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asr comments on Skepticism about Probability - Less Wrong Discussion
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Why should I take the skeptic seriously?
I cannot picture how I would live my life without coping with uncertainty. And I know that probability follows from various plausible axiomatizations of uncertainty. (E.g, Cox's theorem)
This makes me suspect strongly that the skeptic is playing terminological games, since there's no actual substantive thing I could do differently if they convinced me.
Can you clarify here? Starting from no assumptions whatsoever, how do things such as Cox's theorem get to the basic axioms of probability from which it can be inferred that the universe probably exists, that memories are probably accurate, and that induction probably works?
That's not the work Cox's theorem does. Cox's theorem tells you that if you believe in the universe, and you're going to deal with uncertainty, and you believe some (plausible) axioms, you should come out with something mathematically identical to probability.
I've never felt the need to justify my belief in the universe or that the past was roughly as I remember it. I've never seen any viable alternative to those beliefs.
Everybody I've ever met acts as though the universe exists. And you might say "we don't really know it, or even have evidence for it." But this feels like a terminological game. Everybody I've ever met seems to have some mental activity that looks like belief, that's updated in ways that look like induction. The burden is on the skeptic to label these things and construct an ontology that explains how we live our lives. I don't feel any need to justify acting as though the world exists.
Any account which assumes we do live our lives, or proscribes ways to do so, is not sceptical at all.
Besides, your argument is circular as you assume the world's existence. It also involves argument ad populorum, appealing to popular belief rather than evidence. Showing that humans are incapable of believing X does not refute X.
I cheerfully plead guilty on all charges.
I am not a skeptic. I am unbothered by any logical circularity in my belief in objective reality. I see no reason to worry about a belief I am incapable of believing.
Honestly, I can't quite picture what it would be like to worry about such things, let alone believe them. If the universe doesn't exist, there's nothing you can do about it, so why waste energy thinking about the possibility?
Circular arguments have no correlation with reality except by chance- you may as well make something up and believe it. It would make about as much sense.
It is correct that if skepticism is correct then there is nothing we can do. Logically speaking, since probability doesn't exist there is a probability of 100%.
I don't believe this is true. A circular argument is at least internally consistent, and that prunes away a lot of ways to be inconsistent with reality.
This assumes the falsity of skepticism to begin with. Even then, it is possible for a circular argument to be internally inconsistent.
For skepticism to be correct you would need to show that it's possible to be skeptic.
It's certainly possible to pretend to be skeptic but pretending to be skeptic doesn't make you any more of a skeptic than pretending to be a duck makes you a duck.
Not so. There is no logical connection between the feasibility of a human believing something and its truth. Something can be true and impossible to believe simultaneously.
I think that's the category that Wittenstein summarizes as "things you can't talk about".
But we are talking about scepticism. It's an exception to the Wittgensteinian rule.