#22 - Historian: Because medieval epistemology (theory of

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Weaken. The correct answer choice is (E).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice.

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[momo]

My prephrase was: are medieval epistemologists accessible (aren't they all dead, so how can we ask them?)

Since that reasoning wasn't available in the answer choice, I read through the answers and chose the best option.

I chose D because if some medieval epistemologists believed a claim, and some believed opposite of a claim, wouldn't these contradict each other? How would this "help determine what should and should not be included"?

[KelseyWoods]

Hi momo!

Your prephrase is an interesting one! But ultimately, doesn't really get at the problem with this argument. We don't have to ask medieval epistemologists directly what they believe. We can rely on their writings. It's the same way we know what ancient philosophers believed, even though no one alive has directly spoken to them. But I like that you're reading closely and thinking about what was actually stated and looking for gaps in the argument!

Answer choice (D) was basically already stated in the argument: "If any [medieval epistemologists believed a claim], it is part of medieval epistemology; if any medieval epistemologists believed the opposite, then that opposite claim is part of medieval epistemology." The author seems perfectly fine with medieval epistemology containing contradictory claims. The argument is just about how to determine what should and should not be included in a definition of medieval epistemology. According to the author, the included beliefs don't necessarily have to be consistent with one another. They just have to have been held by medieval epistemologists. Since answer choice (D) was already accounted for in the argument, it cannot weaken it.

Answer choice (E) is the correct answer because it tells us that, similarly to how scholars cannot agree on a definition of medieval epistemology, they can also not agree on who exactly the medieval epistemologists were. If there's no agreement on who medieval epistemologists were, then the author's conclusion that we can define medieval epistemology simply as whatever medieval epistemologists believed would not follow. We can't define epistemology as whatever medieval epistemologists believed if we don't know who the medieval epistemologists are.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[momo]

I see, I didn't realize the contradiction was inherently accepted in the stimulus. Thanks!

[owen95]

So I went with C here; I was rushing at this point in the test and I think if I had given E a closer look I would've gone with it, but I would like to run through my thinking for why C is wrong and I'd really appreciate it if somebody could make sure it all checks out!

C felt good to me at first because of the historian's suggestion that "we just ask whether any medieval epistemologists believed it. If any did, it is part of medieval epistemology..."
So like, for instance, maybe some medieval epistemologist wrote that it is immoral to murder. That's not an epistemological claim, so it'd be silly to include that as a part of a definition for epistemology just because a epistemologist said it. It's as ridiculous as saying that a lawyer is making a legal analysis when he says he prefers cats over dogs. That's why C seemed so good to me.
So here's where I think I went wrong... reading back, the "it" in the sentence I previously quoted is specifically refering to "epistemological claims." So the historian here is already ruling out including things that are outside of epistemology's field.

Does that all check out? or is there something else wrong with C?

Thank you!!

[KelseyWoods]

Exactly right, Owen!

The stimulus is not suggesting that any claim made by a medieval epistemologist should be accepted as being part of medieval epistemology (which, like you said, would definitely be ridiculous!). Rather the author is saying we should ask whether epistemological claims were believed by medieval epistemologists or not. Thus, answer choice (C) would not weaken the argument because the author is only concerned with the epistemological claims made by medieval epistemologists.

Good job!

Best,
Kelsey

[T14_Hopeful]

Stimulus:
any believes a belief ---> the belief is part of it
any believes opposite belief---> the opposite belief is part of it

Problems that I see with this criteria:
can we have belief and opposite belief co-exist?
what about just 'not belief' instead of just opposite belief?

Would it be fair to say that the stimulus provides no basis for determining if a contradiction is allowed or not? Thus, D is incorrect because we have no idea if this contraction is allowable or not, and hence not weakening?

[Robert Carroll]

T14,

Yes, it is fair to say that the stimulus gives no way to know if a contradiction is acceptable or not. So we can't be sure that allowing contradictions would be unacceptable. In fact, I think it makes sense to allow contradictions in this case - Newtonian mechanics and relativistic mechanics contradict each other in certain ways, but it wouldn't be reasonable to say that they can't both count as physics. Similarly, different epistemologists, or, heck, even the same epistemologist at different times in his/her career, might have contradictory opinions. Those contradictory opinions would all plausibly count as "medieval epistemology".

As far as "not belief", the author is trying to establish what's included in medieval epistemology. The author basically says "If A is believed, it's included; if the opposite of A is believed, the opposite of A is included." Whether things not believed are not included is just not something the author makes clear, so I don't know the author's opinion about it.

Robert Carroll

[jrschultz14]

Hi! I'd love some help with my thought process on this. I'm still confused as to why AC C is wrong. Doesn't the premise in the argument say that if we want to know whether something is an epistemological claim we should just "ask whether any epistemologists believed it"?

But if there are many thoughts from known epistemologists, and some are or are not epistemological thoughts, how can we tell them apart from one another? This seems just as bad as claiming that we know who the epistemologists are.

The only change is that for AC E we don't know who's thoughts to differentiate from, while AC C suggests that we don't know which thoughts to differentiate across. Sure, some claims could very clearly be disregarded as not epistemological, but in the same way, some people could very clearly be disregarded as not epistemologists.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi jr.

Our stimulus is limited---it isn't applying to all writings by epistemologists, but rather just the epistemological writings of epistemologists. So the fact that the writings may contain non-epistemological passages doesn't hurt the argument here, because the author already limited the writings to ones that were epistemological. It's not a great argument for sure.

But with answer choice (E), we would weaken the argument. Because the argument is assuming here that we know who the epistemologists are. If we can't identify them, we can't use this definition at all.

It's a very subtle difference here. Hope that helps!