cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/3172656

Couple of days ago I saw a post about on atheist community about a quote saying atheist can’t base their morals on anything.

I commented that if religion didn’t accept some premises like god, they wouldn’t either. Some said I am wrong and downvoted me. So I decided to post here about to what extent can I be skeptical about premises, to see where I am mistaken (or commenters).

Before that post, for a while I had an idea that even the analytical truth/necessary truth (whatever you name it) like “a is equal to a” are premises which can not be proven (since they are the basics of our logic, which will we be in use to prove claims) even though they seem us to be true by intuition. They just have to be accepted to be able to further think about other things.

So my question is since we can question the correctness of basics of our logic and cant find an answer, we can not justify or learn anything. Also, there lays the problem of do we really understand the same thing from the same concepts, and does language limit us?

If I am mistaken, which is highly probable, please correct me and don’t judge. I am not much of a philosophy reader.

I would really appreciate it if you could share some resources (video, article, book, anything…) about limits of our understanding, logic, language and related topics.

Thanks in advance…

  • @[email protected]OPEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    You really put effort in this, I don’t know how to thank. Simply put, you are awesome.

    Firstly, I would like to ask a question about self reference. I hope this won’t sound stupid, but we use language to give the verdict that states “We do not know anything”. And this results in contradiction as you mentioned but can’t this be caused by the limit of our language or our definition and understanding of those words and concepts. I mean when we use the word “anything” how do we ensure “knowledge”, the thing we define by our own language create by use, is included in this set. It is like that everything is so abstract that you miss some things that lead you to see the statement as a contradiction. One way it came to my mind is that: while you are stating “We do not know anything” it is not knowledge. It is nothing that will become knowledge when it has been stated. So when you say “anything” you refer to things that you name “knowledge” but not the all other things that labeled as knowledge. Let me give you an another example from other self-reference paradoxes: “This sentence is a lie.” when we say “this” there is nothing to refer which means this is not a paradox, this is just nonsense since this does not refer to anything:

    1. You should have something that can be referred when you want to refer something
    2. To be able to create a self-reference paradox, you should a have a conclusion that gives a verdict about itself(and possibly some other things or some other conclusion/conclusions that gives a verdict about it).
    3. Let us take an example like “This sentence is a lie.”
    4. The part that refers to something is “this sentence” and it refers to “This sentence is a lie.”
    5. But when you call out “this sentence”, the thing that’s being referred does not exist, yet.
    6. If something refers itself, the thing we call “itself” should just be a reference to itself, like: “This three word”, “This sentence”
    7. Because to be able to refer something, it should exist so a statement that refer itself can not be longer that reference of itself

    What’s the mistake I make here? I could only find that it may be the way I interpret the sentence. I interpret it as it was under the effect of a linear interval. But if the statement is being given(whether it crosses on your mind or by mouth) it does happen in a while. One may can reject this by saying it doesn’t need to be read or thought, it is knowledge without being processed; but “knowledge” and “sentence” are concepts created by human beings, without them, they aren’t significant or have a meaning for someone or something.

    Thanks for mentioning about “The Münchhausen trilemma”, it is exactly what I was thinking about the knowledge. I will certainly do further reading about it.

    I would really appreciate it if you could recommend me some resources(book, video, podcast, anything…) on cognitive closure.

    Again thank you for your comment, it certainly helped a lot.

    • @ArxirEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      You raise a very good point. I think there are several ways this can be caused, some of which you already mentioned yourself:

      1. Our definition of knowledge is itself subject to the trilemma. Every statement we make about not-knowing is just as much in need of a dogmatic assumption, an infinite regress or a circular reasoning as statements about knowing. If we take apart the statement “We do not know anything”, we will find that multiple of its parts are based on the assumption, that something exists, which itself is a textbook example for the trilemma. Thus we can not know that we do not know anything, while at the same time knowing, that we can not know anything.

      2. The subject matter of paradoxes is imaginary. Does the sentence “This sentence is a lie” really exists, if it is entirely located in a latent space of common understanding? What makes it be a thing that can be referred to? Our reference can only be made into this latent space of linguistics and common understanding, but this applies to every piece of knowledge.

      3. Logic theory doesn’t hold up when faced with self-reference, which would be better dealt with using unconventional logic systems like Paraconsistent Logic.

      There are probably more…

      I would really appreciate it if you could recommend me some resources(book, video, podcast, anything…) on cognitive closure.

      Difficult. There are many different concepts of cognitive closure and some may be more to your liking than others. I personally like Kant’s approach in Critique of Pure Reason. He introduced “categories”, which are mental frameworks that shape our understanding of reality, and argued that certain aspects of reality may be inaccessible to us, because we lack the categorical framework for those.

      On linguistic relativity, I highly recommend Guy Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass: why the world looks different in other languages. It’s an overview of the entire research within this field, which challenges every linguistic theory regarding how language shapes our understanding of the world and thus debunks “common” linguistic myths.

      You really put effort in this, I don’t know how to thank. Simply put, you are awesome.

      Thanks for mentioning about “The Münchhausen trilemma”, it is exactly what I was thinking about the knowledge. I will certainly do further reading about it.

      You are welcome!

      • @[email protected]OPEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        You really do understand me. I mean I couldn’t find anyone out there, in flesh to speak about these but here I am discussing it with a complete stranger on internet. I really appreciate your effort, thanks again.