(March 2, 2018 at 11:07 am)robvalue Wrote:(March 2, 2018 at 10:39 am)rskovride Wrote: Is his argument about conceivability = possible a popular one? Are there no examples of things I can conseive that could not possibly exist?
It seemed to be a rather empty argument to me, too. When you're dealing with facts about the state of reality right now, "possible" is irrelevant. Something exists, or is true, if and only if it's possible that it exists / is true. Possible is only relevant with regard to future events.
He just seemed to be saying that if something isn't internally inconsistent then we can't rule it out; or that if something hasn't been shown to be impossible, then... it can't be discounted as possible. That just sounds like a pointless tautology to me. I don't see how we can learn anything through that. A "square circle" is an abstract concept anyway, and one we say is impossible by our definitions. We also haven't learnt anything about reality by noting that. What we're really saying there is that something we identify as a circle, we wouldn't also identify as a square. But even then, that depends on the geometry we're using. In topology, they are the same.
I'm fairly new to philosophy and have only studied basic epistemology but just read a little about this concept and there are issues with it. Some say that we just don't have knowledge of any contradictions. Similar to the fact that at one point in time we didn't know that all triangles, in fact, do not add up to 180 degrees.
I think its fair to say there are issues with the conceivability = possible argument.
