Timeline for Omniscience argument against Pyrrhonian Skepticism
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20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 8, 2023 at 21:53 | answer | added | Kristian Berry | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 8, 2023 at 21:37 | answer | added | Professor Sushing | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 8, 2023 at 21:01 | history | bumped | CommunityBot | This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed. | |
| Aug 10, 2023 at 20:52 | answer | added | user66933 | timeline score: 1 | |
| Aug 9, 2023 at 9:32 | comment | added | Conifold | In both 1 and 2 you want a skeptic to assert something, but why should they? Just because they decline to assert omniscience does not mean that they confess its lack. As far as they are concerned, they may well be omniscient. For the trivial reason that there is nothing to know, or because, unbeknownst to them, they do happen to know all there is to know. They suspend judgment on that too. There is a difference between happening to know or not know, and judging it so. Perhaps, you intuitively rely on the KK rule, but it is disputed even by non-skeptics. | |
| Aug 9, 2023 at 8:29 | comment | added | Numa | @Conifold Thanks for clarifying, still I struggle to understand (maybe because I'm not trained in formal logic, maybe because I'm severely sleep deprived). I see that not knowing and knowing that not is different in virtually any other context but in context of omniscience it seems to me that not knowing necessarily entails lack of omniscience and therefore knowing that not. What am I missing? | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 20:14 | comment | added | Conifold | Not knowing is different from knowing that not, the knowledge operator K does not commute with negation ¬. So suspension of judgement or not knowing does not entail knowing non-omniscience. Your 1-2 dichotomy presupposes K(O)∨K(¬O), which does not follow from LEM. ¬K(X) type premises will not get you K(Y) for any Y by any valid inference rules. And that's even assuming that skeptics accept LEM and other logical rules, which they don't either. | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 19:57 | review | Close votes | |||
| Aug 23, 2023 at 3:11 | |||||
| Aug 8, 2023 at 19:42 | comment | added | David Gudeman | I'm not assuming anything; I'm trying to figure out what the conclusion of this argument is supposed to be. Is the conclusion supposed to be "God cannot be a Pyrrhonist"? | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 18:19 | comment | added | Numa | @Conifold The idea is that suspension of judgement equals not knowing something. If judgement is suspended non-omniscience would therefore be entailed. | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 18:15 | comment | added | Numa | @DavidGudeman The pyrrhonist suspends judgement on ALL matters, no exceptions, no matter how outlandish this might seem. Why assume to be human? And one the same note: Why assume to not be omniscient? | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 18:06 | comment | added | Conifold | Why should skeptic's cognitive state be any different than all other matters as far as suspending judgment? They neither know nor not know whether X, any X, including their own states of knowledge. Is this supposed to be based on the Cartesian idea of infallible access to one's own mental states? This idea is widely rejected today, not just by skeptics. And whether a skeptic does or does not meet the definition of omniscience in somebody else's judgment is orthogonal to whether they judge it one way or the other themselves. | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 18:00 | comment | added | Conifold | Why should skeptic's cognitive state be any different than all other matters as far as suspending judgment? They neither know nor not know whether X, any X, including their own states of knowledge. Is this supposed to be based on the Cartesian idea of privileged access to one's own mental states? This idea is widely rejected today, not just by skeptics. And whether a skeptic does or does not meet the definition of omniscience in somebody else's judgment is orthogonal to whether they judge it one way or the other themselves. | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 17:53 | comment | added | David Gudeman | I do not understand in what sense this is an argument against Pyrrhonism. It may be an argument against an omniscient Pyrrhonist, but how is it an argument against a human Pyrrhonist? | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 16:28 | comment | added | Numa | @AgentSmith Not sure what you're alluding to but thanks for commenting anyways. | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 15:39 | comment | added | Hudjefa | 10/10 for attempt! Pyrrhonism is, geologically, very young. I, however, am too old to process all that Pyrrhonism is. How very unfortunate for my friends. | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 14:58 | comment | added | Numa | @NotThatGuy In short the "beliefs" a pyrrhonian skeptic would hold would arise from the impossibility of non-action and are not at all what we would call belief in a modern epistemologic sense. | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 14:57 | comment | added | Numa | @NotThatGuy I know this SEP entry and I read Frede's article but it doesn't really touches on the matter at hand. Skeptics may hold "beliefs" in the sense that they acquiesce to what is apparent, habitual, customary etc. But that is primarily a practical decision. Notice how the skeptic drops a belief like "It's day outside." as soon as it becomes a matter of philosophical investigation instead of an involuntary sense perception. An ancient skeptic would also do sacrifice to the gods as a matter of custom while suspending judgement about the existence of gods in a philosophical sense. | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 13:22 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | There an entire section about whether skeptics really "suspend judgement on ALL matters" on the SEP (Sextus Empiricus - 3.4. Does the Skeptic have any beliefs?), with views on either side. | |
| Aug 8, 2023 at 13:00 | history | asked | Numa | CC BY-SA 4.0 |