I've noticed that there haven't really been any crippling defeats in scepticism, which makes me wonder, can't you disprove any philosophy? — Hobbez
Where scepticism goes off the rails is in ontology. It might be entertaining to consider the unlikely - like that the world doesn't exist, it's all in the mind, or it's all demonic illusion. But it is not useful to pretend to believe the unlikely. You don't really doubt unless you are fully prepared to act on that doubt. At which point it has just turned into a belief. — apokrisis
What is the purpose behind westernized pragmatism (Peirce, James, Dewey)? In what sense are we to see theories as "useful", i.e. to what end? Is truth simply equivalent to what is useful, or is usefulness the best method of obtaining truth in the correspondence sense of knowledge? If the latter, then pragmatism seems to become more of a methodology than a metaphysical theory of knowledge itself. — darthbarracuda
What is the purpose behind westernized pragmatism (Peirce, James, Dewey)? In what sense are we to see theories as "useful", i.e. to what end? Is truth simply equivalent to what is useful, or is usefulness the best method of obtaining truth in the correspondence sense of knowledge? If the latter, then pragmatism seems to become more of a methodology than a metaphysical theory of knowledge itself. — darthbarracuda
Is truth simply equivalent to what is useful, or is usefulness the best method of obtaining truth in the correspondence sense of knowledge? If the latter, then pragmatism seems to become more of a methodology than a metaphysical theory of knowledge itself. — darthbarracuda
I have asked apo what amounts to this question many times in many contexts and forms; and this is just where he always seems to fail to be able to respond. — John
There seems to be no answer as to how pragmatism can actually be of any philosophical importance and become something more than merely a kind of heuristic formula for understanding the nature of the methodology of science. As soon as we necessarily become involved in trying to understand how holding beliefs can be justified by their usefulness to us in more than merely practical ways, we become involved in questions of truth in senses that go well beyond any merely pragmatic understanding of truth. — John
I'm sorry Woolly Heron, I don't have any clue as to what you are talking about. — John
how are we to assess whether a belief contributes to flourishing unless we hold some ethical position which goes beyond pragmatism, about what exactly constitutes flourishing? — John
Still no clearer... — John
OK, that's a fair enough answer, but we are still left with the fact that transcendence, or not, is a purely faith-based presumption either way. — John
The problem is, though, that in order to to do that we must already have a notion of what flourishing is, and that notion will always already be based on whether we believe in transcendence or not. Do you see then how it cannot be reduced to a merely pragmatic question? — John
So really, faith or "free choice" has nothing to do with what I end up believing. That is just your wishful thinking — apokrisis
but prior to that you have already decided to place your faith in one line of enquiry rather than another. — John
So I am not claiming my methodology, or enquiry, is superior to yours; the truth is I am claiming is that they are, although obviously not the same, equivalent in that they are both rational elaborations of groundless presuppositions. — John
So it comes down to the nature of the evidence - which in my case would be public, and in your case private. I know which I find superior. — apokrisis
A Buddhist perspective on epistemology is that there are two types of "truth": ultimate and conventional. Conventional truths are made of ultimate truths, but are not legitimate in themselves. — DarthBarracuda
In Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato, Oxford University Press (2012), paperback (2015), I explore a Socratic intuition about the difference between belief and knowledge. Beliefs, doxai, are deficient cognitive attitudes. In believing something, one accepts some content as true without knowing that it is true; one holds something to be true that could turn out to be false. Since our actions reflect what we hold to be true, holding beliefs is potentially harmful for oneself and others. Accordingly, beliefs are ethically worrisome and even, in the words of Plato’s Socrates, “shameful.” As I argue, this is a serious philosophical proposal. It speaks to intuitions we are likely to share, but it involves a notion of belief that is rather different from contemporary notions. Today, it is a widespread assumption that true beliefs are better than false beliefs, and that some true beliefs (perhaps those that come with justifications) qualify as knowledge. Socratic epistemology offers a genuinely different picture. In aiming for knowledge, one must aim to get rid of beliefs. Knowledge does not entail belief. Belief and knowledge differ in such important ways that they cannot both count as kinds of belief. As long as one does not have knowledge, one should reserve judgment and investigate by thinking through possible ways of seeing things.
I argue that the ancient skeptics and Stoics draw many of these ideas from Plato’s dialogues, revising Socratic-Platonic arguments as they see fit. Belief and Truth retraces their steps through interpretations of the Apology, Ion, Republic, Theaetetus, and Philebus, reconstructs Pyrrhonian investigation and thought, and illuminates the connections between ancient skepticism and relativism, as well as the Stoic view that beliefs do not even merit the evaluations “true” and “false.” The ancient skeptics, on my reading, develop versions of the Socratic idea that an unexamined life is worth nothing. Ultimately, I hope to defend the guiding intuitions of skepticism against so-called dogmatism, understood as a confident attitude of laying out how things are. A life of investigation may well be a compelling enterprise. Contrary to the presumption that it is impossible or absurd to try to do without doxa, I argue that modes of thought that are to some degree hypothetical –that involve the proviso that one is likely to encounter new arguments and evidence as time proceeds – are often called for. — Katja Vogt
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