It seems to me that at this point, your skepticism is of the Cartesian variety, only even more extreme. There’s a reason that Descartes’ “rationalism” was rejected, and the same counterargument applies here, with even greater force.
Basically, Cartesian rationalism doesn’t really allow you to believe anything other than “I think” and “I am”, which is not the way to go if you want to hold more than two beliefs at a time. Your version is, if anything, even less defensible (but interestingly, more coherent—Descartes didn’t do a good job defining either “think” or “am”), because it brings down the number of allowable beliefs from two—already an extremely small number—to zero. Prescriptively speaking, this is a Very Bad Idea, and descriptively speaking, it’s not at all representative of the way human psychology actually works. If an idea fails on both counts—both descriptively and prescriptively—you should probably discard it.
In order to create an accurate model of psychology, which is needed to show the beliefs are wrong, you need to accept the very axioms I’m disagreeing with. You also need to accept them in order to show that not accepting them is a bad idea.
I don’t see any way to justify anything that isn’t either based on unfounded premises or circular reasoning. After all, I can respond to any argument, no matter how convincing, and say, “Everything you said makes sense, but I have no reason to believe my reasoning’s trustworthy, so I’ll ignore what you say.” My question really does seem to have no answer.
I question how important justifying the axioms is, though. Even though I don’t believe any of the axioms are justified, I’m still acting as if I did believe them.
You keep on using the word “justified”. I don’t think you realize that when discussing axioms, this just plain doesn’t make sense. Axioms are, by definition, unjustifiable. Requesting justification for a set of axioms makes about as much sense as asking what the color of the number 3 is. It just doesn’t work that way.
It seems to me that at this point, your skepticism is of the Cartesian variety, only even more extreme. There’s a reason that Descartes’ “rationalism” was rejected, and the same counterargument applies here, with even greater force.
What’s the counterargument? Googling is didn’t find it.
Basically, Cartesian rationalism doesn’t really allow you to believe anything other than “I think” and “I am”, which is not the way to go if you want to hold more than two beliefs at a time. Your version is, if anything, even less defensible (but interestingly, more coherent—Descartes didn’t do a good job defining either “think” or “am”), because it brings down the number of allowable beliefs from two—already an extremely small number—to zero. Prescriptively speaking, this is a Very Bad Idea, and descriptively speaking, it’s not at all representative of the way human psychology actually works. If an idea fails on both counts—both descriptively and prescriptively—you should probably discard it.
In order to create an accurate model of psychology, which is needed to show the beliefs are wrong, you need to accept the very axioms I’m disagreeing with. You also need to accept them in order to show that not accepting them is a bad idea.
I don’t see any way to justify anything that isn’t either based on unfounded premises or circular reasoning. After all, I can respond to any argument, no matter how convincing, and say, “Everything you said makes sense, but I have no reason to believe my reasoning’s trustworthy, so I’ll ignore what you say.” My question really does seem to have no answer.
I question how important justifying the axioms is, though. Even though I don’t believe any of the axioms are justified, I’m still acting as if I did believe them.
You keep on using the word “justified”. I don’t think you realize that when discussing axioms, this just plain doesn’t make sense. Axioms are, by definition, unjustifiable. Requesting justification for a set of axioms makes about as much sense as asking what the color of the number 3 is. It just doesn’t work that way.
I used incorrect terminology. I should have asked why I should have axioms.
It may be unacceptable to ask for justification of axioms, but that does not make it acceptable to assume axioms without justification.
In what meaningful sense are those two phrasings different?