Category: Knowledge
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On Our Knowledge of Sameness
How ubiquitous, yet how strange, is sameness! A structure of reality so pervasive and fundamental that a world that did not exhibit it would be inconceivable. How do I know that the tree I now see in my backyard is numerically the same as the one I saw there yesterday? Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper…
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Conceivability and Epistemic Possibility
My disembodied existence is conceivable (thinkable without apparent logical contradiction by me and beings like me). But does it follow that my disembodied existence is possible? Sydney Shoemaker floats the suggestion that this inference is invalid, resting as he thinks on a confusion of epistemic with metaphysical possibility. (Identity, Cause, and Mind, p. 155, n.…
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Greco on Stroud on Moore on the External World with a Shot at Stove
John Greco (How to Reid Moore) finds Barry Stroud's interpretation of G. E. Moore's proof of an external world implausible: According to him [Stroud], the question as to whether we know anything about the external world can be taken in an internal or an external sense. In the internal sense, the question can be answered…
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Can One See that One is Not a Brain-in-a-Vat?
John Greco, How to Reid Moore: So how does one know that one is not a brain in a vat, or that one is not deceived by an evil demon? Moore and Reid are for the most part silent on this issue. But a natural extension of their view is that one knows it by…
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Knowledge Without Belief: A Dallas Willard-Josef Pieper Connection
A commenter on the Pieper post notes that Dallas Willard has a understanding of the belief-knowledge relation (or lack of relation) similar to that of Pieper. A little searching brought me to the following passage in Willard's Knowledge and Naturalism which substantiates the commenter's suggestion (I have bolded the parts relevant to my current concerns):
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Possibility, Intelligibility, and Miracles
Dave Gudeman at my old blog commented forcefully and eloquently: I've always had difficulty with arguments like this: It is not easy to understand how God could add causal input to the space-time system. I'm aware that such arguments have a distinguished history, but I don't get it. Just because you don't understand how it works,…
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Imaginable, Conceivable, Possible: How Justify Modal Beliefs?
As I use them, 'imaginable' and 'conceivable' mean the following. Bear in mind that there is an element of stipulation and regimentation in what I am about to say. Bear in mind also that the following thoughts are tentative and exploratory, not to mention fragmentary. The topics are difficult and in any case this is only…
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Notes on Van Inwagen on Modal Epistemology
Herewith, some interpretive notes and critical comments on Peter van Inwagen's paper, "Modal Epistemology" (Philosopical Studies 92 (1998), pp. 67-84; reprinted in van Inwagen, Ontology, Identity, and Modality, Cambridge UP, 2001, pp. 243-258.) 1. Van Inwagen describes his position as "modal scepticism" (245) but a better name for it would be 'mitigated modal scepticism' since he does…
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Knowledge, Certainty, and Exaggeration
As I explained the other day, I am inclined to accept Butchvarov's view of knowledge as the impossibility of error. If I know that p, then it is not enough that I have a justified true belief that p; I must have a true belief whose justification rules out the possibility of error. Anything short…
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Butchvarov: Knowledge as Requiring Certainty
We begin with an example from Panayot Butchvarov's The Concept of Knowledge, Northwestern University Press, 1970, p. 47. [CK is the red volume on the topmost visible shelf. Immediately to its right is Butch's Being Qua Being. Is Butch showing without saying that epistemology is prior to metaphysics?] There is a bag containing 99 white marbles and one black…
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Which Is More Certain: God or My Hand?
A reader inquires, " I'm curious, if someone asked you what you were more certain of, your hand or belief in the existence of God, how would you respond?" The first thing a philosopher does when asked a question is examine the question. (Would that ordinary folk, including TV pundits, would do likewise before launching into gaseous…