Skepticism and Considering Rebuttals
Pyrrho
Pyrrho was so radically skeptical he was said to have had been saved by his students and followers who literally followed him around as he would be unconvinced that jumping off a cliff would inherently lead him to his death. While today radical skepticism exists, it is not quite to this extent. However, Pyrrho thought that there were equally valid and sound or cogent arguments for the opposition to any argument. He thought that it was necessary to rebut an argument as being in a constant state of not being sure which side was truly correct, he thought, led to ataraxia, or a state of equanimity and peace, free from worry. Skepticism, in the moderate sense, is the view that we should not take things at face value so quickly, and is something we often take for granted. Modern scientific papers, and the basic scientific method describes a step for admitting where our experiments may have gone wrong. However, when it comes to Philosophy (especially outside of academia), or building our arguments outside of science, we do no such thing. However, can this step be crucial for actually strengthening our views?
Give Credit where Credit is Due
The main point I am trying to get at here is that if we take our rebuttals seriously enough, we should consider them as ultimately plausible. Even so, we may not be convinced by rebuttals very easily. The solution is easy, give credit where credit is due, admit there are rebuttals to our views, but explain why they are not so convincing to us. Giving our rebuttals the time of day is not something that we see often enough in, especially our political, climate. I wonder if this may be due in part to the opposition actually having a valid or cogent point against our own worldview, not giving it the time of day would be a type of ignorance, a type of ignorance that Philosophy tube spoke about called “active ignorance.” However, if it’s not this, and we were able to use this as an effective means of realizing we are fallible human beings, we can be far more understanding of one another, even if we disagree.
Rebuttals
Now, to put it into practice. There are rebuttals to why one should not even consider including a rebuttal. One such consideration is with rebuttals that are not even worth the time of day. While I would agree there are some rebuttals that are so outrageous that they may not even be worth considering, who are we to say what truly is a worthy rebuttal or not? I would say we need to consider this carefully, before passing judgment as to whether a rebuttal is worth addressing or not. Another rebuttal to this is that, maybe the original argument is so straight forward that no rebuttal may be sufficient to even remotely combat it. An example argument may be that “Socrates was a man. All men are mortal. Therefore, Socrates was mortal.” While this argument may seem sound, I don’t think anything within this argument is truly so sufficient that it cannot have any valid complaints. I don’t think any argument is sufficient enough to not have any valid complaints. For example, was Socrates a man? There are ideas floating around that we don’t even know who Socrates was since his students accounts of him varied greatly. Some say that he may not have even existed at all. Secondly, are all men mortal? What does it really mean to be mortal anyways? Is something like “the immortal soul” still Socrates and therefore he is still immortal? Of course, these may still be complaints someone may consider too far out of the realm of considerable rebuttals to address. However, who are we to say which rebuttals are actually worthy of attention, as mentioned previously? Can’t we take these rebuttals seriously, yet explain why they aren’t convincing to us anyways? Where is the line that decides whether a rebuttal is worthy or not?
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