Advertisement
Symposia :an online philosophy journal and archive, does (on the whole) have a number of quite good and remarkably noteworthy articles on philosophical studies .
However, they do also have some quite dodgy ones too : some articles that are pepperred with a number of fallacies and spurious methods of coming to conclusions .
A particularly bad one is posted (not suprisingly by a relativist) and is titled , ' Does Plato offer a comprehensive refutation of relativism? ' and is posted apparently by some person whose on line name is apparently :'someoneisatthedoor' .
In the present post you are now reading , I have decided to select one particular fallacious claim made by that author in that essay and present a basic explanation of why the author of that essay is quite wrongheaded .
If all goes well, sometime yours truly would like (in another post) to expose other errors made by the author of that essay .
First ,it is well taken that I quote that other person who goes by the screen name : 'someoneisatthedoor ' to better present a review of a claim they make . So here goes ....
"The “moral-optical illusion” in Plato’s case derives from him presupposing the existence of complete truth and then defining it by means of an exclusive, incomplete set of criteria . What is more significant to the argument about relativism is that if knowledge is innate then all we each have to do is recollect our knowledge. This in an epistemological sense makes us all as potentially wise as each other, which is what many relativists would claim. "----someoenisatthedoor
Though the person who is dubbed 'someoneisatthedoor' does use the term 'potentially', in the phrase : 'potentially as wise as each other' , the odd part is that he glosses the 'potentially' element over when he (wronglty) adduces from such a claim the thesis which claims that such potential argues for some inherent mysteriousness (as to whether memory of the Platonic sort is valid for evaluating epistemological data) . He goes on to claim-- with a seductive, lazy-minded, first glance plausibility-- the conclusion that claims that anyone who advances a statement (as to what content they remember supposedly is) has presented just as warranted a statement as any statement (as to the content of memory), as presented by anyone else --and claims to derive that conclusion from the doctrine of Plato that all learning is a form of remembering -- called anamesis !
A passably deeper study of the premise of Plato :which holds that all (non-contingent) learning is a form of remembering (or more precisely: unforgetting) shows that it is outrageous that the author called "someoneisatthedoor" would claim to derive the weird conclusion: that the statement any person might be wont to make about the content of some putative memory at any time is somehow supposedly as warranted as a statement made by anyone else !
How does someoneisatthedoor make that error you may be asking ?
The author in murky fashion glosses over the difference separating (A)Some putatively accurate memory of some body of data and (Z) merely some statement claiming to be a memory of some body of data !
He goes from taking note of the doctrine that all persons *in potential* (given the requiste conditions getting made available for remembering) have the capacity for accurate remembering of some body of data , and then weirdly dives headlong into presuming that every time a person merely *claims to report* some statement as to what they *allegedly* remember that they are actually using that capacity . <---Which is an unwarranted jumping to conclusions (and that's a collossal understatement to call it jumping to conclusions !)
Thus he dives headlong into epistemological pluralism from a premise that in no way supports it .
If a person ,say, after drinking half a gallon of Miller lite and smoking a suitcase full of opium and babbling most of the day, makes the statement where they claim to remember that 12 times 12 equals 0 or minus 22-, then on what grounds should we claim that such a person has equal claim to remembering the content of the information as to what product the mathematical operation mentioned yields than, say , someone else who makes the statement that affirms that they remember that the product of 12 times 12 = 144 ????
Yes , the person who has been drinking half a gallon of Miller light and smoking a suitcase- sized amount of opium who then makes a statement claiming that 12 times 12 somehow equals 0 or -22 might have a innate capacity (IF they put their mind to it ) to remember what the veridical answer to the question :what does 12 x 12 equal ? ---yet does that mean that just because they have the capacity to remember that somehow means that automatically every time they open their mouths the statement they make regarding the topic automatically uses that capacity ? (Heck no , it doesn't !)
The author of the article, which alleges that Plato somehow failed to refute relativism, weirdly presumes that an innate capacity for memory must be thought of as always instantiated by anyone who claims to be giving an account of what they *supposedly* remember as to any content of data . Furthermore, he glosses over factors such as whether a particular person who claims to remember some specified information is even willing to try to remember it accurately . Also the author glosses over whether such a person has the requiste cognitive and/or neurological factors on hand or not that is favorable to them calling up the memory to the forefront of the mind .
Such is quite frankly an outrageous fallacy on behalf of the author of the article .
One can read the article and review it at the following webaddress . (Provided the hyperlink takes)
journal.ilovephilosophy.com/Arti ... ivism-/269
There are numerous other errors /fallacies in the article as well .
However, they do also have some quite dodgy ones too : some articles that are pepperred with a number of fallacies and spurious methods of coming to conclusions .
A particularly bad one is posted (not suprisingly by a relativist) and is titled , ' Does Plato offer a comprehensive refutation of relativism? ' and is posted apparently by some person whose on line name is apparently :'someoneisatthedoor' .
In the present post you are now reading , I have decided to select one particular fallacious claim made by that author in that essay and present a basic explanation of why the author of that essay is quite wrongheaded .
If all goes well, sometime yours truly would like (in another post) to expose other errors made by the author of that essay .
First ,it is well taken that I quote that other person who goes by the screen name : 'someoneisatthedoor ' to better present a review of a claim they make . So here goes ....
"The “moral-optical illusion” in Plato’s case derives from him presupposing the existence of complete truth and then defining it by means of an exclusive, incomplete set of criteria . What is more significant to the argument about relativism is that if knowledge is innate then all we each have to do is recollect our knowledge. This in an epistemological sense makes us all as potentially wise as each other, which is what many relativists would claim. "----someoenisatthedoor
Though the person who is dubbed 'someoneisatthedoor' does use the term 'potentially', in the phrase : 'potentially as wise as each other' , the odd part is that he glosses the 'potentially' element over when he (wronglty) adduces from such a claim the thesis which claims that such potential argues for some inherent mysteriousness (as to whether memory of the Platonic sort is valid for evaluating epistemological data) . He goes on to claim-- with a seductive, lazy-minded, first glance plausibility-- the conclusion that claims that anyone who advances a statement (as to what content they remember supposedly is) has presented just as warranted a statement as any statement (as to the content of memory), as presented by anyone else --and claims to derive that conclusion from the doctrine of Plato that all learning is a form of remembering -- called anamesis !
A passably deeper study of the premise of Plato :which holds that all (non-contingent) learning is a form of remembering (or more precisely: unforgetting) shows that it is outrageous that the author called "someoneisatthedoor" would claim to derive the weird conclusion: that the statement any person might be wont to make about the content of some putative memory at any time is somehow supposedly as warranted as a statement made by anyone else !
How does someoneisatthedoor make that error you may be asking ?
The author in murky fashion glosses over the difference separating (A)Some putatively accurate memory of some body of data and (Z) merely some statement claiming to be a memory of some body of data !
He goes from taking note of the doctrine that all persons *in potential* (given the requiste conditions getting made available for remembering) have the capacity for accurate remembering of some body of data , and then weirdly dives headlong into presuming that every time a person merely *claims to report* some statement as to what they *allegedly* remember that they are actually using that capacity . <---Which is an unwarranted jumping to conclusions (and that's a collossal understatement to call it jumping to conclusions !)
Thus he dives headlong into epistemological pluralism from a premise that in no way supports it .
If a person ,say, after drinking half a gallon of Miller lite and smoking a suitcase full of opium and babbling most of the day, makes the statement where they claim to remember that 12 times 12 equals 0 or minus 22-, then on what grounds should we claim that such a person has equal claim to remembering the content of the information as to what product the mathematical operation mentioned yields than, say , someone else who makes the statement that affirms that they remember that the product of 12 times 12 = 144 ????
Yes , the person who has been drinking half a gallon of Miller light and smoking a suitcase- sized amount of opium who then makes a statement claiming that 12 times 12 somehow equals 0 or -22 might have a innate capacity (IF they put their mind to it ) to remember what the veridical answer to the question :what does 12 x 12 equal ? ---yet does that mean that just because they have the capacity to remember that somehow means that automatically every time they open their mouths the statement they make regarding the topic automatically uses that capacity ? (Heck no , it doesn't !)
The author of the article, which alleges that Plato somehow failed to refute relativism, weirdly presumes that an innate capacity for memory must be thought of as always instantiated by anyone who claims to be giving an account of what they *supposedly* remember as to any content of data . Furthermore, he glosses over factors such as whether a particular person who claims to remember some specified information is even willing to try to remember it accurately . Also the author glosses over whether such a person has the requiste cognitive and/or neurological factors on hand or not that is favorable to them calling up the memory to the forefront of the mind .
Such is quite frankly an outrageous fallacy on behalf of the author of the article .
One can read the article and review it at the following webaddress . (Provided the hyperlink takes)
journal.ilovephilosophy.com/Arti ... ivism-/269
There are numerous other errors /fallacies in the article as well .
posted by:
|
Florida
|
Advertisement
Advertisement
