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Carinthium comments on Skepticism about Probability - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (129)
It means we cannot be justified in knowing anything, and are isolated from any objective reality. The basic rules of probability from which we assume the reliability of memory, senses etc are taken on religious style faith.
I've been trying to find a way around this, but you are probably right.
I mean I am checking and and again just in case because I don't like the idea that scepticism is right.
I'm not familiar with that notion.
Justification depends on a function that tells you whether something is justified. I can easily justify a belief with the fact that a teacher taught it to me.
In what sense do you think it can not be justified and why do you think that framework of justification has some sort of reality to it?
Something is epistemically justified if, as you said, it has some sort of reality to it not by coincidence but because the rule reliably shows what is real. I am trying to find a framework with some sort of reality to it, and that requires dealing with scepticism.
If you don't believe in reality in the first place how could you check whether something has reality?
You need to look at reality to check whether something is real. There no way around it. Your idea for justification has no solid basis in reality if you don't believe in it in the first place.
You don't get to be certain about justification and be skeptic about reality. There are certain types of Buddhism who you could call skeptic about reality but they would also not accept the concept of justification in which you happen to believe.
I don't believe in the reality around us, not on a rational level- that does not mean I don't believe there are things which are real(there may be, anyway). I just have no idea what they are.
Justification is DEFINED in a certain manner, and I think the best one to use is the definition I have given. That is how I can be certain about justification (or at least what I am calling justification) and a skeptic about reality.
OK, let's skip to (4), as that might help you formulate your skepticism more precisely. "Maximum entropy" has more than one meaning, but here it basically means a belief-state that assigns an equal probability to all possibilities. In other words, it's the probability distribution you would use if you had zero information. For example, if I ask you whether glappzug is thuxreq or not thuxreq, you can't do better than to just pick an answer randomly. You have no clue to go on, so just get the choice over with and move on.
A thorough-going skeptic, it seems to me, would have to think that all choices are just like that one. Even when we think we have information, we don't really (because we could be dreaming!). Therefore there's no reason to discriminate between any pair of alternatives, or among any set of them.
When you say "skepticism wins," do you mean that for any set of alternative claims, there is never any reason to discriminate among them?
Probability itself being somehow valid is something I do not think rationally legitimate. Therefore, in a sense yes but in a sense no.
In that case, I don't know how to proceed until you formulate your skepticism more precisely. What exactly is it that is not justified, if "skepticism wins"?
Nothing is justified if skepticism wins. Unless we have irrational faith in at least one starting assumption (and it is irrational since we have no basis for making the assumption), it is impossible to determine anything except our lack of knowledge.
So on thought, yes. There is never any valid rational reason to discriminate between possibilities because nothing can demonstrate the Evil Demon Argument false.
OK. I am still not exactly sure what you mean by "justification." Let's put this in more concrete terms. Imagine the following:
What does the Evil Demon Argument (and all in its family) say about the rationality of each choice, compared to the others (assuming it says anything at all)?
What advice would you personally give someone sitting at such a dinner table, and why?
The Evil Demon Argument says that you don't know that it's actually those three things before you. Further, it says that you don't know that eating the rice will actually have the effects you're used to, or that your memories can be used to remember your preferences. Etc etc...
On reason, I would give no advice. On faith, I would say to have the rice.
So, which advice would you give?
In the real world, it depends. With most people in practice, assuming they have enough of an understanding of me to know I am a skeptic on these things and are implicitly asking for one or the other, I give that. Therefore I normally give advice on faith.
I guess it's hard for me to understand what's irrational about advising them to eat the rice (as you indicated you would do). It seems like the only sane choice. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "faith", but if advising people to eat the rice is based on it, then it must be compatible with rationality, right?
Right--choose the rice, assuming you (or they) want to live. That seems like the only sane choice, doesn't it?
Maybe this is a problem of terminology. You seem to be using the labels "faith" and "reason" in certain ways. Especially, you seem to be using the label "reason" to refer to the following of certain rules, but which you can't see how to justify.
Maybe instead of focusing on those rules (whatever they may happen to be), you should focus on why the rules are valuable in the first place (if they are). Presumably, it's because they reliably lead to success in achieving one's goals. The worth of the rules is contingent on their usefulness; it's not rational to believe only things you can prove with absolute certainty, because that would mean believing nothing, doing nothing, dying early and having no fun, and nobody wants that!
(In case you haven't read it, you might want to check you Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality, from 2008.)