Judging by your post, you aren't very familiar with (or impressed with) radical skepticism. I consider myself one, so we maybe so divergent in our ontological perspectives as to be unintelligible to one another.

The goal is getting to work on time, and without dieing in a fiery car wreck. You agree that there is a correct side of the road to drive on in that case? Objectively?

This is like saying, unless you can objectively say that one side of the road is inherently better to drive on, you can make no objective judgments about what side of the road someone should drive on. The correct side of the road to drive on is determined by all of the other people out driving, and what is rude is determined by what offends other people. If in our culture something isn't rude at all, and we went somewhere where it was very rude, it would probably be rude to do it (barring a ridiculous scenario).

I don't know what you are talking about. My point with the snowflakes is that people share a lot of similarity, and that we have a definition of rude because of that.

You say "each individual has a different criteria" but they come from the same source. It's not as bad as you make it out to be. This is the failure of radical skepticism by the way.

According to that possibly non-existent article on the possibly non-existent Internet which you may or may not have just referred us to, a possibly non-existent entity who may or may not have been named "Bertrand Russell" allegedly ran his possibly non-existent pen over some possibly non-existent paper, leaving some ink traces which, were there such things as words, might be deciphered, were there anybody to decipher them, as constituting the words "Skepticism, while logically impeccable, is psychologically impossible, and there is an element of frivolous insincerity in any philosophy which pretends to accept it." I think he may possibly have been right.

I think I am perhaps being rude to you, but I make no moral judgement on myself for so being.

You have your faith, I have my doubts.

Are you sure about that?

We call the moon the moon because "moon" is the word we have been taught that refers to the object the moon. So what?

How are you so convinced?

I imagine for the same reason I am. Because there is no good reason to believe that knowledge is impossible. When someone offers one, I'll reconsider.

All that you percieve must first be filtered and then interpreted through your mind and your physical body. That hardware and software are not capable of actual, objective observation.

Is that supposed to be a good reason for thinking that knowledge is impossible?

Why?

I would think that in order to support that (rather dubious belief) you would first have to say what it is you think is impossible.

That is, say what knowledge is supposed to be. Don't you think so?

All that you percieve must first be filtered and then interpreted through your mind and your physical body. That hardware and software are not capable of actual, objective observation.

Does rudeness in the context of this example mean disrespect? If so, then moral judgement is beside the point, because disrespectful behaviour is not necessarily bad behaviour.

Perhaps the professor seduced the student's girlfriend, and the student's rudeness in disrupting the class was indeed politeness in comparison to what else he might have done!

Either way, moral judgement is still beside the point.

Was the student being objectively respectful or disrespectful? That is, was he showing respect or disrespect for the professor?

Or, perhaps more germanely, was he showing respect or disrespect for the solemn occasion of teaching and learning at which he was present?

Is that an objective question? I think so, and I think the objective answer to the question is that he was showing disrespect.

If the class was in Zen Buddhism, might the student have been teaching the professor and the class a lesson? What if it were a class in drama?

Even in such far-fetched cases, in which perhaps at some other level the student's overt disrespect for the serious activity of the class might (just conceivably) somehow be mitigated, justified, or otherwise be finally recognised as subtly modulated and well-intentioned, no such future reinterpretation of his behaviour would even be possible without presently recognising it for the disrespect which it evidently (if superficially) is.

But that's just the amazing thing: that (as I would put it) we are capable of reliable objective judgement, in spite of only having thick, bony skulls full of grey sludge, haphazardly 'designed' by random evolution, in a way of which even Bill Gates would be ashamed. Even you, in your radical scepticism, have faith in your own honesty and realism - and to some extent rightly so, although to some extent also your faith is misplaced.

Again, you must rely on a statement of values. What actions are considered "respectful", or "disrespectful" are based on your personal values.

Therein lies the fundamental difference in our opinions. Your faith in your observations, and my doubt.

I think my judgement of what is respectful or disrespectful is based on my social skills (poorly developed though those skills are).

So are you saying that you don't, after all, have faith in your own radical scepticism? That you believe that your radical scepticism might be mistaken? I'm not sure that I understand you.

I don't understand this passage.

I would like to understand what you think knowledge is so I can understand what it is you think is impossible. If you said that camels are impossible, and ai did not know what you meant by "camel" I would ask you please to tell me what a camel is. What is it you think is impossible. The same thing goes for knowledge. Now, I really do believe that I know that Quito is the capital of Ecuador. Really I do! Could you please indicate to me not only why you think that I do not, but you think that it is impossible that I should know that? I guess I might just ask you to define "knowledge". So, when you tell me that knowledge is impossible I will have some clue to what it is you think is impossible. What is so complicated about that?

If those are your goals, than it seems to make sense to pursue those means. Of course, if your goal was to simulate merry old England, Your means might not be so effective. See why objective value statements are unnecessary?


See? You got it. If you have defined ends for yourself, than determining actions geared towards achieving those ends is simple. Although without clearly defined ends, determining actions becomes arbitrary, and usually based on faith.

It's a "chicken and egg" type of argument to claim that we are naturally similar, or similar based upon cultural influences.

I'm not sure I understand. What is the "same source" you are referring to? What isn't as bad as I make it out to be? What is the failure of radical skepticism?

I don't remember saying knowledge was impossible. I don't have the faculties to determine what is possible and impossible.

So are you disagreeing that the student was rude, or just saying that it is ok to be rude sometimes?

I don't think many people would disagree that it is ok to be rude sometimes. You should be clear about what you think is uncertain, whether he was rude or whether he was right to be rude.

Err, chicken and egg? We are naturally similar.

Making good judgments about whether someone is rude isn't as impossible as you make it out to be. One thing people try and do with radical skepticism is argue that there is no reason for murder to be immoral etc, because that is just our instinct. But the "just" is not warranted. We don't need the rules to be objective for non-humans.

I'm saying that the term rude is meaningless without determined, absolute terms of morality already in place.

The uncertainty lies in the fact that each and every individual decides what perceived phenomena each considers "rude". Therefore, it is a relative, subjective values statement to consider a certain perceived phenomena "rude".

I guess it depends on what criteria you are using to define similar. The quality I felt was most relevant to the conversation would be ethically, or morally. If that is the case, then I'd think it would be rather hard to determine how similar we would be without the cultural influence, or because we are so innately similar, that our cultural norms are the way they are. See? Chicken and egg.

What is the reason for the immorality of taking another human's life? As far as the instinct thing, and the non-human tangent, I don't quite follow.

I don't remember saying knowledge was impossible. I don't have the faculties to determine what is possible and impossible.

So, what is radical skepticism?

You are either contradicting yourself or just confused about the word "rude".

You can say that someone is being rude without absolute terms of morality in the same way that you can say that someone shoved another person without absolute terms of morality.

You seem to think that the fact that rudeness is more fluid is makes it meaningless, but it doesn't.

This is the equivalent of trying to argue that we can't say whether something is medicine or not until we objectively determine whether it is better to be sick or to be healthy. Since you didn't seem to go for the road analogy.

No. The first part isn't even true (society determines a lot of it, and a lot is innate) but that might be a sidetrack. And we aren't talking about a vague hypothetical. The person who does the rude thing doesn't have to consider it rude in order for it to be rude.

Nature vs nurture rather than chicken and egg I think. Something that would be rude in one culture or time can be done without being rude in another culture or time. This is pretty obvious I think. But it isn't what we're talking about.

Because that's what morality is--it isn't something that a computer would reason its way into. The framework is our nature, and what we want.

Good Point. I guess you could say that I'm not an orthodox radical skeptic, i.e. I still think that actual, real, objective knowledge may be possible, but it would require omniscience and observation beyond the limitations of the mind and body. So call that position what you will, but radical skepticism is the closest school of thought to what I actually theorize.

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