RichardKennaway comments on Skepticism about Probability - Less Wrong Discussion
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Have you ever seen such a proposition? I don't think that I have. Not a single sage of recorded history has been able to come up with something whose self-evidence convinced everyone. And if someone is unconvinced, how shall you convince them, if it's "self-evident"?
What is this? If you have any unjustified belief, you are identical with someone who pays no heed to rationality at all?
And what does this have to do with probability in particular? You originally asked about probability, so I recommended works on the foundations. Even if none of them persuade you that they are a sound basis, at least you will be informed about the arguments and conceptual structures that people have created, at which point you may be able to productively search for something better.
But now you have broadened this to a requirement for a refutation of the Evil Demon/Matrix scenario. I see no possibility of any such refutation, because sufficient powers can always be attributed to the Demon/Skynet/Lizard Overlords/NSA to explain away any putative refutation. If there is a refutation, you will have to find it yourself.
I mentioned John C. Wright earlier, and there is more to say. He finds the ultimate foundation in the uncaused cause that is the Originator of all causation, the Good that needs no justification because it is the Originator of all that is good, proves their existence by the argument against infinite regress, and recognises them in the world as the Christian God, specifically as preached by the Roman Catholic Church. You could work out from that what his self-evident truths might be, for him to build these arguments on, but his actual self-evident truths are the religious visions that he had. He was never argued into any of this by the arguments that he presents (and neither am I, an atheist).
Self-evidence is a subjective property of a belief. The experience of self-evidence is the absence of experience of justification for the thing believed.
I explained my context was the refutation of philosophical scepticism in general- what I was after should have been clear.
1- You assume that the criterion of self-evidence should be based on being universally convincing. Why should this necessarily be so? Self-evidence comes when the contrary proposition simply doesn't make sense, as it were (simplistic example: free will). The question is how to deal with that with regards to demonstrating the validity of probability/induction. 2- Because the fundamental starting assumption is unjustified, we are no more justified in believing we know the truth than the people who believe in God on faith.
"Free will" is a concept, not a proposition. What is the proposition about free will that you are claiming to be self-evident, and its opposite "not making sense"?