So, explain how the rhinoceros thing is even remotely plausible.
Okay, think of it this way. If someone says that there is not a rhinoceros in the room, you might look around the room, ascertain the lack of an immense horned beast, and then agree. This is verification, and it's what you consider to be truth itself.
Steady on.
Well, okay, in fairness, if someone said that, in the larger sense of the term, there is no rhinoceros in the room, you might think about the ways in which this might be true, but you'd likely feel a duty towards your habit of verification, and these would be only slight forays into that other territory, and you'd likely say that, when it comes down to brass tacks, and given the obvious reality of things, it would be more logical to conclude that the room was rhinoceros-free.
But how is it false to say that there is not a rhinoceros in the room?
It's not false, it's simply nonsense. First, there was never any possibility of a rhinoceros being in the room, so in a Hegelian sense, there is no specific lack of a rhinoceros.
But it suggests an absence, not a thing lacking.
Precisely. It only suggests an absence in a situation where there was never a possibility of a presence. It's like saying that time isn't running backwards, or that a giraffe isn't π. The statement cannot be agreed to because it's simply nonsense, despite the fact that this one offers a foothold of attempted verification. I might similarly say that running off the edge of the Grand Canyon doesn't cause the river below to turn into the Napoleonic Code, but the person who tried to verify it would be a fool, and if they tried to verify it conceptually, they'd have nothing to grab onto. The possibility of verification doesn't mean that the claim makes sense.
But its not theoretically impossible for there to be a rhinoceros in the room.
Well, that depends on the kind of theories that you have.
I mean, some undergraduates could have, as a prank, gone to the zoo, brought a small one back and tossed it in the window.
Legitimate, but the question is if that's enough to create the genuine possibility of the event. Genuine doubt is as difficult as genuine belief, as Peirce said to dispel the Cartesian demon. And so the expression in language at best might reduce to the claim that the situation that no rational person would think to be the case is in fact not the case. Which for W, might be precisely the same as the stronger form.
So we can never know if there is a rhinoceros in the room?
No, we just can't make the claim that there isn't one coherently, if there was never a possibility of the event. It's about how we think and talk, not what's going on in the world outside. Knowledge is understanding that the tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable, but wisdom is not putting it in the fruit salad.
Bit trite.
Indeed. And perhaps entirely wrong. Just wiseacring and procrastinating.
#notexpert #dontrely