I think one reason this has stuck around in academic philosophy is that western philosophy has a powerful anti-skepticism strain, to the point where “you can know something” is almost axiomatic. Everyone wants to have an argument against skepticism; they just haven’t agreed on exactly what it is. Skepticism is every philosopher’s bogeyman. (This even applies to Descartes, the big proponent of the skeptical method.)
In particular, a view that (in my limited experience) academic philosophers wants to at least accommodate as possible, if not outright endorse, is the “here is a hand” argument: IE, you can know (with 100% certainty) some simple facts about your situation, such as the fact that you have a hand.
western philosophy has a powerful anti-skepticism strain, to the point where “you can know something” is almost axiomatic
I’m pretty pessimistic about the strain of philosophy as you’ve described it. I have yet to run into a sense of “know” that is binary (i.e. not “believed with probability”) that I would accept as an accurate description of the phenomenon of “knowledge” in the real world rather than as an occasionally useful approximation. Between the preface paradox (or its minor modification, the lottery paradox) and Fitch’s paradox of knowability, I don’t trust the “knowledge” operator in any logical claim.
In my limited experience, it feels like a lot of epistemologists have sadly “missed the bus” on this one. Like, they’ve gone so far down the wrong track that it’s a lot of work to even explain how our way of thinking about it could be relevant to their area of concern.
Fair enough, but I’d expect this post is unhelpful to someone who doesn’t acknowledge a baseline universal uncertainty, and unnecessary for someone who does.
Presumably whatever axioms the anti-sceptic philosophers use to avoid infinite recursion in any knowledge apply here too.
Ah, well. In my experience, there are a lot of people who (a) acknowledge baseline universal uncertainty, but (b) accept the theory of common knowledge, and even the idea that Two Generals is a hard or insoluble problem. So I think a lot of people haven’t noticed the contradiction, or at least haven’t propagated it very far.[1]
Presumably whatever axioms the anti-sceptic philosophers use to avoid infinite recursion in any knowledge apply here too.
Based on how this comment section is going, I am updating toward “haven’t propagated it very far”; it seems like maybe a lot of people know somewhere in the back of their minds that common knowledge can’t be literally occurring, but have half-developed hand-wavy theories about why they can go on using the theory as if it applies.
I think one reason this has stuck around in academic philosophy is that western philosophy has a powerful anti-skepticism strain, to the point where “you can know something” is almost axiomatic. Everyone wants to have an argument against skepticism; they just haven’t agreed on exactly what it is. Skepticism is every philosopher’s bogeyman. (This even applies to Descartes, the big proponent of the skeptical method.)
In particular, a view that (in my limited experience) academic philosophers wants to at least accommodate as possible, if not outright endorse, is the “here is a hand” argument: IE, you can know (with 100% certainty) some simple facts about your situation, such as the fact that you have a hand.
I’m pretty pessimistic about the strain of philosophy as you’ve described it. I have yet to run into a sense of “know” that is binary (i.e. not “believed with probability”) that I would accept as an accurate description of the phenomenon of “knowledge” in the real world rather than as an occasionally useful approximation. Between the preface paradox (or its minor modification, the lottery paradox) and Fitch’s paradox of knowability, I don’t trust the “knowledge” operator in any logical claim.
In my limited experience, it feels like a lot of epistemologists have sadly “missed the bus” on this one. Like, they’ve gone so far down the wrong track that it’s a lot of work to even explain how our way of thinking about it could be relevant to their area of concern.
Fair enough, but I’d expect this post is unhelpful to someone who doesn’t acknowledge a baseline universal uncertainty, and unnecessary for someone who does.
Presumably whatever axioms the anti-sceptic philosophers use to avoid infinite recursion in any knowledge apply here too.
Ah, well. In my experience, there are a lot of people who (a) acknowledge baseline universal uncertainty, but (b) accept the theory of common knowledge, and even the idea that Two Generals is a hard or insoluble problem. So I think a lot of people haven’t noticed the contradiction, or at least haven’t propagated it very far.[1]
Not sure what you mean here.
Based on how this comment section is going, I am updating toward “haven’t propagated it very far”; it seems like maybe a lot of people know somewhere in the back of their minds that common knowledge can’t be literally occurring, but have half-developed hand-wavy theories about why they can go on using the theory as if it applies.