I don't know whether this is true or not; arguments could (and have) been made that such a skeptic could not exist in a non-empirical void.
:) It is the case that the coherence of the idea of the Cartesian skeptic is basically what we are debating.
I'm specifically asserting that things that are independent of empirical facts are non-social.
I think that things that are subject to empirical fact are actually subject to social mediation, but that isn't a consequence of my previous statement.
What does rejection of the assertion "If you think you can fly, then you can" have to do with the definition of socially mediated? I don't think post-modern thinking is committed to the anti-physical realism position, even if it probably should endorse the anti-physical models position. The ability to make accurate predictions doesn't require a model that corresponds with reality.
It is the case that the coherence of the idea of the Cartesian skeptic is basically what we are debating.
That might be a bit orthogonal to the discussion; I'm certainly willing to grant you the Cartesian skeptic for the duration of this thread :-)
I'm specifically asserting that things that are independent of empirical facts are non-social.
If you are talking about pure reason, don't the conclusions depend on your axioms ? If so, the results may not be social, per se, but they're certainly arbitrary. If you pick different axioms, you get different con...
Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules: