Ignoring the Total Skeptic.

“Nobody knows anything”

entails

“I don’t know anything”.

If I suspect that I don’t know anything, I have no position from which to make claims about other people’s (lack of) knowledge. If you hear me say something that entails “I don’t know anything” and take me at my word, you have no reason to believe anything I say about the state of your knowledge.

Thus, the total skeptic is properly ignored.

Sounds good!

I’ve alluded to this when I debate conspiracy politics.

This is something I definitely agree on. I think there is a lot of harm in skepticism, in that, in the wrong hands, it can lead to just as much ignorance as it is trying to prevent.

To deny all or reality is silly. We are obviously here. We are obviously consciously observing this life. We feel pain, and sadness, and love, and happiness, and beauty. We feel the pangs of sorrow, and the peaks of ecstasy.

We truly are lucky to be here, experiencing this beauty. The irony, however, is that the only way we would enjoy it so thoroughly, is if there was an end to it. Life is precious because it is not eternal; otherwise it’d be monotonous. We have been designed by evolution to be happy with the time frame we have been given to work with.

not really.

knowledge is impossible.

if you claim that you know something and are unable to prove that you know it, regardless of the epistemic position of your opponent, you do not know it.

-Imp

Also, when people are frustrated with the whole world and think it’s all stupid, they should remember that they are not smarter than the whole world. Everything is so complex, and just expecting it to be better is a retarded idea. Actually making something better, would prove its critic superior.

Critic is too easy.

Invention, and transcendance, are not easy; but they ARE worth it.
:wink:

Pierce talks about this a little bit. To paraphrase: Justification is needed in order to overturn a belief.

In other words, you can’t just be skeptical… you have to offer a compelling reason for your skepticism.

I would hear more of this ‘Pierce’.

-Goethe

Uccisore,
Check out Charles Sanders Peirce, the “father of pragmatism” in any good philosophical survey or at great internet sources such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
I agree with Dan. To criticize is much easier than to create either good arguments or sound theory. The skeptic appears to be one who says, “I don’t like the way this game is going; so I’ll take my ball and go home.” On the other hand, Walter Kaufmann made a neat observation about those who criticize while not offering anything better. He said. “One can smell a rotten egg without being able to lay a fresh one.”
But— where skepticism acts as an incentive toward improvement, IMHO, it is viable. Where it simply deconstructs, despite Kaufmann, it is a waste of precious time.

No, I don’t think skepticism means, “Nobody knows anything”, but rather, “I don’t believe anything anyone tells me”.

In other words, the skeptic will always do independent research on someone else’s claim before any kind of judgement is reached.

The opposite of the skeptical, then, is the gullible.

Ucc,

There is no such thing as a ‘total skeptic’. Well, maybe one exception: totally dead might fit that description. Nothing can be sensed or thought of from no point of view, which denies total anything. I consider myself a skeptic, but all that is saying is that what I know, I know conditionally. Not accepting a single point creator and an ideal reality behind appearances isn’t proof of some sort of total skepticism.

Are you sure?

Subjectively speaking, yes, I’m positive.

I’ve always understood skepticism as a sort of tool, a kind of buffer-zone or filter between ignorance and conviction. One who is perpetually skeptical is no better off than one who is perpetually convinced, or perpetually ignorant.

Per usual, balance is key.

Daybreak - it’s part of the Philosopher’s Disease to take a common-sense notion of a perfectly useful tool and somehow raise it to an absolute value, either to exhault it or to vanquish it to hell.

Perhaps you will join me in a petition to give out free innoculations against this dreadful malady.

This has been a public service announcent of Friends of the Eradication of Eronneous and Totally Uneccessary Paired Opposites (FEET-UP OP).

:laughing: =D>

Sure, I’ll join.

If I am lost in a strange city and I get directions from a stranger, then the following is true:

  1. I know the stranger has given me directions. I am not skeptical that the stranger has said something that resembles directions.

  2. I am skeptical, however, that the stranger’s directions are useful to my predicament. While following the stranger’s directions, I will remain open to the possibility that the stranger has either lied to me, has been mistaken, or that I have heard him incorrectly.

  3. If my predicament is not soon rectified, my skepticism will win out, and I will be in the position of being skeptical of an entirely new set of directions.

So, you see, the concept of skepticism has nothing to do with “absolutely disbelieving” a set of claims. It has rather to do with always remaining open to the possibility of their uselessness.

A Dialogue:

Ivan- Nobody, I tell you, knows anything.
Vladimir- But you know that means that you yourself being a “body” do not know anything.
Ivan- So?
Vladimir- Therefore you don’t even know that you know nobody knows nothing.
Ivan- I am not saying that I know that nobody knows anything so, in fact, what I said stands because, nobody, including me, knows anything.
Vladimir- So what are you saying? That you believe that nobody knows anything?
Ivan- Yes of course. Now, like me, people believe that they know, but if you analyse what they say they know and how they came to know it, what you find is that they don’t know, just like me, but think they know, believe they know.

Vlad- You’re wrong mister and I can prove it.
Ivan- Try it.
Vlad- I was just fixing up some pasta. I now see some steam coming from the saucepan filled with water and therefore the water I had set, I know for sure, is boiling.
Ivan- How do you know, because in the past everytime you saw steam coming from the saucepan filled with water on a hot surface the water was boiling?
Vlad- Yes.
Ivan- But that was the case in the past. How do you know that this time it is in fact boiling?
Vlad- Hold on (goes over to the stove and looks inside the saucepan). I see the water bubbling.
Ivan- So, again how do you that the water is boiling?
Vlad- Because that is how boiling water looks like when it is…well, boiling.
Ivan- You see water bubbling, but that does not mean that the water must be by necessity boiling. Soda looks like water and it had bubble though it does not boil.
Vlad- Are you saying that it is soda? But I had set water to boil.
Ivan- Someone could’ve changed it while you were not looking.
Vlad- Fine! Fine!! Fine!!! How about this: I’ll put my hand inside the boiling water. Arrgh!!!
See…it is all reddish and the skin is falling off. That is hot water; I know that that is boiling water and here is the proof!!!
Ivan- That was unecessary really. That is actually acid, not boiling water. I did not know before but now that I saw what happened, I believe that this is acid. See, I did try to swap the water with some soda to make a point. I saw no sodas in the fridge and so I was checking in your pantry and saw this odd looking contained that said Caution Acid. But how could I know that it was indeed acid? Why, you might had already used the acid and refilled the contained with soda. So I took it and put it in the saucepan.

The moral of the story is that I don’t have to suspect that I don’t know anything. I believe in all directions. I believe that I know and I can believe that I don’t know. I may indeed know what I think I know, but there is always the possibility that I could be wrong…possibility, not probability. I may treat what I believe I know as a certain fact, but my actions on a belief do not make my believe absolutely certain, but demonstrate that they are certain for me.
Claims that nobody knows anything come from the standard of prescision we chose to measure our knowledge. Doubt, if pursued, can be introduced into any measure of knowledge we lay claim to. No logical necessity, no physical law stands against ouir ability to imagine possibilities and doubt. If the Total sceptic does not exists, it is not because it is an actual impossibility, for I could doubt to my hearts desire every bit of knowledge I, you or anybody lays claim to, if i really want to. The only consequence I wish to avoid is death. Life makes it necessary that I take my beliefs as knowledge, as certain, even, if under Humean scrutinity, my certainty and knowledge evaporates.

It might be that life carries on on faith, and that faith, religion, is but a development of a natural self-preservation. We live by faith and not by sight can be a motto for the entire species, this is true. But consider that there are differences as well between men. Let’s agree that the total sceptic is a beast that does not exists, or at the very least exists for a very short time before it dies of it’s own doubts. What you have left is the academic sceptic and the saint.
The difference between St Paul and Bertrand Russell is not that they had to take something on faith, but in how lasting their faith must be. For St Paul, what he takes on faith, is not alterable. In this, Ucci, he is a s extreme as the Total sceptic. Russell, or someone similar, say, a scientist, keeps many beliefs, but most are provisional. They are alterable by the observations he makes and how efficient his faith is in explaining what he experiences. Many things are kept for another day; many beliefs change and must change because even the universe, in some cases this beliefs exist, must also change. Some still hold on to the idea that the speed of light is 186,282.397 miles per second, as if this was always the case and forever will be, but some now question even this faith. Such is a staple of science, but not of religion. God does not go from eternal to finite and back to eternal, for the christian. same with omnipotence.
In the end religion is plaged by many propositions that are beyond the reach of empiricism. God is X and Y and Z by conceptual necessities, not because we’ve observed this or that to be the case. Worse, some claims of religion make it impossible for other claims to be impossible of being manifest and thus paradoxes develop. The academic adjust his beliefs at this point. The religious must ignore the observations or work the older belief into the new conditions by creating new scripture to account for the discrepancies. Rather than saying:“Well, maybe was not after all omnipotent” they have to say: “No, he is omnipotent but there is a heaven, in which, those who suffer now, will be rewarded”. Like the Total sceptic, the Total believer hides his head on the ground, ignores all evidence in front of him and continues to consider what is possible so that what he believes should not change.

Suspecting, as opposed to the sceptic, that I know everything and implying that everyone else knows everything, leaves his with no position to account for differences in what they say to know. One then says that he knows that the Purple Wombat is the creator and that he is a wicked little marsupial. The other that he knows Jesus Christ created everything and that he is goodness itself. Since their knowledge go against one another the academic rightfully knows that they can’t both know and that one simply believes that he does, or even both. From here, the Total sceptic offends both and declares knowledge impossible. And because in both cases the object in question is imprevious to thrid party verification, in this regard, no one knows anything.

If the Total believer tells me “I know everything”, then I must listen to what he says about the state of my own knowledge, which is implied, but because often he will disagree with what I know, he too, like “the total skeptic is properly ignored.”

What one really claims when “Nobody knows anything” is stated, is that nobody knows anything objectively for sure. A matrix-like world is insinuated by the absolute skeptic.

Ultimately, I don’t know that you people exist. As descarte pointed out, the only sure thing is that I exist. Thats the only thing that is known without a doubt to be true. Everything else is fair game for skepticism. Nothing else is known to exist with 100% certainty. Everything else has a probability of existing, but it is not 100%.

For example. This computer I am typing on has a high probability of existing objectively(it exists regardless of my existence, maybe)while a unicorn has a low probability of existing.

For practical purposes, it is best when something has an extremely small probability to consider it impossible.