Usman Ali Ishaq

2/10/20

08

Philosophy

What’s good, Chachi!,

I’ve been taking this class on philosophy and wanted to drop some knowledge on you.

We’ve been talking about popular philosophical arguments and the disparity on skepticism

lately!

There are, essentially, two different arguments on skepticism. First you have the

Cartesian Skeptical Argument. This one talks on how certain types of knowledge are possible,

even when it’s something no one is certain of. This guy named Descartes created this form of

argument to explain why we basically can’t know anything about the external world and should

therefore use that as evidence. This is how he describes the order of events. Firstly, we have an

idea about the external world, but we do not know if it’s true, then we cannot know that this is

true and then lastly, we don’t know a real answer in the case that it’s about the external world. 

This form of argument occurred from disagreements about philosophical issues that no one had

real knowledge on. They concluded that it is best to just say that they cannot know if it is

something we have little evidence on.

The next argument is the Pyrrhonean Skeptical Argument. This one shows why people

should suspend judgment on certain topics so people can accept things they got little knowledge

on. They discovered that they can’t argue over relative topics, so instead, they withheld their

opinions. For instance, someone could be considered fat compared to someone skinny. In

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actuality they’re not really overweight. So, this is a situation where it’s best to suspend

judgement.

In Descartes’ first chapter of the First Meditation, he describes his argument about how

there could be a demon deceiving him, but he doesn’t know for sure, so he doesn’t know that it’s

false. This is a Cartesian Skeptical Argument because if he doesn’t know that a demon is

deceiving him, then he can’t know if he is being deceived or not. This shows how his argument

works even if it’s something that we can’t know for sure. Considering the demons can have

control over all of his thoughts, he could never know for sure if one is controlling him. Both

hypotheses have the same amount of evidence and neither is better than the other! This is

considered the Principle of Underdetermination, because we can’t prove if he is being deceived

or not.

An objection to this Cartesian Skeptical Argument would be that if he doesn’t know

something, then he can’t know that he doesn’t know something because a demon is deceiving

him. If he were being deceived, the demon would not allow him to think about that because it

would not want him to be aware of what is happening.

These are both valid arguments that help to specify the origin of our present concept of

skepticism. I think it’s valuable to consider the different arguments to see where our personal

theories live. That’s all I got on skepticism for now, Chachi! As the semester goes on, I’ll be sure

to fill you in on more info.

Take care!