Ambiguity

On my mind this morning. 

Visual ambiguity, and arguably, ambiguity in language is often used, I  think, to distract from methodological scepticism. It is uncontroversial to assert (from a particularist  position) that inductive arguments (with a tacit control for simplicity of best explanation) give you knowledge (justified belief) albeit not the certainty of a deductive argument.

 'The particularist and skeptic have very different approaches to knowledge. For the skeptic, the burden of proof is on the cognitivist. If it is logically possible that one might be mistaken, then knowledge is not present because knowledge requires certainty. Of the two main tasks of epistemology (obtaining true or justified beliefs and avoiding false or unjustified beliefs), the skeptic elevates the latter and requires that his position be refuted before knowledge can be justified. Moreover, if one asks what it means to have “a right to be sure” that one has knowledge, two different senses of this phrase are involved: (1) one can dogmatically assert that one has knowledge and refuse to look at further evidence or (2) one can have the right to rely on the truth of the belief in explaining things and in forming other beliefs while remaining open to further evidence in the future. The skeptic claims that the particularist assertion of knowledge is an example of the former sense of the right to be sure, not the latter. By contrast, the cognitivist places the burden of proof on the skeptic. Just because it is logically possible to be mistaken in a given case, it does not follow that one might be mistaken in an epistemic sense. There is a distinction between a logical “might” and an epistemic “might” in “you might be mistaken.” The former means that there is no logical contradiction in asserting that a knowledge claim is in error. The latter means that there are good reasons for thinking that one actually is mistaken in a knowledge claim.’ Philosophical foundations for a Christian worldview / J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig.

Inductive arguments and arguments to the best explanation yield credible conclusions in other words. 

"One’s current sensory beliefs are prima facie justified, that is, innocent until “proven” guilty. If something appears red to someone right now, and he forms his belief that “Something before me is red right now” on that basis, then in the absence of defeaters (factors that refute or undercut one’s justification), or perhaps in the absence of being aware of reasons for thinking that there are defeaters, one has a right to be sure of one’s sensory belief. Moreover, if people do have knowledge about human fallibility and past deceptions, then, obviously, they know certain things."  - Philosophical foundations for a Christian worldview / J.P. Moreland 
and William Lane Craig.

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