Have you tried to read modern responses to this philosophy? Because ancient philosophers got a lot of stuff long through faulty assumptions and faulty reasoning. Even Aristotle.
For instance
This implies that the uncertainty is the same whether 1 out of 1,000 philosophers disagree and 500 do. Certainly the former case is more certain than the latter. If y accept that, we can reduce the uncertainty to a level as small as you wish as we achieve consensus.
No. Proofs rest on axioms and the rules of logic. Axioms by definition do not need proof. And you can of course build consistent yet mutually contradictory sets of theorems depending on which axioms you choose (like Euclidean versus non-Euclidean geometry.) Axioms can be tested against the real world.
One more
While true, strictly speaking, none of this keeps us from distinguishing a dog say from a cow. Why? Data mining has a concept called clustering, in which if you measure n parameters you can place observations in n-space. There are mathematical ways of creating clusters of similar observations. In dog versus cow, they both will have four feet, but while dogs will be of different sizes, the size parameter will cluster to being smaller than that of cows. Ditto fur versus cowhide. Ditto bark versus moo. While different dogs bark in different ways, and we may hear the barks differently, we can distinguish barks from moos. And so on.
This method is used for machine vision, for example. We can’t fault the ancients for not coming up with it themselves, but it still shows that their objections is invalid.
I’m sure you can find much better objections if you look for them.
Machinaforce, I am actually going to try to point something out to you. Please consider this strongly: *Figuring out how to live your life involves developing the discipline to manage your thoughts, choosing which to acknowledge and act on, and which not to. *
Meditation/Prayer. Exercise. Playing music. Therapy. In some cases, medication. These all help us step back and recognize that “We are not our thoughts. We have thoughts.”
So yes, look at skepticism. Choose to take the value you can from it and not get lost in circular interrogatives.
If you find you cannot do this, then I submit that you are focused on the wrong thing. Until you can calm your mind and manage your thoughts, Philosophy is Not Your Friend. You approach it with no grounding and it is spinning you around.
Jeepers, I think I could argue against that. In a fairly real and concrete way, I “am” the sum of my thoughts. Certainly, if my thoughts changed drastically, I would be a very different person. To me, it’s a little like saying, “You aren’t a body; you have a body.” I think both are true!
Definite agreement. The OP is not doing it right, by any means. Speculating about the nature of reality is like putting pepper on your food: a little is good, but a whole lot is icky.
And yet what if the claims that they have found tranquility through the suspension of all judgment? It makes it sound like if I don’t follow them then everything I do is incorrect.
In fact the points people are making about different philosophies and managing thoughts is actually just playing into the hands of the Pyrrhonist. The fact that there are many views and even the practice itself is sort of ammunition they use.
Here are some responses to Pyrrhonism i saw while browsing the web:
I browsed the web and saw a few responses people had about Pyrrhonism:
You may find peace by stripping away the absolutes that block your real ability to question and move on.
Skepticism allows a humility to question everything including yourself in a fresh and fluid way.
A way that doesn’t have an answer and doesn’t need one.
Getting to the star’s is amazing.
Understanding awareness is impossible.
found peace through Pyrrhonism. Thanks to the systematical dismantling of delusion I was able to restore myself to an unconditioned state from which a true personality could arise.
It’s only confusing because you keep asking the questions.
Its only depressing because you thought you had the answers.
Teasing at happenings trying to control.
Something objective to fulfil the soul.
Forgetting perhaps why they began.
Is spinning in nothing spinning at all.
Tangling the tales that comfort and sedate.
Something so human something innate.
Missing through force wider perspective.
Why do so many follow what so few create.
Reforming with a self realised lack of validity.
Understanding nothing understanding humility.
Seeing the things that don’t exist.
I don’t believe in objectivity.
If they’re telling the truth, then they found tranquility by doing that. That wouldn’t mean it’s the only path to tranquility; possibly other paths are also ‘correct’.
Maybe you’ll find tranquility by emulating them. Maybe you won’t. Maybe you can find it by doing something else. Maybe not. If it worked for them, what does that prove?
People find tranquility through god a and god b and god c and no god. People find tranquility through love. People find tranquility through drugs. That someone finds tranquility through a belief is no indicator it is true. If I say I find tranquility by believing in objective reality, should you drop your views?
Already answered in my last post. I’d say they all agree about the high probability of objective reality. That they disagree on some of the details is no evidence that they are wrong about the things they do agree with.
Questioning is good - questioning but rejecting all the answers you get is not so good.
And answer to what? Some things have answers, some things may not. I’m comfortable being an atheist because I’m fine with the “why?” question not having an answer except because. Or as my friend’s father said, “Why is a crooked letter.” He was a Holocaust survivor, and probably wondered why more than most of us.
Please don’t be cute. You get it. Of course you’re the sum of your thoughts. Isn’t there value in learning to manage your thoughts?
Machinaforce - please comment on my point. You fucking ask us into your threads to comment on your imponderables. Either you genuinely want help or you don’t. Own your shit.
I really wasn’t trying to “be cute.” I think the phrasing can be argued either way, with much validity. I don’t think that “I am my thoughts” and “I have my thoughts” are mutually exclusive. I think the same about “I am my body” and “I have my body.” Both are true.
I absolutely agree that management of one’s thoughts is of great value, just as there is for managing one’s body. We diet and exercise…and we read good books and attempt to reason clearly.
But it’s what they say about finding tranquility by suspending all judgment, they say that opinions and beliefs are the cause of suffering in the world. So essentially their path is the right one, or that’s what they might be implying.
If it works for them it means they were right about opinions and beliefs and knowledge, and that we are just living in a flawed and imperfect illusion we have crafted for ourselves. Good, bad, better, worse, such judgments cannot be affirmed because according to them their opposite has equal weight.
It would literally be the tearing down of everything I know.
Except this is beyond simple skepticism. This isn’t about a fresh and fluid way, it’s more like a stasis or destruction of foundations.
How exactly can we build lives without answers? What is the point of reading books and acquiring knowledge if according to them we cannot know the truth about things in their nature?
To put it according to the wiki entry:
According to the Pyrrhonists, it is one’s opinions about non-evident matters that prevent one from attaining eudaimonia.
the criterion of truth, which in Pyrrhonism is seen as undemonstrated, and therefore nothing can be called “true” with respect of it being an account of reality.
Let’s try another approach. One thing we can all agree we know isn’t true is the future. Nothing is certain tomorrow. If I go to the airport to catch a plane, it might be that the plane isn’t there, or the airport is shut down, or lots of other things. I fly standby sometimes - that is even more uncertain. By Pyrrhonism, we would suspect judgment on whether the plane will ever be there, and, if I am reading them correctly, act as if we don’t know that it will be - which would involve not getting out of bed at 3 am to catch this plane.
Yet of course we do get up, and are willing to accept the small probability of the plane not being there.
Do you think not even trying to fly anywhere is a reasonable approach?
You dismiss me as a “simple Cartesian” (and don’t respond directly to a serious comment to you) and also question whether your own “I” even exists?
Listen to Exapno: we are here and life happens. *That’s *what I assume. Also, learning to manage one’s thoughts is the central behavior of religions and meditative practices (and philosophical schools of thought like skepticism ;)) around the globe and you choose to walk right past it.
Say you know a guy who has a lot of money. So you say to him, I’d like to make a lot of money; how did you get a lot of money? And he replies that he’s a surgeon: he went to medical school, and then he spent years – decades, even – earning big paychecks for operating on folks who needed his skills. It worked for him.
Possibly he’s telling the truth. Possibly he’s not. Assume for the sake of argument that he told the truth: is his path is the only one? Is that what he might be implying?
Or is it also possible that the next rich guy you meet will reply, oh, hey, I’m an actor who got his proverbial big break; that’s when I became a movie star, see?
And maybe next week you’ll chat with a best-selling novelist, or a successful inventor? Or maybe a rich trial lawyer, or a rich lottery winner?
If that first guy really was a surgeon, what does that imply about anyone else?
Quit obsessing and live your life. You’ll find the answers reveal themselves to you.
Philosophy is mental yoga for a healthy mind. You’ve turned it into a bitch-slap contest with yourself. And you’re loosing.
Confirmation bias: You spend every waking minute of your life in obsessive opposition to the very idea of eudaimonia. Of course you latch on to nihilism. Philosophy is as helpful to you like throwing an anchor is helpful to a drowning man.
You will never achieve your search for what’s “real” and “true” until you decide to find treatment for your obsessive Solipsism Syndrome.
If we can’t prove anything, then we can’t prove that we can’t prove anything. Therefore it is possible that we can prove something, and radical skepticism must be wrong.
Do you find tranquility by suspending all judgment? If so, that is evidence that they are right; if not, that is evidence that they are wrong.
Not being able to disprove something does not necessarily mean that it might be true. It just means we don’t know.
His problem is not in questioning everything - it is in not listening to the answers.
The funny thing is that the followers of this school reached the exact opposite conclusion than the one Machinaforce thinks they did. They thought, “Hey, you can’t know for sure, so suspend judgement and stop worrying about it and get on with your life.” He thinks, “You can’t know for sure, so collapse on the floor in a heap, sobbing.”
His problem is that he’s miserable. The problem with his problem is that he thinks he’s miserable because he doesn’t have the correct epistemology. The problem with his problem with his problem is that due to his obsessive / compulsive disorder he can’t stop worrying about epistemology.