UnbornTao

"To find pleasing, to love, to have faith in." To find pleasing. What is your criterion for choosing to believe one thing over another?

I came across this unlisted video while doing some research. It is a sharp observation. (And notice that, at the same time, they still largely fell into the trap they were cautioning against) This can be an extremely subtle and insidious dynamic - in many different domains. Do you think this video, and the very need and impulse to believe, doesn't currently apply to you?

My question wasn't going in that direction. Who cares?

Fair.

Heresy. I'm sure there are, even if they aren't strictly or formally framed as 'epistemological' works. Gotta take a look at Being and Time and The Critique of Pure Reason.

Why do so many people pay attention to this BS?

@Carl-Richard I was just going to share that clip!

Exactly.

Correction, it's Sextus Empiricus's account. Sex + empiricism woohoo

Okay.

Square One: The Foundations of Knowledge is on my to-read list.

In my view, it is about the underlying principle of rigorous openness, and what we can learn from it. The foundation is worth breaking - or at least dissecting - and this might well be the goal of Pyrrhonism. Have nowhere to go. Maybe that's the end goal of openness. From that state, we can question things more powerfully.

Nothing against them

Damned if you believe? To use an example: both atheism and theism - even agnosticism and similar stances - are essentially conjecture-based. At their base they're the same activity. Disbelieving is more of the same. The direction here is recognizing and removing them, not believing the opposite of an established view.

OK then, thanks. Surrendering one's fantasies is sobering, albeit a bit discouraging in the short term, too. That's the direction being pointed at.

Cats are superior beings.

I still think there's some resistance to acknowledging your experience as it is, but that's fine. Consider: Is that something you've heard and then adopted as true?

Yes. "Representing" is the key term here. Even if valid and accurate, that is what believing is about.

That could be the case. Is it entirely accurate, though? What is thinking? What is emotion?

You're right in that it might not be possible to entirely transcend the tendency, but a lot of progress can be made in that direction. No need for enlightenment in order to discard beliefs, I don't think. It probably helps, though. Tons of practices promote belief-interchange as the path towards what's true. They just don't realize it. But yes, I get your point. Definitely. I see openness and attachment to one's beliefs as mutually exclusive, in a way. As for the question above, for example, we might live as if life were somehow fundamentally unfair. And we might think this is true. How could this belief be recognized for what it is? Something to look into. And look at the resistance that might come up as a result of this confrontation, too.

Thanks for the encouraging words. And yes, check it out for yourself if interested. Probably the best quality of Pyrrhonism is its radical openness paired with a solid ability to think rigorously. As far as I'm aware, most other schools of thought start from too many presumptions. Presumptions are their place of origin whereas this kind of skepticism is aimed at reducing, stripping down, doubting.

Every form of elitism.