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Originally Posted by TheNocturnalEgyptian
I always wondered how "skeptics" choose what they accept and what they are skeptical of. Notice they tend to direct their skepticism towards the same cluster of things. It seems that this fallacy applies to any claim.Ad ignorantiam
The argument from ignorance basically states that a specific belief is true because we don’t know that it isn’t true. Defenders of extrasensory perception, for example, will often overemphasize how much we do not know about the human brain. It is therefore possible, they argue, that the brain may be capable of transmitting signals at a distance.
UFO proponents are probably the most frequent violators of this fallacy. Almost all UFO eyewitness evidence is ultimately an argument from ignorance – lights or objects sighted in the sky are unknown, and therefore they are alien spacecraft.
Intelligent design is almost entirely based upon this fallacy. The core argument for intelligent design is that there are biological structures that have not been fully explained by evolution, therefore a powerful intelligent designer must have created them.
In order to make a positive claim, however, positive evidence for the specific claim must be presented. The absence of another explanation only means that we do not know – it doesn’t mean we get to make up a specific explanation.
Pyrrho – ancient Greece
The main principle of Pyrrho's thought is expressed by the word acatalepsia, which connotes the ability to withhold assent from doctrines regarding the truth of things in their own nature; against every statement its contradiction may be advanced with equal justification. Secondly, it is necessary in view of this fact to preserve an attitude of intellectual suspense, or, as Timon expressed it, no assertion can be known to be better than another. Thirdly, Pyrrho applied these results to life in general, concluding that, since nothing can be known, the only proper attitude is ataraxia, "freedom from worry". ("By suspending judgment, by confining oneself to phenomena or objects as they appear, and by asserting nothing definite as to how they really are, one can escape the perplexities of life and attain an imperturbable peace of mind.")
The proper course of the sage, said Pyrrho, is to ask himself three questions. Firstly we must ask what things are and how they are constituted. Secondly, we ask how we are related to these things. Thirdly, we ask what ought to be our attitude towards them. Pyrrho's answer was that things are indistinguishable, unmeasurable, undecidable, and no more this than that, or both this and that and neither this nor that. He concluded that human senses neither transmit truths nor lie.[2] Humanity cannot know the inner substance of things, only how things appear.
The impossibility of knowledge, even in regard to our own ignorance or doubt, should induce the wise person to withdraw into themselves, avoiding the stress and emotion which belong to the contest of vain imaginings. This theory of the impossibility of knowledge is the first and the most thorough exposition of noncognitivism in the history of thought.[citation needed] Its ethical implications may be compared with the ideal tranquility of the Stoics and the Epicureans.
Maybe this is why the occult and secret societies exist (the original ones, not the satanic ones which want to control everything). They must hide from the "skeptics" throughout society, who don't recognize their own ignorance. The ones who do recognize their own ignorance go underground and explore areas which would draw wrath from the 'skeptic' society which surrounds them.If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein #115 from On Certainty
Oh well...interesting stuff.
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