Claims to Certainty and Scrutiny

Since I've put up a few posts, I thought it might be important to mention one of my fundamental disagreements with Gangadean, Anderson and WF which might remind the reader of why I raising some of the objections that I am raising.

If you will look at my posts, you will see that I try to show how their proofs fail. I might bring up remote possibilities against some of their arguments/premises. Of course, it is undoubtedly going to make me seem like a skeptic in general. In fact, I am a fallibilist about knowledge, that is to say, I think we can know propositions even if we are not maximally justified regarding them and so skepticism doesn't actually suit me that well.

However, Gangadean and company are infallibilists about knowledge. They maintain that S knows that p if and only if, S has a justified true belief about p. However, they have an extreme view on what counts as justification. Roughly, S is justified in believing that p if and only if, S has ruled out all not-p possibilities. So you're only justified in believing something like, "God exists" if you have been able to rule out every other possibility that is mutually inconsistent with the proposition (that God exists). Sometimes the proponents speak about being able to "show" a proof--- but I think this brings about difficulties --for instance, what does it precisely mean to be able to show a proof? Nevertheless, I have heard the followers of WF speak of being able to show that God exists---this is part and parcel of knowing that God exists. And what it means to show that God exists is to be able to (at least) rehearse a sound argument which demonstrates that it is simply metaphysically impossible that God does not exist.

I think that such a view invariably leads to skepticism about knowledge. It would mean we know very little, if anything. We don't know things like, "I have hands," "I have a body," "I was born in July," "My wife is a conscious being," etc.

So when Gangadean and company claim that to know things like that God exists, Jesus is the son of God, the bible is the word of God, etc, then they are claiming that they have absolute proof of the veracity of these claims. Moreover, they believe that if a person is unable to rule out any and all alternative possibilities to, for instance, the proposition that God exists, then such a person does not know that God exists. This is why, in my posts, I may be extra-scrutinizing.  I hope to speak at more length (and hopefully depth) about my epistemological issues, in future posts, so stay tuned.