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Q&A: A Proposal for a Reasoned Rejection of the Skeptical Position

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This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

A Proposal for a Reasoned Rejection of the Skeptical Position

Question

It is impossible, from the skeptical position, to assert anything.
Yet even this claim is challenged by the skeptic.
The skeptical move rests on a demand for orderly explanations regarding the matter under discussion. But that is not something available in every field.
This claim goes beyond the bounds of skepticism itself (it is not stated from within the skeptical position), while one who examines it from there, that is, the claim that not everything has an explanation, will say that the basis of this claim is the desire for mental stability and sanity. In other words, it is a constraint born of deficiency, not truth as such.
How does skepticism know that everything must be given an explanation?
A full explanation, woven together beautifully?
Where does it get this demand for explanation of each and every thing?
Is this its firm foundation? That same intuitive identification which it scorns everywhere else?
In fact there is a contradiction here. The demand to ground everything in a full explanation itself has no explanation, and yet apparently for the skeptic too it comes from an inner intuition.
It follows that these two cannot both exist in an absolute way, and one of them must be qualified, as the Rabbi writes and suggests regarding the First Cause in the matter of two contradictory truths…
Is there enough in what I have said here to reject skepticism in a reasoned and explained way?

Answer

I don’t understand the question. You are expressing yourself in a lofty and unclear way, and you are not defining the terms. Define the skeptical position you are discussing (because in my opinion you are not speaking about skepticism in its usual sense), and formulate the question briefly and clearly.

Discussion on Answer

Dvir (2021-08-05)

I identify the skeptical position as being founded on a demand to give a systematic explanation for what one claims. (For it, there is no such thing as “that’s just how it is.”)
And the one arguing against it recognizes that the claim he wants to make has no explanation of that sort, but is learned by him from intuition.
Something that skepticism sees as having no value whatsoever. (“Because who says that’s really so?” it says.)

And what I was trying to say is that the skeptical position itself is unable to sketch an explanation for the demand that every claim (about a person or the world) be accompanied by a systematic conceptual rationale; rather, it too apparently identifies the truth of this through a basic intuition. And if so, it is a position that does not meet its own demand.
And secondly, by that very fact it also demonstrates in itself that there are things for which it is impossible to give an orderly verbal-intellectual explanation.

At the end of all this it turns out that on the one hand there is a need for explanation, and on the other hand there are things that do not require it. And if so, there is really no justification for a skeptical position of this kind, one that rules over every field and does not allow one to claim anything about anything.

The question is whether what has been said up to this point is capable of extracting the skeptic from his skepticism once and for all.

Forgive the lofty wording. I’m trying to speak in the language of the great thinkers, in general, so as to develop to their level.

Judah (2021-08-05)

Judah, not Dvir… written by mistake.

Michi (2021-08-05)

This is basically the usual argument against the skeptic: why is the skeptical position itself not treated skeptically from his point of view? Except that you are translating this into the skeptic’s motivation.
First, that is not necessarily his motivation. A person may simply be a skeptic. He just does not accept any claim, that’s all.
Second, he can answer you that the skeptical claim is not a claim and therefore does not require an explanation. It is a stance toward claims, not a claim. In other words, he is not saying that every claim needs an explanation, but rather that without an explanation he does not accept a claim.

Judah (2021-08-06)

First, I want to ask whether I am relating to the skeptical position in its usual sense, now after I’ve explained myself more…

Second: what other motivation could he have? If we are talking about a person who simply declares that he accepts nothing, that is just evasion and unseriousness. Do you have a problem with my claim? Please explain!

Third, every position is built on some statement. A hidden belief or a claim about reality. There is no such thing as a position that is just there for no reason…
A position stands on some basis that upholds it… and that is a statement, inwardly, in the soul.
And I can’t manage to think of any other motivation besides the demand for a neat and systematic rationale for the entire structure that makes up the claim or conclusion.
Even if we say that he is a skeptic because if something is not absolutely certain then it has no value for him, when we examine that statement we discover that it is directed toward those same foundational assumptions for which there is no explanation or rationale. And again we return to the line of thought I presented above…

Michi (2021-08-06)

1. Now I think yes. The formulations above said something else.
2-3. Why should he explain it to you? You are the one who assumes that everything requires an explanation, not him. He doubts everything, and that’s all.

Judah (2021-08-06)

But why does he doubt?
And again, I’m not talking about just some idiot making declarations…
He says there is doubt. What is the reason? Why does he have doubt?

Michi (2021-08-08)

We are not talking about an idiot. He simply doesn’t believe it, that’s all. Do you have an explanation for why you do believe? Because that is how it seems to you.

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