I think we're talking about different things. I'm not making any claims about the nature of knowledge, but rather justification. Surely you don't deny there is a problem there?

On second thought, this is Pyrrhonism, not Academic skepticism. It does point towards a simple 'suspension of all beliefs' rather than any true declaration of doubt.

Although this commonsense approach is intended to use as few suppositions as possible, it does make some. Even though we can only declare a sensation to be 'directly experienced' through the use of some kind of assertion (which seem inherently fallible), qualia seems to be quite a different thing than belief. So I might be presupposing, incorrectly, that qualia is in some way subject to 'mistakeness'. I don't know; either view looks hard to parse.

The only approach I've uncovered that seems to have a chance at actually refuting this might be Duncan Pritchard's claim that underdetermination - which is essentially my core supposition - is false, or somehow inapplicable (in his words: a contentious philosophical claim masquerading as common sense). So I guess I have one promising avenue to explore, at least, even if underdetermination feels basically true to me.

Thanks to everybody who responded.

If you know something there's no need to "know that you know," anymore than if you're running, say, you need to "run that you run." "Knowing that you know," among other things, seems to suggest that there is, or needs to be, something certain about knowledge, and as I've expressed a few times, that is a mistake.

A big problem with philosophy is that it very easily becomes a meaningless semantic game. When I talk about 'knowing that one knows', I'm not asserting that it is possible to know something yet not know that I know it. Rather, the statement is used to highlight the infinite regress of justification which fallibilism creates (how do you know A, and how do you know your explanation for why A is true, etc). The incoherence is the point.

I'm trying to download this article from JSTOR because I think it deals with what I'm talking about, but it insists that I have to pay $15 despite claiming that I have 'six free articles' for registering an account. Is there a way to avoid paying or do I have no choice?

EDIT: Got it through Sci-Hub.



What does external validation mean and how is it relevant?

I explained this already. They're knowledge claims. Knowledge doesn't imply certainty or proof.

No, but it requires justification, which I'm arguing is incompatible with fallibility.

Why do you think that claims "need to (ultimately) justify themselves"?

They need to be justified, period. I didn't say that claims in general need to be able to justify themselves (that would be circular), I said that scientific claims rest upon an underlying epistemic framework that itself needs justification.

Not within its own epistemic framework, but they still aren't able to ultimately justify themselves. I'm not knowledgeable enough to give my opinion on just what it is they *are* within that framework, so why don't you tell me what you think?

If global skepticism holds, then we have no more reason to believe in scientific claims than any other type of claim. An assertion about feldspars would be based on faith.

What are permissible criteria for either defining or testing a mistake in the reasoning process?

Well, I suppose if one can't coherently suggest that something might be wrong or mistaken. I'm not sure what that could be. You say 'logically speaking', but even the laws of logic can't be assumed against the commonsense argument.

Here is another way of formulating the problem: suppose that most of the observers in existence are simulated by some malevolent AI (i.e. Cartesian demon). Any rational observer will quickly come to the conclusion that they are being simulated, but the AI does not want this to happen. It alters their logic so that they come to conclude, incorrectly, that they are most likely not simulated. That's regular Cartesian skepticism. However, this thought experiment relies itself on a whole slew of premises which could potentially be used to show that it is self-refuting.

The argument here is that one does not need to state the premises in logical terms. We simply take a commonsense scenario (as common sense is accepted as true when we reject radical skepticism) and use it to undermine everything else. Of course, we're not supposing that any particular scenario like the AI or demon is true - rather, we must accept that all situations in which massive error is attributed to ourselves, such that we incorrectly assume our own rationality, are no more improbable than situations in which we are rational enough to apprehend reality.

So scientific statements like those (1) are not asserting certainty or proof, and (2) are not saying "we know nothing about this."

But they're knowledge claims, no? We say that we know that feldspars are a group of rock-forming tectosilicate minerals that make up about 41% of the Earth's continental crust by weight, for example.

Is that not the way you've understood what scientific claims are doing to this point?

That isn't an epistemological claim. The phrase 'I know' is being used colloquially, in the context of common sense. You have to first build up a whole epistemology to assert that the scientific method and our perceptions are generally accurate.

I don't really understand what you're asking (remember that I'm not well-read). I do think that those statements presuppose important claims like 'my senses and reasoning are reliable'.

Think about it this way: why worry about/focus on certainty or proof?

Because saying something is 'probably' true already presupposes certain claims about the nature of knowledge.

Also, isn't "P, a proposition about x, is certain or has been proved, otherwise we can know nothing about x" a false dichotomy?

Is it? Can you show another alternative?

Sorry, I'm new to this board. How is my concern misplaced?

Most philosophers do not accept radical skepticism. I'm sure that they do accept that all ideas are fallible, but what I'm arguing here is that that undermines any basis for claiming that fallibility doesn't imply doubt.

Falsification is useful as a heuristic, but can't provide a workable epistemology. We may be able to try to falsify our beliefs to bring them closer to the truth, but there's no way of evaluating our absolute proximity from it. It's a process, not any sort of justification.

The only way that conclusion could be made is through the use of logic, which this argument aims to undermine. It does try to show that knowledge is impossible, but only according to our fallible framework of comprehension.

So yes, as I said, you could argue that I could equally be mistaken about this thesis, but that isn't even relevant to it.

This argument seems powerful at first because animals with very similar cognition have, in our planet's history, far outnumbered humans (who we can surely admit are unique). No one can know how the 'selection process' works unless they fully understand the nature of minds.

However, that selection process could conceivably be gamed regardless of our lack of understanding. Consider a simulated experience identical to your own. Regardless of whether your minds merge or remain separate, its existence means you have added to your 'observer fluid' or measure. That is, assuming all else is equal, your particular experience is now twice as likely to be selected as anyone else's. Assuming that animals have relatively low measure accounts for our apparent luck just as well as them being mindless and requires far fewer needless assumptions.

This certainly doesn't prove we're being simulated, but does possibly show that humans are *important*, having a large share of experience.

This argument is powerful because animals with very similar cognition have, in our planet's history, far outnumbered humans (who are unique, we can surely admit). No one can know how the 'selection process' works unless they fully understand the nature of minds.

However, that selection process could conceivably be gamed regardless of our lack of understanding. Consider a simulated experience identical to your own. Regardless of whether your minds merge or remain separate, its existence means you have added to your 'observer fluid' or measure. That is, assuming all else is equal, your particular experience is now twice as likely to be selected as anyone else's. Assuming that animals have relatively low measure accounts for our apparent luck just as well as them being mindless and requires far fewer needless assumptions.

This certainly doesn't prove we're being simulated, but does possibly prove that humans are *important*, having a large share of experience. It fits a religious framework reasonably well.

I'm afraid I don't see the point you're making? Logic is not immune to my argument.