And just how much are you certain about? Are you ever going to be certain about everything?

Try naming things that you are not certain about.

Now try naming things you are certain about.

Which is the bigger list?

"The only thing you can be certain of is that you cannot be certain of anything" — Yadoula

Look at the things around you, are they really there? Can you prove that they are?

Maybe you can provide a reference.

I know in the "Apology", Plato reports Socrates saying:

"At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know" 22d

As a philosophical sceptic, I'm essentially bound to accept the possibility that any argument may be valid. I'm struggling with this one, though.

When you say that you are "certain of everything", I assume you're not suggesting that everything you think is necessarily true, since this would qualify as ludicrous narcissistic drivel. This only leaves one other option; that you only accept an opinion if you can find no room for doubt.

As to the latter, without providing a basis for absolute certainty, aren't we in effect reduced to the Socratic position that nothing is certain, except for our own lack of certainty?

Speaking as a philosophical skeptic myself, there’s some important qualifiers to certainty that are too often left implicit. Are we addressing that which is ontically certain? That which is infallibly certain to our subjective being? Or that which we are quite certain about though in acknowledgedly fallible ways? The three are not the same. Doubt, btw, is not identical to uncertainty: e.g. the future may be uncertain when addressed in a long enough term, but then saying that the future is uncertain is not the same as saying that the future is doubtful. To doubt is—as the term is always used—to hold an uncertainty about something which has already been established by someone somewhere to be certain. To be in states of wonder and curiosity, for example, is to be in states where one is not certain about all the pertinent aspects of that regarded—i.e. is to hold uncertainty about that concerned—without there being involved any doubt in respect to that regarded.

So we minimally have three types of certainty: that which is ontic and indifferent to our appraisal; that which is an infallible appraisal of what is (… of what is ontically certain); and that which is acknowledgeable fallible yet nevertheless an appraisal which we hold with certainty (again, concerning that which ontically is).

To have infallible certainty that there is no infallible certainty is a blatant contradiction—and, hence, an error of reasoning.

The philosophical skeptic, however, can quite cogently maintain a fallible certainty that no infallible certainty can be evidenced—including the infallible certainty that infallible certainties are impossible.

This then makes Yadoula’s comment correct (here overlooking any possible intermediate arguments): the only way you can be infallibly certain of anything is if you hold infallible certainty of everything (tangentially, this to me speaks of a non-dualistic awareness and its infallible certainty of what is, if such a perfectly formless awareness can ever be actualized).

As to repercussions for knowledge, it can easily translate into the fallibilism proposed by Peirce.

Heck, there’s been disagreement among philosophical skeptics in the consequences of this position for quite a long time. Still, to be clear in a general audience sort of way, no philosophical skeptic can ever be a Cartesian skeptic … for it’s by the very definition of philosophical skepticism already apprehended with fallible certainty that there is no infallible certainty to be obtained via methodological doubts.

I’ve been earnestly trying to break away from the forum for a while now—this for the time being. If there isn’t a robust refutation of what I’ve here posted, I might not reply. My bad. (Hopefully there’s more agreement than not.)

:up:

"The only thing you can be certain of is that you cannot be certain of anything"

This sentence is clearly paradoxical and so cannot be true. — Yadoula

It is paradoxical because it should make an exception for that one thing. That is, it should say

"The only thing you can be certain of is that you cannot be certain of anything else"

Invoking the Principle of Charity, I think it is reasonable to presume that that non-paradoxical form is what was meant.

Whether it is true is a different discussion, but I contend that that form is not paradoxical.

Wait a sec: when a dude's been being studied by scholars for a thousand years or two, he might be wrong, but he's obviously not obviously wrong, right?

It’s a misquote to begin with. The fact that ‘sentence’ is spelled wrongly straight after it should be a clue.

"The only thing you can be certain of is that you cannot be certain of anything" — Yadoula

I do not see the problem.

Two subjects; (1) the state of mind of 'you', which is differentiated from (2) 'anything' i.e. the external world, that what isn't you.

I can be certain about my own state of mind by means of introspection, but there is no similar means of obtaining certainty about the external world.

The actual quote from Plato's Apology is "I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."

The closest thing to the well-known saying is the account given by Laërtius: "[Socrates] declared that he knew nothing, except the fact of his ignorance." But this is likely best understood as the quote in the Apology (or as summarised by @andrewk above).

Maybe you can provide a reference.

I know in the "Apology", Plato reports Socrates saying:

"At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know" 22d — Cavacava

The actual quote from Plato's Apology is "I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know." — Michael

Yes, and those are worded much better.

I voted for, "Both are wrong/it's complicated", because both are wrong, although Yadoula's own quote, in a sense, is more wrong, because it isn't insightful, it's just obviously wrong, and the other quote was a misquote of Socrates, and what Socrates was actually quoted as saying is of greater significance.

I can be certain of things (plural), and I don't have to be certain of everything to be certain of things. (That's obvious, right?).

For example, right now, I am certain that I am here in my bedroom, and I am certain that I am typing this reply. But I am not certain, without checking, what number of planets Jupiter is from the Sun. As in, is it the fifth planet from the Sun? The sixth? I don't know.

(Ooh, good guess. I checked, and it's the fifth).

Thank you Michael, an indispensable clarification. Note especially the ‘in this trifling matter’ - redolent with irony, and indeed, wisdom.

Ahhh so it was lost in the translation! The original quote from Plato sounds perfect. And so, it appears as though Socrates was indeed as smart as I was when I was 18... Recently I managed to map out strategic thought-process used by all living beings which I do fancy might put me on top of the pile. I worked out why Socrates was killed too; something called cognitive dissonance was the real cause of his demise. It's the same thing that is stopping me from selling Poker guides.

This sentance is clearly paradoxical and so cannot be true. I think — Yadoula

True and false arise from the diabolical nexus of mind and heart. Mind and heart are not equals.

Paradoxes are both true and false. The mind rejects it but the heart loves it.

Certainty is a mental image. Uncertainty is more emotional than cerebral.

Of course the heart resides in the mind unless someone can prove that the heart has a neural network capable of comprehension we're not aware of. Right?

Couple of points. First, Socrates was not killed. He was ordered, and agreed, to kill himself.

Secondly it was not accidental, nor a failure on his part. In The Apology, which, with corroboration from other contemporary sources, is regarded as largely historically accurate, Socrates was first ordered into exile. After this judgement he gave a speech so provocative - he demanded that Athens provide for his basic needs while he continued his program of undermining the positions espoused by those who considered themselves wise - that the jury had little choice but to order him to drink hemlock. He did this, at the age of 87 (and after refusing to act on a plan for his escape - see Plato's Crito), to ensure his place in history. To see to it that we would still be discussing his philosophy two and a half millennia later. It should be noted that to have one's name pass into history is what the Athenians regarded as immortality.

Context here is key. Socrates' position is that no - one, especially not some arrogant 18 year old brat, should be certain that what they believe is true. This is not an absurd Pyhrronian scepticism, it is the refutation of hubris. The realisation that our fragile, mortal selves are incapable of attaining absolute metaphysical truth, and that there will always be better answers beyond our grasp.

It's true but shouldn't be focused on. You could learn everything about the human condition and then find out that Elon Musk believes this is almost definitely all a computer simulation. Then call everything you thought you knew into question.

It's an interesting statement but it does not lead to a productive line of reasoning if this all is intact real.

I hope the 18 year old brat was not me... I was way too poor to be a brat.

And.. The human mind blatantly is capable of understanding everything. Buddha claimed to have cracked it all and there is loads of evidence backing him up; He accurately described the expansion of the universe, and the development of a baby in the womb. He also spoke a lot of atoms and seemed to have a good grasp of quantum physics. How could he know these things if not through some "spiritual" method. He also, like Einstein, seemed to say that it is the conscious observer who gives shape to the universe. Not so much a computer simulation, but more like a combining of the spiritual world with physical world to create everything as we know it.

And... The human mind blatantly is capable of understanding everything. — Yadoula

Cute. Far from blatant, it's untenable. And your argument certainly does not demonstrate the above conclusion. You can give as many examples as you like of people who had an exceptional understanding of things, but understanding a lot about things is very far from understanding everything. Whatever the Buddha claimed, there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that he understood everything, nor even that he was capable, and there is very strong counter-evidence that there were things that he did not understand, and/or that he could not have understood.

What gives me to - perhaps totally unphilosophically - to doubt Socrates is that he wouldn't take payment from his rich pupils to help his poor family and that he survived the rule of the very nasty Thirty Tyrants most successfully, but couldn't survive long under democracy. It's the sort of thing I would tend to start from if we were discussing philosophers in Nazi Germany. Am I wrong?

There is very little direct info on Socrates. it is speculation mostly based on what Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes wrote about him, all highly disputable.

He was apparently a member of a tribal class in Athens (10 tribes) and since it was a tribal society his position n society was more important than his work. He couldn't survive Athens Democracy because several of his prize students were among the Thirty Tyrants, and his love Alcibiades betrayed Athens to Sparta. The city didn't appreciate these results of his teaching, or lack of teaching as he puts it in the Apology.

Welcome to TPF.

The tribes had been introduced only a generation or so before, and were deliberately spread over all Athens, to avoid special interest groups developing.
Thanks.