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g_pepper comments on My Skepticism - Less Wrong Discussion
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You obviously could not be thinking if you do not exist, right?
I don't know, as I don't truly know if I am thinking. Even if you proved I was thinking, I still don't see why I would believe I existed, as I don't know why I should trust my reasoning.
You may not know you are thinking, but you think you are thinking. Therefore, you are thinking.
I don't actually think I am thinking. I am instead acting as if I thought I was thinking. Of course, I don't actually believe that last statement, I just said it because I act as if I believed it, and I just said the previous sentence for the same reasoning, and so on.
It seems to me that this statement implies your existence; after all, the first two words are an existential declaration.
Furthermore, just as (per Descartes) cognition implies existence, so it would seem that action implies existence, so the fact that you are acting in a certain way implies your existence. Actio, ergo sum.
But how can I know that I'm acting?
You stated that you were acting:
I took you at your word on that :).
Anyway, it seems to me that you either are thinking, think you are thinking, are acting, or think you are acting. Any of these things implies your existence. Therefore, you exist.
I think we're not on the same page. I'll try to be more clear. I don't really believe anything, nor do I believe the previous statement, nor do I believe the statement before this, nor the one before this, and so on. Essentially, I don't believe anything I say. That doesn't mean what I say is wrong, of course; it just means that it can't really be used to convince me of anything. Similarly, I say that I'm acting as if I accepted the premises, but I don't believe in this either.
Also, I'm getting many dislikes. Do you happen to know why that it? I want to do better.
It seems to me that at this point, your skepticism is of the Cartesian variety, only even more extreme. There's a reason that Descartes' "rationalism" was rejected, and the same counterargument applies here, with even greater force.
What's the counterargument? Googling is didn't find it.
Basically, Cartesian rationalism doesn't really allow you to believe anything other than "I think" and "I am", which is not the way to go if you want to hold more than two beliefs at a time. Your version is, if anything, even less defensible (but interestingly, more coherent--Descartes didn't do a good job defining either "think" or "am"), because it brings down the number of allowable beliefs from two--already an extremely small number--to zero. Prescriptively speaking, this is a Very Bad Idea, and descriptively speaking, it's not at all representative of the way human psychology actually works. If an idea fails on both counts--both descriptively and prescriptively--you should probably discard it.
In order to create an accurate model of psychology, which is needed to show the beliefs are wrong, you need to accept the very axioms I'm disagreeing with. You also need to accept them in order to show that not accepting them is a bad idea.
I don't see any way to justify anything that isn't either based on unfounded premises or circular reasoning. After all, I can respond to any argument, no matter how convincing, and say, "Everything you said makes sense, but I have no reason to believe my reasoning's trustworthy, so I'll ignore what you say." My question really does seem to have no answer.
I question how important justifying the axioms is, though. Even though I don't believe any of the axioms are justified, I'm still acting as if I did believe them.
You keep on using the word "justified". I don't think you realize that when discussing axioms, this just plain doesn't make sense. Axioms are, by definition, unjustifiable. Requesting justification for a set of axioms makes about as much sense as asking what the color of the number 3 is. It just doesn't work that way.
I used incorrect terminology. I should have asked why I should have axioms.
It may be unacceptable to ask for justification of axioms, but that does not make it acceptable to assume axioms without justification.