This House Supports Epistemological Nihilism!

Thank you Ajab for your round. I apologise for the briefness of this round – via. sheer laziness I decided to write this in the last 80 minutes. *Crosses fingers* - hopefully this will turn out semi-legit.Note to voters – Ajab and I did agree that I could postpone my round – and if Ajab peruses this then I will just send a screenshot of the relevant portion of out conversation affirming this. But then… we can never know *evil laugh*.Also note, rebuttals are not allowed in our opening rounds as per the rules, thus Con’s complaints of having a short round are unfounded, since his position is the same regardless.OverviewKnowledge is by definition “justified true belief”, thus I need to negate one of these supersets, or show that an amalgamation of these are incoherent. For the purposes of this debate I will forward two main contentions:1. It is impossible to fundamentally justify one’s beliefs 2. “Truth” is arbitrary, and at best subjectiveI assert that truth as a subjective concept is entirely coherent, and thus one can reasonably accept what I am saying as a generalised principle if I am working from the same implicit assumptions as my opponent/voting audience are – which is something I am pretty sure we will all agree must be the case. Thus it is not incoherent to agree with and vote for Pro if I demonstrate that “truth is impossible” or “truth is meaningless” etc. since language is merely a communication tool - of which we are conveying general concepts.1. Impossibility of the justification of beliefsWhen we look to justify beliefs, we do so necessarily in increasingly fundamental steps. We can justify mathematical truths by well-established mathematical principles, we justify well-established mathematical principles with mathematical laws, etc. etc. We keep going until we hit bedrock – which are commonly so named as axioms. Justification goes no deeper. This presents a problem to those who hold that fully justified belief is possible, since we necessarily wind up with something that is not itself justified – aka the axioms themselves (if you are a foundationalist).Agrippa presents the problem in a form of a trilemma (AKA Munchhaussen Trilemma), there are three epistemologically possible methods for having justified belief, and I argue that none of them are sound.1. Justification via. an infinite regress (infinitism)2. Justification via. circularity (coherentism)3. Justification via. basic beliefs (foundationalism)To formalise, I present the argument in a form of a reduction:1. Justified belief is possible (Assumption for reductio)2. If justified belief is possible, then belief is fundamentally justified3. If belief is fundamentally justified, then justification via. infinitism (I), coherentism (C) or foundationalism (F) must be possible4. I, C & F are impossible5. Justified belief (and therefore knowledge) is impossibleNote that the conclusion would also entail that it itself is also not a justified belief, which is true, given the parameters and definitions this conclusion is made in. I will address this pre-emptive objection later.Defence of P2 –This needs very little justification. Any probability chain, for example Pa x Pb x Pc x Pd… ad infinitum can only ever yield a probability of one if and only if every single link in the chain has a probability of 1. If any link is uncertain, then the entire link is uncertain.Similarly, any unjustified link in a chain of justification would entail the entire chain being unjustified. Thus, the chain must be fundamentally justified.Defence of P3 – This is easily justified via the mathematics of infinite chains:1. Either the chain is infinite, or finite (law of excluded middle)2. If the chain is infinite, then infinitism (definition)3. If the chain is finite, then it either has a beginning or the chain intersects with itself4. If the chain has a beginning, then foundationalism (definition)5. If the chain intersects with itself, then coherentism (definition)To defend P3, either the “continuation” of the “beginning” of the chain leads from another chain (hence infinitism), or it leads from its own chain (hence coherentism), or it doesn’t continue (hence foundationalism).Ergo, the trilemma is inescapable, one of the three horns, or at best a mixture of them must be grappled.Defence of P4 –Against CoherentismCircular arguments by definition do not have justification for itself. While statements may be consistent, it entails the “Raft Problem” – where regardless of how pretty your web of interconnected beliefs is – there is nothing within that web that tethers it to reality (otherwise it would cease to be circular, and thus rule itself out by definition).Moreover, it blatantly begs the question if one does claim it has any ties to reality. Thus beliefs are not fundamentally justified with regards to “truth”.Against InfinitismBesides being widely rebuked in philosophical circles, it also runs into exactly the same problems are coherentism. There is nothing that inherently ties it to reality, ergo the raft problem is no closer to being solved. If it was tied to reality, then it would no longer be infinitism, but foundationalism.Against FoundationalismFinally you are trapped in foundationalism, which relies on making basal assumptions, or axioms. However I don’t feel I need to make my case any louder, that these assumptions are exactly that – assumptions. Hence we have no reason to believe that have anything to do with reality. These assumptions are themselves without justification – and ultimately the best one can do is appeal to coherence of the assumptions in justification. However that leads to problems already discussed.Moreover, even if one did have a sound basic belief, for the sake of argument, then it follows there is no way for that person to know that he possessed a basic belief, since he the subject is still trapped within the trilemma. Thus we are gambling on sheer luck whether or not our basic beliefs are indeed “true”.2. Impossibility of objective truthWe are subjects, and as such, we only have access to our own mental contents. Everything we postulate fundamentally comes back to our incorrigible experiences. However this is problematic for the notion of “truth” since:1. The subject is inherently divorced from the objective2. Even if the subject is not inherently divorces from the objective, it is impossible for him/her to know that3. His beliefs are at best grounded in his incorrigible experiencesBecause beliefs, and indeed anything we postulate is grounded in our incorrigible experiences, it follows that the contents of these is inherently subjective. We therefore operate on the assumption that:1. Other subjects are working from a similar/same framework2. Our experiences are tied to the objectiveHowever, of course, neither of these can be fully justified. At best, a subject can state that something is “true for me”, however that is insufficient for knowledge as defined.SummaryI hope to expand more in later rounds, :-p.