Hello everyone, thanks for your comments on the discussion boards for week two. I thought this might be a good juncture for me to came back in, and talk a little bit about some of the topics that have been raised there. I've been reading the discussion boards, and been keeping note here and there as of some of the tutors that are helping out with this MOOC. The first thing that caught my eye was the case. So some of you thought the cases were very far fetched, contrived. Why should we care about these kind of cases. Well what I'll suggest here is that look, although then, some of these cases are very complicated. Actually, some of them are phenomenally simple. I mean, the case that I give of the sheep and the farmer, the sheep and the field I think are actually a fairly straightforward kind of case. Moreover, I think once you understand the structure of the case, it becomes apparent that these kind of cases happen all the time. So it's not as if this is some sort of scenario which is kind of sci-fi or something like that, the kind of scenario which doesn't affect ordinary life. I think ordinary life is in fact full of Getty star occasions. And this relates to a second issue some people raise, which is I think here's a thought well look, if you have to exclude gay cases then aren't we somehow requiring certain different knowledge or something like that. But that's not part of the thought that's going on here. In fact, in the lectures I explicitly disavowed the idea that knowledge requires a certainty and that is very plausible. What I want to do is actually set the bar off the launch relatively low and then see if our believers clear it. And I think actually that the demand that we have beliefs, true beliefs that don't get your rises is a pretty minimal demand to make on the launch. I mean what we'd hope that all of our beliefs clear that hurdle. I mean, properly formed under the right kind of circumstances, then they ought to clear it. So I don't think we should think that either the getting of the problem or getting the cases relates to somehow farfetched or sci-fi scenarios, I don't think it's like that at all. And I don't think it raises the bar for knowledge. You can still think of the bar for knowledge as quite low. And yet they want to declare a one true belief that isn't subject to any of the cases if one is to clear that bar. The second thing that caught my eye was to do with skepticism. A few things I want to emphasize here. One is just that notice the skeptic is not saying that you are a virus or even that you have any reason for thinking you're a. That's not part of the set of the skeptical argument. That's simply saying that you have no reason for thinking that you're not a. So you can't know you're not a. So this quite important. Because what this means is that Skepticism is a problem, even if the real life is exactly as you take it to be. Even if everything is optimal from a specific point of view, you really are, my case for example, I really am sitting here right now talking to you surrounded by these objects that I can feel around me, and so even if everything is as I take it to be, the skeptical argument still gets it's grip because they're not saying that you're not in these circumstances. Or indeed much less they're not saying that you're in these terrible circumstances bringing that case. They're just simply saying well, how do you know you're not in those circumstances? That's all. That relates to a second point which is the skeptical problem, properly conceived, is a paradox. What I mean by that is what the skeptics trying to do is trying to get you to say that there's a fundamental tension in your own concepts. So although we talk about the skeptics, someone out there who's trying to convince us of something, I think that's actually misleading. Because really the problem of skepticism relates to the fact that we have some fundamental commitment to epistemology which are inconsistent with each other. So it seems like we're committing to the idea we can't know were not based in fact, because we think knowing requires telling the difference and we can't tell the difference between normal life being a brain of that will lead to many skeptical hypotheses. So we committed to that. We also seem committed to thinking we know lots of things. And yet we also seem committed to the idea well look if I know for example, that I've got hands, I know that if I've got hands, I've got a brain available. Then I must know I've got a brain available, right. I mean it's not possible for me to know that I have hands and yet not know wether or not on the hand that strained in the van. So we got a bunch of claims today, which we committed to. And they can't all be true. One of them must be false. And that's the nature of paradox. It's where you got basic fundamental commitments. Which is why they can't all be true. That way it's just not obvious which one is false. And that I think is the best way to think about a skeptical program. It's not that there's a skeptic out there trying to convince you of anything. Rather our own concepts, at the very fundamental level or intention one to them, and we need to deny something. So we need to either say, that we can know not anything of that. I generally, more generally we're going to be able to say that we can know the denials of skeptical hypotheses. All we have to say, that it's you want to know things like whether or not one has hands. Even though one doesn't know whether or not one is a handless brain of that. Well all one has to say, then one can't learn things like whether or not one has hands. Either of these options is pretty disturbing. Another point people have made is we are all does anything practically speaking hinge upon skepticism? Why does it matter from a practical point of view? Well I think once you recognize it's a paradox we'll get a better sense of this of why it does matter. So recognize there's a paradox, that we've got a set of claims which we're all committed to but which they can't all be true. So something has to go. That in itself doesn't have any practical ramifications. I mean, because we haven't identified yet which of those claims has to go. But we're in sort of a state of sort of intellectual unease at this point. because we realize there's something gone wrong somewhere. We can't work out what it is. In responding to a paradox though, you've got an eye, some deeply claim. And whichever claim you deny that's going to have practical consequences. I mean, take the nuclear option of responding to skepticism by saying we don't know anything. Worse we have no reason for thinking that we know anything. I'm not sure that's even psychologically possibly. And to do that, people can say the words and so on, but actually to fully believe that one really knows nothing. But I mean honestly if he did, if that's really what you thought your situation was, then you would have all kinds of practical consequences. I mean, we make our decisions, judgements about how to act and what sort of things we're going to do next, and our plans and so on. These were based upon things that we know, or take ourselves to know. Take ourselves to know not know anything then, well that's going to have huge implications. And I think the same goes for whichever. It's basically a trilemma the skeptical problem. That is you've got three options there's three claims in play one of them has to go. Whichever one we deny is going to lead to disastrous consequences from an intellectual point of view and they will have practical ramifications. I think sometimes when people say, what's the practical difference? What they mean is a different fluid. It's the idea well, maybe we are maybe not who, we can't tell the difference, so who cares? But I think even that, is a bit suspect, if you start to think about it. I mean, if you are then none of this is real. You know that your friends aren't your friends. Your family aren't your family. The things that you're working hard and striving to achieve actually pointless because they're not real. So the idea that you know it kind of doesn't matter. I mean, I think that it doesn't bare scrutiny really. It can seem superficially possible but I don't think it stands up to closer scrutiny. And the last thing that jumped out to me was this idea of [INAUDIBLE], what's so bad about lucky knowledge. And I think there's something right about this thought, because clearly sometimes we do get knowledge through luck. Lucky discoveries. Science is full of cases, penicillin and so on, where through some Lucky set of circumstances when scientifically important knowledge was acquired. But not just that, that kind of luck that's in play here isn't the kind of luck that we're interested for the purposes of this week. We're interested specifically in it being a matter of luck that you get it right. And that's a different kind of thing. So think about our lucky discovery. So you've got some great scientists, but they just happen to be in the right place at the right time to make a lucky discovery. But given that they are in the right place at the right time, it's not a matter of luck that they get things right. They makes some inferences, draw some conclusions, or whatever. The reason why that's genuine knowledge even though it's matter of luck that the were in a position to acquire is because the beliefs are so formed it's not a matter of luck that they're getting things right, and I think that's the important thing. I mean, when we say knowledge compatible with luck we mean in most specific sense it's compatible with the idea that it's just a matter of luck that you've got things right. The scientists in the case like he discovered, it is not just a matter of luck that they got things right. It is because of their skill, their scientific expertise that they got things right. It would be very different if someone who had no inkling of what it was that was on the takes a lucky discovery and it's Petri dish let's say, it's some enzyme in there what have you and so much more, I haven't a clue what it is they've found or whatever. We needn't be tempted to think that's a lucky scientific discovery. Maybe a lucky scary of a Petri dish, but what makes it a scientific discovery is because of the. The scientist is there, able to classify and recognize this for what it is. And given that they can do that, it's not a matter of luck that they can do that, that's down to their expertise. So I think we just need to be clear here, that when we're talking about how knowledge is incompatible with luck, what we mean is that it can't be a matter of luck that you got things right, given how you formed your beliefs. Okay, I'll let you get back to discussions. I hope that was useful. Thank you.
