This may be a bad time, but when, where, and what time is the exam?

Flicker Vision

I have another question to throw out to everyone.

A few days after we did the Hornbeam example for Phenomenal Conservatism, we looked at the Objection from Flicker-Vision (the example where a blind person's vision flickered on for a second and they saw a red wall). I know it was (briefly) stated in class, but how is this example different from the Hornbeam example?

It seems to me (and therefore I have immediate prima facie justification... hehehe) that the problem for the Phenomenal Conservatalist brought about in both these examples is just a question of what the content of shared experience is, and what we get prima facie justification for, on their view. Can someone please explain how they differ?

Phenomenal Conservatism and those Darn Hornbeam Trees

I was taking a look back in my notes and I ran across some interesting comments I made to myself during the course of some lectures. I thought I'd share them and see what everyone else thought.

Looking at our lecture on Phenomenal Conservatism and Pryor's Thesis (PC) - Whenever a person has an experience as of P's being the case, the person has immedite prima facie justification for believing that P - I realized that I was not (and I really still am not) satisfied with the example of the three people in the garden looking at a tree. In class we tried to figure out what exactly the content of their experience was, or what P they could get prima facie justification from. We narrowed it down to nothing but possibly "that's an object" and even this ran into problems when we talked about 'Unlucky' who is always on drugs.

What i wonder is if we can give an account of what the content of their experience was. Could we not say that there is a shared experience of a body seemingly outside and separate from themselves, having a particular shape and colouring? Would this run into sense-data-y problems? I can't see why this wouldn't be a good basis for experience, since all people who can see will experience this, even the children (hehehe).

With prima facie justification for this external object, the three people looking at the tree would only have to apply concepts that they normally apply to external objects of that particular shape and colouration, and thereby be justified in believing what they respectively believe to be true?

Argument for team Murray/Dwayne/whoever defected last time

Let's say that there is a child who has seen lakes before, but has never seen the ocean. Then one day, his family takes a trip to a place by the ocean. When they arrive, his family decides to go to the beach. Now for the sake of what's to come, let's say that his parents just said beach and never mentioned it as the ocean and that he's only been to lake-side beaches and the like. In other words, until he actually got to the oceanic beach he had neither seen nor heard of the ocean in his life. Anyway, when they get to the beach, the kid is stunned. The dad then asks "what are you looking at, son?" and the kid replies "that's a big lake!"

As you can see, when encountered with something out of the ordinary, the child fell back onto his background knowledge which caused him to seem to see a big lake. This is similar, but less extreme than, the blind man case. For the blind man, he had no background information on what was in front of his eyes because he had never seen anything before so the only thing he would seem to see is "something" since he has no way of identifying what the red wall is. if he were to touch it, he might then be able to say that it is a wall at least, but could not even say it is colored until he turned and saw that nothing else looked the same. This illustrates that the background knowledge giving rise to "experience 2" is what makes you seem to see what you seem to see and that it is not simply a problem of language.

Does anyone else find it unusual that we were given an assignment to do over reading week and yet it is not posted on the blogspot?

Zebras, Painted Donkeys, and Fallibilism

Today we discussed an objection to Fallibilism. While at the zoo and looking into the pen in the normal way, the Fallibilist holds that you can come to know that that's a zebra. But it's possible that it's a mule that is cleverly painted to look like a zebra. You know this too. And you also know that necessarily, no zebra is a mule (painted or otherwise), and vice-versa. Now all of these claims cannot be true. So Fallibilism is incorrect.

There are several papers addressing this problem. Before looking at them I strongly recommend that you try to formulate the objection yourself as a valid argument against Fallibilism (I intentionally did not do this in class) and come up with your own response. You can then compare what you come up with to what Jason Stanley came up with and what Patric Rysiew and Trent Dougherty came up with. There are, of course, other papers on this but these are three of the most recent and prominent. Interested parties should feel free to follow bibliography trails.

(n.b.: clicking on 'came' after 'Jason Stanley' takes you to Stanley's shorter 2003 paper on this topic. Clicking on 'up with' after 'Jason Stanley' takes you to his longer 2008 paper on this topic.)

A Moorean Problem

As much as I love Moore's 'Here's a Hand" Argument, I don't think that it legitimately confronts a the Skeptical problem. Skeptics say that we cannot know that there is an external world - and that we cannot differentiate a dream-world from reality. Thus by saying, "I have a hand" and waving it about does not do anything to dispell the doubt aspoused by the skeptic. All it seems to be doing - in my opinion - is stating an assumption that the skeptic opposed to begin with, and does not give much proof for itself... I think that the skeptic's argument is seemingly untouched by Moore's argument...

What do you fellow philosophy peeps have to philosophise about this wacky enigma? If anything...

Rock out!!

A Bid Adieu

Hey Guys,

I just wanted to let everyone know I have dropped the class and won't be attending anymore. I'm just not getting the marks I had hoped for and figured it would be prudent for me to focus more on my other classes. It's been great getting to know everyone though and has been very interesting hearing everyone's opinion and their thoughts on the subject matter. I wish you all the best of luck!