Questions tagged [skepticism]
The skepticism tag has no usage guidance.
198 questions
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Consistency and special pleading in absolute truth claims
There are a lot of questions* on this site that are about a statement made in philosophical skepticism that is best summarized with a quote I found on this Wiki page:
Philosophical skeptics state ...
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Can beliefs equal Knowledge? [closed]
Do you think that beliefs can equal Knowledge?
If beliefs are never caused by themselves and if we understand knowledge to be what guides us throw our daily lives, instead of an absolute truth, could ...
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Pyrrhonian Skepticism
Pyrrhonian skepticism probably needs no introduction; Agrippa's Trilemma is a famous "unsolved problem".
I have some questions to ask on Pyrrhonism. No, SEP, IEP and Wiki don't have info on ...
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Do we have volitional control over our level of skepticism?
In a recent answer to my earlier question What kind of epistemology would justify accepting religious claims that lie beyond the reach of scientific and historical verification?, an intriguing point ...
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Is there more evidence for God than for Russell’s teapot? [closed]
Is there any more evidence for God than Russell’s teapot? As a reminder, Russell’s teapot is related to the notion of a teapot orbiting around the earth [the sun].
If there is more evidence, then I ...
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Gardner's presentation of Kant on Skepticism
I am working (slowly) through the Critique of Pure Reason, reading Sebastian Gardner's Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason as a secondary source (among others), and ...
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Do all those who study philosophy have constant fears and doubts because of skeptical ideas and constant uncertainty?
There are many skeptical ideas: solipsism, skepticism of the external world, skepticism about moral doctrines, etc.
Philosophers and all those who study philosophy constantly live in fear that ...
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How to engage in radical skeptical pondering for hours on a daily basis and maintain psychological well being?
I often have heard the sentiment most famously expressed by Russell that whilst practically all flavors of radical skepticism are unassailable, they are psychologically impossible to hold.
Recently, I ...
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How do skeptics explain axioms not being arbitrary?
I get infinite regress but surely the axioms of ZFC or arithmetic were not so much chosen as discovered and intuited and thought about. They certainly didn't just grab whatever was around them and say ...
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Why be moral and moral anti realism
If the only reason to be moral is a subjective preference (to be moral), not rational or irrational, then is morality subjective in the sense of mind dependent (as with e.g. expressivism)?
I suspect ...
user71399
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"i think therefore i am", revist, does criticisms really hold?
In Wikipedia the critiques don't make much sense to me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum#Critique
For example, it is said that "Saul Fisher 'points out that recognition that one has ...
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Scott Aikin's "modest, but not self-effacing" transcendental argument
This question is about Scott F. Aikin's 2017 paper "Modest (but not Self-Effacing) Transcendental Arguments".
The full paper is accessible here with a free account, and some ideas regarding ...
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René Descartes' and Wittgenstein Doubt: Self and the Existence of Others?
Can one doubt their own existence in the world while simultaneously doubting the existence of others? If one's being isn't present because they aren't present themselves, wouldn't that make it ...
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What are some critiques of my philosophy about approaching claims of truth using the scientific method? [closed]
mathematician here. I occasionally go down philosophy rabbit holes and end up in some dark mental states. It always stems from examining the foundations of mathematics.
As a foreword, I am not making ...
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What does Moore need the second hand for?
I just read Moores 'Proof of an external world' and I feel like I almost get it. To me the structure seems to be this:
He clarifies what 'the existence of things outside of us' is (anything that ...
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Why does Descartes derives existence from "Thinking" and not from "Consciously experiencing"?
I am reading Descartes Meditations and in the second meditation there is the following quote that is obviously central:
"But I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world,...
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Semantic externalism and transitivity of causal chains (using Putnam's brain-in-a-vat thought experiment)
TL;DR: I'm looking for information on semantic externalist views on transitivity of causal chains. Is it an objection anyone has invoked? Does it hold? What are potential pro-Putnam responses to it?
...
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Are algorithms on the internet going to 'completely' remove any sort of common ground to discuss and share 'objective' knowledge in the future?
I always try to self-analyze whenever I am doing deep research on the internet, and it seems to me that Google usually gives me topics that seem to be in direct views as of my own.
I understand that I ...
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Is the Skeptic's Prayer a valid scientific experiment?
The "Skeptic's Prayer" is introduced on page 411 of Handbook of Catholic Apologetics: Reasoned Answers to Questions of Faith, by Peter Kreeft & Fr. Ronald Tacelli.
The Skeptic's Prayer
...
user66156
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The problem of iterative skepticism
I mean the following tactics:
Christina: "There is a tree outside in the garden."
René: "I grant that this might be right, and even that your sensory information would justify your ...
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Is there a definitive answer to this question, or is it still possible that 'nothing exists'?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_there_is_anything_at_all
There are a few answers, but they do not seem to be certain, and there are arguments against answers to the question, what does this mean?
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Did i Just found the solution to radical skepticism?
If someone uses the premise that:
1=1
and then arrives at the conclusion that:
1=2
this means that the conclusion has proven the premise wrong; and if the premise is wrong, then the conclusion is ...
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I have an absolute certainty that cannot be refuted [closed]
Consider the statement "language exists in some way". You cannot question that statement, otherwise you're implying the statement itself, since a question is a form of language. If one ...
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Do the senses themselves (not what they deceptively reveal) exist in some form? [closed]
Firstly, I accept that "I" probably don't exist, labelling a tree Barry and a baby child "Charlie" is the same useful construct for reference.
Secondly, the statements "...
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Is this is more stable version of Descartes experiment? [duplicate]
Everyone knows Descartes old experiment now.
He concludes with absolute certainty that “I am, I exist”. However this could very well be a delusion, since the evil genius could have corrupted the mind ...
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Why is Sextus Empiricus not self-contradicting and where can I read about his works?
Firstly, Sextus states: "By way of preface let us say that on none of the matters to be discussed do we affirm that things certainly are just as we say they are: rather, we report descriptively ...
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Has Münchhausen's trilemma been solved?
I believe that the classic argument that conceptual regress goes back forever may be wrong.
For instance, if I try to infinitely regress on concepts, I actually end up at a point where I can't go on ...
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Would LEGIT miracles and prophecies serve as proof for a religion [duplicate]
Let's say that a random man comes to me and preaches his faith. He says that his religious book was sent down to Earth 3000 years ago and revealed to a man called 'X'.
I ask him for proof about his ...
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How do we know if our interpretation of our raw conscious experiences is accurate?
X is a conscious agent. X has the ability to have raw subjective conscious experiences, aka qualia. But beyond merely experiencing qualia, X also has the ability to interpret their qualia, by ...
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Is it "unscientific" to be sceptical without offering alternative explanations?
Alice has made some anecdotal observations. Through a process of elimination, she proposes a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon, as well as an experiment to validate (or otherwise) her hypothesis. ...
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To what extent is intersubjective agreement required for one to be justified in trusting one's own subjective experiences?
Context: this is a follow-up to my last question Is the hallucination hypothesis always the best explanation?
Suppose A has a subjective experience (or multiple subjective experiences) that leads them ...
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Is the hallucination hypothesis always the best explanation?
Suppose there are two persons A and B.
A attests to having witnessed some extraordinary event, e.g. A claims to have had an extraordinary religious experience with an other-worldly entity. Let's say ...
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Do atheists bear the burden of proof in showing why/how the reasons presented by theists are unconvincing?
In conversations and debates between atheists and theists, is it enough for the atheist to assert that they are skeptical of theism without providing justification, or does the atheist bear the burden ...
user66156
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Is constantly questioning yourself a virtue or a drawback?
In modern society, skepticism in things is taken to be a virtue. Presumably, this is equated with being open minded and having an easier willingness to change your mind in the wake of new evidence.
On ...
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If we don't know anything for certain, how do we know that?
I think it is the case that we don't know anything for certain. But if that is the case, how can we know that we don't know anything for certain? This is related to Socrates's famous remark that all ...
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How does fallibilism not collapse into skepticism?
First let's define fallibilism as the view that there's no belief that can't turn out to be false no matter how much credence we lend to it.
This implicitly entails that we take ourselves to not be ...
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Do we know that we don't know whether we are in a skeptical hypothesis scenario?
Novice here, so please don't use jargon or advanced topics (I've had experiences like this on the math stack exchange lol). I was reading through the book Philosophy for Everyone, and I was just ...
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A Case of Scheler vs. Skepticism: Religious Experience
This concerns a problem I myself have with Scheler, and am not sure where to go with it. Scheler argues in On the Eternal in Man that one cannot dismiss religious experience (or as he calls it, "...
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Can we conclude from Wittgenstein that all philosophy shows just as well that all philosophy is nonsense?
There's been a lot of skeptical questions recently, about knowledge, god, probability, other minds, all sorts of crazy stuff (I'm still waiting for "nothing is true")
Can we conclude from ...
user67675
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Is it possible for the sentence "bachelors are unmarried" to be fallible?
Is it absolutely certain that "bachelors are unmarried"? Are analytic propositions like these more certain than the cogito? Is this one area where philosophers throughout time have agreed ...
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Why is Time Cube wrong?
Time Cube was a pseudoscientific theory from a crank. It is generally believed by the scientific community that there is no meaningful theory which can be isolated from the Time Cube corpus.
In debate,...
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Restating my argument, people have seen real unususal seemingly fictional creaturs [closed]
NOBODY SHOULD EDIT MY ARGUMENT BECAUSE THEY DONT REPRESENT IT CORRECTLY
Reconsidering Unusual Creature Sightings: A Rational Perspective
It is important to reconsider the phenomenon of reported ...
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Omniscience argument against Pyrrhonian Skepticism
Pyrrhonian skeptics are known to (allegedly) suspend judgement on ALL matters, thereby being completely free of all presuppositions.
But could such a skeptic suspend judgment about their own ...
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Standards of knowledge-by-testimony and reports of unusual lifeforms [closed]
The argument goes:
Over 50% of all statements made by all people in general are true or at least sincere.
Over 50% of observation reports are factually accurate (not reports of hallucinations).
A ...
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Could skeptics practicing empathy be justified?
Suppose one takes the standpoint of a skeptic to the problem of author minds, that is suppose that we accept that we can't judge whether others have a mind like ours. Then, what would be the ...
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Help sourcing a quote - "There is no doctrine so invalid..."
Recently a quote popped into my head, which I recall as a Bishop Berkeley proposition. But on further looking into the matter, I can't seem to find it. It's within the general area of the following:
"...
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What noun describes the ideology that most things are scams?
What’s the -ism that portrays this outlook. This forgotten -ism is related to — BUT NOT — capitalism, corpocracy, cynicism, Marxism, misanthropy, nihilism, pessimism, socialism or skepticism. Such ...
user64125
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Substructural skepticism
The SEP article on substructural logic mentions an issue of repeated premises:
So, I might have X, X ⊢ A, which says that I can use X twice to get A. I might not have X ⊢ A, which says that I can use ...
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Do judges violate due process in their efforts to make a logical connection between would-be evidence and facts in question?
Note: I had this post with a question that follows, but then I reformed the question again. I've used ChatGPT to help me research this issue, and I think it has been somewhat helpful.
For anyone ...
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The possibility of knowledge [closed]
If a skeptic comes to argue against the possibility of Knowledge, Would you refute it? If yes, why? If not, Why?
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