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fortyeridania comments on Skepticism about Probability - Less Wrong Discussion
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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.)
My conception of reason is based on determining what is true, completely and entirely irrespective of pragmatism. To call skeptical arguments irrational and call an anti-skeptical case rational would mean losing sight of the important fact that ONLY pragmatic considerations lead to the rejection of skepticism.
Rationality, to me, is defined as the hypothetical set of rules which reliably determine truth, not by coincidence, but because they must determine truth by their nature. Anything which does not follow said rules are irrational. Even if skepticism is false, believing in the world is irrational for me (and you, based on what I've heard from you and my definition) because nothing necessarily leads to a correlation between the senses and reality.
One of the rules of my rationality is that pragmatic considerations are not to be taken into account, as what is useful to believe and what is true have no necessary correlation. This applies for anything which has no necessary correlation with what is true.
What you're talking about is pragmatic, not rational. It is important to be aware of the distinction between what one may 'believe' for some reason and what is likely to be actually true, completely independent of such beliefs.