With God's help

Thank you very much,

As I understand it, in the end you do indeed accept a primary axiom of something along the lines of judgment or “eidetic seeing” or “intuitive cognition” — without a reason or rationale — as what stops the regress.

And only starting from that primary factor do you begin to examine how much concrete beliefs sound reasonable or “logical” to you. And that is according to the initial judgment, regarding which—or regarding its content—there is no further justification for you. For example, you would not ask why what seems reasonable and logical to us really is such. Because that is the primary factor, and otherwise we again get caught in regress.

This is an interesting claim, because sometimes one can see and read as though a person is made up of a sequence or list of axioms, in the sense of the statement that “the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts.” But by contrast, by placing judgment before the whole list of axioms that comes “after” it, you are able to develop a less fundamentalist approach and relate to a specific intuitive feeling and examine how reasonable it seems to you. And then, as a result, you are free not to accept every axiom whatsoever, but only if it seems right to you.

1. So I wanted to ask: is this approach really philosophically “necessary,” or can one think in terms of the other approach, which accepts the “list of axioms” and feelings without any further reason? Because in the end, as I understand it, logically (?) this should not really be essentially different from your primary factor. And it could fit much better with approaches that do not accept the possibility that we have an eidetic capacity.

In any case, if I continue with your description, then you gave 3 examples and I would like to focus on the relation among them.

First, you gave the intuitive feeling that there exists a celestial teapot; you chose to reject it because you do not think it is reasonable to assume that we could be aware of such a thing out there in space.

On the other hand, you gave the intuitive feeling that our sense of sight is reliable. And you did not write a justification for it, even though earlier you did see a need to write that we require justification for intuitions.

I assume the justification you would give is to point out that we have a mechanism that enables us to see (say eyes + brain), but first, it is obvious that the average person or even the expert does not know enough to explain how this mechanism works on the physical level even before the psychophysical problem, and in particular that over the years there have been many approaches to how this mechanism works at all—and in retrospect, it is reasonable to assume that if those approaches are correct then our senses are not reliable at all… And moreover, even if you argue that it is enough to point to the existence of the mechanism, we still will never know whether it is reliable, since we have never received feedback from outside the sensory system about the sensory system itself…

Rather, we must say that the strongest proof is only that it seems reasonable to us that our sense of sight is reliable, and that’s it. And if someone seeks justification, then at most it is enough to point out that some mechanism exists that justifies it.

But if so, if a person truly and sincerely “believes,” and has a clear axiomatic experience that there exists a celestial teapot—just as his eyes are reliable—and it sounds that reasonable to him, then even if he does not know how to ground it, it would seem that this is enough. After all, in the end this is no different from the visual system. And if you argue that at the very least one must point to a mechanism (or something else) as justification,

2. then we may ask: why? Why does a person need to point to a hypothetical mechanism as justification, if he cannot really prove it? Is that not itself an arbitrary assumption? And moreover, every axiom begins with something understood and was not refined into something more understood that would explain it.

3. Likewise, we may ask: insofar as we seek justification, what is the relation between seeking justification and producing justification? Because we can always replace “seeking justification” with producing an ad hoc mechanism that will sort things out. For example, just as for accepting the sense of sight we assume there is a mechanism of eye + brain, so too we could produce the idea of the celestial teapot + an ideas-observer as justification for its existence (Rabbi Michael Abraham’s approach). Or something like teapot-force, as a paraphrase of the force Newton invented following the apple that fell. Or aliens, as a paraphrase of believers in God. Or we could build the entity “Unknown” (parallel to Hosea, who mentioned “Not Pitied”) in which there is embedded “the real and ultimate justification,” whatever it may be—and this is, in other words, just not entering into this issue because we do not need it.

And so, if each of these possibilities is coherent enough to save our belief in the celestial teapot, or whether we even need to point to some mechanism at all (as in question 2).

After clarifying these three points, I think I will be able to turn and address the third example you mentioned regarding the coordination of our thought with the world (whether it requires justification at all; if so, whether it is enough to point to a possible mechanism; or whether that is even possible).

Just as an aside, to sum up this part, I would add that I think the example of a celestial teapot is not a good example at all, because from the outset it simply does not seem to us like a reasonable axiom. But if you really experienced it as a genuine axiom “with all your soul,” then you would indeed look for a justification for it and would already find something coherent for it. Just as if you encountered alternative healing by means of birds, you would not reject it only because you are a rationalist, but would accept it because you are open-minded and rational. And if necessary, you would add healing powers and create a bird-healing force, and if necessary also a graviton or a birditon that carries this alternative force, and if that were indeed required for your theory, you would produce such a thing.

I think it is better for now to focus on these questions, as you suggested, so that I can understand what the relation is between skepticism and justification, and when it is in fact possible to stop the search for further explanation. And only then examine the option of a world of ideas, if there is any need at all to posit such a world.

I just want to add that to the best of my knowledge (and Wikipedia’s), the distinction between Aristotle and Plato is not whether the ideas are attached to the material world or not, but whether they exist at all… and that modern empiricism was built on the basis of Aristotle, even though he himself was not exactly such an empiricist. A somewhat subtle point… And I also wanted to mention that from your perspective, the discovery of the world of ideas was something dramatic, and the fact is that you wrote an entire quartet about it, so this only strengthens my claim that at most it is enough for us to produce a mechanism for justification, as in question 2…

In any case, thank you very, very much for the detailed response and the patience; I appreciate it. Many apologies for the length—it is just that regarding the beginning, I understood almost nothing.

Best regards

Greetings.
I did not understand your opening discussion. As I explained, I examine everything, including initial assumptions. But if I have an intuition about some claim that is not suspect, the presumption is that it is correct. I explained that there is no other option, since every argument is based on premises. I did not understand what alternative you want to consider against my claim. Just arbitrarily accepting things? Would you accept someone’s intuition about how many stones there are on the moon? He has no source for that, and there is no reason to trust such an arbitrary feeling.
The justification for trusting the eyes is not knowledge of the mechanism that operates in them, but trust in the One who created them. On the contrary, recognizing evolution as an arbitrary mechanism that built them should have weakened our trust in them. The intuition that our eyes should be trusted could not have stood if we knew they were formed arbitrarily. That is because the probability that an arbitrary mechanism would be reliable is negligible.
2. You need to point to a possibility that would justify your intuition. For example, the possibility that you passed by the planet Jupiter without noticing, and then perhaps your intuition could be accepted. Without that, it is a mere illusion.
3. I have no problem with ad hoc justifications when they ground a strong intuition of mine, and when they themselves are not implausible. See the commentators on the Mishnah in Avot on “judge every person favorably,” and also my article here:

עוד בעניין תערו של אוקהאם

The dispute over whether ideas exist is precisely the dispute over whether they are attached to tangible objects. According to Aristotle, ideas are categories, that is, characteristics of objects in the world, not entities that exist independently. According to Plato there is redness and horseness; according to Aristotle, certain objects in our world have the properties of being red and being a horse.

Thank you, but I do not think I understood.
On the one hand, it seems you are saying that what seems logical to you, you will accept (at least as a presumption).
And what seems illogical to you—has no logic at all, seems suspicious—you do not accept, and you assume it is probably an illusion.
From those two things, it would seem that your criterion is simply what sounds reasonable and what does not. And this is a principle that it seems to me everyone accepts, because the idea of an intuition that sounds/seems reasonable to you, and that you cannot justify further, then for you it is a basic assumption.
It is not because you feel something intuitively that you immediately accept it. For example, many feel fear at night, but they do not think it is reasonable, so they do not accept it.

But my problem is that I did not understand why afterward you do continue trying to look for a justification for what seems logical. (Even though you agree that what seems logical does not require further justification, since we will not be able to justify whether what seems reasonable to us really is reasonable… and at first you write that you do agree this is an initial stopping point.)
For example, regarding the sense of sight, according to the principle we found earlier, it would be reasonable that because it seems to us that the sense is reliable, even though we cannot really justify it, we should simply assume that this is a basic assumption and accept it. But on the other hand, here you turned to an external justification like God, and even added that if we assume it is an evolutionary process then it should actually be undermined (and one could still quibble about that).
But that is my original question: why do you add this part? Why is it not enough to say that this is a basic assumption, and that’s it??

2+3. Even if we assume that this additional justification does need to be added,
we again ask: is this added justification only within the framework of a conceivable possibility by which we could maintain that the basic assumption is reliable? In that case, anything logically valid could enter. Or do we need to be informed about that factor? (From your wording in 2, “the possibility that you passed by the planet Jupiter without noticing,” it sounds like we do not need to be informed of it.)
But if it is indeed only a logical possibility, then it sounds like this whole process of justification is completely sterile. After all, for every option we can add infinitely many possible justifications, just as for every option we can add infinitely many possible refutations.
If only because of the illustration from the proposition that our eyes are reliable because Descartes’ demon actually loves us but deceives everyone else. If so, that justifies our eyes, QED.
But this seems to me—and I think to you too—a completely silly game.
In any case, from your statement in
3. you wrote, “I have no problem with ad hoc justifications when they ground a strong intuition of mine, and when they themselves are not implausible.”
you add that the justification itself has to seem reasonable to you, but that was my criterion for accepting basic assumptions. So why is there a need to produce a justification that seems not implausible instead of simply accepting the basic assumption, together with the clear knowledge that for every such basic assumption we can create countless excuses to ground it? Why then is there a need actually to ground it?
And moreover, your statement “when they themselves are not implausible” will hold relative to your thinking and your degree of familiarity with the world, before you even thought of or found a justification. Therefore, if you assume, as you do, that a person must find a justification—and a baby has no justification because it does not yet know what sounds implausible and what does not—then you will never be able to know whether your justification is implausible or not. Because it relies on prior knowledge. But according to your method, that knowledge is not reliable, because it was not justified in the first place.

–
Aristotle is a new and interesting discussion, but it seems to me better to leave it for later.
I just did not understand whether he thought those properties were objective or not. From the way you describe it, he thought a bit like Kant (categories in the world).

This is already dragging on and we are repeating ourselves.
I explained that with the sense of sight, if the assumption is that it was created randomly, there is no logic at all in believing it. Therefore it requires further justification.
In everything else, I lost you.
So allow me to end here.