25 thoughts on “Network Stimulus 5: Scepticism”

1. Good lord I’ve been spelling it like an American.

   I’ve always associated skepticism with a sensible questioning of (often religious) unsupported claims, not necessarily an affirmation of the opposite view. I don’t know if I’d call the skepticism described in the video as extreme, but it seems to leave room for hyperbolic doubt which is the same thing I suppose. I see skepticism as something which may be applied to specific claims to knowledge, not a world-view in itself. Surely there must be justification for claims of doubt as there is for knowledge claims?

   Can I confidently claim that I’m sitting on a settee in my living room? Yes. Could I possibly be wrong? I don’t see how in any justifiable way. My experience conforms to everything that has ever been meant by “I’m sitting on a settee in my living room”; to introduce doubt would be unjustified so how “might” I be mistaken? Sure, I can imagine fantastic scenarios but there wouldn’t be any justification for accepting them. Is there a vanishingly small possibility or probability they could be real? Again, based on what? One normally assesses probability and possibility with known facts and variables.

   I agree with the idea of provisionality but not artificially holding on to some small “possibility” without any context or justification, just for the sake of it. If we have reason to change our minds about something then that’s a different thing to doubting for no reason.

   Reply

   1. Hi Dan,
      My main point is that it is impossible for sceptical arguments to be ‘extreme’ or ‘hyperbolic’, because all they imply is uncertainty, not a positive or negative position. It’s not a world-view by itself, but it is an important aspect of the Middle Way.

      The possibility of being wrong about sitting on your settee, again, isn’t about any positive evidence of being wrong, but just about the implications of being human and embodied. The fact that we’re not God and can’t have an absolute view of anything, always introduces the possibility of unknown unknowns. By acknowledging that possibility of being wrong, we are just thinking slightly differently about the practical beliefs we hold, rather than adopting wholly new ones. There is no need to hang on to that ‘possibility’, or make a big deal of it, only to note it where relevant (i.e. where we need to make a judgement). That’s not at all “for the sake of it”, but as an aspect of the Middle Way as a wider practice.

      It’s probably easier to understand the wider context of this argument about scepticism if you look at some of the interlocking other aspects of the Middle Way. There’s a set of videos on various aspects of it at https://www.middlewaysociety.org/audio/middle-way-philosophy-introductory-videos/

      Reply

      1. Hi Robert, thanks for your reply and I will take a look at more of the videos you linked to (I watched the video ‘Embodied meaning and scepticism’). There appears to be much food for thought on this site.

         One or two things do stand out in your reply which I’d like to comment on. I accept that scepticism doesn’t necessarily mean taking an opposite position and simply implies uncertainty, but I think that uncertainty needs justification as much as knowledge claims. Without context or justification, claims of uncertainty are unnecessary, or even irrational.

         I see that the context and/or justification for uncertainty in your view is provided by the idea of embodied meaning. That is to say, because we’re embodied, we can’t have access to reality. Likewise, in your reply you talk of recognition of our limitations and that we’re not God.

         I suppose that where I would disagree is that implicit (explicit even) in this idea is that there is a correct view of reality (or rather a truer, more definitive awareness of reality) that can never be known. I accept that you’re using God as a rhetorical device rather than affirming a belief, but none-the-less, there seems to be an acceptance of a definitive understanding of reality ‘out there’ so-to-speak in your framework (albeit one in which you’re disinterested).

         Where is the justification for this supposed definitive view of reality? Obviously it goes beyond our ordinary ability to correct for subjective error. My understanding of sitting in the living room has the exact same basis as my understanding of myself as a body. Why would I entertain the idea that my understanding of myself as a body with all that it entails means that I cannot know things as they really are and that what I’m experiencing in my living room may or may not in fact correspond with ‘outer reality’?

2. Hi Dan,
   The connection that often doesn’t seem to have been understood here is that if scepticism is not a position, it does not require positive justification as a position. The sceptical argument points out that there we can’t have access to any “correct view of reality that can be known”, so how can one possibly be implied? It’s just a prompt to holding our views provisionally. As long as one makes neither positive nor negative claims about what reality is like, and also refrains from using it selectively, sceptical arguments imply no such claim. The traditional philosophical assumption that this must be the case is a huge straw man.

   It’s also important here to distinguish between being able to talk about this (i.e. finding the arguments of scepticism *meaningful*) and having to hold supposedly ‘implied’ views about reality. Philosophers often seem to have confused the two, but embodied meaning offers a clear explanation of how meaning is prior to, and independent of, belief. Like anything else, we can think about scepticism meaningfully without turning it into a set of claims about reality.

   Reply

   1. Hi Robert,
      I agree that scepticism, ordinarily speaking, is not a position; It is specifically not taking a position because of insufficient justification. However, the idea that “we can’t have access to any correct view of reality that can be known” is most certainly a position. It’s not a position about what reality actually is. Agreed. But it is a position about our relationship with reality, specifically, that we cannot claim to have one.

      If scepticism does not require justification, then why the reference to embodiment? The video on embodied meaning for instance says that the thesis is a support of scepticism. Is it because scepticism as used by Middle Way doesn’t simply mean withholding judgement due to insufficient knowledge, but instead means giving assent to the idea that we’re cut off from knowing what is ultimately real? Any discussion about “ultimate reality” has a question begging bias to begin with does it not? This is what I was getting at. This interpretation of scepticism is a metaphysical position, sImilar to Cartesian scepticism perhaps. It is to say that the state of being human is not compatible with direct perception of what is real (whatever that might be). But why is this so?

      Reply

      1. Hi Dan,
         Strictly speaking, I’d put it that “we can’t have access to any view of reality that we can know to be finally correct (or incorrect)” I do agree that that’s a position, of a practical and provisional kind. It’s not an absolute position of the kind that sceptical arguments threaten. It is not the same as “We’re cut off from knowing what is ultimately real”. Strictly speaking, don’t know whether or not we are cut off in such a way.

         Not being an absolute position, it is also not a metaphysical position. It’s certainly got no resemblance to Cartesian so-called “scepticism” (actually selective use of sceptical arguments for dogmatic ends). It’s not concerned with finding out the ultimate truth of the matter, but recognises that holding views on such things is not only irrelevant and distracting, but also potentially damaging. That’s where we can get into the psychological, linguistic and neurological evidence for the negative effects of absolutisation, which justify the value of scepticism as a *practical* tool. We don’t need to finally answer *why* we can’t have access to absolutes, only to recognise in our experience both the negative effects of absolutisation, and the lack of justification for it.

3. Hi Robert,
   Am I right in saying then that your advocacy of embodiment thesis is not in defence of some form of indirect realism? Also, that your scepticism is based on the understanding that we have no way of confirming any of these types of metaphysical theories?

   I agree that there is no way to prove experientially any idea in metaphysics of course because metaphysics asks us to ponder the nature of perception itself. We can however assess the coherence of a metaphysical idea. For example I read your essay ‘Challenging misunderstandings of scepticism’ where you describe the ten modes of Pyrrhonism. These are very reasonable points and, it could be argued, challenge some of the ideas of direct realism.

   In a similar fashion, we can address the coherence of your statement “we can’t have access to any view of reality that we can know to be finally correct (or incorrect)”. I’m not saying this is a metaphysical belief but it is a philosophical position on metaphysics. The word ‘finally’ would characterise the statement as referring to the metaphysical and its saying that we can’t perceive any situation in such a way that somehow transcends the limits of subjectivity. I don’t want to put words in your mouth or create a straw man but is this a fair interpretation would you say?

   Transcending the limits of your own perspective makes sense when talking, as you would say, incrementally (meet new people, learn other customs etc etc) but when addressing metaphysical questions the idea is incoherent. There is no ultimate knowledge independent of subjectivity (the perceiving subject) because subjectivity is a prerequisite for knowledge itself, and not some sort of handicap to ‘real’ knowledge. What is it about God’s view that is better than mine, in terms of metaphysics I mean? In terms of incrementally obtainable knowledge, someone who has lived a long time and studied has a better perspective, for sure, so too someone with better sensory faculties. But in terms of metaphysical questions, a God’s eye view doesn’t refer to anything meaningful that makes my view uncertain by comparison. It’s nonsense to suggest that there’s a way of seeing something, let’s say, as if it’s not being seen by a perceiving subject. This is an insight by George Berkeley I believe.

   I don’t entirely agree with your view that absolutisation is necessarily unhealthy and that being disinterested in the ‘ultimate truth’ of the matter, or not holding on to absolutes avoids psychological damage. For example, it would not be a compassionate act to tell a child that incrementally speaking there is no evidence of an evil monster wanting to get them but that this is just a provisionally held assessment and metaphysically speaking we can’t be absolutely certain there isn’t. My tongue is only slightly in my cheek when I say this (I’m thinking the introduction of uncertainty as to the reality of other people for example).

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4. Hi Dan,
   No, I don’t hold a metaphysical theory of perception, realist or idealist, direct or indirect. Agnosticism is my response to metaphysical issues. This is indeed because we have no way of confirming (or negating) metaphysical theories. Yes, you can assess the coherence of metaphysical ideas, but that tells you nothing about their truth. Yes, I do have critical metaphysical positions (i.e. positions about metaphysics in general) that are not themselves metaphysical, because they are judged on practical criteria.

   I agree with you that we have no access to a God’s-eye view, and that a view has to be an embodied view, though I would use slightly different language to make this point. I wouldn’t say that a God’s eye view is meaningless, only that we don’t have it (I’m not a logical positivist, and don’t think that meaning is dependent on communication or verification). I also try to avoid the terms ‘subjective’ and ‘subjectivity’ because they are useless – all experience obviously comes from a point of view, so it tells us nothing. An embodied experience is just as much ‘objective’ as it is ‘subjective’, so calling it ‘subjective’ in an absolute sense just tends to put a negative spin on our incrementally justifiable experience.

   As to whether absolutisation is always unhealthy, I agree that there are emergency situations where instantaneous responses based on absolute assumptions are preferable (that’s what military drill instills, for instance). However, the justifications for this still need to be framed by a wider and slower appreciation of conditions that is not absolutised. A just war is distinguished by non-absolute thinking, even if the fighting of that war requires absolute thinking in specific situations. However, I don’t agree with your example of a child frightened by a monster, because I don’t think it’s at all helpful psychologically to tell children that monsters ‘don’t exist’ or to make them matters of evidence either. The monster is meaningful to the child, and it needs to be addressed on that level by being put into a wider context of meaning, not literalised and treated reductively. For instance, you could tell the child a story in which the monster is not destroyed, but made to look insignificant, or even reformed. People way too often tackle issues of meaning in religion and myth at the level of belief, and a lot of my work on archetypes (two books due out this year and next year) is about that.

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5. Hi Robert,
   I think a misunderstanding has crept in because I do not agree with the statement that we can have no access to a God’s-eye view. My point has been that the idea of a God’s-eye view infers something that is illogical. As such there is nothing to not have access to and therefore nothing to need to be agnostic about. I probably shouldn’t have called it meaningless though. The phrase makes sense, it just describes something illogical. Also, you’re right about coherence not telling us anything about whether it is true (for example a mathematical model in theoretical physics may be entirely coherent but nevertheless not relate to anything real). What I should’ve said was that metaphysical ideas can be judged on their logical validity.

   I must confess, I’m still confused by Middle Way philosophy. I find the emphasis on an embodied understanding of ourselves and the world attractive. It seems compatible with the ordinary scepticism of out-of-this-world claims but not the non-selective, full-blooded global scepticism as you’ve described it elsewhere. There appears to be two strands to Middle Way and I don’t see how they twist together very well. One, a practical, down-to-earth way of being and knowing which has no interest in metaphysics. And the other, a highly intellectual approach to scepticism which strives for a consistent approach to all metaphysical beliefs.

   Why would someone with an experience-based, embodied understanding of themselves and the world be agnostic about whether or not there is a book ‘ultimately’ on the table? The only reason I can think of is that they perceived embodiment as some sort of limitation which denied access to a God’s-eye view of the book (and the table). This strikes me as something of an indirect realist position instead, which you say you don’t hold. Hence the confusion.

   [NB. Indirect realism is said to lead to scepticism about the reality of the outside world. Not doubt, just uncertainty.]

   When I concurred that there is no way of experientially validating ideas relating to the field of metaphysics, I was making a logical point (metaphysics addresses ideas about perception itself and so referencing the content of perception is not informative). I am not a sceptic though. My view is not based on the idea that we can’t access a God’s-eye view as yours appears to be. I can’t help but think that scepticism of the type you advocate is based upon unacknowledged metaphysical assumptions.

   I’ll understand if you feel you’ve said all you want to on this, I’m just describing where I’m at that’s all. I liked your reply about the monster by the way; of not dismissing the child’s sense of meaning but telling a better story instead.

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6. Hi Dan,
   I do feel that your comments are worth engaging with. I appreciate that you’re taking the trouble to try to understand the Middle Way approach, but I’d say that there are various unjustifiable assumptions (ones that I find commonly in analytic philosophy and more widely in academia) getting in the way.

   One of these is about the role of logic. You’ve agreed with me that coherence does not imply truth, which implies that logic is only a measure of coherence that is only ever as good as its premises. At the same time you say that “the idea of a God’s-eye view infers something that is illogical” and thus that there is “nothing to need to be agnostic about”. I can make no sense of this, and it seems to have nothing to do with logic as a coherence-checking method, rather ‘logic’ apotheosised into a set of unquestionable conventional assumptions, as it often seems to be in analytic philosophy (and in popular speech too, where ‘logic’ is weirdly one of the vaguest terms around). Firstly, ideas are not logically inferred – it is only beliefs or propositions that can be inferred. Ideas are merely the building blocks of beliefs, and are formed through a process of association rather than reasoning. Secondly, if what you really mean by “illogical” is “unhelpful” in some practical sense, then it is the belief that we can have a God’s eye view that is unhelpful, not the idea of one. We can only be agnostic about beliefs, not ideas, and once it’s clear that we have practical reasons rather than ‘logical’ ones for avoiding the belief that we can have a God’s eye view, then the point of agnosticism is also clear.

   You still seem to be making a false distinction between so-called ‘practical’ (actually partial) scepticism and consistently applied so-called ‘intellectual’ scepticism. This is a false distinction that goes back to Hume and the whole idea that scepticism needs to be ‘mitigated’ – which was due to a misunderstanding of its implications in the first place. It’s a distinction that seems to be drilled into everyone who studies the subject, because of the very formatting of syllabuses from the beginning. But consistently applied scepticism is not just ‘intellectual’, just more practical in the longer-term than selective or merely ‘localised’ scepticism, because it makes us aware of a wider range of uncertainty and thus works against confirmation bias. Someone with a practical view of the world needs to extend their scepticism to ‘unknown unknowns’ as well as ‘known unknowns’ simply for practical adequacy. The debate about climate change, for instance, tells us that, with climate change denialists calling themselves ‘sceptics’, but using scepticism selectively because they don’t consistently apply sceptical argument to their own limiting assumptions about the data they should use or its interpretation. This is not only a thoroughly practical issue, but one that threatens us all in a completely practical way.

   I’m guessing that you must have had some training in Philosophy? I’ve done a Ph.D. in the subject, but my views are deeply interdisciplinary and just as influenced by Buddhist practice and psychology. I’m often dismayed by the way that philosophical training seems to actually leave its graduates with an inability to question the assumptions that have been instilled into them (under the pretence of examining assumptions), such as representationalism about meaning, the fact-value distinction, scientific naturalism rather than scientific method, the habit of imposing absolutised false distinctions on everything, an unquestionable belief in ‘rationality’, and the misunderstanding of the implications of sceptical argument. Particularly, I’ve come to regard analytic philosophy as a dogmatic culturally-specific ideology that is all the more damaging for its false assumptions of cultural neutrality. At the same time, philosophical training can be liberating by providing strong critical thinking skills that can be applied to philosophical questions – but the liberation seem to stop by graduate level, where it gets gradually replaced by ‘deformation professionelle’.

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   1. Hi Robert,
      Yes, I agree that ‘logically valid’ does not necessarily imply ‘true’. One can come up with endless syllogisms which don’t even pretend to describe truth. As you say, a logical statement’s relationship to truth is only as good as its premises. I’m guilty of using the word logic in a sloppy way in my statement about the God’s-eye view when maybe ‘rational’ is more suitable. You seem to have a stricter definition of ‘idea’ than me too; I’ve used it to mean simply a notion that someone might have. Let me try to make myself clearer:

      My understanding of the phrase God’s-eye view is that it implies perception that is not just superior (which would be incremental), but absolute and definitive. By which I mean of a kind that observes things as-they-are-in-themselves so-to-speak. Now, my understanding of your position is that it is not possible to have (access to) this God’s-eye view, and therefore agnosticism about things as-they-are-in-themselves is desirable, necessary and rational. My position is that God’s-eye view is an irrational notion and saying we can or can’t have it doesn’t make sense.

      John Locke was interested in ‘things-as-they-are-in-themselves’. He described what he thought must be qualities possessed by an object which are independent of observation (length, breadth etc), and those which appear intrinsic to the object, but which are actually a subjective properties dependent on the observer. Is grass actually green, or is green an experience of an observing subject that is associated with grass but not really a property of it as-it-is-in-itself. He speculated that objects as-they-are-in-themselves must be forever a metaphysical unknown.

      It was George Berkeley who pointed out the fallacy of considering things-as-are-in-themselves as having any quality as an object, without a perceiving subject. In other words, there is no such thing as what something looks like independent of any observer, it’s conceptual nonsense. If there appears to be a book on the table, I don’t need to worry myself as to what such a scene is “actually” like, or resign myself to agnosticism about it due to my inability to have a definitive picture (Locke’s metaphysical unknown or Middle Way’s inability to access a God’s-eye view). There isn’t one. You might well say in response that an agnostic doesn’t have any opinion of what the definitive picture is. This I accept, but the point is of course that you must view the notion of a definitive picture as valid in some way, otherwise why would you say you can’t have access to it?

      The best I can come up with by way of illustration is if someone argued that we can know how big the universe is. Fine if they were talking about the extent of space relative to a human being for example. But not if they meant in an absolute sense. Size relative to what? It doesn’t make sense. But, here’s the thing, it would be unjustified to say that we can’t know the absolute size of the universe as well, for much the same reason.

      As for selective versus consistent scepticism, I would probably agree with you that there doesn’t need to be a distinction made, but I do make a distinction between justified and unjustified claims. Often, this manifests in subtle misuse of language; such as the use of the word ‘can’t’ as in “we can’t (or don’t) know….”. This makes a statement about reality by asserting an actual state of ignorance about something. “I can’t (or don’t) know what’s over there” infers that there is in fact an over there and that I am ignorant in relation to it. Claims of ignorance need justifying as much as knowledge claims.

      On the other hand, no one needs to justify hypothetical statements; these are just descriptions of what would logically follow from certain premises. “If this, then that”. “If I couldn’t know something, then I wouldn’t know it”. This is logically correct, a tautology even, and I don’t dispute it. It simply describes what logically follows from the premises but it says nothing whatsoever about reality. Known unknowns can be spoken of as real things but unknown unknowns are always hypothetical and should be spoken of in such terms. Hypothetical unknowns lead to hypothetical ignorance, not actual ignorance.

      Thank you but no, I’ve no training in philosophy (although as you might agree from what you’ve said, training in philosophy seems like something of a contradiction in terms) but I do enjoy philosophical and political discussions.

      Reply

7. Hi Dan,
   I think the problem here is probably that you are arguing in terms of some sort of “validity”: you talk about “making sense” and being “valid in some way”, but are now saying that this is not logical validity, and it seems that you agree with me that it’s not an absence of meaning either. So I really don’t know what this “validity” is supposed to be. It sounds a bit like a hangover from logical positivism to me, where claims were supposed to be “nonsense” if they were not “verifiable”, or perhaps a Wittgensteinian approach where the meaning of terms depended on them being used as a medium of exchange in a language game (though I think Wittgenstein was talking about communication, not meaning as we experience it). But for me, terms are meaningful if we have the embodied conditions to find them meaningful (primarily synaptic connections), and “validity” is a logical judgement about the consistency of propositions.

   My approach is not pursued on that level, because it is practical. My “can’t” is a practical “can’t”. We can’t have a God’s eye view, not because of mysterious notions of “validity” but because we have bodies, and experience the meaning of the language we are using through those bodies. This produces meaningful language through a complex process of association and metaphorical extension, elaborated by Lakoff and Johnson. We then form propositional beliefs by assembling that meaningful language, in ways that are meaningful to us because of their continuing live relationship with our experience as organisms with drives, sensual limits, processing limits and cultural contexts. Absolute claims have developed in that context as shortcuts, even though their meaningfulness still depends on the body. They can work as shortcuts because they bind groups, enable power to be exercised, and trigger the repression of alternatives that might interfere with immediate group goals. They assume a God’s eye view in order to mobilise us into a practical stance where we act as though we had one – for instance, to fight an enemy who is assumed to be absolutely bad as long as the fight continues.

   To say that practically we “can’t” have such a view is to point out how that view is a product of that shortcut process, and instead to encourage us to stay with our embodied experience of a more adequate incremental judgement of conditions. It’s to point out that even though we are in the habit of overlaying embodied and associative meaning with the idea that meaning is propositional, that underlying embodied meaning offers the more basic condition. There’s a basic delusion in the view that we “can” have such a God’s eye view.

   Regardless of the “validity” you may be talking about, absolutisation is an extremely common phenomenon, a maladaptation that I see as underlying all our problems as a species. I think the philosophical issues can be answered by adopting practical criteria for judging philosophical issues, but there is also a danger of just going round in philosophical circles without addressing the practical issues when philosophical criteria become an end in themselves.

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   1. Hi Robert,
      I want to do justice to your last reply without just saying the same thing in a different way. I think maybe your emphasis on ‘practical’ is the key.

      Firstly, I’ll just respond to your criticism of my use of certain words.
      I said ‘meaningful’ because indeed, the phrase God’s-eye view has meaning to me otherwise I’d be asking for a definition ( perhaps I should have done). In the same way I can understand what someone is trying to convey when they use religious terms, for example, even when I don’t think those terms describe notions which are reasoned through very well (of course if they’re poetry or metaphor they don’t need to be). ‘Valid’ has a strict meaning (conclusion follows from premises – I shouldn’t have used it)). Logical has a strict meaning (valid deductive argument). Since the phrase God’s-eye view hadn’t been described as a deductive argument I shouldn’t have called it illogical). I think I’m on safe ground with reasonable or rational and ‘makes sense’ is common in ordinary parlance and means much the same thing.

      But what I think would be helpful to me is to ask this:

      Would you assert that your arguments in favour of (universal) scepticism are something I’m compelled to accept if I was committed to reason? Or would you make no such assertion but simply make a rigorous defence of a misunderstood philosophy because you reason that it has value in helping us lead a better, more ethical life?

      Or maybe you’d phrase it differently?

      Reply

8. Hi Dan,
   I don’t know where “compulsion” comes into it. That’s another kind of analytic philosophy language that I find quite baffling. And what does it mean to be “committed to reason”? Reason is another term for logic, i.e. the relationship of entailment between propositions. It’s a tool for testing consistency. Being “committed” to it sounds like saying that one’s committed to one’s spade when one is really committed to the gardening one plans to do with it. I’m committed to the Middle Way, which involves improving my judgements to make them more adequate, but those judgements are based on assumptions, not “reason”. Improving them involves “emotion” just as much as (and interdependent with) “reason”. I’m not committed by a reasoning process, but by the values that have refined and developed the basic desires that my body creates.

   On ethical vocabulary I’d be habitually much warmer, though actually there are just as many ways of misunderstanding such vocabulary. Yes, I think we ‘ought’ to practise the Middle Way, but not because there’s some basis of obligation separate from the values we develop and actually feel. The ‘ought’ is best interpreted as a stretch, or a motive to move forward from a worse judgement to a better one, based on the imaginative comparison of possible judgements. I don’t “reason” that, I feel it, and then compare my feelings. There are several competing ways of making moral judgements (consequential, deontological, virtue), but any of them can be used to prompt us to consider alternative possible judgements that would stretch our ethics in practice.

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   1. Hi Robert,
      By commitment to reason I mean being prepared to amend my point of view in the light of rational argument and logic. By compelled I mean obliged to do so if the argument is, well, compellingly rational.

      In ‘Challenging misunderstandings of scepticism’ you make a series of arguments that you reason to be “irrefutable” and then survey “unsuccessful” arguments against them.

      So what I mean is:
      Would you assert that if I was prepared to amend my views in the light of rational argument, then really I should be a sceptic because the arguments for scepticism are irrefutable?

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9. Hi Dan,
   The conditions for being able to amend one’s point of view do include some that might emerge from checking ideas for consistency, but also depend heavily on mental state, emotional state (especially stress levels), imagination and experience of different possible alternatives. This is provisionality, and there are lots of further resources on that that you can look at on this site. ‘Reason’ forms a pretty small part of provisionality. I think philosophers can only continue to talk about it in this way by ignoring psychology (which they are unfortunately well practised in doing).

   By saying that sceptical arguments are irrefutable, I mean that there are no arguments against them that don’t dogmatically presuppose some sort of certainty. The paper you mention was directed at philosophers and thus concentrates on the justification of argument. However, this is just to try to establish scepticism for practical purposes.

   Your final question seems to be about the relationship between scepticism and provisionality. So, yes, I do think that each requires the other. Provisionality depends on people recognising the uncertainty of their previous views (as well as considering alternatives), whilst scepticism, when applied even-handedly to both positive and negative absolute claims, leaves us with provisional ones as the only alternative in between. However, that mutual requirement is in part a practical one arising from the embodied situation of someone who accepts one or the other.

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10. Hi Robert,
    Do you mean the practical benefits of scepticism or the practical benefits of Middle Way in the face of irrefutable scepticism? I’m just trying to understand how you view scepticism. Whether you view scepticism as: a) an intellectually unavoidable stance (as evidenced by you as an academic addressing other philosophers in terms of the justification of arguments and presenting an irrefutable case); or b) as an advisable way of approaching any claim to certainty for its benefits in helping us lead a more ethical life (as evidenced by your comment about establishing scepticism for practical purposes). Of course these may coincide. It may be that the most logical epistemological position is also an ideal foundation for ethical self-development.

    Thank you for your continued patience. I’m just trying to reconcile the two strands again. I don’t agree that arguing against the nine arguments for scepticism in your paper must be based on dogmatic presupposed certainty though. It might even be the other way round. For example you summarise the ten modes of Pyrrhonism by describing our perceptions as relative. Fine, but then you say “this means that any perception may be in error”. This doesn’t follow though (unless one assumes indirect realism). I’ve mentioned Berkeley’s argument that perception is inherently relative and that there’s no ‘metaphysical unknown’ to justify the word error. This isn’t a dogmatic assertion of Berkeley’s position you understand, just pointing out the assumptions in your conclusion.

    Or take the dream argument; you very reasonably dismiss the suggestion that we’re might be dreaming all through time as this creates a problem with distinguishing between states even in principle. But the same argument could be made about not distinguishing between the experience of the waking state and the actual experience of dreams that inspired the labels in the first place. Dreams are a different experience to waking reality otherwise we wouldn’t be talking about having dreamt, but about having gone somewhere or done something etc. The dream argument unjustifiably infers that two types of experience are identical and then asks us “how do you know it’s not the other one”.

    Neither of these arguments I’ve made dogmatically presuppose some sort of certainty. They’re just criticisms of the claim of uncertainty.

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11. Hi Dan,
    Re. your first paragraph, definitely both. the most justifiable epistemological position can’t be isolated from ethics and practice.

    Re. “this means that any perception may be in error”, I think you just need to practise charitable interpretation here. Almost any statement can be interpreted either metaphysically or provisionally if you try hard enough. From my approach in general I hope you now know enough to interpret it provisionally! “May” for me is just a marker of uncertainty in that sentence. The same point applies to the dream argument. As to whether you yourself mean to imply certainty in the way you discuss sceptical arguments – well that’s up to you and depends on exactly what the language means to you as an embodied, particular person. My criticisms in the paper are directed against the norm of Western philosophical interpretation as I understand it.

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    1. Hi Robert,
       I wasn’t saying that you were making an absolute claim, but an unjustified claim. I was just pointing out that perception being relative doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a potential error. For example if the water feels warm to you and cool to me, why would that indicate that one or both of our perceptions may be in error? We’d only say that if we assumed indirect realism. It even says as much in the introduction to the ten modes: “reasons why our senses do not necessarily give us correct information about objects”. This is what I think scepticism should be. Pointing out when a claim is unjustified; even claims of uncertainty.

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12. Hi Dan,
    We seem to have different understandings of “potential”. The water feeling warm to me and cool to you is just one of many indications that we can’t claim a necessary relationship between an experience and a claimed “truth” (i.e. the water really is warm or cold). It seems obvious to me that there is always a potential error in any case, but the sceptical arguments aim to remind those who assume ‘truths’ dogmatically of this. The potential error comes from the mismatch between language that expresses a God’s eye view and justifications that are finite.

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    1. Hi Robert,
       I think I see where you’re coming from here. The arguments are addressed to those who might dogmatically believe that they have the correct information about objects and you’re showing reasons as to why this particular assumption may be unjustified.

       Is this generally the approach you take? What I mean is: do you challenge dogmatism by imaginatively entering into the perspective of those whom you are addressing? This might make sense of your continued use of the phrase “God-eye view”. I’ve quibbled about it because I thought it exposed unjustified assumptions on your part. Do you use it to discourage dogmatically held views of those for whom the phrase might be meaningful rather than because you hold to the assumptions it presupposes?

       My issue with Middle Way’s scepticism is that I thought it was advocating uncertainty, and here’s the crucial point, even to those who don’t assert metaphysical certainty. I’m not talking about people who consciously hold their views provisionally, but those who just accept the world as it presents itself. For most people, the book is on the table means just that. They don’t mean it provisionally, that’s true; but by the same token they’ve never even heard of absolutisation or metaphysics.

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13. Hi Dan, Yes, indeed, I do try to enter imaginatively into the perspective of those I’m addressing, so as to distinguish between dogmas and helpful beliefs in their terms. That’s one reason why I’ve written separate books on the Middle Way in Christianity and in Buddhism, and my next forthcoming one addresses Jungians.

    As I’ve already said, though, I don’t think the use of a phrase can presuppose anything. It’s beliefs that have presuppositions, not ideas or terms.

    I agree with you that there are many people who believe in ‘common sense’ or naive realism dogmatically (if that’s what you’re saying). It’s obviously not necessary to have heard of absolutisation to hold absolutised beliefs. Nor do absolutised beliefs have to be consistent or philosophically formulated. Donald Trump, for instance, seems to be an absolutist not because of ideological commitment, but because of an absolute belief in the priority of his own gratification over anything else whatsoever.

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    1. Hi Robert,

       Maybe I mean unquestioningly. I don’t really mean dogmatically as I associate dogmatism with asserting something in spite of contrary evidence. I’m just saying that the common sense position is one I would not challenge or ask for justification.

       Have you heard of Patrick Harpur? He writes about ‘The Otherworld’ which he interprets as real, but not literal. It encompasses things like UFO encounters, faeries, etc but with a quite lofty Jungian interpretation. These encounters tend to defy any literal interpretation put on them. Just thought I’d mention it as I found it fascinating and there may even be something Middle Wayish about it.

       You’re not a Trump fan then! Have you thought of doing a Middle Way for progressives and conservatives? There doesn’t appear to be much of a middle ground these days does there?

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       1. I don’t know Patrick Harpur, but on searching him, his work seems to involve lots of claims about “reality” – unfortunately all too common amongst Jungians who don’t combine archetypal appreciation with critical thinking.

          I have written a fair amount about politics, though not as yet a whole book. For instance here is an article about conservatism https://www.middlewaysociety.org/how-not-to-be-a-conservative/, and here is the first of two talk on depolarising politics: https://www.middlewaysociety.org/depolarising-politics-talk-1/

14. I’ll take a look. Much thanks for the conversation Robert. Best wishes.

    Reply

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