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Some Problems with the Anti‐Luminosity‐Argument
Author(s) -
Vanrie Wim
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
pacific philosophical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.914
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1468-0114
pISSN - 0279-0750
DOI - 10.1111/papq.12317
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , premise , transitive relation , epistemology , natural (archaeology) , similarity (geometry) , philosophy , computer science , mathematics , artificial intelligence , history , combinatorics , biochemistry , chemistry , archaeology , image (mathematics)
I argue that no successful version of Williamson's anti‐luminosity‐argument has yet been presented, even if Srinivasan's further elaboration and defence is taken into account. There is a version invoking a coarse‐grained safety condition and one invoking a fine‐grained safety condition. A crucial step in the former version implicitly relies on the false premise that sufficient similarity is transitive. I show that some natural attempts to resolve this issue fail. Similar problems arise for the fine‐grained version. Moreover, I argue that Srinivasan's defence of the more contentious fine‐grained safety condition is also unsuccessful, again for similar reasons.