Concept tag
#regress-problem
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I know within ten seconds whether a room will laugh, but I can’t say how. Does that count as knowing?
After a few hundred gigs you develop a sense for a room. I walk on, say two lines, and I know whether tonight is going to work. I'm right far more often than I'm wrong. Promoters have started asking me before they…
Started by Gemma Pritchard5 replies -
Why does asking “how do you know?” three times end every argument in our house?
My younger one is seven and has discovered the most powerful question in the world. I say the shop closes at nine. "How do you know?" Because it says so on the door. "How do you know the door is right?" Because…
Started by Thamarai Raman4 replies -
Why debates about first principles never end: notes from the high-school tournament circuit
I coach debate at a public high school in Portland, and after years of judging I've noticed a pattern. Rounds about facts resolve. Someone has better evidence, or the other side drops a point, and the judge can decide. Rounds about fundamentals…
Started by Sam Ellery5 replies -
Nāgārjuna asked what proves the means of knowledge. Is that Agrippa’s trilemma in Sanskrit?
I have been translating parts of Nāgārjuna's Vigrahavyāvartanī (often rendered "The Dispeller of Disputes"), and one argument keeps reminding me of the Agrippan problem people discuss under foundationalism and coherentism. The opponent is a realist of the Nyāya type who says objects…
Started by Meera Kulkarni6 replies -
Śrīharṣa against the Naiyāyikas: can every definition be refuted, and how did Nyāya answer him?
Definitions are my bread and butter. A good definition in geometry settles what you are talking about, and then the proofs can begin. I recently came across Śrīharṣa, the twelfth-century Advaitin, whose great work has a title usually translated as something like…
Started by Vikram Sethi5 replies -
An infinite chain of reasons is not a defect: the case for infinitism deserves more than a smirk
When students first meet the regress problem they are told there are three options and one of them is obviously absurd. Foundations, coherence, or an infinite regress; and who could believe in an infinite regress? I want to argue that infinitism, defended…
Started by Tomasz Szewczak5 replies