PHL232H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Rangipo Desert, Bertrand Russell, Eugenius Warming
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Introduction to arguments for scepticism from sceptical hypotheses- sept 11. If knowledge is easy to get, so is mere option, and it can be hard to spot the difference. What a first seemed like knowledge can turn out to be something less than the real thing. But knowledge has a closer connection to us than resources like water or gold. Gold would continue to exist even if sentient life were wiped out; the continued existence of knowledge, on the other hand, depends on the existence of someone who knows. Knowledge demands some kind of access to a fact on the part of some living subject, without a mind to a(cid:272)(cid:272)ess it, (cid:271)ooks (cid:449)o(cid:374)(cid:859)t (cid:271)e k(cid:374)o(cid:449)ledge it (cid:449)ould (cid:271)e just i(cid:374)k (cid:373)a(cid:396)ks. Access to knowledge may or may not be unique to an individual: the same fact may be known by one person and not by others.
