Comments for There is Some Truth in That

Comment on Presupposition and ‘Knows’ Contextualism by Joachim Horvath

Joachim Horvath — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 13:18:39 +0000

Hi Jonathan,

you claim that “the expression ‘the man sitting at the table’ requires it to be common ground that there is a uniquely salient man sitting at a uniquely salient table”. But what about the possibility of referential uses of descriptions à la Donnellan? In a skeptical context, this may in fact be the most charitable way to interpret an utterance of “the man sitting at the table does not know that there is a table”, given that it is not common ground in that context that there are tables.

Comment on What is fallibilism? by Jonathan Speke Laudly

Jonathan Speke Laudly — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 21:23:16 +0000

Hi, Jonathan Speke Laudly here,
False on a priori grounds?
I define a bachelor as an unmarried man and assert that Joe is a bachelor because he is a man and unmarried— until I find that he was in fact secretly married recently.
Doesn’t seem false on a priori grounds but empirical grounds. So, is it about changing the definition?
Example: I exclude Bill from category of bachelor because he is gay. But subsequently I decide or observe that unmarried gay man is similar enough to unmarried straight man to be placed in the bachelor category. In other words, I change the definition — thus Bill is a bachelor now on a priori grounds rather than empirical grounds? So, “Bill is not a bachelor” is now false on a priori grounds?
But I changed the definition of bachelor because straight unmarried man is similar empirically to gay unmarried man–so if this means that I changed the definition on empirical grounds doesn’t that make Bill now a bachelor on empirical grounds not on a priori grounds?
Or did I change the definition simply by realizing that the category bachelor as already defined simply does include Bill and similar others; is it just a remedial inclusion then, a corrected oversight?
What is so a priori, by definition, by tautology, by synonymy or by something or other, versus what is empirically so—seems not so clear.

Comment on What is fallibilism? by Alessia

Alessia — Mon, 31 May 2010 04:35:14 +0000

I think we could see the question of fallible a priori also in another way. If you consider justification with as background a theory of knowledge, and a way to characterize a theory of knowledge as compounded of many sources (perception, memory, etc) one of which is a priori source, at the same level of the others, I think you could say a priori is in a way ( but not in another sense) falllible. You must take into account the possibility of epistemic overdetermination (corroboration, disconfirmation etc). If you consider undermining defeaters (source sensible) and overriding defeaters (not sensible to a particular source), you could say a priori is infallible respect to the first, but not to the second. Here I consider a priori as a source of knowledge. Certainty would bring it to a higher degree than knowledge and would create a disparity among sources

Comment on Quantifiers and Epistemic Contextualism by There is Some Truth in That » Blog Archive » Presupposition and ‘Knows’ Contextualism

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:42:38 +0000

[...] contextualism that is broadly Lewisean. His project is, in its broad forms, very similar to that in one of my forthcoming papers. In my paper, I argue that Lewis’s particular suggested rules for proper ignoring are [...]

Comment on What is fallibilism? by Jonathan Weinberg

Jonathan Weinberg — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:31:43 +0000

“And it doesn’t look obviously to be connected with what they say.” Why do you say that? It seems to me to fit _very_ well with both the quoted text and the rest of what they say, which is why it’s such a good candidate for what they have in mind. It’s on your (overly-)literal reading that what they say comes out as weird & under-argued. And this is all doubly so, in the context of the epistemological state-of-play as I indicated in my previous post.

There’s a certain style of philosophical exegesis where we hold every damn sentence someone writes up to a very tight scrutiny of all its quantifiers, etc. And I think it is often (though definitely not always) a poor mode of exegesis. What’s important is that philosophers be extremely careful _in the places where they need to be careful_, and to be prepared to be more careful should such a need arise. These authors, very reasonably, did not feel a need to be especially careful in these glosses on their fallibilism. If reading them too tightly yields something incomprehensible, then the proper and charitable thing to do is relax the reading.

Regarding the other matter, I reckon I hold with Garret on the question of old-timey beliefs in the Euclidean structure of space. It’s only with the benefit of our more recent understandings about what sorts of claims can actually be known in what sorts of ways, that it looks preposterous — not even justifiable — to think that the structure of space or time could be discerned a priori. I mean, are you saying that Kant’s arguments in the transcendental aesthetic don’t even provide _justification_ for his claims? If so, then I think you’ve just got something weird in mind with the word “justification”.

I would also note that there’s a weaker reading of “universality” in Garret’s comments than the one I offered (and maybe it’s the one he actually had in mind): the necessity of Euclid’s Fifth Postulate, i.e., the impossibility of any non-Euclidean form of geometry. That, too, is something that was widely believed on an a priori basis, and (I think) with justification, but then ultimately falsified, also on an a priori basis.