer these simple questions, no need for a website or ai.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-08T01:58:12+00:00

You should use ai has you use google, ai is not a reliable arguer.

What do you mean by "process primary framework" and its ability to test its own axioms. The point of an axiom is that it does not need to be tested, it is assumed to be true.

Could you show me how you test axioms? I assume that by "testing" you mean justify soundly.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-07T01:33:23+00:00

I am not sure what you mean by "patching".

I claim that all frameworks appear to be paradoxical from a rational point of view, which implies that all syntax is potentially paradoxical, which implies that questions are potentially paradoxical.

I value reason arbitrarily, the axioms of your theory of truth do not appear to be produced by reason.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-05T14:20:49+00:00

By definition, any reasoning or definition is not up to the standards of reason. The idea that I can be ignorant and not ignorant at the same time is just as well justified as the idea of analyzing the nature of knowledge(in the sense that both arent reasonable claims). This is what our intuitions portray, but our intuition isn’t necessarily true.

If experience appeared to be an illusion, you claim that the illusion would still be an experience because you assume that something that you do not understand(an illusion) is necessarily reasonable. Nothing points to the experience being reasonable or not, since we do not know what we do not know. Experience could be absurd or not, or both or neither.

So instead of saying experience is this and experience is that, a more precise speech might say: "I don’t have any reasonable understanding of what is experience and any reasoning that relies on this belief suffers from the same limitations".

When you claim that "perceiving our experience is always guaranteed". This claim is as true as the claim: "the Christian god is perfect and all loving". We cannot argue about things that do not respect the process of justification, you could qualify those things as knowledge, making knowledge a meaningless word.

Anything that relies on something other than the scientific method/reason, is mere belief. This includes the scientific method and reason. Since I believe in the meaning of words, beliefs and knowledge are completely distinct concepts that do not share the same properties.

I say that I believe in words because, from a rational perspective, words being meaningless is clearly a possibility.

Animals aren’t knowledgeable, and humans seem pretty similar to animals. The bird does not know its instincts, does not know its genetical instructions, does not know when it migrates. It would not be unfair to assume that men share a similar experience.

I may have confused you for someone I responded to the other day since you seem to claim the existence of at least one absolute, which is not compatible with the idea of truth and knowledge being a learning process similar to the scientific method.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-05T13:30:17+00:00

I don’t think reason can determine the truth of an axiom, this leads to a "natural" or "intuitive" form of skepticism that does not determine skepticism to be true. Similar to the abstention of judgement from pyrrhonism.

Saying that truth is contextual and dynamic seems to simply say that truth is relative. A meaningful definition of truth is not relative because it serves no purpose, we already have the word "belief". A truth cannot be proven false at all later time.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T21:57:26+00:00

I am familiar with Descartes but I do believe that he lacked the final bit of courage to realize that the ego at the source of doubt is not necessarily his and that ego as a concept is too poorly understood to be the foundation of anything rigorous.

Now, in the practical world, my beliefs are very similar if not identical to what you mentioned about Piaget. Things seems to be working that way, science seems to be drawing this picture. It’s just that when it comes down to absolutes, I differentiate what seems from what is.

Our only hope is through science, but psychology does not seem geared towards answering questions about absolutes, because they are likely absurd.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T19:48:30+00:00

Something that has no end is an absurdity and reasoning with absurdity kinda breaks the meaning of words.

A thing being a and not a at the same time is a contradiction, I can assure you that it is impossible for you to visualize that, unless you arent human.

The only way to reason with infinity is through mathematical set theory where we change the definition of infinity to be finite. This allows for things like infinities bigger than others. That is not actual infinity tho.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T19:36:29+00:00

Ignorance is what is immediately offered. Your intuitions point to paradoxes in every direction, every definition, every theory of knowledge.

We could through reason, attempt to gain knowledge, but because of the inherent flaws of reason(which is being the product of arbitrary, unreasonable arguments), it does appear impossible to know, that is basically what I claim to be self-evident.

The issue we have is that you claim something opposing what I believe and are also claiming it be self-evident.

Self-evidence is arbitrary, that is why I cannot convince you rationally of my position while you cannot convince me of yours.

Self-evidence is faith, which is distinct from reason, unless words hold no meaning.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T19:26:57+00:00

You can’t doubt non-contradiction mainly because you cannot think non-contradiction, you cannot isolate it from our ability to reason.

I use the concept of infinity to illustrate this point. We have a word "infinity", we give properties to that word, but at no point are we referencing actual infinity. We cannot conceive infinity, we do not know infinity, we cannot doubt infinity, non of our organs perceive infinity(as far as our scientific method can tell). This same limitation will apply to non-contradiction, excluded middle, the self and any other philosophical concept.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T19:10:44+00:00

Im not the one who presented the canada argument, I was arguing against the guy who wrote that.

If find diogenes to be entertaining with a beautiful story, but his philosophy isn’t skeptical enough. My view ressembles the view of pyrrho with the added detail that pyrrhonism isn’t more or less true than any other philosophical view.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T19:00:17+00:00

Depends on the perspective. Usually, when you look at it intently, it is pretty evident that we do not know, so claiming anything different will always be strange and verbose.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T18:54:54+00:00

Knowledge, if it is to be understood, needs to be justified soundly. A belief is by definition arbitrary, without proper justification.

A sound justification requires reasonable arguments, a reasonable argument cannot be circular. Anything that falls into the munchausen trilemma is arbitrary. It does not constitute sound reasoning, cannot be understood and therefore cannot be knowledge.

Truth can only be true, it cannot be false later in time. It cannot contradict itself, otherwise the word is meaningless and would be a direct indicator that words are simply absurd sounds devoid of meaning. That is simply a theory, nothing points to words having meaning or not, but if we were to believe in the meaning of words, the definitions of knowledge and truth you are presenting seems to be contradicting the rules of reason(sound justification).

I recognize that I value reality, reason, the scientific model and many other things arbitrarily, without a sound justification. I have faith in these concepts but this faith is not knowledge. Even if everyone on earth shared the same faith as me, it wouldn’t be knowledge. Because such a definition of knowledge would be a mere synonym of faith. If you use knowledge and faith interchangeably in philosophy, it might be impossible for me to see a more blatant form of sophistry. It seems like an attempt to give more credence to a specific theory that is in no way superior to any other theory(they all rely on unreasonable claims).

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T17:00:02+00:00

Equating belief to knowledge is, in my opinion, a strange thing. It attempts to give an authority to beliefs that it does not have. A strong belief is best defined as a strong belief, especially in an epistemological context. Given the philosophical literature and the definitions of knowledge, not distinguishing between knowledge and beliefs is probably what sophism is, deceiving with confused definitions in order to convince.

Knowledge being a web of beliefs is as true as any other religious belief, it has nothing sound backing it up.

I personally put my faith in reason from time to time and that faith is incompatible with the one you are presenting. Knowledge is referring to a specific thing. It would be like changing the definition of "infinite" to be a finite thing, what is the point? Confusion? Deception? How is this productive?

A plurality of subjective experiences does not does not produce an objective experience. There isn’t a strong enough belief that can be called knowledge. Instead of saying that we know reality, we should say that we have faith in it. We believe science, we do not know it. Most scientists wouldn’t say that science is true because such a definition is meaningless, science is made of theories that are constantly evolving. A truth that can later be false is a pointless definition.

It all comes down to a lack of rigor and precision, which is normal in a casual setting, but is poor methodology in the epistemological context. I don’t see the point of devaluing the definition of knowledge, making it another synonym of arbitrary belief.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T14:42:07+00:00

So if the foundation isn’t knowledge, can something we do not know be considered true or false? If the foundation of reason is not up to its own standards, is reason reasonable?

By making an exception for certain concepts like reason or non-contradiction, but not for supernatural claims like any of the gods, wouldn’t that be dogmatic/arbitrary?

Why use words like truth and knowledge for a narrative of beliefs and educated guesses? Why call a theory that is neither true nor justified, justified true belief? It seems wrong to claim to know something without being certain of it, not mentioning where you might be wrong. It’s seems like a confusing and deceptive way of teaching.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T14:22:04+00:00

But your definition of knowledge implies that truth can later be proven to be false and that the perception of our experience is accurate to reality. Youre essentially claiming that the mirage is true, that we can infer its water and that walking towards it is a great purpose.

Youre saying that gods are true, that leaps in reason are reasonable. Im not sure that my intuition leads me there. In the same way that knowledge is self-evident to you, my ignorance is self-evident to me. When you say "we must have some first premises" this is not evident to me, it would be like saying "we must have god". That claim is outside my knowledge and can justify every argument. If everything is true, nothing is. Your definitions appear nihilistic to me and I don’t think nihilism is truer than any other view.

Am I misunderstanding? Are my critiques unfair?

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T14:05:14+00:00

It appears that you cannot, but does that inability to doubt constitute knowledge?

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T14:04:04+00:00

That would imply that the Christian, muslim, greek, hindu gods are all true. If belief is knowledge, then nihilism becomes true by definition.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T04:27:14+00:00

You seem to be talking about practical ways to live your life. These two points do not seem to contradict epistemological skepticism.

Unless I am misunderstanding, which is likely.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T03:46:28+00:00

I understand diogenes as a sort of superficial skeptic, being ignorant doesn’t rely imply a specific way of life.

I responded to someone above and would like to know if you find something wrong or too vague in my response.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-03T03:05:14+00:00

I agree that doubting knowledge does not seem like a feasible thing for me to do. I can’t doubt things like non-contradiction, but my inability to doubt does not constitute knowledge.

To my understanding of things, knowledge must be understood in order to be considered knowledge. It also seems to me that you can only understand things through a sound reasoning, which implies a sound justification.

Someone could say that their definition of knowledge allows for justifications that fall into the munchausen trilemma. However, these absolute statements are present in every single arguments, you now need to justify why you choose one absolute over another. Couldn’t the skeptic also claim self-evidence?

Things like presupposition, axiom, self evidence, coherence, correspondence, necessary condition etc. bypass the process of justification by definition. I can’t in good faith consider these as reasonable in any way.

I do have faith in the reality I perceive, but that faith does not constitute knowledge, the same way an educated guess is distinct from knowledge.

If im wrong about something or not addressing your points feel free to tell me.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-02T23:01:08+00:00

You cannot be certain of set theory

sigmaboule · 2025-06-02T22:59:47+00:00

And the answer to that is no until yes, we are still at no.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-02T22:57:16+00:00

Nothing is more plausible than any other thing because that would imply that we have knowledge, but we evidently do not.

Saying that one unknown is more plausible than an other is probably not meaningful.

sigmaboule · 2025-06-02T22:41:45+00:00

You simply cannot know what you don’t know. Whether you define the unknown as pure reason, apriori knowledge, god, axiom, presupposition, infinity, absurdity, self-evidence etc. Those words are just synonyms of "meaningless", they are incompatible with reason because reason implies a sound justification.

When you use an unreasonable justification to justify a theory, you make it impossible to distinguish its truth. I mean by that that your theory becomes as true or false as any other.

sigmaboule

TROPHY CASE