Deep Digressions of a Dreadful Dullness

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Today's post is another journal entry I had to write for Theory of Knowledge class in the International Baccalaureate. It deals with philosophical scepticism, and I must say, I believe it's my best piece to date. Hope you enjoy.

TOK Journal Entry 2 – Philosophical Scepticism

The whole issue of knowledge claims and means of justifying said claims was explored once again in this wonderful stimulating session of cynical reasoning and preposterous remarks. Before I delve into the nature of how we demolished the very foundations on which we base our justifications, it was also a time where sweeping generalizations were made, and their innate rudeness subsequently ignored, instead being the catalyst for five minutes of private thought interaction amongst which the rest of the class could only sit in stunned silence and ponder indeed how times have changed from our the early years of high school, where such a remark could potentially have sparked a class-long lecture on why hurtful generalizations, like 3 bottles of 12mol/L sulfuric acid being poured into your cereal bowl while your attention is momentarily distracted by a elephant-shaped cloud floating outside the window above the roof your next door neighbour’s mansion which has 2 swimming pools, 4 plasma TVs and 3 indoor swimming pools as outdoor swimming pools are unsafe especially during lightning storms, and then you subsequently downing the bowl of cereal, like a Guatemalan priest downs a huge beaker of distilled water after spending 35 hours in a rodeo avoiding (Thou shalt not kill, remember?) a rogue bull in Guatemala, with the sulfuric acid in it, are in fact bad. But I digress.

The whole point of the lesson was that we can really never know anything, can we? Maybe the response that we heard after a description of an immaculate well-groomed man who however you feel is intuitively suspicious and perhaps has bad intentions wasn’t what someone else in the room heard. Maybe the student didn’t say, ‘Do you mean he is gay?’ but rather, ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like 4 burritos with chunky steakhouse beer-battered fries with tomato sauce served alongside a bow l of Caesar salad topped with liquorice ice cream that has been left out of the freezer for exactly 2296 seconds since 3 minutes after midnight on the 27th February 2009 and subsequently placed back into the freezer for 257 minutes before being transferred into a freezer located in Guantanamo Bay and subsequently flown back to this wonderful educational institution and driven to this wonderfully groomed young man who is offering me said meal with a 210mL of lime martini in a champagne glass made in Palau on the side.’ But I digress.

The point is, sceptics are able to cause an infinite regress of problems for the budding philosopher with their argument of infinite regress of justification. Knowledge must be justified by knowledge that must be justified by other knowledge that must be justified by other other knowledge that must be justified by other other knowledge and we see how as this argument approaches infinity the probability that people will lose the game becomes 1. Now this argument becomes somewhat of an annoyance for philosophers, kind of like how missing the bus on a morning where you needed to get to school early because you had a covert meeting with the Head of Covert Covertness in a covert location compromises your covert approach to school and since it’s 2am in the morning, you have to kind of covertly stay in the street without becoming a not-so-covert target for other not-so-covert people or risk going back covertly to your home and covertly sneaking in via a covert entrance in the covert laundry and hide there covertly for another 50 minutes before covertly leaving the covert laundry and covertly making your way back to the bus stop without not-so-covertly attracting the attention of not-so-covert individuals and catching a not-so-covert bus in order to covertly arrive at the covert meeting place and very not-so-convert 50 minutes late and being subsequently not-so-covertly fired by the Head of Covert Covertness is kind of an annoyance to you. But I digress.

Philosophers have tried to break this argument down the way you attempt to break down a clay statue of Florence Nightingale. Covertly. Enter Stage Left: Foundationalism. What foundationalism aims to prove with its foundationalistic views is that there are certain beliefs that are the foundations of any belief structure, just like any stack of tacos must have at the bottom, a taco. These tacos or beliefs that form the foundation of the tower of tacos or the tower of thought are intrinsically true and therefore do not need to be justified. Therefore we can build more tacos on this first taco without justifying why we are building a taco tower in the first place. Therefore, with these ideas at the bottom of our belief structure, we can using these we-don’t-need-to-be-justified ideas and use them to justify our other knowledge claims. Another much-less-covert method that philosophers have tried to discredit the sceptic’s point of view is by attacking the point of view itself, much like how when one decides to attack a building, they attack the building, as opposed to the oak tree standing next to the building and hoping that the building mysteriously had a spiritual link with the tree and spontaneously implodes with guilt and shock. That’d be killing two analogies with one metaphor, though – a mighty clean trick. But I digress.

So what the clever philosophers have done is say in a voice not unlike that of Rosa Luxembourg, ‘You sceptics are inherently contradicting yourself. You say that you can never know anything. But if that were true, you’d know that. And therefore you know something. And therefore you can’t say that you can never know anything. Because you do know something. So there.’

But what I believe is the defining beauty of the sceptic’s argument is that they don’t have to justify their belief with proof. Their belief is inherently justified with the absence of proof. Their response would be replied in a voice not unlike that of Alfred Hugenberg, ‘We can’t know that we don’t know anything. But can you know that you know something? To know that you know something, you have to know that you know that something. But for us to say that we don’t know anything, all we must do is not know. We cannot Know that is true, but we can know that is true. Knowing is different to knowing. To Know is to justify and prove that it is always right. To know is to not justify and prove that it is wrong’. Ok so that last bit wasn’t Hugenberg, it’s what I believe. It’s what I can’t Know but what I think I know. Surely that’s enough to know, even if it isn’t enough to Know.

Appendix – The Sceptic Quiz: How Sceptical are you?

Instructions: Pick the number applies mostly to you. ‘1’ is not applicable and ‘2’ is applicable.

1. When someone makes a knowledge claim, you yell ‘Substantiate that claim infinitely!’

1 2

2. You don’t trust anyone that does not provide evidence for their reasoning.

1 2

3. You think that the world would function better if everyone were sceptics.

1 2

4. When someone tells you they like you, you say ‘Rationally or empirically speaking?’

1 2

5. When you tell someone you like them, you expect them to say, ‘I would believe you…but your facial creases are 2.47cm apart when they really should be 2.46 cm if you were serious and also you didn’t seem nervous at all when you talked to me, which would never be the case if you did mean it because you would’ve been so nervous that you would’ve fallen down like a person who has been injected with a nerve paralytic trying to walk a tightrope between two buildings in the city centre of Paris holding a spoon and a fork and balancing a bowl of ‘Just Right’ cereal with 3 bottles of sulfuric acid poured into it by the new more covert recruit who was covertly hired by the Head of Covert Covertness at a covert meeting at a covert place at a covert school at 3am when the initial assassin was fired due to his lack of covertness and who also has much training in preparing professional meals in the kitchens of Guantanamo Bay. But I digress.

1 2
6. You think everyone else is a sceptic.

1 2

7. You are a sceptic.

1 2

Results

If you answered:

Mostly 2s --> You are no sceptic. A true sceptic would’ve been sceptical about the real nature of the test and believed that the questions were hinting toward you picking all 2s. Since you have picked mostly if not all 2s, you fail as a sceptic. You are not sceptical. You will love this entry.

Mostly 1s --> You are a true sceptic, seeing as you doubted the intention of the author and picked the option that didn’t seem like what the author of this quiz wanted you to pick. Since you have ignored that and picked mostly if not all 1s, you pass as a sceptic. You are very sceptical. You will love this entry.

Till next time, may you agglomerate all your unpremeditated contemplations.