Life, Writing, Weirdness

Agrippa the Skeptic was a Greek philosopher who lived somewhere around the late 1^st century CE. Attributed to Agrippa by the biographer Diogenes who lived a couple of hundred years later is the idea of the Agrippan Trilemma. (It’s apparently also known as the Münchhausen Trilemma, coined in the 1960s by a German philosopher referencing a British philosopher taking the name of the fictional Baron Münchhausen for fun, but I didn’t know that until I went looking for a formal phrasing to back up my understanding in writing this, so I’m going to continue thinking of it as the Agrippan Trilemma.)

It goes like this: you can’t actually prove anything.

Well, not exactly. You can’t actually prove anything without eventually resorting to one of three arguments:

1. Circular, where the proof of some proposition presupposes itself. A is true because B is true and B is true because A is true. See the problem?
2. Regressive, meaning each proof requires another proof which requires a further proof, which requires… Why? Why? Why? And so on.
3. Dogmatic, resting on an axiom, something taken to be true as a starting point but that requires no proof of its own.

So you can’t actually prove anything. Kind of makes arguing a little more pointless.

Well, maybe not, but it should make it a requirement to agree to ground rules ahead of time or, at the very least, come to agreement of the meaning of words or terms under dispute.

And it probably depends on what you’re arguing about. Something that can be visually demonstrated (like a clip containing a quote from a televised interview) is probably going to be easier than something that’s a purely theoretical concept (the existence of extraterrestrials, for example).

Best to point out here that I’m not a philosopher in any formal sense of the word, not even of the armchair variety. I think about things and I think about how I think about things and I think about why I believe things. I read in the subject here and there and I certainly have personal philosophies but those aren’t the same thing.

But it’s fun to play with things like this sometimes and work out new ways to think about things as a result. Agrippa’s Trilemma is one of those things. I don’t recall when I first learned about it, but it was mentioned recently in a podcast I was listening to and briefly addressed. The thought I mostly took away in the moment was, “Oh, that’s kind of neat. I’d forgotten that one.” Of course, I’m at an age where I’ve probably forgotten a lot more than I can conveniently recall.

My brain kept coming back to it, though

Of the three limbs of the trilemma, the only one I think holds any water for me is the dogmatic one. Circular reasoning is immediately suspect and repeatedly asking why will eventually lead me to something I take as self evident or fundamental. If I have certain rights, you should have them to, for example. Or all dogs have the potential to be the best dog. There are things that underpin my entire outlook on the universe. They can change, of course, and much of my adult mental life has been a quest to make them change so that they’re closer to being correct than they were before. I’d like to think I’ve had some success.

But dogmatic thinking is a thing. Dogma is more of an “unquestioningly accept what the group thinks because you’re part of the group” in my mind, but you can think dogmatically even as an individual. The moment I accept something without question, I’m thinking dogmatically.

And that’s both good and bad, potentially, depending on whether or not I’ve previously examined that thing. If I’ve made an honest intellectual effort to understand something I think or believe and it’s stood up to real scrutiny, I feel okay about accepting it without question after that. For a while, at least. I try to work under the principle that beliefs should be examined regularly.

But if I don’t, that’s sloppy thinking at best, intellectual dishonesty in the middle, and deliberate misrepresentation of reality at the far end.

Circling back around to the trilemma, though, does it work?

Well, you could argue it’s self-refuting. To justify it as a sound argument, you’ll have to eventually use one of the three legs of the trilemma and so turn it into a self-defeating axiom.

But I would probably argue that it’s more of a starting point. It’s an interesting statement of logic and let’s me admit (as if I hadn’t already) that absolute certainty is impossible. Once that’s settled, I get to move on to the idea that absolute certainty isn’t necessary, but sufficient certainty to change, keep, or abandon a belief.

More importantly, once I get past that and remember that most things aren’t from a simple linear “if A then B” kind of chain, but instead produced by an interconnected web, I can recognize that the dogmatic leg of the trilemma is probably necessary at some point (or many) for any coherent worldview.

So, almost 900 words later, did I make any progress?

Well, I don’t think my worldview is particularly incoherent, but I also think it doesn’t require too many basic axioms (bits of dogmatic thinking) to hang together. And I can recognize that those axioms are important to how it does. I’m leaning heavily on that third leg.

But, if we stop and think about it, probably most of us are.

Be well, everyone.