PsychoSarah,
Nice talk'n to you again...
So you're saying we should not only be skeptical of knowledge the scientific method provides, but throw out philosophical knowledge altogether.
No, this is not what I am saying. Feel free to use philosophy, but to use it correctly, you MUST know its limits. Philosophy doesn't provide knowledge about the world, but it does provide plenty about yourself, and how others think. Philosophy is a great means by which to learn about abstract concepts such as love and morality. Just because there will never be an answer to philosophical questions doesn't mean it is completely pointless. As unfulfilling as it may seem, sometimes we are left with no choice but to leave decisions to philosophical debates, and we have to live with knowing that the decision that results has very little objective basis. But not acknowledging these limitations will leave you using philosophy incorrectly and for things that science is more suited for. Just because science cannot tackle some question now doesn't mean philosophy should.
I'm saying we should not be skeptical at all because this is to condemn our ability to know. It is to damn our mind as unreliable.
Our minds are pretty unreliable. A false sense of security is not a good alternative to recognizing our flaws. Sorry that this bothers you, but the truth doesn't always humor fragile human sensibilities.
Now as I've said in the past our mind is meant to know, that is to unite with the world around us. Our mind is reliable to this task.
I wish that was true, but it isn't. All evidence points to the contrary. Heck, doesn't the pervasive disagreement everyone has as to the nature of the world show that even if 1 person existed that was entirely correct about it, the majority of humanity is misinformed and ignorant, even amongst intellectuals?
Our senses likewise are also reliable... they either work or they do not. We either perceive or we don't, there is no middle ground here.
Our perceptions are so unreliable, that we can knowingly trick our senses and be unable to overcome the trick. That's part of the fun of optical illusions. In all videos, the timing between the image and the sound is always slightly off, but unless you try very hard to notice it, you usually won't. Our focus is so narrow, that if we focus enough on counting objects in a film, we won't notice the obvious gorilla walking across screen. The lack of middle ground in our senses is also debatable; my vision is perfect, but my sister's is not. She can't even tell me the color of my eyes from a meter away, but she can tell where my eyes are. We can partially perceive.
What we have to be careful of, as I've said before, is that our judgment can err. This is what I've called the 2nd and 3rd acts of our mind. The 1st act, simple apprehension, cannot err precisely because it is instantaneous and as such an involuntary act of our mind. It is how we come to know something exists in front of us. Without this knowledge the mind has nothing to reason on.
Hallucinations. Your arguement is invalid. And it can be in error even beyond that. Seeing movement out of the corner of my eye, I can mistakenly think something is there, but when I turn, and think on it for a minute or two, I figure out it was just lighting and shadow tricking me. Our initial perceptions not only can be wrong, but it is extremely frequent for them to be.
The 2nd and 3rd acts are what we call ratiocination. It is here in reasoning that the mind can miscarry, which is possible in both the scientific and philosophic ways of thinking. So it is in making judgments that we can make mistakes in thinking but this in no way supports the skeptics idea that we cannot have certain knowledge. Skeptics wrongly make doubt their final goal, they doubt and stop there.
Being skeptical doesn't make someone stop moving forward with a concept, it just means that they don't entirely expect it to work out as initially thought. It makes people cautious, and for those very determined, is nice to have in case of failure. A skeptic will have a lot less mental anguish if their preconceptions turn out to be wrong than someone that never had any doubt.
Descartes formalized this kind of thought with his famous statement, cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). He called into question our faculty of intellect and this was a serious error. He used reason to supply his arguments to overthrow the trustworthiness of the same reason, he at the same time trusted and did not trust his own reason. He doubted the simplest and most self-evident truths, and yet relied on them... e.g.: the principle of non-contradiction, etc., when he judged: "I think, therefore I exist."
Some people even doubt as much as the one statement he thought reliable, but that doesn't prevent people from functioning. In fact, having complete trust in your ideas all the time is far more harmful than doubting yourself all the time, especially considering how unlikely it is that every idea you hold dear is correct.
If universal methodic doubt requires us to doubt seriously even about principles and facts that are self-evident, universal methodic doubt leads to universal skepticism.
The basic idea is that nothing actually is "self-evident". It doesn't mean you have to be all Hal-9000 about it, and blow yourself up just because you can never be 100% certain about anything.
Supposing this doubt were possible, there would be no means of getting rid of the doubt; and even if there were a means, we would have to doubt whether it existed.
Pretty much. You seem to think that I both don't already know that, and that I will be bothered by it. Neither of those things are the case. I have made my peace with uncertainty, and have no problem living my life knowing that no matter how accurate I am, I will never be 100% certain. 99.9999% certainty is good enough for me to live my life without being in constant fear of incompetence or constant incorrectness, while still allowing mistakes not to come as a soul crushing shock.
Therefore universal methodic doubt cannot be admitted as the starting point of philosophic inquiry.
Why not? Because it bothers you that no human can ever be perfectly certain about anything and be valid in their thinking? That sounds like a personal problem.
What is immediately present to our intellect cannot therefore, be doubted either really or methodically.
Not only can it be doubted, but it should be doubted to at least some extent. Being too certain in yourself just makes the eventual realization that you are wrong all the more devastating.
We have recourse to the method of regarding a judgment as doubtful only in order to demonstrate it, i.e., to bring before our intellects the reasons for its truth; but in the case of cogent, self-evident judgments those reasons are already present to the intellect. Hence it would be absurd to expect a demonstration of self-evident truths.
True, we don't waste our time constantly questioning every aspect of an explanation, for convenience. Not because it is the most valid thing to do, but that to bring up every doubt would take up too much time. Hence, errors are not unknown to happen due to that.
We do not, however, assent blindly to such truths, but because of their self-evidence. Nothing, indeed, should be admitted without a reason: but every reason need not be sought from some extrinsic object. For the strongest reason arises from the immediate evidence of the thing in question. (Epistemology - Walter F. Cunningham, S.J., Fordham Philosophy Series, N.Y. Copyright 1958, Thesis I)
And I challenge that, and state that the strongest evidence of an item in question is not the immediate evidence, but the study and evaluation of the evidence multiple times by multiple people. It has less error, will not be distorted if the initial observation was made by a person in error (because the chances of 1000 people all making the same error in an observation is highly unlikely, and becomes more unlikely the more people that participate), and demonstrates that the result is not some fluke of chance that deviates from the norm.
The human intellect is of its nature infallible in its judgments, for the aptitude of the intellect to attain truth implies that the intellect is of its nature infallible, though it can err by accident.
Humans are always fallible, and our intellect is limited. We can describe concepts far better than we can visualize them. Do you know how long a kilometer is? If not, substitute in a mile. Now, I want you to imagine a creature that has a length of one of those units, and a width of 1/4th of said unit, and a height of 1/8th of said unit. What do you suppose the chances are that you have correctly visualized the scale of such a creature, as it would appear to you if you were standing next to it?
A faculty is of its nature infallible, if acting only in accordance with that nature it cannot err, i.e., of its nature it is ordained to attain truth and is capable of attaining truth.
Maybe we aren't that capable. Depending on how you define truth, humans may not actually be able to get to it precisely.
A faculty is fallible by accident, when it can err because of some reason other than its nature. Error is had only in the judgment. If we consider man with all his faculties, he is of his nature fallible; because in man there is a combination of faculties, and in that combination there is found an element which might lead him into error, e.g., the influence of his passions, his will hastening the intellect to judge, etc. Hence, we do not say in our thesis that man is of his nature infallible; but we claim this infallibility for the intellect. The intellect acts according to its nature: if it has evidence of the object, i.e., if it sees that the object is so and cannot be otherwise; if, when it has not this evidence, it is not determined by prejudices, etc., to form a judgment, but refrains from judging.
Everyone perceives the world differently. That alone disproves the idea that any information we process could, at any point, be infallible. Additionally, even if you demonstrated that human intellect by itself is actually infallible (something you have failed to do thus far), it would be irrelevant if other factors that make information processing less than perfect are always present anyways. The end result would be the same, regardless as to whether or not intellect is in and of itself fallible, and that result is potentially fallible conclusions.
For a faculty which is of its nature fallible, is of its nature indifferent to truth and error, and hence incapable of perceiving and distinguishing truth.
Not necessarily totally indifferent to truth and error, just not perfect in distinguishing the two.
Therefore it is incapable of a certain judgment, and thus all certitude is destroyed. In other words, if the intellect were of its nature fallible, we could always doubt whether or not it was leading us into error, for the nature of the intellect is always the same.
While that 100% certainty could never be obtained, I personally view intellect as varying from person to person, so no to that second bit about the nature of intellect always being the same.
The natural infallibility of the intellect does not need to be demonstrated, for its denial implies its affirmation; nor can it be demonstrated, for in every demonstration it would necessarily be presupposed.
Total nonsensical statement. Since when does denial imply affirmation in any regard? You have to explain yourself, or recognize that this entire bit is completely irrelevant. Also, presupposing something doesn't mean you can't demonstrate it, nor would it mean that an experiment wouldn't disprove it and show that presumption to be incorrect. It could simply not be testable.
Consequently, our proof of the thesis is not direct, but indirect. Although the human intellect is fallible "by accident," it is not so in everything. As regards truths that are immediately evident, the intellect cannot in any way be led into error, because the condition for error (i.e., ignorance or imperfect knowledge) is absent. Nor is the intellect under the influence of the will, for when immediate evidence shines in upon the intellect, all indifference ceases, and the intellect of its nature is necessitated to assent.
People can never fully separate their thought processes from their biases. So long as you view intellect as the only reliable component of the human "machine", all your arguments are completely pointless, because in the end, it wouldn't matter if you are wrong or not; human conclusions still would never be 100% certain, even if we like to think it.
We must remember that the intellect is a necessary faculty, i.e., when all the conditions requisite for acting are present, it must act. Still, in the absence of evident truth, which is the proper object of the intellect, it is not of itself necessitated to act.
Humans always are thinking to some degree, barring brain death. Even when we sleep, thoughts never cease, we just don't typically remember them. Still, you have never demonstrated that evident truth exists, is the object of intellect, or that it needs to exist to justify thinking.
In the case of false judgments, therefore, where the evidence is only seeming or apparent, it must have received its inclination to judge from without, i.e., from the will. The finiteness of our intellect merely demands that our knowledge be limited, not that our intellect be of its nature fallible. But because it is a finite intellect and does not know everything, it can, under the influence of the will, through lack of due reflection, etc., form false judgments regarding truths that are not evident. In such judgments, the intellect is lured by seeming or apparent evidence.
You just disproved yourself in the perfection of the intellect, by mentioning that it can be fooled by apparent evidence that doesn't actually exist.
In judgments, however, which the intellect forms by itself, error cannot creep in, for in these judgments the intellect is necessitated by the evidence of the objective truth.
Not everything has an objective truth. What is the opposite of a fruit loop? Is abortion moral or immoral? Good luck finding a conclusion that would satisfy everyone for either of those questions.
It is essential to the intellect that it be able to err "by accident," through lack of evidence, etc., we grant; that it err of its very nature, we deny. The trustworthiness of our intellect is not affected by the fact that many people err, teach error, and use their reasoning power to teach error. Their errors came from a neglect or violation of the rules of reasoning, or possibly from the fact that they suppose to be true something that is doubtful or false. (Epistemology - Walter F. Cunningham, S.J., Fordham Philosophy Series, N.Y. Copyright 1958, Thesis V)
In your opinion, which even if true, would not change anything in how the results of our thought processes turn out. The doubt comes from the errs of the result, not in the errs of the various components of our minds as they reach that result.
* Certitude is the firm assent to a truth without fear of error.
I would say perceived truth rather than truth, we can't ever be 100% assured that we are not in error, even if we feel that it is the case.
* Opinion is the assent to one of two contradictory judgments, with more or less fear of error.
I have seen people assert opinions with just as much "certainty" as anything else.
* Doubt is the state of the intellect suspending its assent for fear of error.
Why must you fear error? Also, we can push forward despite thinking that there is a chance we are wrong. People do it all the time.
* Ignorance is the absence of knowledge in a subject capable of possessing such knowledge.
Sure, that's a fair definition.
* Error (falsity) is the positive deformity or disagreement of the thought with the object, and consists in affirming what should not be affirmed or denying what should not be denied.
Kind of wordy, you could just say "asserting something which clashes with reality, or denying something which agrees with reality".
