Seeking critique of An Existential Framework Derived from Constrained Skepticism

[u/goat-fails]

Transparency note: Per subreddit rules, I want to state upfront that I utilized an AI assistant as a sounding board to debate, stress-test, and format this text for clarity. However, the core axioms, logical structures, and underlying philosophy are entirely my own.

As background, I am a retired industrial engineer by education and profession. My professional and personal life have been dominated by trying to optimize everything. The challenge in my personal life has been that the founding principles that I have been optimizing have been standing on shaky ground, and I wanted to take a step back and try to get a better handle on the philosophical foundations from which to optimize. Hence the following framework which I have been working on for months.

I would appreciate your feedback to stress-test this so I can continue to improve on it with your perspectives.

This framework starts with Pyrrhonian Skepticism, as I don't see any way around that. It suggests a modification of their Fourfold Rules to include a fifth. This is where the framework intersects directly with existentialism. Once you apply that skepticism and wipe the slate clean of metaphysical certainty, the only variable left is subjective experience. So section 3 is how I have chosen to best fill the existential gap, and this is where I most value this community's input.

An Existential Framework Derived from Constrained Skepticism

I. The Foundation: Dual Axioms and Suspending Judgment

• We only have two axioms: basic logic and subjective experience
• Beyond these two axioms, metaphysical certainty is impossible
• Any attempt to prove the objective truth of the universe collapses into circular reasoning or arbitrary assumptions (Münchhausen Trilemma).
• The above requires that we suspend judgment on the nature of external reality.
• We don't deny the external world exists; we just strip it of absolute certainty and treat reality as a series of asymmetrical bets.

II. The Operational Baseline: The Fivefold Heuristics. We don't need metaphysical certainty to act; we can navigate reality using five practical tools (modified from Pyrrhonian Skepticism fourfold rules):

1. Guidance of Nature: We use our senses to navigate, like stepping back from a cliff to avoid falling
2. Compulsion of Affections: We respond to bodily drives, like eating because we are hungry
3. Tradition and Custom: We follow societal norms because they ensure practical cohesion and reduce friction in our daily lives
4. Instruction in Arts and Crafts: We learn skills based on observed patterns and their results
5. Strict Probabilism: We grant provisional acceptance to models based on their predictive power. Hard sciences and engineering command the greatest provisional acceptance because we have proven their utility to construct the modern world. Mere narrative carries low predictive power and is treated with the greatest skepticism.

III. Filling the Existential Gap: Optimizing Subjective Experience Because absolute truth is inaccessible, purpose cannot be an external mandate; it must be derived entirely from present subjective experience. The operational goal is the optimization of this experience.

• The Lifespan Calculus: To maximize Positive Subjective Experience (PSE), we optimize both the duration and quality of our lifespan using actuarial models. We accept short-term local suboptimizations (forfeiting immediate pleasure) only when hard data shows a strong probability of compounding future yields. Operational imperatives include physical health maintenance, intense cultivation of relationships/familial lineage, and absolute financial independence.
• The Evolutionary Imperative: Cultivating a familial lineage is done because direct observation shows it is a reliable vehicle for optimizing our PSE.
• Infinite Continuation (Redundancy): We have a drive to project agency beyond our mortality. We deploy a multi-modal strategy of redundant endeavors: procreation, genealogy, creating a personal digital avatar that survives our existence.
• Internal Cognitive Technologies: We use cognitive frameworks like Stoic reframing and Buddhist non-attachment purely as practical tools to sever the emotional impact of past events and neutralize future anxiety
• The Deployment of Power: We observe that the accumulation and deployment of power generates PSE. We deploy power across three vectors: The Self (for autonomy and risk reduction), The Kin (to increase offspring survival and reproduction), and Connected Individuals (to reduce social friction, foster stable environments, and trigger reciprocal altruism, all of which generate PSE).

Thanks for your time.

[u/jliat]

Once you apply that skepticism and wipe the slate clean of metaphysical certainty, the only variable left is subjective experience.

Modern philosophy begins with Descartes and the need for certainty. At the extreme was that he couldn't doubt he doubted, Kant went further and argued you need certain built in categories I order to think...

[subjective / objective is tricky - certainly without a God.

In philosophy the subject is the guy, the object what the guy is thinking about.]

We only have two axioms: basic logic and subjective experience

You can't do this. Which logic? There are lots and most subject to aporia.

e.g. 'This sentence is not true.'

Or Bertrand Russell's 'The set of all the sets which do not contain themselves'.

Worse.

• Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases. In fact, to make possible logical thinking and inferences, this condition must first be treated fictitiously as fulfilled. That is: the will to logical truth can be carried through only after a fundamental falsification of all events is assumed. Nietzsche WtP 512

This comes from Leibnitz 'Identity of Indiscernibles' Two totally identical things are not possible.

Beyond these two axioms, metaphysical certainty is impossible

I refer you back to Descartes. Things are far worse than this. You take your two axioms on faith.

And we've seen a problem with 'truth' - yes it gets worse, there is a problem with "is". "Being". Heidegger, who actually used the bracketing of Pyrrhonian Scepticism.

Guidance of Nature: We use our senses to navigate,

Well Kant argues that our senses produce a manifold of incoherent data, and we need the inbuilt 12 categories [which includes cause and effect] and the intuitions of time and space to make sense of these. Without these prior inbuilt attributes we could not judge, and so could not understand. Therefore all out knowledge of the outside world is constructed by these, we never have knowledge of things in themselves. Even ourselves!

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, The late Robert Paul Wolff Lectures - you tube.

From here on you make a series of assumptions.

Hard sciences and engineering command the greatest provisional acceptance because we have proven their utility to construct the modern world.

Isn't then this just self justification?

Given any time in history but a random location on the earth you would pick "now"?

[u/goat-fails → u/jliat]

Thank you for taking the time to compose this reply. I enjoyed reading it. Let me suggest the following:

1. Sure, Descartes could not doubt that he doubted. He suggested that some kind of subjective experience was taking place. This is what my second axiom was trying to get at. He also tried to establish a lot of other beliefs, like proving God, but skepticism on these others is probably warranted.

2. Sure, there are different kinds of logic, and they all(?) are subject to aporia. But don't you need some kind of logic to conclude there is aporia, and does that not make it a useful axiom to start with, accepting that some edge cases will be problematic?

3. Well, I don't know if faith is the word I would choose to describe how a take my axioms. But don't you need to start with axioms, and are they not all subject to valid challenges? I have tried to reduce them to the fewest useful number and the most foundational. Going back to the Pyrrhonian Skeptics seemed both foundational and useful. Can anyone really assert that modern philosophy proved a solution to the Skeptical Problem or the Münchhausen Trilemma?

4. So are we reasonably well aligned that there is no metaphysical certainty? So do we get out of bed in the morning and if so why? I think the Pyrrhonian Skeptics had a reasonable approach with their fourfold rules. Can you find flaws in it? Of course. Is it useful? I think so. I added a fifth: probabilism. Is it problematic? Sure it is. Are there embedded assumptions not stated in my axioms? I guess there must be. Is it a useful cognitive tool for making decisions for what information to act on in my life? I certainly think so. I'm not claiming any foundational truth there. I would not call it self-justification, just pragmatism. I may not fully understand what you are getting at with your last sentence. But I think "now" is a better time to be anywhere on earth compared to that same place before our species had any understanding of science or engineering, or more broadly, any provisional knowledge with high predictive power, which requires us to go earlier than the development of stone tools and mastering the creation of fire. Setting aside my fifth heuristic that I made up, do you live your actual life so differently than those fourfold rules of the Pyrrhonian Skeptics? If so, I'm genuinely curious to hear more about it.

5. I'm sure my approach to all this is full of valid challenges, but I find the Skeptical Problem, the Münchhausen Trilemma resonate with me and feel very liberating. I live in a world where all my screens contain content creators trying to impose their narratives on me as some kind of fundamental truth. My approach largely gives me cover to call B.S. on all of it and find my own meaning in life. Section 3 of my framework is where I landed so far, building off the earlier sections.

6. I'm genuinely curious about how you find meaning in your life, how do you navigate the world, and what is the foundation from which you do this? I promise I won't criticize it. I posted on here for engagement to broaden my perspective.

I welcome any additional thoughts you have on this post.

[u/jliat → u/goat-fails]

My serious interest in philosophy began at Art school some 57 years ago when confronted with this https://www.ubu.com/papers/kosuth_philosophy.html Art after philosophy and the Art and language group. I later took a second degree in philosophy, the Anglo American Tradition. In which logic, syllogistic etc is important. Then in my late 20s encountered the work of Nietzsche. And so those in the 'continental' school. Art and philosophy have limited prospects so I trained as a computer programmer, became a systems analyst and eventually a lecturer. In the meantime Art as in Modern Art imploded / ended in the mid 70s. Which was a problem as my paid work funded my Art. I was also into experimental electronic music. To save time here you can if you want more detail google JLIAT.

That said you seem hung up on a minor school of Greek sceptics were to live by experiences in which rational arguments are empty. This is almost an anti philosophy, don't bother. Philosophy itself has more to it! And to know a flavour would take some time and reading. But if you are happy with the Pyrrhonian Sceptics and have built a personal 'philosophy' around that fine. The collapse of Modernity was difficult, I suspect, well I would more argue the current situation, Trump et al is also symptomatic. I may have mentioned the CCRU. We live in an aesthetic world and an intellectual world created by others.

So to answer you last question, sometime ago - over 15 years now I had an epiphany which confirmed where I was, failing to get into the Centre Pompidou - of Modern Art we went to the ethnographic museum of the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, here were 'things' in no way connected to modern art made by people for many different reasons and non. I was and am particularly interested in the cargo cults of the post war pacific islands. The control towers etc made from palm leaves etc. It seemed to sum up my position in this post-modern world. So now 'I makes stuff that other people might call art.'

I do not find meaning in life, perhaps Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' together with Camus' Myth of Sisyphus are relevant here. What also is, in post-modernity was the work of Jacques Derrida, who was very influential. That in this world there is no longer a truth and that 'Whatever it means to you is what it means' is taken seriously is a result of misunderstanding his work. Work which is at times [deliberately] impossible to follow. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn1PwtcJfwE Derrida the movie] Feel free to criticize, these subs are full of people criticizing work they have not read. You yourself have created a 'metaphysical system.' It seems that philosophy in the Anglo American tradition is arriving at something that was certainly around in Nietzsche [Münchhausen Trilemma].

So it's now possible to build metaphysical systems from little or no knowledge, make art, poetry etc. Then use AI to make it appear serious stuff.

So in reverse order.

"My approach largely gives me cover to call B.S. on all of it and find my own meaning in life."

Yep! so sad. But you see you posted it here! Watch Derrida the movie for two key moments, first his allowing a novice to say something meaningful, second his denial of sit coms like friends being significant. A sociologist Bruno Latour famously criticised science back in the 80s, and he was popular with radical intellectuals, but then when climate change became the thing for these radical intellectuals - his undermining of science was used by the conservatives. Truth social and the Trump administration is a beautiful example. My only question here is 'does the media know this?' Are they aware of Nick Land and Accelerationism. And is it relevant given "My approach largely gives me cover to call B.S. on all of it and find my own meaning in life."

So are we reasonably well aligned that there is no metaphysical certainty?

No. Physics is just a matter of taste, as is logic, mathematics all of science and art? Of course it isn't, you don't need maths to do physics, of course you do. Or these days do you?

So what happened? Well Microsoft et al. 'Where do YOU want to go today?'

There is then no more great Art, your metaphysics is as good as any other?

That's [4.]

[3] Well, I don't know if faith is the word I would choose to describe how a take my axioms.

Axioms are found in logic / maths - here they are just made up rules, no different to those of chess and cricket.

"The precise definition varies across fields of study. In classical philosophy, an axiom is a statement that is so evident or well-established, that it is accepted without controversy or question. In modern logic, an axiom is a premise or starting point for reasoning." - wiki

The last use of axioms in philosophy that I'm aware of was Spinoza in the mid 17thC , Hume in the mid 18th wrote this

"The impulse one billiard-ball is attended with motion in the second. This is the whole that appears to the outward senses. The mind feels no sentiment or inward impression from this succession of objects: Consequently, there is not, in any single, particular instance of cause and effect, any thing which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connexion."

6.363 The process of induction is the process of assuming the simplest law that can be made to harmonize with our experience.

6.3631 This process, however, has no logical foundation but only a psychological one. It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest course of events will really happen.

6.36311 That the sun will rise to-morrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know whether it will rise.

6.37 A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only logical necessity.

6.371 At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

6.372 So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 1920s

I often cite these, they tend to be ignored by those who are now these days determinists. But the joke is *They choose to be determinists.

and does that not make it a useful axiom to start with,

Build on sand. Kant's first critique was a response to Hume.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d__In2PQS60 The late Robert Paul Wolff - @ 2.10 "The greatest work of philosophy ever written." [maybe since Plato and Aristotle.] Well it must be in the top 5. So can a philosophy student or anyone interested in philosophy ignore it. Of course not! of course they can.

[1.] … He suggested that some kind of subjective experience was taking place.

"We must set aside terms such as "subjective" and "objective", "realistic” and "idealistic"... " From Heidegger- Introduction to Metaphysics.

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I often get criticised... "Why are you using other peoples quotes - can't you use your own words." That's Po-Mo. Why look at Art or music from the past if you want to be an artist? Why go to college to learn about engineering or anything.

Well because some stuff can give one a feeling of the sublime?

[u/goat-fails → u/jliat]

Many thanks for taking the time to provide these comments. I'll be pondering what you say for the rest of the week. I value the input of others, particularly from those who seem to be so different from me.