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Mostly speaking to the question of when a skepticism is justified and how we might justify an initial skeptical attitude. It definitely does enter into territory of apologetics, but I'm wondering if anyone has taken the time to spell out when credulity is warranted and when skepticism is warranted in a way that doesn't arbitrarily privilege one or the other.
My thoughts are not to construct a "final answer" so much as to argue that there must exist a burden on skepticism or else we can only escape Munchussen through fallacious means such as special pleading. I'm wondering if anyone has taken the time to spell out what a claim is, where and when a burden exists, and when and where epistemic maxims like "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" are legitimate and when they are simply an attempt to engage in special pleading. Stuff along those lines.I've seen a variety of attempts, and from different angles of approach, but honestly, I don't think anyone can construct a 'final answer' to this except in the more general uses of the term seen in the Philosophy of Law because of what I call our "existential situatedness." There are too many conceptual complications to reach a concrete conclusion one way or another.
But, sure. I can toss out different epistemic sources if you like to spend time juggling.
Oh, absolutely. But the question for me isn't "does God exist?" but "Is there a rational basis for belief?" which starts by examining the issue of burden of proof to establish that a blanket preference for skepticism is indefensible, then examining what species of argument could satisfy that burden and a survey of attempts at such an argument, and then moving into the analytic-synthetic divide and the its relationship with the ontological argument.
Yeah, my aim is more to highlight that the "evidential" burden for either skepticism or credulity must either be none or absolute with no middle ground. To give carte blanche to skepticism gives no escape from Munchaussen, so the rational question is not what we can prove but how to move the needle. I'm more or less aiming to set up a reason to take Pascal's wager seriously.
This is kind of what I am trying to look into. The central objection I am relying on is that the very fact that their epistemic framework boils down to definitions that are accepted on the basis of a sense of self evidence means that their whole framework can be summarily dismissed by rejecting the assertion of their definitions. If analytic statements can provide us with an opinion of contingent facts, then we must consider some ontological argument as valid.
I'm thinking the discussion must begin more in the realm of conception than in discussing particulars. Our criteria for investigating particulars is bound to be tied into our beliefs about whether or not God exists, so to try to take a particular battlefield is going to be won or lost on priors.
In what I wrote above, I came in afterward and added an additional statement to it that I'm not sure you saw, so I'll just copy and paste it here for your consideration because I think it has some bearing upon your project: One example of [epistemic] complication here is shown when some one person simply doesn't have the felt motivation to care about an inquiry that you and I think they should normally care about. This is one additional problem, and we might call it the Modern Problem of Neuro-contingencies, afforded now by neuroscience (and even by some aspects of Christian theology), which then pushes some amount of existential factors into the mess.
I understand what you're saying here and on one part of it, I think you're right. However, unfortunately, analytic statements don't always reflect what they claim to reflect as 'truth claims' and may not measure up deductively. So, while we might be able to make some headway doing what you're wanting to do with them, they may not by necessity offer the default of providing validity (or soundness) to certain ontological arguments. If we try to use Kant's thinking, then while we can consider we have particular justification for positing certain necessary truths, they end up being more of a Ghost-In-The-Machine and that's not really the sort of sense of establishing our justifications for belief that anyone today wants to own.
A story:
It seems to me that burden of proof is an object of discussions and not something that belongs to existential claims. So those who have no motivation to enter into the discussion have no bearing on where the burden of proof lies, only those who want to move the needle in one direction or the other.
Yes, I'm aware. But the set-up is complicated by the fact that scientific modeling is generally assumed to have shifted the case so far along that Pascal's wager is essentially nothing more than buying a lottery ticket with astronomical odds of not coming into fruitition.
Analytic statements are true by definition, the issue being that they do not say anything about what is real. But what my project intends to establish is that any epistemic framework is going to begin with something being defined as true because, as far as I can tell, Munchaussen actually collapses into two options. Either dogma or epistemic paralysis through infinite regress. We either take something as a brute fact, or we can keep asking, "But how do I know that?" So we either embrace radical skepticism, or we accept that something about reality is true by definition. Which is reason to take seriously the premises of the ontological argument as some ontological argument must be accepted, either for God or some godless natural order, so Kant's objection can be dismissed as can Gaunilo's. The tricky part is bridging the apologist's gap and moving from a generic panentheistic deity to God of the Bible.
There is a caveat that separates me from Presuppositional position, in that I don't believe that the Sensus Divinus is empirically demonstrable. I share some kinship with presuppositional arguments, but I'm more concerned with the question of justification in the ordinary sense and not for God in particular. I'm interested in spelling out what it means for something to be a claim, what we mean by justification, what epistemic maxims and techniques are appropriate and why they have force, and similar. More of a complete breakdown of the very epistemic enterprise, a sort of meta-epistemics. I'm not sure who to even begin with in such a project, since my background is far more developed in theology and exegesis than in general epistemics.
I think you may be looking for the Church History subforum, or Visual Arts. The latter forum would be appropriate for discussion of works of art in historical church buildings and posting pictures.
That I think is practiced by the Anglicans, Episcopalians, and I think the Catholics and Orthodox might too? Eh.
That's not detrimental to my case, in fact my statements largely depend on that being true. I'm not interested in positing what is true, or what the right way to get at the truth is. I'm just interested in challenging the arbitrary acceptance of skeptical priority as an unqualified default. My main point is that, while minimal, even skepticism requires some sort of justification. And then the question becomes how we might go about establishing such justification, and seeing if there have even been attempts to do so and exploring the faults of those attempts.
Yes, but let's not pretend as if there isn't a privileged position in academic philosophy.
I'm more interested in attack than I am in defense. My aim is not to establish the way people ought to think, merely to establish that we need more than an argument from ignorance or bare assertion to insist on a skeptical default.
Yeah, which is kind of the point. We either begin with something that must be true, or we end up paralyzed by an endless challenge of "how do I justify that?" The questions never end, so at some point we have to say "That's just how it is." Which, if legitimate, means we must take existence to be a predicate and accept that something is by definition true. If it's fair for the skeptic, it's fair for the believer. But we must keep in mind my aim is not to satisfy the skeptic's demands for answers, but to challenge the appropriateness of their approach. if we must be fully justified before we can adopt a position as skeptics insist, then they cannot move to any sort of metaphysical claim without violating their own purported commitments.
Can you provide me an example of some Skeptic who presses their form of skepticism in the way that you're citing. There are different degrees of Skepticism and even Hume recognized this. Citing an example of the challenge you're wanting to put a crack into may help me identify some Christian philosopher or other who has said something substantive in regard to this issue.
Oh, I never pretend to do so. I just hold folks accountable for their negligences all the way around.
Russell's teapot-like arguments, the common canard of "you can't prove a negative", and arguments along those lines. Basically the assertion that the one making the "positive" claim bears the burden. My main point of contention is that in ordinary discourse we don't routinely accept skepticism as the appropriate response to every claim, we require some kind of reason for skepticism. If my neighbor tells me about their friend from work Mark, whom I have never met, my first response is not to demand that my neighbor prove to me Mark exists because I have never met him. I have to have a reason to not believe Mark exists.
My skepticism is more a rhetorical matter, because I am more of a pragmatist in that I see "knowledge" as an unattainable goal and instead rely on a tentative model-based epistemology. I don't think skepticism is tenable to live by, but I do think that the skeptical position isn't given enough weight in most discussions of "truth"...we are far too quick to accept that because it is necessary to adopt either a circular justification or a dogmatic one in order to escape infinite regress that we let whatever it is that we think is the right fit for an axiom off and accept assertion as a valid grounds for acceptance. So I maintain that I am a skeptic, but recognize that skepticism is fundmentally untenable. My point is simply to reverse the question from "why should I believe?" to "why shouldn't I believe?"
Fair enough
Much appreciated
