Neo-Mooreanism, Ability and Inconceivable Error Possibilities

Title: Neo-Mooreanism, Ability and Inconceivable Error Possibilities
Speaker: Raban Reichmann
Date: 9/2
Time: 10-13
Venue: Sala Rossa, via Azzo Gardino 23, Bologna

Abstract:

In this session I would like to discuss the short-comings of the neo-Moorean response to closure-based scepticism. In particular, I will argue that neo-Mooreanism is fatally flawed in that it cannot accommodate the ability condition on knowledge. I will try to motivate this conclusion on the basis of a number of cases as well as by appeal to a different kind of sceptical possibility. This possibility is the possibility that we could be in error for a reason that we cannot conceive of (a reason, that is, with which we simply cannot cognitively engage). I argue that it would be conceptually confused to regard this possibility as far-fetched and that it poses a legitimate sceptical threat that the neo-Moorean cannot circumvent despite its necessarily abstract nature.