I love hitting my head against the wall. It feels so good when I stop.
I am fascinated by the reasons people believe really stupid things. Alas, in the America of today we are awash in examples. This is mild compared to some of them.
If I understand pyrrhonism correctly, both the dogmatic and the skeptic take the stairs and wait for the light to cross the street. The difference is that the dogmatic claims to know the stairs will be safer than jumping off the roof and the cars will wait for a greenlight, while the skeptic admits only that it seems so.
“We live in accordance with the normal rules of life, undogmatically, seeing that we cannot remain wholly inactive. And it would seem that this regulation of life is fourfold, and that one part of it lies in the guidance of Nature, another in the constraint of the passions, another in the tradition of laws and customs, another in the instruction of the arts. Nature’s guidance is that by which we are naturally capable of sensation and thought; constraint of the passions is that whereby hunger drives us to food and thirst to drink; tradition of customs and laws, that whereby we regard piety in conduct of life as good, but impiety as evil; instruction of the arts, that whereby we are not inactive in such arts as we adopt. But we make all these statements undogmatically.”
Sextus Empiricus 1:23-4
The critical bit here, I think, is the laws and customs. The skeptic does what everyone else does failing a better reason to do something else.
That may be true for your run of the mill skeptic. But what’s Machinaforce, our radical skeptic, to do?
Logic didn’t lead you to be miserable. Rather, you’re miserable, and you keep trying to use logic to discover the sorcerer of your misery.
But your misery is not caused because you have the wrong epistemology. You can’t reason a man out of a position when he didn’t reason himself into it. That’s why thinking about philosophy wI’ll never solve your problem. You’re not miserable because you read some problematic philosophy. You are miserable because you suffer from obsessive compulsive thoughts you can’t control.
The good news is that therapists do have some fairly successful ways of treating your sort of problem, and it isn’t reading the correct philosophers. Would you like to know more?
I find the same to be true of solipsistic doubt. Sitting and wondering, “Is this all real” actually does not feel particularly good. Having a milkshake and a hamburger feels great!
Agreed. Skepticism, even extreme skepticism, is merely silly, as opposed to going to a faith-healer to cure cancer, or telling a judge you’re a self-incorporated sovereign citizen so he can’t fine you for illegal parking. Those are stupid, and harmful!
The theory of knowledge course I took in college was mostly ruined by a trio of extreme skeptics who were into the “you don’t know for sure” crap. I did my paper on Keynes’ first book, which correlated knowledge and probability.
So I’m not too fond of skepticism.
In summary, this.
The courses I took left me plenty fond of skepticism; I just don’t see how it leads to the OP’s predicament, instead of to something easier to live with.
Grin! I did an intro paper on essentially the same idea (I think.) I argued from inductive reasoning. The last 10,000 steps I have taken were on solid ground, even though it might only be an illusion, and with my next step I might fall right through the mists and vapors of appearances and fall into the void forever.
Yeah, well. Inductively speaking, doesn’t seem likely!
(ETA: I essentially defined “knowledge” as “those propositions one would bet money on.”)
As The Other Waldo Pepper says, I’m fond of skepticism…as a “mind game.” A “toy” to entertain one’s thoughts during an idle moment. It’s like daydreaming about what I’d say to God if I met him. The mind at play!
When it becomes serious and/or disturbing, then it’s time to see a mental health professional.
That’s terrific. And if you click Next, the next one also works.
If he’s so annoying, why are you responding to him?
I love skepticism!!
As I said, it’s the germ of thinking that leads directly to the scientific methods. Stoics quashed skepticism throught the emergence of Christianity. Skepticism was reintroduced which in effect kicked off the Renaissance and ultimately the Enlightenment. Read The Swerve by Stephen Greeenblatt about how a papal secretary named Poggio (an amazing man) who was a book hunter found a copy of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. It spurred a return to Epicureanism and Skepticism, which directly drove folks like Bacon and Hume, let alone my favorite Montaigne in their thinking.
Skepticism is a critical discipline that has been essential to our development as empirical thinkers. Yay!!
I’m not sure that history really bears this out.
Eratosthenes, for example, was a Stoic. He was the first person to use empirical evidence to measure the Earth.
The first variant of the Scientific Method was written by an Islamic man, Ibn al-Haytham. In the philosophical realm, he studied Aristotle - the father of “it’s true cuz it’s self-evident to ME.”
Roger Bacon then, eventually, refined the Scientific Method to its general modern form. He was, again, most strongly influenced by Aristotle - despite Aristotle being nothing like a sceptic.
The scientific method was probably the product of having a sufficient density of geniuses and a mechanism for them to communicate with one another during their own lives. It didn’t come about because of skepticism. It came about because of one dude calling another one out for pulling shit out of his ass, because the other guy was smart enough to do so.
All very cool - yeah, there are few straight lines in all this.
Probably for reasons similar to yours for responding to me. He didn’t stop being annoying when I wasn’t responding, it seemed remotely possible (although admittedly unlikely) that if I told him he was being annoying then he’d knock it off, but most of all, I found it satisfying to express my thoughts.
Like most other things, it’s great in moderation, and really sucks in extremis. The Scientific Method is sometimes compared to the fabled citizen of Missouri: “Show me.” The great thing about the S.M. is that it can show us!
From the link:
He seems to be putting a limit upon skepticism, and accepting some certain level of appearance. This contradicts the notion of “radical” skepticism, which never accepts any level of appearance at all.