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According to this, the procedure cannot continue ad infinitum, because there is a first criterion, who is God or any other almighty being, initiator of all things. The existence of this first criterion can, however, be counterpoised of a similar manner. If we have a first criterion, do we have any knowledge of it? If we compare this to God, it is almost certain that we not only have no knowledge, but we also have no access to it. This further strengthens the point-of-view according to which we cannot have absolute knowledge of facts.
Because I have mentioned God and the existence of the First Cause, counter arguments brought by the non-Skeptical can include the fact that not all our justifications are brought about by sensorial perceptions. One can appeal to reason, faith or feelings to prove the existence of a fact. We are often in the situation of saying that we know with all our hearts that something is true, but we cannot find material or physical evidence to show that this is such.
Faith is the best example in this sense. People who believe in God do so because of their faith and of their belief in religious facts, but not because God revealed himself to them or because his existence has been proven by physical variables, but because religious people believe he exists and he directs and determines events in their lives. Materially and from a sensorial point-of-view, we have no knowledge of him, but faith proves he exists.
This brings us to another point in our discussion, a non-Skeptical argument that may prove useful, given the fact that most of the Skeptical are quite convincing and difficult to...
While absolute knowledge can perhaps be proven not to exist on an individual level, we can prove the existence of relative knowledge, in the sense of individual perceptions on each fact, perceptions that may be different from those around us.
In this sense, starting from the premise that people are different from one another, we may renounce the existence of certainty and tender it with the existence of knowledge. It is true, this may be a relative and individual knowledge, but it is nevertheless knowledge. This comes to strengthen some of the previous non-Skeptical arguments that I have used, for example, the probability argument, which seems more reasonable: we cannot be 100% certain on the truth of a fact, but we can believe it to be true with a certain probability, a probability that is enough in many cases to prove a point and make a case.
In this sense, it is my opinion that, even if many of the Skeptical arguments are almost impossible to refuse and respond to, this is mainly because they generally lie in a very sophistical environment, with arguments such as the 'what if' argument. Certainly, if we choose to look at things this way, we may arrive to the obvious conclusion that nothing, in no circumstances, can actually be proven to be correct. Such a conclusion does not stand true facing real life evidence and not philosophical sophisms.
Bibliography
1. Mandik, Pete. Skepticism. On the Internet at http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/skepticism.html
2. Carroll, Robert Todd. Philosophical Skepticism. The Skeptic's Dictionary. On the Internet at http://skepdic.com/skepticism.html
Mandik, Pete. Skepticism. On the Internet at http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/skepticism.html
Carroll, Robert Todd. Philosophical Skepticism. The Skeptic's Dictionary. On the Internet at http://skepdic.com/skepticism.html
Bibliography
1. Mandik, Pete. Skepticism. On the Internet at http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/skepticism.html
2. Carroll, Robert Todd. Philosophical Skepticism. The Skeptic's Dictionary. On the Internet at http://skepdic.com/skepticism.html
Mandik, Pete. Skepticism. On the Internet at http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/skepticism.html
Carroll, Robert Todd. Philosophical Skepticism. The Skeptic's Dictionary. On the Internet at http://skepdic.com/skepticism.html
One need only refer to the preceding example to prove this fact. In this example, glass on the floor with spilled water and the author's testimonial to what happened all add up to the fact that there a glass was broken. In this case, there is no difference between what appears as truth (that a glass has broken), and what in fact is truth (that a glass is broken).
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