Ignorance: A Case for ScepticismIn this controversial volume (originally published in 1975) Peter Unger suggests that, not only can nothing ever be known, but no one can ever have a reason at all for anything. A consequence of this is that we cannot have any realistic emotional ties: it can never be conclusively said that someone is happy or sad about anything. Finally he argues that no one can ever say, let alone believe, that anything is the case. In order to get beyond this apparent bind - and this condition of ignorance - Unger proposes a radical departure from the linguistic and epistemological systems we have become accustomed to. Epistemologists, as well as philosophers of mind and language will undoubtedly find in this study of the limitations of language an invaluable philosophical perspective. |
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... Facts , and some things which are True 278 §3 . The Objects of Knowing 280 §4 . The Truth and Truth 284 $ 5 . Agreement and Truth 288 §6 . The Predication of Truth and the Relevant Sense of ' True ' §7 . The Modification of ' True ' 293 ...
... Facts , and some things which are True 278 §3 . The Objects of Knowing 280 §4 . The Truth and Truth 284 $ 5 . Agreement and Truth 288 §6 . The Predication of Truth and the Relevant Sense of ' True ' §7 . The Modification of ' True ' 293 ...
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... fact have prevented him from gaining this mystical knowledge in the first place . We allow for this also with our assumption . For , then , we do not say that if the mystic knows this , then he must be able also to know that no ...
... fact have prevented him from gaining this mystical knowledge in the first place . We allow for this also with our assumption . For , then , we do not say that if the mystic knows this , then he must be able also to know that no ...
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Contents
| 6 | |
| 7 | |
A Complex of Arguments | 36 |
13 How much Alleged Knowledge can this Form of Argument | 44 |
9 Does Knowing Require Being Certain? | 83 |
AN ARGUMENT FOR UNIVERSAL IGNORANCE | 92 |
one to be Certain | 98 |
Absolute Attitude? | 118 |
The Step from ones Being Reasonable to ones Reason or Reasons | 201 |
The Step from ones Reason or Reasons to the Propositional Specificity of these things | 204 |
The Step from ones Propositionally Specific Reason or Reasons to ones Knowing | 206 |
5 The Basis Argument again Being Justified | 211 |
6 Two Hypotheses about Nouns | 214 |
7 On the Connection between Partial Scepticisms of the two Types | 226 |
8 The Principle of the Possibility of Identifying Knowledge | 231 |
9 A Form of Sceptical Argument Employing this Principle | 239 |
7 Helpful Experiences for Rejecting the Attitude of Certainty | 123 |
8 Helpful Experiences for the Hardest Cases Other Times | 129 |
9 Helpful Experiences for the Hardest Cases Cartesian Proposi tions | 131 |
10 An Absolutely Clear Analysis of Knowing | 136 |
11 Some Implications of this Analysis | 140 |
12 Taking Stock of our Scepticism | 147 |
SOME WAGES OF IGNORANCE | 152 |
1 The Patterns our Language Reserves for the Central Concepts of our Thought | 153 |
2 Constructing some simple Sentences and Talking about some Entailments | 154 |
3 How Verbs Yield Entailments to Knowledge | 158 |
4 How an Hypothesis may be Taken as a Governing Paradigm | 162 |
5 Why some Entailments from Verbs are not to be Found | 164 |
6 Sentences with Adjectives and some Hypotheses about them | 169 |
7 Adjectives which Confirm our First Hypothesis | 171 |
8 How some Adjectives Disconfirm this First Hypothesis | 176 |
9 The Absence of Adjectives which Entail Falsity | 177 |
10 Reformulating our First Hypotheses for Verbs and Adjectives | 180 |
11 Some Wages of Ignorance Their Scope and Substance | 183 |
12 A Problem of what to Say and Think | 189 |
FROM IGNORANCE TO IRRATIONALITY | 197 |
1 The Basis in Knowledge Argument Being Reasonable | 199 |
10 Irrationality | 242 |
11 A Second Problem of what to Say and Think | 246 |
WHERE IGNORANCE ENJOINS SILENCE | 250 |
2 An Hypothesis concerning Asserting and Like Acts | 252 |
3 Support from Problem Sentences | 256 |
4 Support from Conversational Situations | 260 |
5 More Representational Difficulties | 265 |
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF TRUTH | 272 |
1 The Whole Truth about the World | 273 |
2 Parts of the Truth Facts and some things which are True | 278 |
3 The Objects of Knowing | 280 |
4 The Truth and Truth | 284 |
5 Agreement and Truth | 288 |
6 The Predication of Truth and the Relevant Sense of True | 293 |
7 The Modification of True | 297 |
8 The Appearance of Amounts of Truth | 299 |
9 Falsity and Truth | 304 |
10 Some Paradoxical Consequences of this Account | 308 |
11 An Approach to Philosophy | 313 |
INDEX | 321 |
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Common terms and phrases
absolute adjectives Accordingly actually adjectives agreement analytic propositions appears argue asserting attitude of certainty basic absolute terms Battle of Hastings bumpy Chapter China is larger classical argument clear completing clause condition contexts course deceiving Descartes dogmatic Donald Davidson electrodes entails epistemology evil scientist example exist exotic experiences explain express external world fact falsely believing falsity feel flat follows G. E. Moore Gilbert Harman happy hypothesis idea ignorance illocutionary acts inconsistent ink-bottle intuitions John justified knowledge sentence la Russell language larger than India least believe locutions logical look Mary matter meaning Michael Slote Nelson Rockefeller nouns one's parallel paraphrase perhaps person philosophers position problem raining reasonable in believing relative terms relevant require rocks Saul Kripke sceptical arguments sceptical conclusion scepticism about knowledge second premiss seems semantic sense someone knows someone's sort statement suggest suppose surface tence thought verbs whole truth words
Popular passages
Page 25 - ... who is deceiving me into falsely believing there to be rocks. But, having been presented with such arguments, I of course now know that this last follows from what I know. And so, while I might not have known before that there is no such scientist, at least I now do know that there is no evil scientist who is deceiving me into falsely believing that there are rocks. So far has the sceptical argument failed to challenge my knowledge successfully that it seems actually to have occasioned an increase...
Page 106 - Not only do I not have to admit that those extraordinary occurrences would be evidence that there is no ink-bottle here; the fact is that I do not admit it. There is nothing whatever that could happen in the next moment or the next year that would by me be called evidence that there is not an ink-bottle here now. No future experience or investigation could prove to me that I am mistaken. Therefore, if I were to say "I know that there is an ink-bottle here," I should be using "know
Page 70 - solidity"? Unless we do understand it we cannot understand what the denial of solidity to the plank amounts to. But we can understand "solidity" only if we can truly say that the plank is solid. For "solid" just is the word we use to describe a certain respect in which a plank of wood resembles a block of marble, a piece of paper, and a cricket ball, and in which each of these differs from a sponge, from the interior of a soap-bubble, and from the holes in a net.
Page 106 - That assertion describes my present attitude towa'rds the statement that here is an ink-bottle. It does not prophesy what my attitude would be if various things happened. My present attitude toward that statement is radically different from my present attitude toward those other statements (eg that...
Page 118 - I asserted it, in fact the case. And I do not think that I can be justly accused of dogmatism or over-confidence for having asserted these things positively in the way that I did. In the case of some kinds of assertions, and under some circumstances, a man can be justly accused of dogmatism for asserting something positively. But in the case of assertions such as I made, made under the circumstances under which I made them, the charge would be absurd.
Page 63 - It is certain that it is raining" where the term "it" has no apparent reference. I will call such contexts impersonal contexts, and the idea of certainty which they serve to express, thus, the impersonal idea of certainty. In contrast, a paradigm context for the second idea is this one: "He is certain that it is raining" — where, of course, the term "he" purports to refer as clearly as one might like. In the latter context, which we may call the personal context, we express the personal idea of...
Page 48 - The skepticism that I will defend is a negative thesis concerning what we know. I happily accept the fact that there is much that many of us correctly and reasonably believe, but much more than that is needed for us to know even a fair amount. Here I will not argue that nobody knows anything about anything, though that would be quite consistent with the skeptical thesis for which I will argue. The somewhat less radical thesis which I will defend is this one: every human being knows, at best, hardly...
Page 87 - ... terms, which are at least partially defined by the basic ones, will fail to apply as well. Thus, we also speak falsely when we say of a real object or person, "That is a cube" or "He knows that it is raining.
Page 63 - ... This last may be allowed, I think, even though in ordinary conversations we may speak of dogs as being certain; presumably, we treat dogs there the way we typically treat persons. Though there are these two important sorts of context, I think that "certain" must mean the same in both. In both cases, we must be struck by the thought that the presence of certainty amounts to the complete absence of doubt, or doubtfulness. This thought leads me to say that "It is certain that/?" means, within the...