For this post I would like to address, Savater’s point on skeptics. In “The Questions of Life” he explains skeptical philosophers as the ones who question, or deny that reason is able to establish unquestionable truths; that is that “they question all human knowledge and even doubt that human beings have the capacity to acquire any kind of knowledge worthy of the name” (pg 29).
So I agree with Savater when he says skeptics are contradictory. How can they say that there’s no reason or a fact that is in some way certain when by denying it they are affirming something. This is why he says they are contradictory, because one can’t say he knows nothing because by saying such thing he at least knows one thing: he’s an ignorant, this example I believe expresses and explains easily what Savater’s point is.
I decided to base my comment on skeptics because I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about until I reread it carefully, and by doing so I discovered that for me skeptical philosophers are denying the truth in the most erroneous way per se. Of course there are many versions of truth, as well as different fields of truth, but we can in fact acquire some kind of knowledge that is worthy of the name as skeptics denies it. I can say for example that the earth is round, this is a truth, at least a kind of truth, men have been in outer space and proven it and it’s something recognized globally that’s why it is a truth. One may question this and many other things but that’s why Savater introduces the fields of truth (other point that I would like to establish in order to contradict skeptics more profoundly), reason may not be the same for everyone and that’s why these fields of truth explain how truth can take different paths.
So, to conclude I think skeptics should take another view to what they say and rethink about the fields of reason, because I think that way they’ll find out that we can acquire knowledge and that’s why we are different from other species, because humans do have the capacity of acquiring and search for knowledge, we just need to remember that that knowledge is a kind of truth, a truth of reason among many different ones.
Monique, I agree where you point out that the truth can take different paths, depending of the field it applies, and I think also depending on the reasoning of all people. I like your conclusion about the skeptics. Indeed, skeptics should re-think their affirmation, there are truths; and we can acquire knowledge, because we are humans, we all have the ability to reason.
ReplyDeletemonica! me gusto mucho lo que dijiste especialmente sobre los escepticos, sobre su contradicción, dicen que nada es verdad, pero que al menos esa no es una verdad, jaja eso es bastante contradictorio, al igual que cuando dicen que no existe el razonamiento, y para lelgar a esto tuvieron que usar el razonamiento, para mi ellos tienen una forma de pensar medio rara. asi que al igual que tu pienso que los escepticos deberian definir mejor su manera de pensar sobre la verdad y la razon
ReplyDelete