I'm so tired of this following move which was instanced in a recent comment left by, no doubt, a Gangadeanian or at least a sympathizer.
You assume clarity/certainty in saying anything. So insofar as I am going to take what you have to say seriously, we both have to agree that there is clarity/certainty at the basic level. If you deny that, you're being inconsistent. Bam. Gotcha.
This is so wrong headed. My undergraduate students with a single philosophy course under their belts can spot why this sort of move fails. But for some reason, at least some Gangadeanians have a really hard time spotting the problem. And I've written several posts about this. But the mistake persists in various formulations.
Recently I was challenged by someone about the kind of confidence I seem to have in my own ideas. The idea was roughly that I criticize others for the confidence they have in their views and yet in so criticizing them, I exemplify the very confidence I find troubling. Same basic structure. Gangadeanians get stuck on this basic move which is to try and show that their opponents assume certain things in order to criticize the very thing assumed. Then on pain of inconsistency the thing challenged must be true just because all parties agree.
So let me try one more time to clear the air.
1. I criticize Gangadean for his claims to having certainty at the basic level. I present reasons for why such a view leads to bad results for his own worldview. I don't assume I have certainty in order to do so. I don't need it. Nothing I've said rests on anything being certain/clear in the sense that Gangadean has in mind. For the Gangadeanian who demands that I must have it in order for my objections to be intelligible, they need to show that this is so without begging the question. Good luck.
2. I am quite confident that I'm right about the things I write on this blog. I'm confident about a lot of things and not confident about a lot of others. And there's a bunch of stuff in between. For the things I am confident about, I try to give reasons in favor of them. Just as I give reasons for questioning the confidence that Gangadean and his people have in some of the things they believe they have certainty about. I don't have a problem with confidence just poorly placed confidence. Gangadean, on my view, has poorly placed confidence. Again, there's nothing inconsistent about this.
3. When I criticize Gangdean's theory of knowledge and show that his requirements are too stringent so that his view, consistently held, leads to skepticism, I haven't shown that skepticism is true thereby undercutting everything I say. It's a hypothetical claim of the following sort. If Gangadean's theory of knowledge is correct, then skepticism (about all kinds of things) follows. If Gangadean's requirements for clarity at the basic level are true, then skepticism follows. Of course, I deny the antecedents of both conditionals. So skepticism doesn't necessarily follow. I'm not committed to skepticism. Gangadeanians seem to have trouble understanding the difference between their conception of knowledge and everyone else's. To show that the former leads to skepticism is not to show skepticism is true. Again, there's no inconsistency, here.
4. To assume something is true for the purposes of some project like talking or thinking or building a theory is not the same as knowing that thing with certainty. One can assume all sorts of things for various purposes. When someone gives a reductio argument, one assumes a premise that one disagrees with to show that it leads to a contradiction. But one doesn't thereby know with certainty that that premise is true! By stipulation, one doesn't even believe it! Assuming that p is not equivalent to affirming that p is true, believing that p, or knowing that p (and a fortiori, knowing that p with certainty). You can assume that p even if you think, believe, or know that p is false. Furthermore, the standard Gangadeanian claim that one necessarily needs to assume certain things like the laws of thought in order to think, is not something that can be proven.
On a related note, I recently heard a comment that there was something weird about how I sometimes present objections against Gangadean's arguments for some view despite admitting that I might even agree with the view. In other words, I object to Gangadean for holding to some belief, despite having the same belief myself. Let me say that this is plainly false. I don't ever argue that a position is false and then admit that I think it's true or that I believe it--that would be strange. Instead I've sometimes criticized Gangadean's statements about how he thinks one can know some proposition, while admitting that I might believe that very proposition is true. In teaching philosophy I've noticed that students have an incredibly hard time seeing a bad argument when they already agree with the conclusion. And it takes a while for many to realize that pointing out that an argument is bad doesn't entail that one disagrees with the conclusion. Likewise, agreeing with the conclusion of an argument doesn't entail evaluating the argument as a good one. That brings us to my last point.
5. To say that I accept that 'a is a' or believe it or even know it is one thing. To say that Gangadean has failed to provide anything like a proof for such a claim, or that he's failed to show that it is clear to reason (that 'a is a' is true) is quite another. There's the question about whether a proposition is true or worth believing on the one hand and the question about how anybody could know that it is true, on the other. Strictly speaking, these are separate matters! For some things, what is at issue in my disputes with Gangadean is not whether or not some proposition is true. For example, I'm not arguing with him about whether the law of identity is true. The issue is over how we know a thing like that to be true and whether or not one could "show" in any substantial way that the opposite of it is simply impossible. And I'm submitting that on Gangadean's theory of knowledge, he can't know a thing like the law of identity. But that's not actually denying the law of identity. Nor is there anything inconsistent about this stance. It's like agreeing with an empiricist that the proposition, 'I exist' is true, but disagreeing with them that I know it is true via my sense experience. There's nothing inconsistent about that. Indeed Gangadean agrees with most theists that the proposition, 'God exists' is true, but he disagrees with them about what it takes to know it.
