Could you give me examples of “self-evident truths” other than mathematical equations or tautologies? To me it seems that if you are allowed to use only things that are true in all possible universes, you can only get to conclusions that are true in all possible universes. (In other words, there is no way I could ever believe “my name is Viliam” using only the Strong Foundationalist methods.)
Well, in that case the intuitive answer would be that the Foundationalists have successfully argued themselves into a spectacularly convincing corner, and meanwhile I’ll just be over here using all this “unverifiable” “knowledge” to figure out how to deal with the “real” “world”.
And in any case, if you’re invoking an Evil Demon you’re lost regardless, it’s the epistemologic equivalent of “but what if all your arguments are actually wrong and you just can’t see it”, to which the answer would be “In that case I am quite hopelessly lost but it doesn’t look that way to me, and what more do you expect me to say?”
I suppose an argument could be made that “if such a thing as evolution exists it seems implausible for it to create a brain that expends an awful lot of food intake on being irrepairably wrong about the things it knows, and if not even evolution exists our view of the cosmos is so lost as to be irrepairable regardless”.
Sometimes I wonder if philosophy should be taught in a largely noun-free environment. (Points for correct answers, points deducted for Noun Usage?) Get people’s minds off the what, and on the how and why. Obsession with describing states will be the death of philosophy...
Firstly, you’re getting mixed up. The Foundationalist side are trying to downplay the Evil Demon Argument as much as possible whilst the Coherentist side claims it refutes Foundationalism as it means nothing can be known.
Both sides plus myself plus practically everybody agrees that just because intuition states X doesn’t mean X is true. So how can you invoke it with any plausibility in a debate?
IF evolution works as suspected, there are still other ways that humans could survive other than correlation of beliefs with reality depending on how everything else works.
Could you give me examples of “self-evident truths” other than mathematical equations or tautologies? To me it seems that if you are allowed to use only things that are true in all possible universes, you can only get to conclusions that are true in all possible universes. (In other words, there is no way I could ever believe “my name is Viliam” using only the Strong Foundationalist methods.)
Yes, the Foundationalist would agree with that. They would not see a problem with it- that is the legitimate limit of knowledge.
Well, in that case the intuitive answer would be that the Foundationalists have successfully argued themselves into a spectacularly convincing corner, and meanwhile I’ll just be over here using all this “unverifiable” “knowledge” to figure out how to deal with the “real” “world”.
And in any case, if you’re invoking an Evil Demon you’re lost regardless, it’s the epistemologic equivalent of “but what if all your arguments are actually wrong and you just can’t see it”, to which the answer would be “In that case I am quite hopelessly lost but it doesn’t look that way to me, and what more do you expect me to say?”
I suppose an argument could be made that “if such a thing as evolution exists it seems implausible for it to create a brain that expends an awful lot of food intake on being irrepairably wrong about the things it knows, and if not even evolution exists our view of the cosmos is so lost as to be irrepairable regardless”.
Sometimes I wonder if philosophy should be taught in a largely noun-free environment. (Points for correct answers, points deducted for Noun Usage?) Get people’s minds off the what, and on the how and why. Obsession with describing states will be the death of philosophy...
Firstly, you’re getting mixed up. The Foundationalist side are trying to downplay the Evil Demon Argument as much as possible whilst the Coherentist side claims it refutes Foundationalism as it means nothing can be known.
Both sides plus myself plus practically everybody agrees that just because intuition states X doesn’t mean X is true. So how can you invoke it with any plausibility in a debate?
IF evolution works as suspected, there are still other ways that humans could survive other than correlation of beliefs with reality depending on how everything else works.