Agrippan Skepticism (Humans)

by dhw, Tuesday, November 08, 2011, 16:29 (4763 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: Agrippan skepticism properly worded (as I did previously) is "The only thing we can be sure of is that we know nothing."

Same problem. Now apparently all scientific knowledge and every scientific theory is open to dispute. I’m not arguing with Agrippa – I don’t know enough about his ideas – but with you, since you’re using this indiscriminate form of scepticism only in order to reject serious consideration of psychic phenomena, whereas it actually rejects serious consideration of anything and everything. You’re concerned with “utility”. I would suggest that our agreed distinctions between truth, knowledge and belief will provide us with a much more useful framework for our discussion.

MATT: This COMPLETELY changes the power of the position because NOW we need to apply a series of justifications to any claim. The challenge offered by the "Agrippan Trilemma" is that we cannot claim knowledge, if the claim suffers from any one of these three challenges:

Hold on. If we are sure that we know nothing, ultimately it doesn’t matter what challenges have been met, as we still can’t acquire knowledge.

MATT: 1. A brute assertion without any justification and therefore arbitrary.
2. A justification that raises a further “why” question, thus resulting in an infinite regress.
3. A justification that presupposes what its supposed to establish and therefore circular.
The problem I have with the order of rank, is that psychic experiences tend to fall in all three categories, depending on the claim.

1) As I’ve reiterated ad nauseam, the psychic experiences we should concentrate on are those “justified” by the fact that the inexplicably obtained information was corroborated by third parties.
2) Virtually every phenomenon we are aware of can be subjected to an infinite why regression. Even if the Big Bang was the beginning of our universe, we can still ask why it took place. I’m not sure that “why” is always the right question anyway, since it implies teleology. Maybe “how” is better.
3) There is no presupposition here, since none of us have offered an explanation. You are continually interpreting the plea for an open-minded suspension of judgement as a “claim”. The information has been corroborated, and we don’t know how it was obtained. ALL explanations are speculative.

MATT: What means of justification should we apply to the psychic claims under question? What if the people who experienced the event are willing to consider that they suffered an illusion? Does that strengthen or weaken their claim?

What claim? The information was corroborated, and this opens up the possibility of a form of energy not known to us. Not a claim – just a possibility. The information was not an illusion. Are you claiming that it was? What, then, is your “justification” for such a claim? Probably your presupposition that all such phenomena have a material source, which puts your argument firmly in your (Agrippa’s) Category 3.

MATT: I must stress that I really AM in a questioning mood about this and am not trying to argue for argument's sake.

I have far too much respect for you, Matt, to imagine otherwise.

MATT: I've said countless times that scientific explanations are ALL provisional. This Agrippan Skepticism is WHY--because however much we think we learn, we still haven't reached "the end."

And in some matters we never will reach “the end”. That’s why we need to distinguish between truth, knowledge and belief. I’m not knocking science or scepticism. I’m only knocking your unwillingness to consider the possibility that certain psychic experiences, as well as consciousness, emotion, imagination etc., might be pointers to a form of energy inaccessible to science. Agrippan scepticism suspends judgement, but you have formed a judgement because you exclude psychic experiences from all consideration. You also continue to ignore the role played by subjective criteria in forming judgements.

MATT: I hope, that it is clear that I'm not driving towards a postmodern "nothing exists" kind of slant... but I am saying that Agrippa gives us a tool with which we can even frame a valid question... unless I'm totally off my rocker!

If you’re off your rocker then so am I, but here is what I consider to be a valid question. David has drawn our attention to an intriguing article on meditation, containing the following sentence: “Meditation can cause structural changes in the brain after as little as 11 hours of training.” What causes the meditation that causes the changes? I can only think of two answers, leading to the following: 1) the brain can cause structural changes in the brain. Or 2) an unknown form of energy can cause structural changes in the brain. The only thing we can be sure of is that we don’t know. But you exclude 2), which means that only 1) can be correct. That is not scepticism but prejudgement.