Our whole life (attitudes, reactions, actions) is based on knowledge. Depending on our present state of knowledge, we are going to react to different situations in different ways, give different answers to different questions. To do that however, one has to know something. Even though we do not tend to question our knowledge in everyday life, it is interesting to do so in order to (ideally) find an answer to the sceptics who deny that knowledge exists, who assert that we cannot know anything for sure.
[...] Unfortunately, that argument does not hold because, if it were so, then if S was p was am a BIV' and p was true, then S should believe that even if she does not know why, but she will not, it follows from the premises: you will never believe that you are a BIV. So even if the fourth condition would this time hold, the second and the third conditions believes that p and S is justified in believing that would again not hold. [...]
[...] In conclusion, I have tried to use the causal and conditional theories to find a way for us to know that we are not brain in vats but I did not succeed in my attempt. I then tried to apply Hilary Putnam's idea but it did not work either because the assumptions about the BIV experiment that I made were stronger than his. So, at this point I still cannot say to know that I am not a BIV. One possible way that remains to solve this question might be to ask whether or not computers could have a conscience because if they cannot, then, they would not be able to fulfil the requirements for making the BIV not feel that he is not a BIV. [...]
[...] Refers to the principle of closure: if you now you are writing an essay it implies you are not a brain in a vat but since you do no know you are not a brain in a vat, you cannot claim to know anything at all (otherwise it would imply that you know you are not a BIV). That is the principle of closure: (Jonathan Dancy, Introduction to contemporary Epistemology, New York, Blackwell p.10) and it can also be said as theory of knowledge respects closure when it adopts the idea, in some form, that the logical consequences of what we know are also known.' ‘Nozickian epistemology and the question of closure', Croatian Journal of Philosophy, special issue edited by Carla Bagnoli Goldman's causal theory is just an add-on to the tripartite argument. [...]
[...] If I know that then it means that if I am not in the position to know that I am a BIV then I am not one. So now S is ‘I' and p is am a brain in a vat' and we are making the assumption that p is true. So here the first condition holds but the second one fails. We cannot say that S believes p here because, again, it is one the premises of the hypothesis that S does not notice anything that could lead her to the that very belief. [...]
[...] But, then, according to the principle of closure, if you know that p then you know that q are not a BIV' because p entails q. But since you do not know you cannot be said to know p either, so either the principle of closure is false or it is Nozick's theory. Nozick then goes on with a possible world argument but it does not interest us because it can only show that Nozick's theory is right (and hence that the principle of closure is false) but not that we are not BIVs. [...]
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