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Pascal's View on Skeptics and Dogmatists




Pascal in Pensees disagrees that the largest argument of cynics is that a person cannot be sure of some truth separately from pure revelation or faith that is based in faith. Such intuition is the single source of information and is strong-minded by own religious ideas, one cannot be sure about the main beliefs derived from instinct, since religion is a subject of private choice sooner than a real source of dependable knowledge. Pascal states, that the dependability of information got though our senses is dependent on the source of the abilities themselves, as such if anything was created by God, it is reliable. The standard knowledge between skeptics and dogmatists is that dogmatists do not doubt the accepted principles - they presume existence of particular reliable knowledge. Pascal was a dogmatist himself. Quite the opposite, skeptics would doubt that hesitation about knowledge consequences in uncertainty about the resource of knowledge -nature itself.

As maintained by Pascal, nature prohibited humanity from incessant hesitation although at the same time it made a human being not capable to justify any information. Human beings stay unaware of the factual condition and, as a result, ignorant of the dependability of the faculties. That way, Pascal's disagreement can be complete - the reasoning lacking faith finishes in skepticism. On the contrary, under dogmatism, if a person hears information - this can serve as the foundation for normal knowledge stranded on revealed knowledge. Pascal thinks, that the Fall of Man is the cause for skepticism. Since the Fall, humankind is in the condition of both lie and truth - as the exposures were partially known, but not about every subjects. Even ones who decide to remain disinterested are, basically, skeptics.

Speaking about Descartes, Pascal perceived him as a skeptic. For Descartes, information can be observed as truth only in case if there is not any doubt about conviction of this knowledge. Descartes did not recognize God as the basis of knowledge, on the contrary with Pascal, who considered God as the only dependable source of truth. Descartes stated that we cannot rely on own senses as the actual sources of knowledge, that way the point of complete confidence cannot be reached. In its place, laws can no more than be established in an total vacuum lacking any influences of the outside source net of natural forces and time.


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