Not so impossible . . .

Brian Weatherson was at Rutgers recently giving a presentation on Bayesianism and Skepticism, during which he discussed this claim:

(B) It is impossible to go from not being in a position to know E É H to being in a position to know it just by receiving evidence E.

Professor Weatherson denies this claim, but I have trouble seeing why it's plausible in the first place.  Let me know what you think of the following.

Suppose that someone justifiably and strongly believes (S):  no material conditionals are true.  This person, then, is not in a position to know E É H.

E:  God says "Some material conditionals are true".

H:  God spoke.

If our agent acquires the evidence described with E, then (given that their background beliefs include a high credence in God's testimony being trustworthy) their justification for believing (S) will be undercut (at least, in some possible cases), and they will be in a position to know E É H, as well as being in a position to know that E.  But, as the only evidence they acquired was the evidence described with E, it looks like any instance of this will be a counterexample to (B).

(If making (S) a claim about truthvaluelessness of material conditionals seems problematic, just replace that bit with some other sortal, s, such that E É H falls under s, and (S) does not.  So (S) will be of the form:  nothing falling under sortal s is true.)

What are your thoughts?

Comments

[Jonathan]

Shieva, I think that even before acquiring E, the person in question is, in the relevant sense, in a position to know that E hook H. Here's a bit of reasoning she could run through:

Suppose that E. Then, H. So, E hook H.

Or she might reason thus:

Suppose E and not-H. Then God says something, but hasn't said anything? No, that's impossible. So, not-E or H. That is to say, E hook H.

Even if she has this crazy belief floating around about all material conditionals, she can, I think, come to know E hook H through one of the reasonings given above. (A good next step would be to reject her crazy view, having found a counterexample.)

You disagree?

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