Talk:Münchhausen trilemma

Agrippa's Trilemma

I suggest renaming this page to Agrippa's Trilemma after Agrippa the Sceptic. Spirals31 (talk) 22:50, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Reductio ad absurdum?

Does anyone know how Albert, or other defenders of skepticism, respond to the claim that a reductio ad absurdum (contradiction derived from the denial of a claim) proves a claim, apparently using none of the methods discussed in the trilemma? Aristotle gives some further support to this method, suggesting that anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction and demand "proof" for it "is like a plant,"--if they do not admit that p excludes not-p, this simply shows that they don't know what p (or propositions in general) mean, and you can simply ignore them. This seems to be an effective way out of the trilemma; whether it can be extended beyond trivial logical claims is another question of course.--ScottForschler (talk) 20:18, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a professional philosopher, but I'll take a stab. I think that reductio ad absurdum is supposed to be a method of deducing new facts from a set of existing facts. In terms of the Trilemma, one might ask what your justification is for believing the original set of facts--if they are not valid, neither will the newly deduced facts necessarily be valid. Furthermore, one might ask what the justification is for believing that reductio ad absurdum actually works--that is, certainly deduces new facts from old ones. Etcetera. Mkcmkc (talk) 16:12, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how Albert or others would respond, but transcendental arguments have indeed been but forward (by philosophers such as P. F. Strawson, A. C. Grayling and Jaakko Hintikka) as a defeater against ontic and-or epistemic skepticism. A transcendental argument against the trilemma may be something like:

One has no justification for holding the trilemma if the trilemma is true (since no belief can be justified)

--it can't even be said to be "more likely" than some alternative, since whatever criteria of "likelyhood" is applied is also ultimately unjustified.

Every meaningful belief is justified (this can be shown in various ways--if this premise is denied then the whole force of the trilemma is nullified--if unjustified beliefs can be meaningful, then it doesn't matter whether justification is possible for some belief X, since some other criteria of meaning is applied).

So to affirm belief in the trilemma is meaningful presopposes some standard of justification which the trilemma satisfies.

So to affirm belief the trilemma is to deny the validity of the trilemma.

So the trilemma should not be believed.

That's just a quick and sloppy version, better arguments can be formulated. 24.243.3.27 (talk) 15:13, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Trilemma

I dont understand how _five_ tropes work out to be a trilemma...