The Nature of Scepticism

On it's own terms we cannot have any confidence in the legitimacy of your scale of confidence.Similarly by the terms of your wider argument we must take an 'unconvinced' position towards your wider argument. Is the position you are advocating in this thread derived from verifiable objective evidence?Is the position you are advocating in his thread a guess? Are you convinced or unconvinced by your arguments in this thread?For the record - I am unconvinced.

In Message 114 you were kind enough to give us a long list of things that you are not convinced of.I have a simple question for you. Are you convinced of your position in this thread? In your confidence scale you stipulate the criteria you require to rationally justify confidence in a given proposition.Yet if we treat your confidence scale itself as a proposition (a proposition as to how confidence can be rationally acquired) then we see that it fails to meet it's own criteria.Similarly we can consider your little chart showing how you personally distinguish between decisions that you think qualify as "logical conclusions" and decisions which you classify as a "guess" or "opinion".Question: How did you decide upon this distinction?

1: Brain damage due to the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants congregating in the garden is a realistic proposition and action should be taken to avoid damage to my children's brains (i.e. I should evacuate my children to a gardenless place)2: Brain damage due to the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants congregating in the garden is not a realistic proposition and there is no need to take any practical action to avoid it.In what sense is the behaviour described in 2 irrational? Then you would come to 2 as a conclusion. If not why not?

According to Message 114 you are not convinced by most positions. So would you classify yourself as convinced or not convinced with regard to your position in this thread? It has nothing to do with feeling and everything to do with the criteria you yourself have stipulated in your scale of confidence. Is your confidence scale derived from any evidence? If the answer to this question is ‘No’ then, by it’s own terms, it qualifies as a No confidence concept. If however you are claiming that your scale is derived from evidence now would be the time to present that evidence

1: Brain damage due to the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants congregating in the garden is a realistic proposition and action should be taken to avoid damage to my children's brains (i.e. I should evacuate my children to a gardenless place)2: Brain damage due to the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants congregating in the garden is not a realistic proposition and there is no need to take any practical action to avoid it.3: In order to actively pursue more evidence pertaining to the possibility of my children being brain damaged by the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants congregating in the garden I should take my children to the hospital every six months and insist that they are brain scanned for any signs of potential brain damage being caused by the aforementioned elephants.Obviously you don’t like 1 and 2 so, with your insistence on the pursuit of more information in mind, I have added 3. Would 3 qualify as a rational course of action by the terms of your approach? But there is only one non-evidenced concept here. That non-evidenced concept is ethereal elephants (and the brain damage associated with their inaudible trumpeting). If one is consistently sceptical of non-evidenced concepts one would be sceptical of the existence of ethereal elephants - No?

1: Brain damage due to the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants congregating in the garden is a realistic proposition and action should be taken to avoid damage to my children's brains (i.e. I should evacuate my children to a gardenless place)2: Brain damage due to the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants congregating in the garden is not a realistic proposition and there is no need to take any practical action to avoid it.3: In order to actively pursue more evidence pertaining to the possibility of my children being brain damaged by the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants congregating in the garden I should take my children to the hospital every six months and insist that they are brain scanned for any signs of potential brain damage being caused by the aforementioned elephants.You tell me!!!!I am asking your advice because I don't want my children's brains put at risk by any subjective, preudoskeptical or irrational beliefs that I (or anyone else) may hold. As much as it ires me I am seeking your advice as the resident expert on skepticism. I have stated the two criteria that you need concern yourself with:[1] I want to safeguard my children from suffering brain damage.
[2] I want to act in a manner that is rational.My question to you was this - Is 3 a rational course of action as far as your approach to skepticism is concerned? Will you answer that question? If all 3 options - Taking practical action, not taking practical action and the active pursuit of more evidence are all ruled out as irrational - Then you need to tell me how your approach can possibly meet the criteria specified with regard to the proposition at hand. You do agree that ethereal elephants are an unevidenced concept don't you? In which case scepticism towards this concept seems justified. Are you possibly conflating the concepts we are assessing with the assessments being made.....?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

According to Message 114 you are not convinced by most positions. So would you classify yourself as convinced or not convinced with regard to your position in this thread? Why would I place myself on a scale which is itself a "No confidence concept" based on an argument that by it's own criteria demands that one be "unconvinced" by it.....?But if you are seeking to suggest that your little scale is descriptive rather than prescriptive because you have found some people that agree with a couple of your confidence assessments then it obviously falls apart under minimal further examination.You only have to look at this forum or poll the beliefs of your fellow countrymen to see that there are many who have considerable confidence in concepts which defy well established scientific knowledge (e.g. Young Earth Creationists). Yet there is no place for the existence of such confidence on your scale despite being widespread.Is your scale intended to be descriptive or prescriptive RAZ?

This has nothing to do with 'world views'.This is about objectively assessing whether there is any real risk of brain damage from the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants.

Your ‘world view’ has no bearing on whether or not anyone is actually going to suffer brain damage as a result of the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants.Your 'world view' is of no consequence to reality. Reality doesn’t care about your ‘world view’.Meanwhile a sceptical approach is about reliably discerning what is likely to be real and what isn’t.

Anyone whose ‘world view’ leads them to conclude that brain damage as a result of the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants is a realistic danger without proper evidence of such - Is almost certainly wrong in their ethereal-elephant 'world view' conclusion.Ditto for all other such propositions.

And as I said - Anyone whose ‘world view’ leads them to conclude that brain damage as a result of the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants is a realistic danger without proper evidence of such - Is almost certainly wrong in their ethereal-elephant 'world view' conclusion. Insufficient information to make a decision about whether or not brain damage inducing ethereal elephants are a realistic possibility.....Oh dear.

Who says it was made-up rather than derived from a subjective experience...?

I didn't say YOU. I said ANYONE. Anyone whose ‘world view’ leads them to conclude that brain damage as a result of the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants is a realistic danger without proper evidence of such - Is almost certainly wrong in their ethereal-elephant 'world view' conclusion. Of course I can comprehend not making a decision. But we have all the information we need to conclude that brain damage as a result of the inaudible trumpeting of ethereal elephants (or any other similarly unevidenced phenomenon) is unlikely to be a real. That is the conclusion an evidence led skeptical approach leads to. The conclusion that brain-damage-inducing-ethereal-elephants are very probably not a real phenomeon is entirely consistent with an evidence led skeptical approach.

Firstly - By it's own terms your little flow chart isn't based on any evidence so it can be ignored (C). It's just another of your typically pointless graphical intrusions.Secondly - An evidence led skeptical approach leads to the conclusion that brain-damage-inducing-ethereal-elephants are very probably not a real phenomeon.That your approach to skepticism doesn't allow you to accept or reach that conclusion merely demonstrates the problems with your approach.