tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949761534200395390.post4196796131222486989..comments2024-01-03T17:27:11.545+01:00Comments on The Space of Reasons: Reid's "Same Shop" Argument (Part 1)AVERY ARCHERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14313322464414110953noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949761534200395390.post-11529318794427597592007-09-22T00:29:00.000+00:002007-09-22T00:29:00.000+00:00The actual experience was quite incoherent and blu...The actual experience was quite incoherent and blurry and so what follows is more or less an attempted reconstruction after the fact. What I remember is that there was a period of time (let’s say t1 to t9) and at different points during that time (let’s say t2, t5, t8) I believed that my roommate was home (and I would imagine him moving about downstairs etc). However, there were also various points during the same time period (let’s say t3, t4, t6) when I believed that he was at the drug store. However (and this is the crucial bit), in my delirious state I took both sets of beliefs to be perfectly consistent (keeping in mind that I did not believe that my roommate was coming and going at these different times). Since I did not believe that my roommate was moving in and out of the house between t1 and t9, I take this to represent a case of my entertaining contradictory beliefs.<BR/><BR/>However, I don’t want the force of my argument to rest on my anecdotal retelling of what was admittedly a confused experience. I was simply trying to suggest that this kind of scenario is not as far-fetched as it may sound. But whether or not my own case represents a bona fide case of a subject’s rational faculty malfunctioning, such cases are indeed conceivable. Presumably, the words ‘mad’ and ‘crazy’ are sometimes used to pick out just such cases, and are not limited to cases of perceptual illusion or hallucination. <BR/><BR/>But all of this is really beside the present point. Since you already concede that a demon could deceive someone into believing 2+2=5 then we’re already in agreement on the conceivability question. This shared assumption, combined with my aforementioned distinction between (1) the claim that the beliefs each faculty gives rise to are equally certain (to which Reid is not committed) and (2) the claim that both faculties are capable of malfunctioning (to which Reid is committed), is enough to get Reid’s argument up and running.AVERY ARCHERhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14313322464414110953noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949761534200395390.post-33169023614414484082007-09-20T10:24:00.000+00:002007-09-20T10:24:00.000+00:00Did you believe p (= your roommate was home) somet...Did you believe p (= your roommate was home) sometimes and ~p at other times, and maybe a&b (where a is a consequence of p and b a consequence of ~p), or did you actually believe that your roommate was both home and not home?Martin Cookehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11425491938517935179noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949761534200395390.post-69175994452029518342007-09-19T14:06:00.000+00:002007-09-19T14:06:00.000+00:00Enigman,You seem to be conflating two separate iss...Enigman,<BR/>You seem to be conflating two separate issues here: (1) the claim that both faculties give rise to beliefs that are equally certain, and (2) the claim that both faculties are capable of malfunctioning. Reid only endorses the latter, not the former. Let me explain. Reid may concede that the truths that reason deliver (when functioning properly) engender a greater degree of certainty (in the subject) than the truths that perception deliver (when functioning properly). Thus, I may attach greater certainty to the claim that 1+1=2 than I do to the empirical claim that <I>there is a computer in front of me</I> (even assuming that both claims are true and that both my rational and sensory faculties are functioning properly). This seems perfectly consistent with the claim that my rational faculties may malfunction (i.e., due to brain damage, disease or degeneration) in a manner on par with the malfunction of the sensory faculties. <BR/><BR/>For example, once when sick with the flu, I believed that my roommate (who I asked to pick up some meds for me) was both home and not home at the same time, without even realising that these two propositions were in conflict (please don’t tell me I’m the only one this kind of thing has ever happened to!). In brief, Reid is not asking us to imagine that something we know to be logically true, ~(p&~p), is false. Rather, he is asking us to imagine a case, where due to some type of malfunction, one believes something of the form p&~p (while fully recognising that it takes this form). Once one concedes that this is possible (as you seem to do with your reference to the demon), then Reid seems to have all he needs to get his argument going.AVERY ARCHERhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14313322464414110953noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949761534200395390.post-9844834828912519582007-09-18T22:22:00.000+00:002007-09-18T22:22:00.000+00:00Yes, and we may be fooled by a demon into believin...Yes, and we may be fooled by a demon into believing falsely what 2 + 2 is, or that our hands are real, but still it does seem inconceivable to me, that I could now be irrational (although I might well seem irrational to others, or to myself later), whereas it seems conceivable that this might be a dream (although obviously not what I now mean by 'dream')...Martin Cookehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11425491938517935179noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949761534200395390.post-12692363045423767862007-09-16T15:36:00.000+00:002007-09-16T15:36:00.000+00:00I do not believe that Reid's argument works either...I do not believe that Reid's argument works either, since I don't think that the faculty of reason and the faculty of sense are on a par. However, this claim is in need of some defence. Moreover, while your reservations are suggestive, I am not sure they’re adequate for refuting Reid. Firstly, I don’t think that the unreliability of the rational faculties is any less <I>conceivable</I> than that of the sensory faculties. For example, consider certain types of mental illness and dementia. In fact, I have had moments when I was in bed with the flu when my rational faculties proved to be completely unreliable (though I was only able to appreciate this fact in retrospect, when I was no longer ill). Admittedly, cases in which a subject’s sensory faculties may be unreliable may prove to be more prevalent than ones in which our sensory faculties are unreliable. But <I>frequency</I> and <I>conceivability</I> are two different things; and only the latter seems salient vis-à-vis the efficacy of Reid’s argument.AVERY ARCHERhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14313322464414110953noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3949761534200395390.post-25155643888996645112007-09-15T20:20:00.000+00:002007-09-15T20:20:00.000+00:00I've not yet read any Reid, but regarding that arg...I've not yet read any Reid, but regarding that argument, we do feel more responsible for the quality of our reasoning, than for the quality of our perceptions. And whilst we can imagine the BIV scenarios quite easily, it is harder to believe that PEM might be false. Prima facie, the two are not of the same kind, and so I wonder if his argument is a bit circular, in that they would be of the same kind if we had evolved, as empirical science indicates (?)Martin Cookehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11425491938517935179noreply@blogger.com