# Justification of Epistemology **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 10, 2004, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934 "2004-11-10T00:09:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/21 "2004-11-12T00:10:46Z")
> [@other-wise](#): > > Since I’ve seen the word “mind” used to denote “thinking”, “awareness”, “consciousness”, “information processing”, and 50,000 other similar-but-not-necessarily-the-same concepts, I was wondering if you would give us a definition (or description) of what you’re referring to when you refer to “mind”. The mind, or consciousness, is the entity which is identified as “self” and constitutes subjectivity, and it is the agency by which transcendental objects are intended amongst the manifold of sensation. > [@](#): > > Also, instead of saying wouldn’t it be more a more accurate reflection of your philosophy to say “Clearly, observable mind-correlated behaviors come in and out of existence”? Or have I been misreading you? That would hold if we restricted our analysis to the purely subjective. This is why Descartes needed God to get him out of his unending doubt. The escape from essential subjectivity is, IMO, axiomatic: it is simply asserted that there are other minds that I am interacting with. I’m being shorthanded about all of this; entire books are written on this subject so I can hardly do any substantial development justice. But it is fair to say that “_X_-like phenomena” is the core of the subjective experience, yes. Some feel we can logically escape subjectivity through subtle maneuverings; I have since come to feel that intersubjectivity is the “origin” of categorization and we understand subjectivity through the symbol-set and behaviors imposed on us by our kinsmen. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/22 "2004-11-12T00:15:52Z")
So… does Meatros (the original poster) have anything to say about how this thread is developing? -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/23 "2004-11-12T08:58:38Z")
> [@erislover](#): > > Like Hume, I suggest that maybe there is a mind-independent reality; I do not deny its possibility or existence. Its existence is unknowable and hence philosophically uninteresting. **It is certainly not necessary to account for empirical investigations IMO** , so it is superfluous and adds nothing to the discussion. (Again: MHO.) Please amplify the bolded text. Give one or more examples. \<\\> 1. Well, there are dreams, where objects have no existence independent of the observer. I’ll ignore this. 2. Ok, if you’re not arguing solipsism, then the choices are “mind-independent reality” and “reality dependent upon many minds”. The latter I find difficult to conceive, except in a sociological sense. 3. Or maybe you are positing “stuff” (eg external matter), “minds” and “Link Between Minds And Stuff” (or LBMAS- maybe that’s what you/they mean by “phenomena”), the punch line being that we can only talk meaningfully about LBMAS). So technically, we could dispense with the stuff. Is this it? **Lib** : ---- I submit that neither of you is considering that essence might precede existence… Help me out (for real). What is “essence”? There’s a drinking cup on the desk in front of me. It is yellow. I believe it is an external object. I can distinguish between that object and my conception of it; (the latter is presumably less detailed than the former). What does “essence” mean in this context? Is this a Platonic shtick? I thought Platonic ideals refer to perfected drinking cups, of which the one on my desk is a mere example. But I suspect that I’m confused, or maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree… Reverend Berkeley??? ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/24 "2004-11-12T10:20:22Z")
> [@](#): > > **erl** : Not at all… When I picture Earth as it existed two billion years ago, I still picture it from a perspective as if I was there. I cannot picture reality from a perspective the mind is incapable of taken… Trivial semantic point or the very thing on which my presentation hinges? Neither: _Tautology_. You are _defining_ reality to be that which involves a mind. I am not asking you to **imagine a mindless universe using something other than a mind**. That is _logically inconsistent_, an (A&-A), _by definition impossible_. I might as well define _solipsism_ to be true, since **I** cannot conceive of reality without **me** , and assert that reality is not just _mind_-correlative but **me-correlative**. You are arbitrarily limiting reality to a particular set. Why? > [@](#): > > Whether there is some underlying cause or not is _not necessary for explaning phenomena._ What is _your_ explanation for the phenomena called “mind” - would it differ from mine _at all_? > [@](#): > > reality is not constituted of mind. I fully believe that there is a reality common to us all; What _is_ reality constituted of? Why _can’t_ it be the physical? > [@](#): > > in fact, I assert it as such in order to leave solipsism which has no explanatory power, or at least is only a degenerate solution. I contend that limiting reality to minds is as _arbitrary_ as limiting reality to **me**. What is the difference? > [@](#): > > [Transcendental idealism] posits that all reality is mind-correlative, [physicalism] posits that all reality is mind-independent. Not under your definition, physicalism doesn’t: physicalism will follow your tautology around like a dog its owner. If a physicalist limited reality only to the subset involving the actions of a mind, he’d be a transcendental idealist. Agreed? > [@](#): > > let’s take a nice example from science: the quark…I choose option (1) Your definition of reality being mind-correlative _forces_ this choice tautologically. > [@](#): > > Some might say that if we know the same things then the metaphysics is unimportant. I’d say that if our minds arise from physical cortices and memory in the same way, metaphysics is _non-existent_, except insofar as it supervenes on the physical. But you ahem knew that already.🙂 Whatever this “mind” thing is, it clearly [ul][li]did not exist for 13 billion years and then developed slowly over the next 700 million years. [_]develops in each individual from infancy. [_]is drastically affected by [physical molecules](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevoflurane), or even a simple blow to the skull, which can make it behave [very strangely](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD#Chemistry) or even temporarily disappear entirely.[/ul][/li]We agree on all of this, and seemingly the _explanation_ for all of this, and yet I still can’t understand why you are _arbitrarily_ limiting this thing called “reality” to the extent that you consider us to be poles apart, philosophically. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/25 "2004-11-12T11:46:33Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Liberal, the trilemna I mentioned called the Pyrrhonian Problematic. It is dealt with by lots of epistemologists including Ernest Sosa among many others. Well, let’s back up a bit. There’s a lot to cover here. First, there is no formal, widely recognized entity called “the Pyrrhonian Problematic”. That was a phrase, probably coined by Sosa, to deal with a particular epistemological problematic that he (Sosa) conceived. It is a bit oddly named inasmuch as he formulated it by harvesting an Aristotlean dialectic. Although Sosa makes reference to Pyrrhonian modes (variously three to ten, depending on what you’re looking for, and in this case, Sosa chose five). So, I didn’t want you to think that you could just walk into a conversation among philosophers and toss out that phrase expecting universal comprehension by those who had not read Sosa’s paper (somewhere around 1998, I think it was.) Second, that isn’t really the way you stated your concern. I don’t know whether it was your expository skill or my reading comprehension skill or both, but what you called a problem was this: “At least some our beliefs seem to be justified by reference to other beliefs. My belief that I can get a coke by going to the fridge is justified by my (presumably true) belief that I put some cokes in there earlier today.” That is, in fact, neither a problem nor Sosa’s Pyrrhonian problematic. If you intended to organize your paragraphs some other way, I had no way of knowing that. Third, a philosophical problematic is not itself a problem, but is essentially a well organised theoretical perspective that suggests significant problems that the philosopher wishes to investigate. So, just because there is a Pyrrhonian problematic does not mean that there is a problem with the whole of work done by Pyrros. And in fact, in this case, it has hardly anything to do with Pyrros per se. Pyrros believed that knowledge basically was not possible, which is rather an anti-problematic modality. Finally, I don’t know of any other epistemologists who have paid much attention to the way Sosa formulated his problematic. I found the original paper and read it, and honestly it’s quite trivial, and is frankly pretty much a rehash of what Descartes had already done. > [@](#): > > The three options do _not_ all represent foundationalism. Only the first represents foundationalism. The second represents coherentism. The third represents the very unpopular position called Infinitism. You can find this information in the introduction to part III of the Blackwell Philosophy Anthology “Epistemology”. Perhaps there is some confusion, this time either in your exposition, my comprehension of your exposition, or your comprehension of _their_ exposition. But clearly, the way you have stated your premises, they all are foundationalist. Foundationalism is nothing more than the notion that justification is linear; that is, every belief must follow from some other belief. In that respect, infinitism is simply a branch of foundationalism since all it does is deny that infinite regression is vicious. Keep in mind that foundationalism has been the _sole_ epistemic (and categorical) justification schema since, well, since philosophy began — until the mid twentieth century, when coherentists finally threw up their hands, tired of dealing with (what they perceived as) the regression problem. (Interestingly, James Burke’s famous _Connections_ series is conceptually coherentist.) Now, in rereading your #2, I can see how you intended that to be an expression of coherentism, but frankly, it is worded a bit loosely. Still, it doesn’t make any sense to justapose three justification theories and call the whole a problematic since, for one thing it isn’t, and for another, there are other theories as well (such as skepticism, speaking of the Pyrrhonians), reliablism, etc. So, where are these others, and why don’t they merit consideration in the problematic as well? > [@](#): > > I’m puzzled because your subsequent comments seemed somewhat sophisticated, but frankly you got this part just plain wrong. Well, no, not really. I’m right. Here are some citations: [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-foundational/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-foundational/) [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-coherence/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-coherence/) > [@](#): > > I’m also puzzled because the somewhat sophisticated remarks you _did_ offer said very much the same thing I said in my own post, just without using the phrase “Pyrrhonian Problematic.” > > So I’m not sure what to make of your post. > > -FrL- I was just trying to clean it up a bit, and show how to derive essentially all possible justification theories from one — the skeptics. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/26 "2004-11-12T11:50:48Z")
> [@other-wise](#): > > **Lib** , > You said: > You left out “… the human mind can conceive of **that which does not exist** ”. This was deliberate, right? Not really. The mind can conceive an analytic a priori contradiction (such as a square circle), but it cannot conceive that which does not exist. That’s because such contradictions _do_ exist as concepts the moment they are conceived. Obviously, there is no way that the mind could conceive a nonexistent synthetic entity. Such entities, by definition, must exist before they _can_ be conceived. > [@](#): > > (Hey, I’ve been away from the boards for a looooong time. May I ask why/when you changed your username?) Oh, a few months back. How did you recognize me? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/27 "2004-11-12T11:55:11Z")
Oops, I forgot to answer your [why](http://www.mises.org/liberal.asp), Other-wise. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/28 "2004-11-12T12:00:14Z")
> [@](#): > > How did you recognize me? Heh heh, I’m not sure whetehr this was a rhetorical question, friend, but changing the username at the top of your posts in a philosophical discussion disguises you like putting sunglasses on an elephant. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/29 "2004-11-12T12:21:55Z")
> [@Measure for Measure](#): > > **Lib** : ---- I submit that neither of you is considering that essence might precede existence… > > Help me out (for real). What is “essence”? There’s a drinking cup on the desk in front of me. It is yellow. I believe it is an external object. I can distinguish between that object and my conception of it; (the latter is presumably less detailed than the former). What does “essence” mean in this context? > > Is this a Platonic shtick? I thought Platonic ideals refer to perfected drinking cups, of which the one on my desk is a mere example. But I suspect that I’m confused, or maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree… Reverend Berkeley??? Keep in mind that existentialism (existence precedes essence) is relatively modern. Thankfully, it appears to have passed its zenith. Essentialism (essence precedes existence) was a rather universal worldview until Nietzsche. Arguably, if Hagel hadn’t been such a puffed-up blowhard, existentialism might be only a footnote in philosophy. Essence is the property set that an entity must have to be what it is — that is, it is necessary truth. It can be proved easily that existence is contingent on necessity (i.e., that necessary existence is true). Existence, therefore, is nothing more than a property. Kant’s damnable meanderings about the predication of existence constituted nothing more than centuries of wasted time, and opened the door for Nietzche, Sartre, and others to waylay Kant’s _interpretations_ of Descartes, et al. Modal logic has been a great assist in sorting it all out, and re-establishing essentialism as the sensible worldview. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/30 "2004-11-12T12:25:39Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > Heh heh, I’m not sure whetehr this was a rhetorical question, friend, but changing the username at the top of your posts in a philosophical discussion disguises you like putting sunglasses on an elephant. 🙂 😃 Yikes! Hoisted by my own petard! ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/31 "2004-11-12T15:36:36Z")
**Liberal** , What can I say… I’ve got a Master’s in Philosophy from the University of Houston, am now studying for a doctorate at the University of California, Irvine (Look me up if you wish, my name is Kris Rhodes) and I’ve never met a doctor of philosophy who hadn’t heard of what I am calling the pyrhhonian problematic, and who wouldn’t have thought the label applies to what I said it applies to, and who didn’t think the problem deserves at least some serious thought. My ability as regards exposition (in papers, admittedly not necessarily in an off-the-cuff context like this) has been almost universally praised by those who have been my teachers so far. I went back to look at the examples you named of possible poor exposition on my part, and I am having difficulty see them that way except on the most uncharitable of possible readings. This doesn’t make me right and you wrong. It just leaves us both, I think, with justification for feeling somewhat confused about what’s going on here. Look, the Blackwell Anthologies are pretty well respected, right? The one on Epistemology has an entire section (admittedly just three articles) on it. My description of it was taken straight out of the introduction to that chapter. Your insistence that foundationalism is just the idea that every belief must follow from some other belief is contradicted by the _very source you cite_, which says: “The foundationalist’s thesis in short is that all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief.” That’s what\* I\* said foundationalism is, and it is not compatible with what you claimed was the definition of that term. I apologize if my tone is becoming a bit strident. My perception is that my understanding of the issue, and/or my ability to communicate clearly about that issue, has been attacked by someone who presents himself as pretty knowledgable about the issue himself. Since I’m being attacked, I feel a need either to acknowledge the criticisms, or defend myself against them. Since the attack is in such strong tension with how other trusted authorities have evaluated my knowledge and skill in these areas, I feel the appropriate response is in fact to defend. And since I strongly identify myself with my understanding of my level of knowledge in issues like this and my ability to exposite them, the attack presents itself to me as a little personal (surely through no fault of your own originally) and therefore the tone I have chosen to take has been what you might call defensive. Hey I just realized something, though. The Blackwell anthology is edited by Ernest Sosa! That could explain why it gives what you seem to think is undue attention to the problem we’re talking about. But still, as I said, my experience has not been that the problem we’re talking about is, as you have implied sort of on the “fringe” and not really an important or well-formulated problem. So I’m still left with some puzzlement. And this still leaves me with complete confusion as to what you meant by citing the stanford encyclopedia as a source when it (so it seems at the moment) blatantly contradicted the position you were claiming it supported. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/32 "2004-11-12T15:53:53Z")
**Liberal,** By the way you asked why I didn’t include skepticism as an option, and that question deserves an answer. You are right that it is a fourth option, and I wondered myself why I had neglected to include it. (In fact my pet source on this for the present discussion, the Blackwell Anthology, _does_ list it as a fourth option.) But on some thought, I realized it didn’t cross my mind as an option for _this_ conversation because I was answering a question about “justifying epistemology.” As I was concieving it, what I am calling the “pyrhhonian problematic” has as at least one of its functions a tendency to call into question the very possibility of succeeding in the Epistemological project of defining a standard for the justification of beliefs. I take skepticism to to be also a denial that this project can succeed. But skepticism is a pretty well known point of view, while the argument I gave is not so well known. I didn’t think I would be adding to anyone’s reasons to think epistemology itself can’t be justified by mentioning Skepticism, but I _did_ think I would be doing so by mentioning the trilemma I spelled out. In other words, I did not post in order to give a lesson on the branches of Epistemology. I posted in order to further “perplexify” the issue of whether Epistemology itself can be justified. Mentioning the trilemma is useful for this purpose. Mentioning Skepticism would not have been, at least not in the context of my post. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/33 "2004-11-12T16:19:29Z")
I will respond to everyone this weekend. Unfortunately I am too bogged down at work to keep up in a timely manner, but it _is_ Friday, so at least I can still respond soon. **Sentient** , the core of our disagreement is outlined by my post 18’s first paragraph. But check what I say to **Measure for Measure** … **Measure** , the opposite of independent is not necessarily dependent. When I discuss an object, like “book”, I–my mind, my consciousness–is directed towards an object which transcends “mere” sensory input. This object transcends the senses. Everything I know and have come to know about that object is from such investigations that I have taken, or others have. The object is not “made” by my mental activity, and so it is not dependent upon it, but it is _known_ to me only through that mental activity, _so there is a very strict correlation between everything I know and mental activity_. If I eliminate mental activity, I eliminate what I know. At no time do I require anything other than 1) minds and 2) phenomena. Hence, empirical investigation does not require physical “matter” to keep reality “honest”: _I find that reality is honest through my investigations_. A little longer than I meant. Please, any questions or comments, fire away. I’d rather know I’m wrong than think I was right. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![other-wise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4bbf92/32.png) [@other-wise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/other-wise)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/34 "2004-11-12T16:58:41Z")
**SentientMeat** - (This may or may not be a nit-pick) Your third point > [@](#): > > “…is drastically affected by physical molecules, or even a simple blow to the skull, which can make it behave very strangely or even temporarily disappear entirely.” Doesn’t make sense to me if we’re using **Eris’** description of “mind”. Affected, maybe, but not _“… disappear entirely”_. Also, when you said:_“We agree on all of this, and seemingly the explanation for all of this…”_; what explanation are you referring to? I’ve seen some wonderful, intriguing _speculations_ about all of this, but nothing that would qualify as an _explanation_. **Lib** : > [@](#): > > Oh, a few months back. How did you recognize me? What SentientMeat said, in spades 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/35 "2004-11-12T17:07:50Z")
> [@](#): > > Doesn’t make sense to me if we’re using Eris’ description of “mind”. Affected, maybe, but not “… disappear entirely”. General anaestheisa can be so deep that there is almost zero brain function - the very definition of **un** _conscious_. There is simply _no mind_ under sufficiently deep anaestheisa. > [@](#): > > Also, when you said:“We agree on all of this, and seemingly the explanation for all of this…”; what explanation are you referring to? The decades of [cognitive science](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science) and [neuropsychology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuropsychology) research which **erl** accepts as having extraordinary explanatory power. ---
**Author:** ![other-wise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4bbf92/32.png) [@other-wise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/other-wise)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/36 "2004-11-12T18:04:20Z")
**SentientMeat:** > [@](#): > > “General anaestheisa can be so deep that there is almost zero brain function - the very definition of unconscious. There is simply no mind under sufficiently deep anaestheisa.” **Eris’** definition of mind is “[that which] constitutes subjectivity”; what you’re describing is “objective” observation of brain function. By definition, subjectivity cannot be studied objectively. Subjective awareness _never_ “disappears”. In a (somewhat poetic) sense, subjective awareness is eternal: you’re _always_ subjectively aware, and always have been. > [@](#): > > The decades of cognitive science and neuropsychology research which erl accepts as having extraordinary explanatory power. Again, with regards to the neurological _correlates_ of subjective reports of subjective awareness, yes, amazing work has been done. As far as explaining subjective awareness itself, I’ve seen only _speculation_. (Actually, I think there is accurate mapping and good explanations of both sensory input and motor output. Explanations for pretty much anything in between, however, are woefully incomplete and mired in controversy). ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/37 "2004-11-12T19:11:11Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > What can I say… I’ve got a Master’s in Philosophy from the University of Houston, am now studying for a doctorate at the University of California, Irvine (Look me up if you wish, my name is Kris Rhodes) and I’ve never met a doctor of philosophy who hadn’t heard of what I am calling the pyrhhonian problematic, and who wouldn’t have thought the label applies to what I said it applies to, and who didn’t think the problem deserves at least some serious thought. You certainly have me beaten in spades. I have no degree in anything, and in fact did not complete more than one semester of college (and that major was to be in lowly textile science). Given your credentials, you deserve recognition as an authority on the topic, and on that basis alone are justified, in my opinion, to trump whatever I might write by the sheer declaration of “because I said so”. There is no need for you to refer to books or professors or philosophers past. That sort of grave-diggery is what people like I must do. Now that you’ve pulled out the big guns, we know where we stand. When a fishing trawler faces a battleship, there is little to debate. I can rely on nothing more than thirty-nine years of study from (having now counted them) some hundred-and-eight primary sources — i.e., books. I haven’t been privileged to move in circles of philosophical doctors (perhaps by the grace of God). The best I have achieved is basically rhetorical fist-fights with rag-tag students, grads, and post-grads from Internet philosophy forums (including one where I have moderated) and the sort of ivory tower discussions that we’ve had from time to time in TOPS meetings. I have been interviewed for someone else’s master’s thesis (on modal logic), but have never written my own. I therefore acquiesce to your superior intelligence and experience, but I do intend to stick around and debate my point of view for two reasons: (1) the off chance that I might, from time to time, offer something worthwhile; but more importantly (2) that I might learn something from erudite men like yourself. Who knows, in a few years, one of your own books might find its way into my library. > [@](#): > > My ability as regards exposition (in papers, admittedly not necessarily in an off-the-cuff context like this) has been almost universally praised by those who have been my teachers so far. I went back to look at the examples you named of possible poor exposition on my part, and I am having difficulty see them that way except on the most uncharitable of possible readings. Well, let’s have a look at it. Philosophy, as you know, is notoriously over-written — from the ebullient prose of Descartes to the head-scratching Gordian knots of rhetoric from Hagel. It was refreshing, to me at least, to see a more plain, more readable text. And yours began this way: _Just to add quandaries to quandaries, there’s the following problem. I forget the label for it, something like the Pyrrhonian Problematic or something like that._ That’s quite readable. There is no way to misinterpret that whatever follows is something that is a problem, that multiplies quandaries, and that, as best you could remember, is called something like “the Pyrrhonian Problematic”. And so, what followed? This: _At least some our beliefs seem to be justified by reference to other beliefs. My belief that I can get a coke by going to the fridge is justified by my (presumably true) belief that I put some cokes in there earlier today._ Now, that struck me as peculiar on a number of accounts. One, it didn’t _seem_ like a problem. Two, it multiplied no quandary that I had. And three, there had apparently been a new label assigned to the independent clause of the Principle of Inferential Justification. (Which was why I went off researching the so-called Pyrrhonian Problematic.) In retrospect, it seems to me that you meant either (1) to word your topic sentence differently — that is, the problem, the PP, the quandaries and what-all were not to follow immediately, but rather later; or (2) actually to put the problem, the PP, and the quandaries in second place rather than third. As I said before, there were possibilities for the misunderstanding _other_ than your expository skills. In fact, I believe I named my reading comprehension skills or some combination of the two. Therefore, you had no cause to take offense, and I regret that you were offended. In such disjunctive clauses, you may feel free to take whatever or’ed combinations you find to be least injurious. For the sake of our discussion, why don’t we agree to call it a problem with my comprehension. As a former state chess champion in my class (A), I understand completely what you mean by the difference between thought-out writing and the sort of writing we all do here. It is analogous to the difference between tournament level chess with thirty moves in ninety minutes and speed chess, with the flags of both players hanging on a thread. It is entirely a metaphysical possibility that I, and I alone, misunderstood what you wrote. It therefore isn’t worth dwelling on, especially inasmuch as you’ve more or less cleared it all up. > [@](#): > > This doesn’t make me right and you wrong. It just leaves us both, I think, with justification for feeling somewhat confused about what’s going on here. You’re being modest and overly kind. You’re like the conqueror who, after having put an arrow through his enemy’s heart, is kneeling over him and doing him the warrior’s honor of taking his scalp as you say a prayer to the Great Spirit. I am honored that a man of your academic calibre would pause to salve the wounds of one as worthless as I. > [@](#): > > Look, the Blackwell Anthologies are pretty well respected, right? The one on Epistemology has an entire section (admittedly just three articles) on it. My description of it was taken straight out of the introduction to that chapter. Well… I want to put all this in as gentlemanly a manner as you have managed, taking your example as my standard. There are books, and then there are books about books. If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard someone say that Aristotle believed so-and-so based on what Gross or Whalley or Atherton said, I’d have, well, quite a few dimes. Anthologies are fine in the way that Monarch Notes are fine — they work best when they serve the limited purpose of giving us a perspective on how other people might interpret what we ourselves have read. Blackwell offers anthologies on everything from bridge construction to hematology. But I consider it to be suplemental material rather than a primary source. In any event, if indeed what you wrote was “taken straight out of the introduction to that chapter”, you might have considered crediting it. But again, I might be misunderstanding your words. By “taken straight out”, you might mean “paraphrasing” or something. A man with your prodigious cirriculum vitae has no cause to appropriate the words of others as his own. > [@](#): > > Your insistence that foundationalism is just the idea that every belief must follow from some other belief is contradicted by the very source you cite, which says: > > “The foundationalist’s thesis in short is that all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief.” > > That’s what I said foundationalism is, and it is not compatible with what you claimed was the definition of that term. Adverbial modifiers can be rather critical, and I would submit that this is one such case. I think that the onus is on us, as readers, despite that we might from time to time become loosey-goosey with our own language, to consider carefully the words of others and interpret them, as far as is possible, the way they are actually written. Of _course_ the beliefs rest **utlimately** — i.e., finally, in the end, after all is said and done — on noninferential knowledge, which is what I said. That’s what an axiom is — a premise offered without proof, an initial starting point from which inference can begin. It is an issue that I addressed several times, including numerous references to the (perceptions at least of) problems with infinite regression. Foundationalism is a huge and bloated theory, with manifold branches, that has developed over eons of human philosophical ponderings. Notice that the introduction, from which you extracted your snippet, ends by saying, “There is no standard terminology for what we shall henceforth refer to as noninferential knowledge or justification.” The author then explained that the comments he would make about justified belief would apply mutatis mutandis to the more general doxastic realm of foundationalism. In other words, it is an antelogous remark: to say that sooner or later, the foundationalist must either admit to an infinitely long chain of inference, an axiom or axioms, or a circle. That’s how I read it anyway. > [@](#): > > I apologize if my tone is becoming a bit strident. My perception is that my understanding of the issue, and/or my ability to communicate clearly about that issue, has been attacked by someone who presents himself as pretty knowledgable about the issue himself. Since I’m being attacked, I feel a need either to acknowledge the criticisms, or defend myself against them. Since the attack is in such strong tension with how other trusted authorities have evaluated my knowledge and skill in these areas, I feel the appropriate response is in fact to defend. And since I strongly identify myself with my understanding of my level of knowledge in issues like this and my ability to exposite them, the attack presents itself to me as a little personal (surely through no fault of your own originally) and therefore the tone I have chosen to take has been what you might call defensive. Defensive? Hardly. I would say that, given the chasm between us, the tone you have adopted is… gracious. When a man is kneeling at the feet of a king, he is relieved to hear that his head will be spared. Whatever else the king might say is as an instrument of God’s own grace. However, if you will grant me leave to speak honestly, your perception of “attack” was misplaced. Speaking for myself, I am delighted when a man will take the time to hold a dialog with me for the purpose of seeking clarification. It is in my nature to view questions and challenges, not as attacks, but as engagements of discourse. Now, if I had come at you with Kant said this or Schopenhauer said that, holding their academic authority and accomplishements over you in order to belittle your contributions, then I could understand a perception of attack. But that sort of thing wouldn’t happen in this forum. So relax, and let’s be friends. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/38 "2004-11-12T19:18:13Z")
Becuase of significant time constraints I am mainly going to lurk this time around, but must say that I am enjoying **sentient** exposition and **erl** ’s defense quite well. My brief two cents to the op: Is any epistemology justified? Let us defined "justified first. If by “justified” you mean having proof that it is ultimately “true” or _the_ means by which to detrmine true reality, then no, for all the reasons already spelled out. All epistemolgies ultimately rest on unprovable assumptions which we accept on that unspeakable f-word - “faith”. However I would posit that an epistemology’s justification is less based on its ability to determine true reality … whatever that may be and if it even exists behind the curtain of our perceptual tools … than on its ability to allow us to make predictions of future observations and experiences, on its utility in aiding us to solve problems of salience to us and thus to achieve our various goals. In that sense epistemologies are well justified and some better justified for particular ends than others. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/39 "2004-11-12T20:14:20Z")
**Liberal,** You’ve incorrectly interpreted my post in as uncharitable a light as you possibly could have, yet again. Frankly, I feel I’ve found a pattern to your posts in this respect. Other than that comment, I’m going to skip the “who’s smarter than who” stuff you started in your most recent post. The substantive issue you deal with in your last post, the question of the definition of Foundationalism, seems to me to be a slam dunk case in my favor. I said Foundationalism is the idea that the chain of inferential justification must end at some point with beliefs that are somehow to thought of as justified without regard to inference from other beliefs. You said Foundationalism is the idea that every justified belief is justified by inference from other beliefs. (Or I think your exact words were, “Every belief must follow from some other belief.”) The text you cited as giving evidence for your claim included the passage: “The foundationalist’s thesis in short is that all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief.” Note that the snippet I have quoted here purports to say what the foundationalist thesis is. I take this to be tantamount to giving a definition of foundationalism. Now, the snippet implies that according to Foundationalism, at least some justified beliefs are justified only by means other than inference from other beliefs. But the two sentences A. At least some justified beliefs are justified only by means other than inference from other beliefs, and, B. Every justified belief is justified by means of inference from other beliefs simply can’t both be true–that is of course unless there are no justified beliefs but we’re not talking about that possibility. Yet I take A to be the article’s definition of Foundationalism, and B to be your definition. You and the article can’t both be right (if I am right to summarize your respective definitions as I have). Hence my confusion as to why you cited the article as supporting your position. None of your comments about the context of the snippet lead me to think that the snippet does not present a fair summary of what the article takes to be the thesis of Foundationalism, and hence a statement from which we can easily derive a definition of Foundationalism. If you think I _should_ have been so led by your comments, I am interested in hearing why. -FrL- > [@Liberal](#): > > You certainly have me beaten in spades. I have no degree in anything, and in fact did not complete more than one semester of college (and that major was to be in lowly textile science). Given your credentials, you deserve recognition as an authority on the topic, and on that basis alone are justified, in my opinion, to trump whatever I might write by the sheer declaration of “because I said so”. There is no need for you to refer to books or professors or philosophers past. That sort of grave-diggery is what people like I must do. Now that you’ve pulled out the big guns, we know where we stand. When a fishing trawler faces a battleship, there is little to debate. I can rely on nothing more than thirty-nine years of study from (having now counted them) some hundred-and-eight primary sources — i.e., books. I haven’t been privileged to move in circles of philosophical doctors (perhaps by the grace of God). The best I have achieved is basically rhetorical fist-fights with rag-tag students, grads, and post-grads from Internet philosophy forums (including one where I have moderated) and the sort of ivory tower discussions that we’ve had from time to time in TOPS meetings. I have been interviewed for someone else’s master’s thesis (on modal logic), but have never written my own. I therefore acquiesce to your superior intelligence and experience, but I do intend to stick around and debate my point of view for two reasons: (1) the off chance that I might, from time to time, offer something worthwhile; but more importantly (2) that I might learn something from erudite men like yourself. Who knows, in a few years, one of your own books might find its way into my library. > Well, let’s have a look at it. Philosophy, as you know, is notoriously over-written — from the ebullient prose of Descartes to the head-scratching Gordian knots of rhetoric from Hagel. It was refreshing, to me at least, to see a more plain, more readable text. And yours began this way: > > _Just to add quandaries to quandaries, there’s the following problem. I forget the label for it, something like the Pyrrhonian Problematic or something like that._ > > That’s quite readable. There is no way to misinterpret that whatever follows is something that is a problem, that multiplies quandaries, and that, as best you could remember, is called something like “the Pyrrhonian Problematic”. And so, what followed? This: > > _At least some our beliefs seem to be justified by reference to other beliefs. My belief that I can get a coke by going to the fridge is justified by my (presumably true) belief that I put some cokes in there earlier today._ > > Now, that struck me as peculiar on a number of accounts. One, it didn’t _seem_ like a problem. Two, it multiplied no quandary that I had. And three, there had apparently been a new label assigned to the independent clause of the Principle of Inferential Justification. (Which was why I went off researching the so-called Pyrrhonian Problematic.) In retrospect, it seems to me that you meant either (1) to word your topic sentence differently — that is, the problem, the PP, the quandaries and what-all were not to follow immediately, but rather later; or (2) actually to put the problem, the PP, and the quandaries in second place rather than third. > > As I said before, there were possibilities for the misunderstanding _other_ than your expository skills. In fact, I believe I named my reading comprehension skills or some combination of the two. Therefore, you had no cause to take offense, and I regret that you were offended. In such disjunctive clauses, you may feel free to take whatever or’ed combinations you find to be least injurious. > > For the sake of our discussion, why don’t we agree to call it a problem with my comprehension. As a former state chess champion in my class (A), I understand completely what you mean by the difference between thought-out writing and the sort of writing we all do here. It is analogous to the difference between tournament level chess with thirty moves in ninety minutes and speed chess, with the flags of both players hanging on a thread. It is entirely a metaphysical possibility that I, and I alone, misunderstood what you wrote. It therefore isn’t worth dwelling on, especially inasmuch as you’ve more or less cleared it all up. > You’re being modest and overly kind. You’re like the conqueror who, after having put an arrow through his enemy’s heart, is kneeling over him and doing him the warrior’s honor of taking his scalp as you say a prayer to the Great Spirit. I am honored that a man of your academic calibre would pause to salve the wounds of one as worthless as I. > Well… I want to put all this in as gentlemanly a manner as you have managed, taking your example as my standard. There are books, and then there are books about books. If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard someone say that Aristotle believed so-and-so based on what Gross or Whalley or Atherton said, I’d have, well, quite a few dimes. Anthologies are fine in the way that Monarch Notes are fine — they work best when they serve the limited purpose of giving us a perspective on how other people might interpret what we ourselves have read. Blackwell offers anthologies on everything from bridge construction to hematology. But I consider it to be suplemental material rather than a primary source. > > In any event, if indeed what you wrote was “taken straight out of the introduction to that chapter”, you might have considered crediting it. But again, I might be misunderstanding your words. By “taken straight out”, you might mean “paraphrasing” or something. A man with your prodigious cirriculum vitae has no cause to appropriate the words of others as his own. > Adverbial modifiers can be rather critical, and I would submit that this is one such case. I think that the onus is on us, as readers, despite that we might from time to time become loosey-goosey with our own language, to consider carefully the words of others and interpret them, as far as is possible, the way they are actually written. Of _course_ the beliefs rest **utlimately** — i.e., finally, in the end, after all is said and done — on noninferential knowledge, which is what I said. That’s what an axiom is — a premise offered without proof, an initial starting point from which inference can begin. It is an issue that I addressed several times, including numerous references to the (perceptions at least of) problems with infinite regression. Foundationalism is a huge and bloated theory, with manifold branches, that has developed over eons of human philosophical ponderings. Notice that the introduction, from which you extracted your snippet, ends by saying, “There is no standard terminology for what we shall henceforth refer to as noninferential knowledge or justification.” The author then explained that the comments he would make about justified belief would apply mutatis mutandis to the more general doxastic realm of foundationalism. In other words, it is an antelogous remark: to say that sooner or later, the foundationalist must either admit to an infinitely long chain of inference, an axiom or axioms, or a circle. That’s how I read it anyway. > Defensive? Hardly. I would say that, given the chasm between us, the tone you have adopted is… gracious. When a man is kneeling at the feet of a king, he is relieved to hear that his head will be spared. Whatever else the king might say is as an instrument of God’s own grace. However, if you will grant me leave to speak honestly, your perception of “attack” was misplaced. Speaking for myself, I am delighted when a man will take the time to hold a dialog with me for the purpose of seeking clarification. It is in my nature to view questions and challenges, not as attacks, but as engagements of discourse. Now, if I had come at you with Kant said this or Schopenhauer said that, holding their academic authority and accomplishements over you in order to belittle your contributions, then I could understand a perception of attack. But that sort of thing wouldn’t happen in this forum. So relax, and let’s be friends. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/40 "2004-11-12T20:18:35Z")
I wish I could edit posts here. A couple of notes: 1. The line-by-line look of my last post might accidentally be taken as indicating a tone of impatience. That tone was neither intended nor felt. It is just a misfortune of formatting that the post has the appearance that it does. 2. To my last paragraph should be added a comment that also, if you think the argument I give in my post simply misses the point, I am interested in hearing about that as well. -FrL- [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934.md?page=3)