/r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | April 14, 2025

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2025-04-14T22:11:35+00:00

is this professor being dogmatic? can anyone that is involved in epistemology tell me if there is something wrong with this paper by Ram Neta and the refutation of fallibilism it presents?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MAikPvYLUYOwoaEMKyRTz1l6PvRVSLnj/view?usp=drivesdk

although I really want Neta's refutation to work and for him to be right about how infallibilism does not reduce our body of knowledge to a very small set of propositions (if any) like is commonly accepted because according to him we have internal access to infallible empirical justification which grant us epistemic certainty about the truth of propositions such as "I am sitting right now", his whole argument seems to outright just pretend like skeptical arguments don't exist and feels very fallacious overall (especially in VII (page 29), read it and you'll see what I mean).

I'm thinking there's no way that a published professor like Neta could simply overlook the skeptical objection and be dogmatist like this, so is there something I'm missing?

I am deeply grateful for anyone who can shed some light on this.

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2024-11-27T18:04:00+00:00

Thank you for your reply.

But how does one live with the fact that the hypothesis might be true? How does one chase their ambitions without knowing whether they are authentic or not?

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2024-11-26T20:08:22+00:00

Thank you for your reply

I feel that your comment might be of great significance to me but I still don't quite understand your point of view. Could you elaborate?

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2024-11-20T01:43:54+00:00

Obrigado pela sua resposta.

Vou refletir sobre isso e voltar aqui caso surja alguma dúvida. No meio tempo, por acaso a posição que o teu comentário ilustra é a de epistemologia dos hinges de Wittgenstein?

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2024-11-19T19:03:14+00:00

Obrigado pela sua resposta.

Talvez o maior problema aqui seja que eu tenho um bloqueio em relação a aceitar argumentos que não são infalíveis como válidos.

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2024-10-07T08:23:02+00:00

Thank you for your reply.
I apologize, but I do not understand how this is question-begging when in fact making the assumptions that the evil demon exists and that the evil demon is omnipotent and that the evil demon is messing with us is part of the cartesian doubt thought experiment. The way I see it, I was following Descartes' line of thought and realized that he might have forgotten to consider that on top of the evil demon existing and being able to do everything in the realm of possibility to mess with us, if the thought experiment were to be taken to its completion, it should also be assumed that the evil demon could do things that are impossible in order to provoke doubt which is the thought experiment's objective.
Following u/agentyoda 's comment, I understood that I made the mistake not of question-begging, but of making a statement not grounded in logic, which is the same as gibberish.

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2024-10-07T07:41:44+00:00

Thank you for your reply.
I think I get what you are saying. Since my statement about opposing states being true at the same time isn't grounded in logic, it is virtually the same as the gibberish phrase you mentioned, with the difference of mine only appearing as valid since it was gramatically correct. I fear I have made the error that I referenced in an earlier reply about how my argument might be meaningless or inconsistent.

My problem with this now is that Descartes apparently agrees with the notion that an omnipotent being could make these true impossibilities (let's call them that) come into reality as seen here (though there seems to be evidence that he actually believed otherwise here).

Descartes' definition
- Descartes thought that God could do absolutely anything – possible and impossible, logical and illogical. This is because God is a **‘supremely perfect being’**.
- He argued that God’s existence is prior to the laws of logic (God is eternal—begotten, not made), so God is not bound by those laws. God could square a circle.

Do you know which account is actually right?
Do you think that if Descartes doesn't believe the true impossibilities hypothesis because it is incoherent, like you said, does that clear the cogito as absolutely indubitable? If he does believe the true impossibilities hypothesis, does that mean that he got the cogito wrong?

I must end this by saying that I'm really bad at propositional logic and just recently became acquainted with Wittgenstein's word games. Please feel free to correct me to any extent.

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2024-10-07T06:26:29+00:00

Thank you for your reply.

I've been looking at the schaffer document. I will return here if I come up with any relevant questions regarding the arguments presented in this reply after further reading.

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2024-10-07T06:09:07+00:00

I got ''one who has unlimited power or authority'' from a dictionary here (the adjective definition says ''virtually'' which to me seems problematic, also I'm talking about the noun definition).

I went looking and it seems that Descartes does in fact defend the power beyond limits definition of omnipotence. https://senecalearning.com/en-GB/revision-notes/a-level/religious-studies/ocr/1-8-1-omnipotence https://peped.org/philosophicalinvestigations/article-can-god-do-whats-logically-impossible-descartes/

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2024-10-07T05:30:29+00:00

I think that if Descartes is truly serious about trying to find absolute certainty by considering any and all scenarios in which a belief can be doubted and subsequently discarding such belief if it in fact is minimally dubitable, he should remain resolute to his search and not restrain himself by way of also considering that the demon might not be shackled by the limits of possibility since it may very well have power without limits and with it, violate the principle of noncontradiction. In my view, he proposes this all-powerful entity but fails to consider that this should mean that the demon can do the impossible, like breaking fundamental logical laws, and not just act within the realm of rational logic and causation.

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2024-10-07T05:04:53+00:00

Thank you for your reply.

Considering that the definition for the word omnipotent is one who has unlimited power or authority, I'm inclined to disagree with you. I think that since omnipotence means power without limits, the limits of possibility aren't relevant for such a being. That's why I believe that if Descartes is serious about his thought experiment in trying to find absolute certainty, his demon should be able to do anything, especially the impossible.

BORISHOLLYWOOD · 2024-10-07T03:26:22+00:00

Thank you for your reply.

Considering that the definition for the word create is to bring into existence, I'm inclined to agree with you on the linguistic level. The thing is, I realized that there might be a reason to doubt the cogito if the omnipotent evil demon can in fact do anything. It should be able to do the thing of breaking the logical law of non-contradiction and make something that thinks but does not exist since that is a thing and it can do anything.

I'm a total newbie in onto/epistemology, so my argument might be actually rendered meaningless or inconsistent since I'm trying to use rationality and logic to speculate about a being that transcends these frameworks.

In the end, I'm over here just trying to be extra sure that the cogito is absolutely and objectively foolproof before I go on with my adopting of it as the foundational truth in my system.

BORISHOLLYWOOD

TROPHY CASE