Great! I’ve listened to quite a few of Nathan Hawkins’ interviews, I’ll take this one to the gym this morning.
1 Like
I basically agree with what you’re saying about skepticism and knowledge. Couple of points:
But not, if you accept Descartes’ argument, on the question of whether you exist. (Or its modern update: the question of whether “existing” is going on.)
Yes, but there can be reasons for skepticism that, while unlikely, don’t require the evil demon. To use your example: It’s possible that King had an unacknowledged ghostwriter. The evil demon only raises its head on the “T” part of JTB, calling into question whether anything can be true. “King wrote Carrie” is both justified and a belief I have as a result, but I don’t know if it’s true, and if the demon had its way, I could never know.
Bradley’s skeptic has overstated the case, but we can still give them a charitable reading. See @Tom_Storm below, for instance. Staying skeptical can be a statement about what is convincing, not about what is foundationally possible or impossible.
JTB does not require that you know if it’s true. See the SEP article’s comment here:
Relatedly, the idea that a proposition is true does not require that anyone can know or prove that it is true. Not all truths are established truths. If you flip a coin and never check how it landed, it may be true that it landed heads, even if nobody has any way to tell. Truth is a metaphysical, as opposed to epistemological, notion: truth is a matter of how things are, not how they can be shown to be. So when we say that only true things can be known, we’re not (yet) saying anything about how anyone can access the truth. SEP article on the analysis of knowledge
And I think I’ve now earned a rant. The notion that JTB requires that you have transcendent knowledge was brought to this forum by a person who refused to read the above SEP information based on a dislike of “academia.” That poster went on the spout nonsense for another 30 damn pages with no one challenging him or her. Do the forum a favor. If someone is spraying the forum with bullshit, speak up. Correct them in a nice way. It makes the forum better for everyone.
Have you looked at the book? I’m through the introduction and Chapter One (Primary and Secondary Qualities) and am pleasantly surprised, both by the quality of the prose and the lucidity of the arguments. I might not have understood this book some years ago, but now as an item in my self-taught curriculum, it’s making a lot of sense, so far, anyway. I like that he launches straight into an assault on the falsity of the idea that only the ‘primary qualities of extended matter’ (i.e. materialism) can be considered real.
Hmm. That’s not quite what the passage is saying. This is a passage about whether truth is independent of what I know, or what can be known. And of course it is. But put it back in the JTB context: the “T” is there because of the assumption that there is an independent need for a “truth” criterion, apart from “justification,” in order to arrive at knowledge. What would it mean to have the correct justifications for belief, while not knowing if what you believed was true – though as it happened, it was? (Maybe I know it, but you don’t.) Would you then have knowledge but not know you did? Or would an observer be more likely to say that you don’t know, since you don’t know whether it’s true?
The question is, is there any daylight between “what justifies a belief” and “what must therefore be true”? I think there has to be, otherwise the T would simply follow from the JB.
And a good rant it is! Hope we all heed it.
That’s exactly what it’s saying.
Well said !
I would also point out the logocentrism here. It is “so very important” to get our merely theoretical verbal beliefs in order.
I used to visit a park where a manic street preacher was often barking over a megaphone at the same spot, where the path narrowed. The spider had chosen a nice place for his web. He was a “fire and brimstone” type. Rude, unsophisticated.
I could usually circumvent him, but once I couldn’t. He started his spiel. I politely mumbled I was an atheist. He tried to rope me into a debate on the subject. I kept walking.
My point is that people can just not take a certain game seriously. Those caught up in the game may insist that this evasion of the game is a position within the game. If “I” try to give a hint of why the game seems unreal to me, this gets “processed” like a move with the game. So a kind of “game-deafness” functions as wall between the inside and outside of the game.
1 Like
By the way, I’ve located a properly bookmarked and OCR’d .pdf of the text here (on the site advaita.org.uk which I suppose is apt.) This edition is much more suitable for close analysis and study.