[HN Gopher] Pyrrhonism
___________________________________________________________________
Pyrrhonism
Author : benbreen
Score : 50 points
Date : 2023-02-21 02:47 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| refuse wrote:
| "Belief is the death of thought"
|
| Robert Anton Wilson
| [deleted]
| ggm wrote:
| Did the Fnord-inventor believe this, or did he have a rational
| basis? If its an axiom, its analogous to a belief in as much as
| it's a given. If its a sound bite, he's handwaving.
| refuse wrote:
| Sounds like a decent thought to me.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit
| rises to the contemplation of truth..."
|
| https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...
| rcoveson wrote:
| That's like Jeff Bezos saying "one-click shopping and reason
| are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the
| contemplation of efficiency".
|
| In the metaphorical "body" of human "contemplation of truth",
| reason is the cerebrum and faith is the appendix.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Naive realism?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
| rcoveson wrote:
| From the perspective of somebody that believes in
| (literal) books full of things that are--in whole or in
| part--fabrications, _of course_ realism looks naive.
|
| This flamewar is ancient and tired, like your dwindling
| religion of doomsday cultists and scientist killers.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Disagree. The appendix is (supposedly) useless, but faith
| does bring some utility, just in an oblique way. Faith
| drives common belief systems, which drive social cohesion.
| HKH2 wrote:
| In that metaphorical body, what is the amygdala?
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| Little known fact: amygdalae come in pairs.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Ego.
| blockloop wrote:
| Philosophy has a long history of seeking Truth (capital T). Most
| notably skyrocketed by Descartes who was a mathmetician and
| believed that we can arrive at the Truth of everything like we
| can with mathematics. If you're really interested in what
| Pyrrhonism means then I suggest you don't brush it off as
| "radical skepticism" because that's not what it is nor is it
| about "trusting evidence" per se. Pyrrhonism is _suspending_
| Truth claims due to _lack of sufficient evidence_. It is a direct
| response to inductive reasoning, which is what most people use
| every day. Inductive reasoning is the probability of a conclusion
| being correct is adequate evidence to support the argument. This
| is the basis for most Philosophical discussions and claims and
| generally how Truth claims work. However, reasoning isn't "common
| sense" nor is it something you pick up by skimming a single out-
| of-context wikipedia page and inductive reasoning is only one of
| several forms of reasoning. Hume was one of the most prominent
| philosophers who further expressed the problems of induction most
| notably the idea that the future will resemble the past. In other
| words, if I flip a coin 20 times and it lands on heads every
| time, empirical evidence and inductive inference would tell me
| that there is a 100% chance that it will land on heads the 21st
| flip because "every time we flip this coin it lands on heads",
| but in reality the 21st flip also has a 50% chance of landing on
| heads, despite the fact that it has been 100% heads in the past.
| Not to mention, I haven't told you whether or not the coin is
| rigged, has two heads, etc. The point of Pyrrhonism is that
| _there is always some unknown unknowns with Truth claims_ so when
| it is safer to assume a neutral position, do so. This is what it
| is like to be open-minded. It's not something you can just do
| without spending time studying logic and reason (fundamentals of
| philosophy.)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I've heard this described as 'radical skepticism' - ultimately it
| implies you can't trust the evidence of your own senses, which
| means in turn you can't trust the information relayed by any
| device that extends sight or hearing, such as microscopes and
| telescopes, or the printed word, and so on.
|
| It's a bit nonsensical, although not entirely worth rejecting.
| Looking for self-consistency (a fundamental feature of axiom-
| based mathematics) and the agreement of multiple lines of inquiry
| into things like historical events or scientific conclusions is a
| good idea, and serves to give some confidence that reality is
| what we perceive it to be.
|
| I'm not sure what the opposite of Pyrrhonism is called, but blind
| faith in the pronouncements of kings and priests was never all
| that good of an idea, and even one's immediate sensory
| impressions are not always 100% reliable.
| [deleted]
| hprotagonist wrote:
| A nonzero subset of flat earthers probably fall under this
| umbrella.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f8DQSM-b2cc
|
| sadly a video link but the general idea is there.
| hummus_bae wrote:
| [dead]
| w0m wrote:
| I've always (... tried to) adhere to the mantra, "The only way to
| guarantee you're wrong in any given situation, is to not consider
| that you may be.".
|
| A little more fatalist maybe; but I try to stay honest.
| alxmng wrote:
| You can't be wrong if you don't ever believe you're right :)
| Maybe.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| It might be a good or bad philosophy, I really don't know.
| dtagames wrote:
| We need more of this philosophy today.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| do we? i'm not sure you're right ...
| DavidPiper wrote:
| Reminds me of: "Be open-minded, but don't be so open-minded that
| your brains fall out."
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This quote implies that there exists a place for the brain to
| fall into.
|
| Which might not be the case for a pyrrhonist or fallibist.
| lordleft wrote:
| An alternative to (and descendant of) this school is Academic
| Skepticism, best exemplified by the thought of Cicero. It
| combines some of the best of Stoic ethics with a probabilistic
| epistemology that rejects certitudes but still allows us to act
| and move forward in the world.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-02-21 23:03 UTC)