“How do you know that?” I.E. do you know you have hands? I.E. solipsism.
The issue here is that Munchausen's trilemma exposes that while you may not be able to explain or expose the justification for a true belief, you yet can state a fact (without necessarily explaining it or justifying it). The PURPOSE of this epiphany is merely to point out that regardless of the weakness of each case in the trilemma, nevertheless you are able to know things, and therefore you have a justification. You just aren't able to explain it easily.
Put another way, what is the necessary contingent that is not contingent informing the fundamental truth of existance? The “post-eternal?” The first mover, the necessary being? It does not matter if you know what it is, but we are forced to conclude that it must exist (i.e. the problem of entropy, problem of time, etc). This is the “A”, the non-contingent principle – the idea that something must be non-contingent, since or due to every case of the trilemma being unsatisfactory.
Otherwise, what then is the “satisfactory fourth case”?
“IF that were true,” then the source of truth underpinning all reality would simply be myself. Given then some question such as “how do you know you have eyes (or hands, or how do you know you have a brain) – if you didn't, but you thought you did, OR if you did but thought you didn't, then this would mean there is hidden information you are not aware of – and then de facto there is some separation between you and whatever is processing reality (and therefore solipsism is untrue).
In short there is no reason not to trust your senses (etc.) since there is nothing informing the anti-case. The idea that we may speculate over this, is only a statement that we may exercise free will. This is the “law of Five” in western occultism – the idea that we can imagine anything. However, this is the important conclusion over that, it is not real. It is not real because it could be anything and this does not affect the world, or the world could not function. Therefore it is the proverbial invisible pink unicorn. How do you know it is pink if it is invisible? In fact, there is no meaning to this, it is not pink, and in fact by definition there is no such unicorn.
The conclusion is that there must be a value proposition to any truth; if something is true and there is no value proposition, it is untrue. All truth affects the world, there is a power of natural selection to it; this also lends itself to the concept of a living religion; like the boy who lived in harry potter– the dead religion is false, the only true religion must be a living religion. And all of this points to the B case and not the C case. This verifies B, but not C – C-class claims must come later. This gives us an edge; others can only barely deal with A-class logic. B-class logic is a higher logic, like helper libraries in a kernal.
1. Considering munchausen's trilema for justifying a belief, is there a fourth option? (answer: revelatory truth–justified coherentism–but this falls into #3)
2. If it is coherentism how do you escape the trap of “circular reasoning with extra steps” given that coherentism embraces a kind of sophisticated circularity (a large web of mutually supporting beliefs rather than a tiny vicious circle)?
3. Munchausen's Trilema; each one considered unsatifsying– but lets pick on #3. Since observational evidence is the strongest form of scientific evidence, why is observational proof or self-evident proof disqualified? Even if we embrace a kind of solipsism, are we saying that the very ability to process and comprehend evidence itself is not sufficient to verify the truth or falsehood of a statement? In that case I would propose that it is a kind of bait and switch; you have asked for evidence but you have pre-denied not only that there is no such evidence, but that evidence itself cannot satisfy truth or falsehood.
“Do you deny the necessity of a necessary God” – first mover, non-contingent, non-eternal/post-eternal etc. (this is a throwback to #1)
1. Who was the guy that said there is a 33.3% chance Jesus existed and a 66% chance he didn't? On the subject of, well we will allow HIS argument but in the general case you lose credibility if you claim jesus did not exist? – break down the credibility thing and explain more about this guy.
2. I would argue we CAN prove that there either was or was not a Jesus. But I forgot my line of thinking since I had to write out the other thing above. Im sure I will remember it more clearly in discussion but it was somehting like, (and this was mentioned), the Jews wrote the bible but deny he existed, yet apparently confirm he was the messiah (break that down please) – but the idea is that IF jesus existed he certainly must appear in the old testament and if he doesnt this is actually proof he did not exist. The rationale for this is a) necessary being, b) from there we need to get to the god of the old testament (Yaweh) being that god.
These are all logical deductions from first mover to most ancient alive religion. I.E. we know there is a necessary being, but we dont know if it is the abrahamic god, …
But by logic it would have to be him because its the only remaining case. Given THAT, we can now find Jesus in the old testament, but we can only do that if we first understand Jesus in the New Testament. Meaning, if you start from the old testament, you have to deny progressive revelation. So if the New Testament has any validity it has to explain this. Once that is done there is no issue with Jesus; given the idea that there is progressive revelation in the sense that people have forgotten things taught in the past; but there can be no abrogation over an eternal covenant, or else the implication is that it breaks the abliity of God to predict the future. I.E. it has to be explained why God made an eternal covenant and then changed the covenant or made a new covenant or maybe a different covenant with a different group of people, i.e. how can we understand the validity of one covenant if another is arbitrarily deprecated?
Meaning, if we do not have an independent source of authority over covenant validity, is the covenant itself arbitrary? if people could be righteous under the old law, why was a new law needed? And is there a choice now? All sorts of issues! It would be based on an exact study of Jeremiah's new covenant at a minimum.
Since we have authorized the holy scriptures as holy, they now become a tool for exposition. This section moved to Jeremiah vs. King David.
Münchhausen trilemma (also known as the Agrippan trilemma or Munchausen's trilemma) is a famous problem in epistemology — the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge, justification, and truth. It argues that it's theoretically impossible to give an ultimate, unquestionable proof or complete justification for any truth claim (even in logic or mathematics) without falling into one of three unsatisfactory options. The trilemma gets its name from the tall tales of Baron Münchhausen, who supposedly pulled himself (and his horse) out of a swamp by his own hair — an absurd image of self-bootstrapping that can't actually work. The three horns of the trilemma When you try to justify a statement (“Why do you believe A?”) and keep asking “But why is that justification true?”, you eventually hit one of these:
Infinite regress The chain of justifications never ends — each reason requires another reason forever (A justified by B, B by C, C by D, …). → Unsatisfying because it never reaches solid ground. Circular reasoning (circularity) The justification loops back — you eventually use the original claim (or something that depends on it) to justify itself (A justified by B, B by C, C back to A). → Unsatisfying because it's begging the question / tautological. Dogmatism / axiomatic stopping point The chain stops at some belief that is simply accepted without further justification (“it's self-evident”, “it's an axiom”, “God said so”, “it's obvious”, “I feel it intuitively”). → Unsatisfying because it's arbitrary or unproven.
The trilemma says: pick your poison — every attempt at complete justification ends in one of these three dead-ends. Is there a fourth option? Mainstream academic philosophy generally says no — these three options exhaust the logical possibilities for linear chains of justification. Many philosophers therefore accept that absolute certainty (in the strong foundationalist sense) is impossible, and they choose one of the horns (or combinations) as the least-bad option:
Infinitism embraces infinite regress as okay (rare). Coherentism embraces a kind of sophisticated circularity (a large web of mutually supporting beliefs rather than a tiny vicious circle). Foundationalism embraces dogmatism but tries to make the foundations as secure as possible (self-evident truths, reliable faculties, basic observations, etc.).
Some people propose what they call “fourth options” or escapes, but these usually turn out to be:
Variants of coherentism (e.g. “holistic / systematic mutual support isn't vicious circularity”). Refusals to play the game (“knowledge doesn't require that kind of infinite-proof standard”). Pragmatic / fallibilist approaches (“we don't need certainty, just good enough justification”). Radical skepticism (“indeed nothing can be proven”). Or highly technical / non-standard logics that most philosophers don't accept as dissolving the trilemma.
In short: the trilemma is still widely regarded as valid — there is no uncontroversial fourth horn that everyone agrees escapes the force of the argument. It remains one of the deepest challenges to the idea of absolutely certain, fully justified knowledge. Most thinkers today simply live with one of the three horns rather than claiming to have transcended the trilemma entirely.