'Knowledge' Again

Gangadeanians claim that without certainty at the basic level, we're doomed. I've often noted that they merely assert that meaninglessness and the like follow without clarity/certainty at the basic level. Which is not the same as having shown that it's true.

Often they cling to talk about clarity of basic distinctions which is to say we can be certain of basic distinctions or in other words, that we can't possibly doubt things like 'a is a' and 'eternal is not non-eternal'. Many times I've mentioned that they need to prove other things. For instance, Gangadean presents a theory of knowledge. It's a theory about the nature of knowledge--or a theory about the truth conditions of a sentence with the following schema, 'S knows that P'. What could make the sentence true? Well, they think that among other things, S must be epistemically certain that P such that it's impossible for S to be wrong about P given whatever process or reasons she has for believing P. We call this infallibilism about knowledge. It's a proposal. It's not a truism even though Gangadeanians treat it like it is.

The trouble is, Gangadeanians never defend their theory of knowledge, probably because they assume it is a truism. But let's "get more basic" here as the Gangadeanians say and critically analyze their most basic assumptions in order to test them for meaning. Consider the following argument which appeals to only premises that the Gangadean already accepts (note I don't accept them).

1. We must have clarity/certainty at the basic level or else knowledge and therefore intelligible dialogue and meaning are not possible.

2. The nature of knowledge (i.e., the answer to the question "which theory of knowledge is the right theory?") is at a basic level.

3. Therefore, one must have clarity/certainty about the nature of knowledge, if one is to have knowledge and therefore intelligible dialogue and meaning.

This is precisely why I have often pressed the Gangadeanians to defend their theory of knowledge. In their little bubble, they can get away with not defending it because Gangadean talks about his theory of knowledge as if it's true by definition (recall my discussion about vocab indoctrination). Consistency demands that they provide a defense or rational justification of their theory of knowledge (infallibilism) as the correct one. But I see no reason to think that knowledge requires certainty in the first place.

In fact, if knowledge doesn't require certainty, then this would be detrimental to Gangadean's worldview because he depends on this very assumption in order to argue that without certainty at the basic level, skepticism wins. That's supposed to be the cost of not affirming (notice not affirming is not the same as denying) certainty about basic things. For some reason, Gangadeanians have a hard time grasping the possibility that a person could fail to affirm clarity at the basic level, and not be a skeptic, because they adopt a different theory of knowledge (e.g. fallibilism). I don't know what to make of such an elementary mistake other than that it's revealing about the lack of careful thinking exemplified by team Gangadean.

For further reading:

Here and here I press the Gangadeanians to defend their theory of knowledge (beyond appealing to their own intuitions).

Here is an article where I press the Gangadeanians to defend the inference from, "not clarity/certainty" --> no point in further discussion, and ultimately meaninglessness."

Here is an article where I argue that figuring out the meaning of a word, or unpacking a concept (like 'knowledge' or KNOWLEDGE) isn't just an a prior process at least in the face of disagreements.