This House Supports Epistemological Nihilism!

PrefaceCon has yet to submit his round at the time of writing of this round. While it doesn’t matter to me due to the format, I was only going to rebut his 1 arguments anyway, in either case I fully expect Con to have completed his round before the next round.KnowledgePlease note, the definition of knowledge within this debate is justified true belief, thus for Con’s arguments to negate, then he needs to affirm exactly this. This is a common problem in Pro’s arguments since he abusively uses the blanket label of “knowledge” whilst running in danger of equivocating between definitions. I will discuss these when appropriate.When Con asserts that “we understand that knowledge is a form of belief which has been verified by the principles of objectivity, reason, and/or innate intuition”he is hiding a massive implicit jump here, since he presupposes that the principles of “objectivity, reason and innate intuition” are themselves both justified AND true. With reference back to my previous round, there is now way any of these sources of knowledge escape the trilemma I outlined. Con would need to assert they are axiomatic (and thus bare assertions), or appeal further back (entailing foundationalism or infinitism).Reason presupposes that we have a grounding that leads to truth. Thus when we reason from Point A to Point B, we are presupposing that process is “true”. The so called laws of logic are themselves axiomatic, and therefore unjustified. I have no idea what Pro means by “objectivity”, and innate intuition is a blatent appeal to subjectivity. Intuition is necessarily subjective (since it is first person), thus it is open for intuition to vary among subjects. Thus, truth would become subjective and epistemic nihilism entails.There is no problem in simply defining “truth” in terms of subjective concepts/terms, however this entails nihilism by the impossibility of “truth” as required by the original definition of knowledge. One could define the colour qualia, and the fact they are having colour qualia sensations from the computer screen they are reading from as “true”, it would just follow we are now ditching the original truth concept (and hence the original knowledge concept). Ergo, nihilism entails.Paradox of Epistemic NihilismCon’s argument is that, I am demonstrating that I know epistemological nihilism is true, hence a contradiction entails. However contradictions are only possible IF the concepts the labels of “justified” and “true” are exactly the same, otherwise it commits the fallacy of equivocation. To make this explicit, I will provide the general concepts of knowledge below:True (Objective): That which corresponds to realityTrue (Subjective): That which corresponds to the subject Justified (Objective): A proposition that is fundamentally justifiedJustified (Relative): A proposition that is justified in relation to other propositionsThe paradox only occurs when one takes the definitions of objective truth & justification and equivocates them with subjective definitions. Thus, the conclusion “epistemological nihilism is justifiably true” is coherent once a subjective & relative concept of knowledge is used. No contradiction entails since the concepts discussed are not the same (A=/=A*)Furthermore, just because a statement cannot be fundamentally justified, doesn’t mean one statement cannot be more/better justified than other statements. Given that we have a general concept of what we accept to be “true”, if epistemological nihilism is a proposition which fits within that concept, then we are relatively justified in accepting it is true, albeit without it being fundamentally justified. Thus, the proposition “Epistemological nihilism is true” would not be categorised as knowledge, however voters would be sound enough in the belief that it is true.Furthermore, the proposition of epistemological nihilism doesn’t necessarily entail that knowledge is in principle impossible, only that said knowledge is in principle impossible to justifiably know you have access to. Thus, I do not need to demonstrate that necessarily no true belief to hold the resolution. Furthermore, even if I did show it to be “objectively true”, it would at worst show that our notions of justified true belief are inherently incoherent (since a paradox/contradiction entails), which also upholds the resolution. One can only uphold the latter by privileging the hypothesis, which is absurd, especially given that I presented my argument in a reductio ad absurdum format, which outlines an internal inconsistency.Mathematics and Apodictic ThoughtCon’s argument here commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent, where he argues that the consequences of objective truth are observed, therefore truth is objective. His argument can be structured in the following format:1. If Knowledge is possible, then apodic systems will possess apparent objectivity2. Apodic systems possess apparent objectivityC. Knowledge is possibleThe only way Con could oppose this is to formulate it in a valid modus tollens formulation:1.If knowledge is impossible, then apodic systems will not possess apparent objectivity2.Apodic systems possess apparent objectivityC.Knowledge is not impossibleNote my use of “apparent objectivity” in the premises, since Con has only appealed to this much in order to sustain his argument. Con cannot assert that such systems are inherently objective, as that would blatently beg the question. Here, I would like to postulate three assumptions under which a subjective epistemology would give identical observations to a fully objective epistemology:1. The assumption of the uniformity of nature2. The assumption that we inhabit a shared reality with fellow subjectsC. The assumption that we make the same assumptions as our fellow subjectsErgo, if we are subjects, with a subjective epistemology and grounding of “truth”, then we would arrive at generally the same conclusions if these assumptions were true. I don’t think I need to expand much to demonstrate that we actually do accept these assumptions are true even if truth was objective. If these assumptions are correct, then we will generally behave and think in similar ways, and have a similar subjective experience of our reality. Ergo, our conclusions and ability to communicate would be essentially the same – thus apodic systems will give a strong illusion of objectivity.Furthermore, a more serious problem is that it doesn’t in any way escape the trilemma, and in fact embraces the horn of foundationalism. Apodic systems are axiomatic, and as such, they arbitrarily define “truth” according to their axioms. Thus, the notion of 7+5=11 [sic] is arbitrarily assigned as “true” within these systems purely on grounds of utility. Mr. Ajab can rightly declare that mathematical propositions are “true” beliefs, but he would not be able to declare that such beliefs are fundamentally justified, since they are predicated on axioms. He is simply begging the question by arbitrarily defining certain concepts as “true”, regardless of whether he is explicit or not. At some point he would have to just accept something as “just true”, which is exactly where the horseman is trying to pull himself out of the mud by his own hair.Furthermore, such abstract systems are necessarily divorced from reality, and hence suffer from the raft problem – one could argue that apodic systems are fully internally coherent, but yet have no reason to believe they have anything whatsoever to do with reality. Given that the generally accepted definition of “truth” is “what comports with reality”, this is a problem for those who hold to the objectivity of truth.Analytic Knowledge Pro’s argument here blatantly assumes that the laws of logic are objectively true, hence when he argues for justified true belief by the law of non-contradiction, he is actually just asserting that this specific law of logic is “true”. Again, these laws of logic are inherently axiomatic, and therefore do not have self-justification. Moreover, contradictions are simply concepts which are incoherent – thus the statement “there are no married bachelors” cannot be “true” since an incoherent concept cannot “not exist”, as it would presuppose that the concept of it “existing” in the first place is coherent. One might as well say “a beeboo doesn’t exist” with exactly the same meaning, the concept of a beeboo is incoherent since it lacks any meaning. Furthermore, this runs into exactly the same problems I outlined in the previous section, namely that analytical “knowledge” is necessarily divorced from reality (and therefore cannot be said to be knowledge), and similar observations are perfectly possible from a subjective epistemology. Lastly, Pro appeals to something being "self-evident" to be true - which is a bletent appela to subjective opinion. If Pro needs to make an argument that something is "self-evident" then he is conceding any objective justification, and essentially furthering the thesis of episemological nihilism.Additional Argument – Brain in a VatIt is epistemologically possible, that we are actually brains suspended in a vat, with our experiences and thoughts fed to us externally by a mad scientist. If we accept such a scenario as epistemologically possible, then we lose the ability to know anything, since we cannot justifiably say we know that we know something. This is important because if you know something, then you know you know that fact. However, if we are uncertain about whether or not reality is real, and our thoughts are genuine, then we cannot build a castle on top of a pile of sand. Back to Con, I do hope he finishes his round.