The twin towers existed! I have epistemically solid proof. I just received this message from my son, Patrick:
"I can tell you how you can be pretty certain the Twin Towers existed. Anand played the 1995 World Championship match against Kasparov there, and I was Anand’s second, thereafter writing a book about the match. I went into one of those towers (I forget which one) many times."
Now, if my sister had only bagged a job in the West Wing ...
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So how do you know it was your son who sent the message and not some troll? And even if it is your son, how do you know he isn't making it all up just to please you?
Because I know him, and know he would not do that. I was not championing radical scepticism. I was trying to make clear the difference between the world we construct from first hand knowledge, and the vastly larger world we construct from the flood or reports we receive that we cannot directly, from personal knowledge, confirm.
Besides, he would not do that to his old dad. :)
Yes, as you have said before, i'm paraphrasing, choose a side you trust, and that will be your truth. Very trumpian, in a sense...
I will second the existence of the towers. I was on the top of one of them with my wife and son. We have to pile up some evidence. Ask Philippe Petit.
It may be worth adding that even necessary truths are subject to this "problem". While there are many theorems in number theory, topology and logic that I have (re)proved myself and others that I could there are many that are beyond me. Yet I know them.
All of this reminds me of Hume on causation: Every time we’ve seen one billiard ball hit another, the second has moved. But we can’t prove logically that the same phenomenon has to happen the next time one billiard ball hits another, and we can’t prove it empirically because it hasn’t yet happened. Still, we believe that every time one ball hits another the second will move, and would be very surprised if it didn’t--and, as he acknowledged, so would Hume. Constant conjunction.
From there my mind jumps to O.W. Holmes, Jr.: “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed.”
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