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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that McGinn's closure argument conflates 'currently unexplained' with 'inexplicable in principle', committing a form of the argument from ignorance.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.McGinn's argument rests on evolutionary constraints on human cognition, not mere current ignorance—a structural, not temporary, limitation.
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    • 2.Analogies to past scientific progress don't establish we can overcome *fundamental* cognitive architecture limits, only previous empirical gaps.
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    • 3.The charge of 'argument from ignorance' mischaracterizes McGinn's claim about cognitive closure as a positive thesis about biological constraints.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.History shows repeated cases where 'permanently inexplicable' phenomena later became explicable (vitalism, phlogiston, lightning).
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    • 2.Without independent criteria for 'inexplicable in principle,' McGinn merely asserts cognitive closure rather than proving it systematically.
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    • 3.Conflating epistemic limits (we can't know) with metaphysical limits (it can't be known) requires justification McGinn doesn't provide.
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