![]() It is impossible to see the curvature of the Earth from ground level. The shape of the Earth just doesn’t seem round. That lived experience, in large part, is why this Flat Earth conspiracy theory has been so sticky throughout millennia. I can walk as far as possible in a single direction and the ground and horizon will always appear flat to my eyeballs. Without any greater evidence than one’s own experiences, it would be more excusable to believe the Earth is flat. The world looks flat, the bottoms of clouds are flat…these are all examples of your senses telling you that we do not live on a spherical heliocentric world.” The simplest is by relying on one’s own senses to discern the true nature of the world around us. Stated so eloquently on The Flat Earth Society (TFES) website “The evidence for a Flat Earth is derived from many different facets of science and philosophy. Notice the massive ice wall around our planet keeping the water in! Muhammad Waqar Saleem/ Flat Earth Beliefs It can’t be that difficult to figure out if Aristotle proved the round Earth more than 2,000 years ago with few scientific instruments. Have you proven for yourself that the Flat-Earthers are wrong, or have you simply believed the pictures and professionals?įortunately, there are multiple easy tests you can perform at your home to prove that the Earth is, indeed, round. And that’s even though I doubt most people could prove it, right here and now.Many of the Flat-Earther’s convictions come from how flat the Earth seems from our perspective. But in most regular contexts then, yes, you do. So do you know whether the earth is round? It turns out it depends on context. If it was incorrect, we’d never get treated at hospitals – for in a context where we can’t trust the established laws of physics, how could we trust the judgements of medical science? And we are correct to rely on these things. We can rely on the fact that every educated physicist, cartographer and geographer never pauses to think the earth might be flat. In the more everyday contexts that we care about, we can rely on testimony. But in that context, nobody knows much at all and so this conclusion is simply unsurprising. In that context, you don’t know the earth is round. The flat earther’s argument is framed in a context where you can’t set aside the possibility that there’s a pervading global conspiracy – albeit one which somehow intermittently leaves glaring errors which give them away. But Phoebe moves him to a “sceptical context” in which if there’s a hint of doubt about something – any possibility that you might be wrong – then you don’t know it at all. Ross’s proof starts off relying on fossils in museums, books and articles on evolutionary biology, and so on. He’s a palaeontologist and, having admitted he can’t be sure about evolution, how can he “face the other science guys”? Suddenly, Phoebe has him – Ross’s admission destroys his worldview. Can he be so unbelievably arrogant, she asks, that he can’t admit the slightest chance that he might be wrong? Sheepishly, Ross agrees that there might be a chance. Ross piles on the evidence thick and fast. In one episode from Friends, Phoebe and Ross argue about evolution. That said, I claim the flat earther is doing a “Phoebe”. ![]() And in that case, you don’t know the details. In the second case, even though nothing about you has changed, the context has. The contextualist says that in the first case, you know her bank details. Do you really know her bank details? Are you sure? Sensibly, you phone her to double check. But now imagine you’re transferring £50,000. Imagine you’re transferring £10 to your daughter. It only makes sense given a particular context.Įpistemic contextualists say that knowledge is the same. And it makes no sense to further ask whether I’m really tall or not. So in that context, the sentence is false. But at the try-outs for the Harlem Globetrotters, my measly 5’11" won’t cut it. Surrounded by five year olds at a rollercoaster park, the sentence is true – after all, I can get on all the rides and they can’t. ![]() To understand what this is, we first must understand a familiar idea: context shift. I recommend letting philosophy do the work.
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