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| 8724 | The meaning of 'know' does not change from courtroom to living room |
| Full Idea: There is no reason to suppose that the meaning of 'know' changes from the courtroom to the living room and back again; no more than for supposing that 'vacuum' changes from the laboratory to the cannery. | |||
| From: Peter Unger (Ignorance: a Case for Scepticism [1975], 2.1) | |||
| A reaction: I disagree. Lots of words change their meaning (or reference) according to context. Flat, fast, tall, clever. She 'knows a lot' certainly requires a context. The bar of justification goes up and down, and 'knowledge' changes accordingly. |
| 8722 | No one knows anything, and no one is ever justified or reasonable |
| Full Idea: I argue for the thesis that no one ever knows about anything, ...and that consequently no one is ever justified or at all reasonable in anything. | |||
| From: Peter Unger (Ignorance: a Case for Scepticism [1975], Intro) | |||
| A reaction: The premiss of his book seems to be that knowledge is assumed to require certainty, and is therefore impossible. Unger has helped push us to a more relaxed and fallibilist attitude to knowledge. 'No one is reasonable' is daft! |
| 8723 | An evil scientist may give you a momentary life, with totally false memories |
| Full Idea: The evil scientist might not only be deceiving you with his electrodes; maybe he has just created you with your ostensible memory beliefs and experiences, and for good measure he will immediately destroy you, so in the next moment you no longer exist. | |||
| From: Peter Unger (Ignorance: a Case for Scepticism [1975], 1.12) | |||
| A reaction: This is based on Russell's scepticism about memory (Idea 2792). Even this very train of thought may not exist, if the first half of it was implanted, rather than being developed by you. I cannot see how to dispute this possibility. |