Whenever I try to solve a problem philosophically, I always end up at radical skepticism, where the solution is unprovable. I understand that skepticism leads nowhere, but I always tend to seek absolute certainty.
How do I change my approach or way of thinking to avoid falling into this hole? If possible, are there any resources you could recommend?
I suggest Wittgenstein, On Certainty. In a nutshell: in order to exert even the most radical of skepticism, in order to express, resolve (or even conclude that you cannot overcome) doubt, you need some "hinge certainties".
For example you cannot doubt the validity of "epistemological" tools that enable and structure the very possibility of doubting. For example.. the notion or "if->then". Evaluators like True/false. To be. Determiners like this, the same, different.
Not that this is proof of some deeper "truth" of those notions, of them being inherent elements of reality. But surely we cannot operat without and outside them. In that sense, they are certainties. Cannot be meaningfully denied or doubted or even demonstrated.
Radical scepsis is not necessarily bad or something to avoid. Why would you need to avoid it? If you conclude by some reasoning, that appears to be valid to you, that all the voices in a dispute express opinions that are not tenable or not completely convincing, then that conclusion is your new starting point. It may not enable you to take sides in the debate, or to judge who is right, but is that a bad thing? For one, it frees you up. It may show you that all the other participants seem to be missing something - even if you yourself don't have all the answers either. So, it may free you up to ask further questions. (A good, positive valuation of radical scepsis, with special attention to how it interacts with mental health and finding a non-dogmatic world-view can be found in Arne Naess' book Scepticism (1968).)
If you're talking about specific forms of philosophical scepsis that are expressed as positive assertions, such as solipsism ("Only I exist" or "Even if other minds exists, I could never really know this"), then the first thing to ask yourself is: "Does that opinion make any practical difference to me? Does it make a difference in how I deal with other people or with my environment in general?" If not, then the opinion can be seen as merely theoretical, not something to affect you emotionally. You can take that form of questioning a step further and ask: "Does that opinion make any difference to scientific research? Are there any specific empirically verifiable or falsifiable consequences to be drawn from it?" If not, if it's even in principle neither verifiable nor falsifiable, then it's a purely metaphysical view -- again without much value.
In the Tractatus Wittgenstein writes:
5.62 [W]hat solipsism means is quite correct, only it cannot be said, but it shows itself.
That the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of the language (the language which only I understand) mean the limits of my world.
5.632 The subject does not belong to the world but is a limit of the world.
5.64 Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
A few Heidegger quotes on skepticism:-
We thus restore to the word "skepsis" its original meaning: σκέψις signifies the seeing [Sehen], watching [Zusehen], inspecting [Besehen], that oversees [nachsieht] what and how beings are as beings. Skepsis understood like this follows the being of beings with its eyes open. … This is the perspective from which it inspects the matter itself. Thinkers are intrinsically skeptics about beings because of the skepsis into being.
– Off the Beaten Track, p. 114.
Descartes does not doubt because he is a skeptic; rather, he must become a doubter because he posits the mathematical as the absolute ground and seeks for all knowledge a foundation that will be in accord with it.
– Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, p. 278.
It is well known that Descartes wanted to bring all human knowing to an unshakable ground (fundamentum inconcussum) by first doubting everything and acknowledging only what presented itself clearly and distinctly as secure knowledge. Leibniz remarked that Descartes’ procedure neglected to specify what was entailed in the clarity and distinctness of cognition that count as his leading principles. According to Leibniz, Descartes had at this point doubted too little. Concerning this, Leibniz said in a letter to Johann Bernoulli on August 23, 1696: sed ille dupliciter peccavit, nimis dubitando et nimis facile a dubitatione discedendo; “but he (Descartes) failed in a two-fold manner, by his doubting too much and by too easily desisting from doubting.”4
– The Principle of Reason (1957), p. 12.
Perhaps Leibniz is partly referring to Descartes' improvised mind-body bridge.
In order to get past the insurmountable isolation of Descartes' cogito Heidegger expanded the starting point to Being-in-the-world, thus including phenomena from the get go. No doubting basic phenomena.
If, in the ontology of Dasein, we 'take our departure' from a worldless "I" in order to provide this "I" with an Object and an ontologically baseless relation to that Object, then we have 'presupposed' not too much, but too little.
– Being & Time, H. 315-6.
For Hegel there is a similar encompassment.
For consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of the object, and on the other, consciousness of itself; …
86. Inasmuch as the new true object issues from it, this dialectical movement which consciousness exercises on itself and which affects both its knowledge and its object, is precisely what is called experience [Erfahrung].
– The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), § 85–86.
You ask:
How to avoid radical skepticism?
Throw a rock at a philosopher and steal their strategy? Everyone from Pyrrho to Robert Audi has a solution. You can start by not reinventing the wheel, one of the advantages of attentive study. Consider any one of the strategies following from the WP article "Philosophical Skepticism". But you have to find something that appeals to your intuitions.
However, if you're looking for something sophisticated and contemporary, consider the arguments put forth for process reliabilism (IEP) which essentially puts forth the following claim:
Process reliabilism, by contrast, asks whether the general belief-forming process by which S formed the belief that p would produce a high ratio of true beliefs to false beliefs.
In other worlds, it's simply an undeniable empirical observation that if one subscribes that truth exists, it's simply probabilistic that given billions or more epistemic agents, most of them will find a way to justify their beliefs and produce knowledge.
You say:
Whenever I try to solve a problem philosophically, I always end up at radical skepticism, where the solution is unprovable. I understand that skepticism leads nowhere, but I always tend to seek absolute certainty.
Lastly, you can abandon the need for absolute certainty by rejecting such a thing exists as is done in embracing fallibilism (IEP). What's wrong, after all, of accepting there is uncertainty in life, as long as its a reasonable amount in some context? From the article:
Fallibilism is the epistemological thesis that no belief (theory, view, thesis, and so on) can ever be rationally supported or justified in a conclusive way. Always, there remains a possible doubt as to the truth of the belief. Fallibilism applies that assessment even to science’s best-entrenched claims and to people’s best-loved commonsense views. Some epistemologists have taken fallibilism to imply skepticism, according to which none of those claims or views are ever well justified or knowledge.
To me, the best way of doing that is embracing some of the principles of van Fraassen's constructive empiricism (SEP) and replacing the notions of correctness with adequacy. Instead of asking, is it certain that I'm correct, you can ask, is the conclusion I arrive at adequate to describe the world to accomplish the goal? This of course moves one's epistemology, even natural, towards pragmatism (IEP). From the article:
Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are to be rejected.
And if all else fails, and you are stuggling intellectually and emotionally, consider whether you are on the obsessive-compulsive spectrum with something like OCD or OCPD. Some problems are not epistemological or logical, but psychological, and there's no shame if you are neurodiverse. If a fixation on certainty leads to paralysis by analysis, it may simply be a matter of taking an SSRI to change how you think. Perfectionism, properly regulated, is an inspiration for quality, but if becomes pathological, there's no more shame in regulating than there is in diabetes.
Well, the first question is (of course) why do you keep ending up at radical skepticism? To my mind, philosophy de-evolves into ideology when it loses the capacity for self-reflection or self-examination. Skepticism is the sneakiest form of ideology because (for some unspecified reason) it has lost the ability to honestly ask whether something can be trusted or taken at face value. I mean, it asks, sure, but the answer is always 'no', so the question is mere rhetoric.
The right method of philosophy (if you ask me, and with due respect to the early Wittgenstein) is this: to have and suspend disbelief; to entertain notions assiduously with a proper skeptical reserve. Abject skepticism has a chip on its shoulder; it challenges the universe to prove itself at every passing encounter, not realizing (because skepticism isn't self-reflective) that the universe doesn't care to prove itself, and that one must reach out to it to make any headway. There's a fear that underlies skepticism: that one might come to believe something that isn't true, which might make one look like an idiot, or feel shamed, or do or say things that are unconscionable or destructive. It's an understandable fear, but it reflects a lack of faith in oneself (in one's integrity, in one's ability to understand, in one's capacity to accept and cope with mistakes) more than anything about the universe itself.
Whenever you ask yourself "Why should I believe X?" make sure you also ask yourself "Why shouldn't I believe X?", or even better "What are the costs and benefits of a belief in X?". People who can't see the costs of a belief are ideologues; people who can't see the benefits of it are ideologues of a different sort; we should strive not to be ideologues. Remember, truth is only one of the three transcendentals; beauty and goodness have equal weight, and are not reducible to truth in any regard. If one places too much emphasis on truth, one ends up an abject zealot or an abject skeptic, and beauty and goodness fade from sight. You are resisting the radical skepticism you keep falling into; that tells me you feel (unpleasantly) the loss of the beautiful and the good. So entertain some notions that will bring beauty and goodness back into your world, just hold the truth of them lightly in your fingers, not solidly in your fist.
The core philosophical mindset is to learn to question the walls of the boxes one thinks within. When we do this, we realize that NONE of those mental boxes are certain! That is why you keep approaching skepticism.
The solution is pragmatism. Identify the holes in the grounding of your assumptions, keep them in mind, but then for most of them, use them anyway. Examining the grounding of our thinking even if it is incomplete, does not require that we THEN STOP THINKING! Instead, we need to realize that our thinking may on occasion lead us astray, when one of those unsupported assumptions may not actually hold. Be on the lookout for this. When we recognize the fallibility of our "best working models", we are more willing to modify them or doubt them when it is appropriate to do so.
There’s no need to avoid it- just keep it in perspective. If you can’t be absolutely sure of anything, so what? You don’t need to be absolutely sure in that sense- you just need to recalibrate what it means to be sufficiently sure. I am sufficiently sure that I have two feet, that the Beatles split up, the Moon is not made of cheese and a million and one other things. Yes I will admit that I can’t prove I am not a brain in a vat, but neither can I prove the Universe isn’t inside a giant pink rabbit or any other nonsense of the sort. I acknowledge the existence of that level of uncertainty but I discount it as utterly negligible. I suggest you do the same.
Concerning your problem that radical scepticism is an obstacle for reaching absolute certainty, there are two messages:
The bad one: Radical scepticism nearly always leads to further problematizing an intermediate result. Hence it does not lead to absolute certainty.
Exceptions are at most statements like Descartes’ cogito ergo sum or theorems from an axiomatized theory.
The good one: Absolute certainty due to final justification is not necessary. We can live and advance on the basis of hypotheses and error correction.
That’s the method of Popper’s principle of conjecture and refutation. It is a critical method.
