Talk:Münchhausen Trilemma

Is it me?
Or is the intro sentence borked?

"but rarely gets addressed because it breaks the legs of philosophy, science and any other thought about reality possible. "

That last bit looks wrong. -- PsyGremlin  10:06, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually it seems grammatically correct, but, yeah, weird. — Haamer 10:11, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * ^ If philosophy and science were "thoughts". — Haamer 10:11, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Comments on the section "The Problem"
it says "most people" and links to "rational", which is sly. There are people who are rationalists and who accept the trilemma and reject all of the justificationist stances because of the trilemma. See Hans Albert.

Where did this name come from?
Not for nothing, but I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, and I have never heard of these problems referred to by this name, either by any of my colleagues or in any text.

The first is just a logical fallacy. No big news here. It has a name. That name is circular reasoning.

The second is actually just the problem of justification in foundationalist epistemology, and there are numerous proposed solutions to it, among which is (for example) the proposal that justification for a statement X doesn't come from another, more basic statement Y, but rather from how well it coheres with a set of statements {S}, thus avoiding the regress problem. The viability of such solutions is debatable, but the regress problem has been known since ancient times (rejecting claims of knowledge on the basis of the regress problem is known as Pyrrhonian skepticism and has never, to my knowledge, been associated with Munchausen... which is only spelled with one "h," incidentally).

And the third leg of the "trilemma" (it isn't a trilemma, it's a list of three possible critiques, so the name is both mysterious AND inapt) could - if you squint hard enough - be raising the issue of whether there are any self-justifying statements. This is a legitimate question and could also provide a way out of the regress problem. Self-justifying statements, hypothetical or actual, are typically known in philosophy as "givens," and the most notable critique of the idea that there could be such statements is Wilfrid Sellars' "The Myth of the Given." Sellars also notably forwarded a coherentist epistemology (not coincidentally).

I teach epistemology sometimes. I've never heard this (mis-spelled and inapt) term used. Ever. Might it be a good idea to reconsider whether this page should even exist? 02:07, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * --"Paravant" Talk & Contribs 02:49, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * *Ahem* *Ahem* 142.124.55.236 (talk) 03:37, 21 September 42015 AQD (UTC)

I appreciate the clarification on the variations in spelling (I learned something!), but I can tell you that Popper's nomenclature for this did not catch on. I've read pretty extensively on these problems for more than a decade and never come across it. It's just not the terminology we use. I don't dispute that *was used*, but it's not in common use in the field.
 * We'd be more inclined to believe you if you literally provided any proof. --"Paravant" Talk & Contribs 04:06, 21 September 2015 (UTC)