The Nature of Scepticism

I think I understand where you're coming from, in that you're making certain assumptions and staying within them to address the questions...But in this case, why can't you admit that you know the elephants don't exists because Straggler just made them up to make a point in a debate?Is one of your assumptions that you are without that knowledge, or something?

The objective evidence is in Message 37, where Straggler used the elephant scenario as a made-up example to make a point in this debate.

You and me both.

Okay, that's what I was getting at in Message 196.You seemed to know that it was a hypothetical, and therefore made-up, but were replying as though you were under the assumption that you didn't know that it was, in fact, made-up.And in that sense you were making sense. Otherwise, you weren't.

Yeah, sometimes our water pressure drops here at work, and that causes the fire alarm to go off. We have lots of false positives, but we all still grudgingly evacuate the building every time it goes off, even though we're all pretty sure there is no fire.

I think I've found your guys' disconnect. Accepting a low-confidence, and highly likely to be wrong, conclusion doesn't sound like skepticism to me, even if it is based on objective evidence.And for that, I agree with RAZD that you might as well just wait to accept a conclusion and get more data instead. In this case, you've defined your conclusion into being an objective one.RAZD's claim of opinion/bias stems from:

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the assumption that the evidence you have is indicative of reality.

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Now, in your scenario you've got:

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The boy cries wolf... the village expert wolf-hunters checked and concluded that there was no wolf.

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that's what the village experts are for... to corroborate and validate the observation that there is no wolf.

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You've set up your scenario so that the expert are 100% correct and that we know that there was no wolf there when the boy cried.In that particular scenario, sure, I agree you have an objective conclusion (you've defined into being one).But in the real world, we don't ever have that 100% confidence.So in that sense, your "objective" conclusion is still based on the assumption that the evidence you have is indicative of reality.In real life, how do you know the experts were right? Would you really call the boy a liar based on just one data point?Wouldn't a skeptical approach wait until there was more confidence in the conclusion?

Well, you're making sense. Oh, I thought validating that there is no wolf means that we know, for a fact, that there was no wolf there. Then why even have the experts? You could maintain the same thing by just having the villagers see that there's no wolf.I thought the experts offered us enough confidence to say that there was, in fact, no wolf there when the boy cried it.That what gives us our objective data point; we know for a fact that there wasn't a wolf when the boy cried.Not that we can predict the future, but for the instance that occurred, we know there wasn't a wolf when he cried. Sure, but if we don't know if the experts were correct or not, then we're no better off than just having the villagers. Well I thought you were bringing in the wolf experts, as opposed to relying on just the villagers, to eliminate the possibility that there actually was a wolf there but it just wasn't observed. That's why you went so far as the experts sitting there and making the observation immediately after the boy cries.And with having the experts, that gives us an objective as possible data point that lets us know for a fact that the boy cried wolf when there was not a wolf there.Given that objective data point, we are allowed to make an objective conclusion that the boy lied (or whatever).That's what I meant by defining it into objectivity; removing the possibility that the observation was in error. The objectivity of your observation relies on assuming that the evidence you have is indicative of reality.That is, when the experts say that there wasn't a wolf there, then there really wasn't a wolf there. Right. And that's where we get into skepticism.Just because a conclusion is based on objective evidence, doesn't mean that its worth accepting. But we can know that for the past tense. In your scenario, we know that when the boy cried wolf there really wasn't a wolf there because the experts were there to validate that there was no wolf.We then take that objective data point and apply it to the future to come to a conclusion that when the boy cries wolf next time, then there won't be a wolf then either.As you said, basing that on one data point offers us a very weak conclusion. One that wouldn't be accepted under a skeptical approach. The opinion comes in when determining whether or not the objective conclusion is true.And it gets a little blurry, because the word "conclusion" implies that you have actually came to a decision as to whether or not its true. If you didn't think it was true, then you wouldn't have concluded.Just for fun, lets look at the definition from Merriam Webster (eliminating the definitions that are about coming to an end):

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conclude verb \kən-ˈkld\

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: to form or state (an opinion) : to decide (something) after a period of thought or research
concludedconcluding

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Full Definition of CONCLUDE

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transitive verb
3
a : to reach as a logically necessary end by reasoning : infer on the basis of evidence
b : to make a decision about : decide
c : to come to an agreement on : effect

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I find it interesting that they explicitly state that its an opinion. And it seems to suggest that once a conclusion is reached, then you're done with your investigation. Maybe it would be phrased better if said: That what the objective conclusion would be.That is, if you stopped there and had to decide, then that is a conclusion that you could come to.But given that were not deciding yet, and were waiting for more data, is it really proper to say that we have a conclusion?

That where validation comes into play.A guy shot a basketball, it fell through the hoop, shook the net, and some points came up on the board.It is actually correct, in reality, to say that he made the shot. It has been validated by our observations. It has been demonstrated to have occured. I think we need to get to the point, in this discussion, where we can say that, yes, this actually exists in reality for real.That guy hands me his basketball. I take a tape measure and measure its circumference. It comes out to 29.6 inches. I go: "hey Stile, this basketball has a circumference of 29.6 inches." That is objective.Then I throw you the ball and you measure it with another tape and get the same number. We throw it to a third guy and he does the same. We have validated my observation and we now know that it is correct. I think its fair to say that it really is the correct size of the ball in reality. I feel like there needs to be, for the sake of this discussion, some distinction between an objective "conclusion" that nobody has taken yet, and one that has actually been concluded.But then again, maybe not. Perhaps we should just dilute the definition of objective down to just not being subjective.An in that case, there's really nothing all that great about being objective, in and of itself.