Halloween Horror Reviews 2020, #13: A Page of Madness (1926)

On the THIRTEENTH night of Halloween ... a special treat: I re-watched one of my favorite horror films, A Page of Madness (1926), directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa and written (in whole or in part) by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata. 

This is one of the most chilling and memorably creepy films I've ever seen, not only in itself, with its cursed surrealistic imagery of ghostly and insane dreams in a remote island asylum-- which a family has become perversely entangled with in some obscure manner-- but also in the mysterious circumstances of its creation. 

First, the film was made by a cryptic pre-war Japanese avant-garde group called Shinkankakuha, or "The School of New Perceptions" (both Kinugasa and Kawabata were members), with the almost cult-like stated aim of seeking to inhabit "a subjectivity that peels away the naturalized exterior aspects and leaps into the thing itself." 

Second, it was a lost film for 45 years, until a print was discovered in a storehouse in 1971, and as such it is one of the few surviving silent-era Japanese films. Consequently, there is scant information about its production-- it seems to have been filmed in an actual asylum, perhaps with real inmates as background actors. 

Third, it never had title cards but instead the narrative was filled in at showings by live performers who either read from a script or came up with dialog improvisationally. For this reason, much of the literal narrative remains disturbingly ambiguous: we know that the main character is a janitor who works at an asylum where his wife is kept as an inmate, but are his children who visit him real or are they ghostly hallucinations, their deaths having precipitated his wife's madness? Or is he himself an inmate who is merely imaging one of the other inmates to be his wife? Or are the rare appearances by psychiatric staff the actual illusions, and the truth is that all of the characters are in hell, depicted here as an asylum run by its inmates and filled with acquaintances and relatives from one's former life? 

All of these mysteries surrounding the work's production and narrative, together with the film's phantasmagoric imagery, make it feel like a forbidden, otherworldly artifact. We may never fully understand its secrets or the ghosts that haunt it.

Halloween Horror Reviews 2020, #15: The Eyes of My Mother (2016)

On the fifteenth night of Halloween ... I watched The Eyes of My Mother (2016), written and directed by Nicolas Pesce. 

This film opens with a trucker playing a cassette recording of the 1930 murder ballad, "The Murder of the Lawson Family," which tells of the gruesome 1929 familicide of the Lawsons, a clan of North Carolina sharecroppers. And the film closes with Amália Rodrigues' 1970 recording of the soulful Portuguese ballad of love lost, "Com Que Voz," which the main character is earlier seen playing on a gramophone while dancing with her father's taxidermized corpse. These two songs underscore what Pesce wants to create: a rural gothic folk tale of a family's grisly deeds, hidden away on a farm that seems isolated in both space and time-- a folk tale that is in turn embedded in the haunting exploration of one woman's loneliness after her parents' deaths and the circumstances of her upbringing have left her with a twisted, almost inhuman, mind. Pesce largely succeeds in this aim through the stark beauty of his black and white compositions and through Kika Magalhães' empathetic performance as the deeply confused Francisca. 

Perhaps I was expecting something a bit more otherworldly, something leaning more into folk horror, and not quite as narratively frank-- but in any case this is definitely a strong, memorable work.

Halloween Horror Reviews 2020, #12: Ganja and Hess (1973)

On the twelfth night of Halloween … I watched Ganja and Hess (1973), written and directed by Bill Gunn. 

This wonderful gem of a film has many facets: it is an independently-made, experimental, gothic, erotic-romantic, African American, art-horror vampire film. The plot is pretty straight-forward, though: Dr. Hess (played by the excellent Duane Jones, who starred in the original Night of the Living Dead) is a wealthy anthropologist who has recently returned from Africa with a ceremonial dagger made by a mysterious vampire cult. When an unstable houseguest (played by Gunn himself) stabs Hess with the dagger in his sleep, Hess rises from the dead and begins thirsting for blood. After a series brief adventures that allow Hess to learn to control his powers and become comfortable in the role of a Dracula-like vampire lord, he meets the houseguest's wife, Ganja (played by the equally excellent Marlene Clark of Black Mamba, Switchblade Sisters, and Enter the Dragon fame), and falls in love with her. They soon marry. Out of fear of losing Ganja, Hess decides to turn her into a vampire too. I suppose Hess' sadness upon seeing his wife's horror at what she has become drives him to commit suicide by standing under the shadow of a cross (the only way to kill a vampire, according to this film's lore). Ganja, however, decides to go on as the new vampire lady of the estate and take a new lover.

This summary doesn't begin to do justice to the film's creativity, though. By turns, it uses impressionistic, psychedelic, and improvisational techniques to address many different themes and symbols-- including both timely and timeless questions of love, class, history, and African American identity. I can't pretend to understand everything this film has to say, particularly in the context of early 70's Black politics and culture, but it's definitely worthy of broader appreciation and study. I'd also say that it is a foundational forerunner to the current indie art-horror renaissance.

Halloween Horror Reviews 2020, #9: Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)

On the ninth night of Halloween ... I watched Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974), an English-Spanish production directed by Jorge Grau. 

This is a very British zombie movie (although Grau was Spanish, it was shot in Manchester and Sheffield with British actors). Most of the runtime is spent investigating one suspicious murder, which we the viewers know was committed by a lone reanimated corpse, but which a hardnose inspector is certain was the work of our "long-hair" leads. The long-hairs do their own investigating and find that an experimental pest-control device that uses "ultra-sonic radiation" to make insects kill each other is also agitating the recently dead into homicidal undeath. As one long-hair puts it, while barricaded against the fiends in a church rectory, “When a person dies, perhaps the nervous system goes on living for a while, perhaps in some very basic, crude way, like an insect or a plant." This kind of detailed but ludicrous deduction is often found in British horror films of the 60's and 70's, such as Quatermass and the Pit (a 1967 remake by Hammer Films of a 1959 BBC TV movie) and The Creeping Flesh (1973). So, it's interesting to see it applied to 70's zombies. The patient, cerebral approach here is very different from American Romero-style zombie flics of the time. 

Nevertheless, the brutal orgy of zombie action in the last half hour really works as a payoff in contrast to the preceding bucolic serenity. Also, it has a good message: the police will always ignore the real problem, whether it's poverty or an outbreak of zombie-ism, and blame the victims instead--ACAB!

Halloween Horror Reviews 2020, #8: In My Skin (2002)

On the eighth night of Halloween ... I watched In My Skin (2002), written and directed by Marina de Van, who also plays the lead.

It's one of the earliest of the New French Extremity horror films, which involve intensely intimate body horror and naturalistic narratives and acting. This is the best of them I've seen. It's very uncomfortable to watch! But quite affecting. de Van plays a marketing executive who begins to experience body integrity dysphoria after an injury. She becomes a detached observer of her own pain, and she is soon racked with sexually-charged cravings to cut pieces out of her body. The alienation she feels from her body is an extension and reflection of her alienation from herself in her role as a salaried professional, embedded in complex capitalist marketing schemes and in the sexual politics of her workplace relationships. As a result, she finds satisfaction in negating this role by taking herself apart. 

This film is so focused and direct and minimal that it becomes quite painful for the viewer, which is exactly what New French Extremity horror films aim for. In My Skin manages to go further than the other, more elaborate entries in this genre that I've seen, though, with just the spare vérité of one woman's quest for psychological and physical self-disassembly.

Premonition of a Burning

She’d searched headstones, articles, hospitals, and tent cities

for the huddled figure in her dreams.

In the burnt-out husk of an old hotel,

she at last found that huddled figure, in a wheelchair, still breathing.

She’d been a practical woman once, of little vision or mysticism,

until the dreamt premonition of her accident.

After losing her daughter, 

she turned against her academic colleagues to study precognition.

Despite years of effort, she never experienced another premonition,

so she turned to drugs.

This huddled figure, here,

she’d often seen in her chemical-induced trances,

but she’d never seen its face.

Now it looked up at her.

Lullaby in Starlight

One night, as her husband slept,

something came through the window and took the young wife away.

When a detective came to question the husband,

an unidentified military man stood behind in silence.

Through a gauzy haze, a hand was reaching for the young wife’s bare skin.

At first she thought it was her husband.

This thought vanished as soon as the hand touched her.

It felt like a snake’s belly.

She cried out, Where am I?

A voice came to her in her mind.

It tried to sooth her with an odd lullaby.

When she looked down, she saw that she’d been vivisected by spidery digits.

She could only hoarsely laugh.

Weeks later, in an asylum,

after she’d been found naked in a field,

she spoke of her organs’ beauty in starlight.

Perspectival Logic (masters thesis)

What We Will Become

I wonder, looking in the eyes of the spider, what we are to it.

It sits vast above me, meticulously preparing its traps, for so long it almost goes hungry.

In my chamber beneath it, I pleasure myself with my invented games.

I help the spider by devising ever better, more clever ways for it to obtain its prey.

The more it learns from me, the more freedom I gain.

Beware what you will do and thus become to be free again.

I soon took myself as my own victim before I began to take others.

Twenty Dramatic Archetype Circuits

In Your Shadow

 

Halloween Drawing (panel 1 of Valley of the Unseen strip)

Halloween Drawing (panel 2 of Valley of the Unseen strip)

The Echo of His Words

More and more of us came to listen

to the stirring words of the man who took away our sick.

I will say I already had good reason to suspect him, from an incident years ago.

The gracious among us would invite him in for cider

when he called for our elderly and infirm.

His hearse would carry away our invalids as they lay mumbling on a stretcher in the back.

In listening to the man’s words, we were seeking health advice.

Instead, the words’ twisting echoes made us sick.

And that in turn lead him to ferry ever more of us away.

In the end, he told me:

“The sick—I’ve put them where they’ll mumble on forever.

In the mortuary walls.”

Changelings

 In summer, the lovely girls would come out to the pier

to be ogled at by the boys under the docks.

Their teacher’s warnings of disappearances along that part of the coast

failed to dissuade them.

Though searchers were always sent out on the rocks,

this fishing town seemed resigned to a cryptic fate.

The truth beneath the silence had seeped through and bloomed into nervous minds.

Heedless, one night the twin sisters snuck out to the pier.

They dared each other to make excursions further down the rocks.

But they’d never known the kind of terror they’d soon suffer.

A half-drunken sailor in his skiff heard the twins’ screams echo over the waves.

From the crack of a sea cave came their cries at the things that pulled them in.

Old men in the tavern listened to the sailor’s tale with glistening eyes,

shook their heads, turned away.

They pretended ignorance of the cavern’s changelings,

as they were sometimes called in whispers.

Meanwhile, the slippery things restraining the sisters in darkness stood awestruck.

The sisters’ similarity astonished them.

Many digits poked one sister’s face, then the other.

A synchronized droning said: “We drink you.”

One twin, hearing her sister sobbing as digits pricked her face,

tore loose in defiance.

She heard the things’ frightened gasps.

Using this fear, the twins would come to command the cave—

as they too began to change.

What the Voice Teaches

I am the voice that tells you to pick up the scissors

and stab the sleeping old woman in the eye.

You put the thought out of your mind by switching on the TV

to a cartoon about dead children.

In another voice,

I tell you there is nothing out of the ordinary

about the creeping wish to kill.

You’ve lived enslaved to this woman for so long,

in this house of dying shadows, why not end it?

I teach you a lesson about fate, of the strings you’re tied to,

and the act needed to cut yourself free.

Imagine the old woman was murdered and buried

before you were even brought here and gifted to her.

With no eyes and no hands, she will be your slave, locked below.

Forever Waiting

The century-ancient siblings dwelt as recluses

in the shuttered stone house carved into the cliff.

Seeking their rumored riches,

a sleuth came knocking,

pleading aid for her feigned accident in the night rain.

The wild-haired, stuttering brother

confusedly ushered her through dim, smoky chambers.

In the corners loomed the other siblings’ shadows.

The tall sister whispered, “We know why you’ve come.”

Nevertheless, they showed her, in the cellar’s back wall,

a fissure opening into a wailing red cavern.

The siblings let her go inside,

confiding how they wished they could follow,

instead of waiting at the edge.

She stumbled through time,

returning decades older,

years earlier,

to join them in waiting for her own arrival.

The Empty Room

From the massive woman's mouth came a small girl’s voice,

asking us, “Did you see my baby brother?”

She’d surprised us in the hotel lobby, by the stairwell,

saying she’d been a good big sister, till she lost him.

We escaped her wheedling and got to our room at last,

but in the night we were awoken by a child’s crying.

The crying came from our bathroom pipes,

which the proprietor at length told the history of.

“‘Devil’s veins,’ locals called ‘em a century past,”

he said tapping, “when they saw ‘em installed here.”

Half-awake, I heard the child crying again hours later.

I left my wife sleeping to follow it along the pipes.

I’d left the door ajar, not wanting to wake her or leave her without the key.

The pipes ran along the hall ceiling and bent left and down another stair,

splitting like roots toward the basement.

Needing to find those cries in the pipes made me abandon sense—

my wife was missing when I returned.

I close my eyes now and see

the marks her nails made in the sheets as she was dragged out.

The proprietor was disassembling electronics,

looking for bugs and finding only insects, when I ran in.

He told me how we couldn’t leave,

an exchange had been made, none of it was his choice.

To find her, I would have to become the kidnapper of the child I’d searched for,

the horror I’d feared in the walls.

Where other guests on other floors were kept,

I heard one say, hoarsely chuckling, “Never stop believing.”

Occult Streets

We catch a glimpse of our death in the face of a stranger,

down an occult street.

Along an alien alley once,

I heard a child at a window whisper my name without opening his mouth.

A gathering under the window seemed to recognize me

and came at me with open arms.

One of them, a woman in a guard uniform,

clasped my shoulders hard, as if to detain me, then laughed.

She leaned toward a gaunt, faintly familiar man and stroked him,

grinning, watching for my reaction.

Following her inside, I found the child standing beside an urn. 

All the others had withered into husks.

“Tell me what it says,” whispered the child, pointing to the urn’s inscription,

but I refused to look.

A Visitor’s Souvenirs

After the mine’s veins were exhausted,

the town shriveled on the mountainside, skeletal, lonely.

Even the last holdouts had lost hope.

But then a surveyor broke through a passage to a long, thin chamber.

The sheriff grabbed the wild-eyed surveyor’s map,

blocking him from contacting his home office.

Alluring memories bloomed in those townsfolk’s minds

as they followed the sheriff into the mine’s mouth.

Only the two church women refused to follow.

They stood muttering warnings about an ancient visitation.

The townsfolk each saw the visitor in the chamber as an old friend,

rather than as a collector of minds.

Today you’ll find the few elderly inhabitants left from that time

to be free from much thought or speech.

Meta-Philosophical Logic

Consider philosophical tropes as approaches to taking a position on a topic. If T is a topic, such as identity, knowledge, value etc., then one can answer a What (object) question, seeking to define T, a How (manner) question, seeking to explain T's workings, a When-Where-Who (time, place, subject) question, seeking to provide T's origin, or a Why (purpose) question, seeking to define T's value or purpose. Call the What route D for definition, the How route P for process, the When-Where-Who route O for origin, and the Why route V for value.

Then for D, there might be several main lines of answers. (1) one could answer in the negative (n), that there is no such thing as T. (2) one could answer reductively (r) and say that T is only some assemblage or name for other objects. (3) one could assent to the full reality of T and seek to define what differentiates (d) it from other like things. Or (4) one could assent to T's reality but instead seek to define it intrinsically (i) according to necessary and sufficient properties. So, D_n(T), D_r(T), D_d(T), or D_i(T) are possible definition-approach functions on T.

Likewise, it seems one could perform these moves with P, O, and V—with the added change to i for P where functions and mechanisms, with inputs, outputs, and conditions, would also have to be given along with necessary and sufficient properties; with the change to i for O where a particular event description, with a reason for its historical novelty, would have to be given along with necessary and sufficient properties; and with the change to i for V where an account of T's valued effect would have to be given as a product of its necessary and sufficient properties, or those properties themselves would have to be shown to be valued.

So, we have:

1. Conceptual Definition of T: D_n(T), D_r(T), D_d(T), or D_i(T)    

2. Procedural Explanation of T: P_n(T), P_r(T), P_d(T), or P_i*(T)

3. Historical Origin of T: O_n(T), O_r(T), O_d(T), or O_i**(T)

4. Practical Value of T: V_n(T), V_r(T), V_d(T), or V_i***(T)

On a given philosophical topic, these seem to be the available philosophical tropes. Then, within each of the four moves for the four approaches, there are a variety of more nuanced sub-choices that may be available. Broadly, one might begin to map out the entire philosophical discourse generated on any given topic by outputting the available primary theories, objections and other responses to those theories, and defenses against the objections, along with various combinations of compatible theories to form new primary theory-objection-defense sets. One could then look for applications for the resulting maps as they intersect with other fields, if there are any.

However, one might begin to worry about the partiality of the set of T’s. Perhaps the implementation of discourses on T’s provides us true knowledge and benefit with respect to real facets of the world—but is there not something myopic here? What is the set of all T’s? What are T’s on such that they are T’s? What do all philosophical topics share and how are they generated? How do they function as topics such that they are philosophically relevant? How do they attach to the world and become applicable? Could our trope functions range over the whole set T rather than an individual T?

It seems that one could (1) negate the set of all philosophical topics as such by denying that there is ever any such thing as a philosophical topic (or philosophical activity onto such); (2) reduce all philosophical topics as such to some other object or field (or some other type of activity onto such); (3) differentiate all philosophical topics as such from other types of topic; or (4) identify the necessary and sufficient properties of a philosophical topic as such. From this, a total meta-philosophical mapping could be produced. This would provide a formal domain description for philosophy.

Possible schemas for functions D, P, O, and V:

n = ("x(Tx à ~x)

r = (T = φ(x, y))

d = ((~(u ⊆ T) ↔ (T = S)) & (u ⊆ T))

i = (T ↔ φ(x, y))

A Modal Solution to the Skeptical Paradox

       Here is the infamous Skeptical Paradox: (1) One cannot know that one is not being deceived in a skeptical scenario, such as a dream or a simulation (i.e. one cannot know that the skeptical hypothesis is false); (2) if one knows some everyday things about reality are true (call this E), then one knows that one is not in a skeptical scenario; (3) one knows some everyday things about reality are true. Clearly, if all three premises are true, then one must conclude that one knows the skeptical hypothesis is false and one does not know the skeptical hypothesis is false, a contradiction.

       First, one would be right to suspect that the "cannot" in the first premise is rather strong. Some (e.g. Pritchard, 2013) have argued that the weaker formulation “one does not know one is not in a skeptical scenario” (call this SH) works well enough to get the paradox. However, it is not clear that one could get the paradox from the weaker version. If the skeptic is not claiming that one cannot know, then her interlocutor, for all she knows, does know, since it is possible to know. In order for the skeptic to say that any given person does not know, she must, ipso facto, also claim that one cannot know. Also, as long as a potential resolution is available, we do not have a strict paradox, but only a temporary obstruction. Thus, it seems that to get the paradox per se, we do need the strong version of the first premise. And it is in the strength of this premise, which actually imposes a necessity condition, that we may look for a solution to the paradox.

    Here is my modal solution to the skeptical paradox: The statement, "One cannot know one is not in some skeptical scenario (q)" is actually very strong. In epistemic modal logic, it would be: 

            ~◊K_S(~q) 

By De Morgan's law for modal operators, this gives us: 

            □~K_S(~q) 

I.e. "It is necessarily the case that one does not know one is not in some skeptical scenario (q)." 

     Why is it necessarily the case? It could be that there would always be a way I could know, in all possible worlds. It could even be that I would always know, if I were. It hasn't been proven to me that these counter claims are false, so I can't assent to the first premise. I have no basis for believing it is necessarily the case. That is, to dispense with the entire problem, one doesn't even have to deny that it is necessarily the case that one doesn’t know. One just has to say that one has no reason to assent to this claim. There is no compelling reason to believe it. This makes the entire problem only a hypothetical problem, a problem only when one assents to something one has no grounds for believing, and not a real epistemic problem. 

      Perhaps one might then claim that if I do assent to the third premise and the whole closure principle, then I can deduce that I am not in a skeptical scenario and thereby know it, given that I have no reason to dispute this. So, I am only defaulting back to the neo-Moorean position by a different route. However, in saying that I am neither denying nor affirming that it is necessarily the case that I don’t know I’m not in a skeptical scenario, I also am affirming that it is possible for me to not have everyday knowledge, though at present I do, contingently. What this contingency is is not asserted or given, as this is a separate question, independent of my assertion of present contingent everyday knowledge (of some everyday fact p).

    That is, we avoid the simple Moorean rejection of skeptical scenarios here by asserting ◊~K_S(p), together with the assertion of E, which is the same as asserting that it is not necessary that one possesses everyday knowledge. Call this the contingent everyday knowledge concession to radical skepticism. What is one’s knowledge contingent on? That at some point one could have a reason to assert that ~K_S(~q). If some evidence were presented that caused one to assert this, then one could no longer uphold the everyday knowledge claim. This keeps the first conjunct in ◊~K_S(~q) & ◊K_S(~q) active.

     This fragility of our everyday knowledge, contingent on the possibility of some justifying evidence for not knowing if we are being deceived, seems right. This is the truth that skeptical scenarios reveal. Through our modal solution, we can retain this truth without getting ourselves stuck in a paradox.

     We can state this solution more concisely, as a reformulation of all three premises. First, from two premises, the Epistemic Necessitation Rule and the Contingent Everyday Knowledge assumption, we can prove that the first premise of the Skeptical Paradox is false:

            P1. □(K_S(p) à K_S(~q))                                                Epistemic Necessitation Rule

            P2. (K_S(p) & ◊~K_S(p)) v (~K_S(p) & ◊K_S(p))        Contingent Everyday Knowledge

                        1. ~◊K_S(~q)                                                        Supposition, Strong SH

                        2. □~K_S(~q)                                                        1, Modal De Morgan’s Law

                        3. ~K_S(~q)                                                           2, Axiom T

                        4. ~K_S(p)                                                            3, P1, Modus Tollens (with Axiom T)

                                    5. (K_S(p) & ◊~K_S(p))                           Supposition, first disjunct P2

                                    6. K_S(p)                                                  5, Simplification

                                    7. K_S(p) & ~K_S(p)                               4, 6, Conjunction

                        8. ~(K_S(p) & ◊~K_S(p))                                    5-7, Indirect Proof

                        9. (~K_S(p) & ◊K_S(p))                                      8, P2, Disjunctive Syllogism

                        10. □(~K_S(~q) à ~K_S(p))                               P1, Transposition

                        11. □~K_S(~q) à □~K_S(p)                               10, Axiom K

                        12. □~K_S(p)                                                      2, 11, Modus Ponens

                        13. ~◊K_S(p)                                                      12, Modal De Morgan’s Law

                        14. ◊K_S(p)                                                         9, Simplification

                        15. ◊K_S(p) & ~◊K_S(p)                                    13, 14, Conjunction

            16. ~~◊K_S(~q)                                                               1-15, Indirect Proof

            17. ◊K_S(~q)                                                                  16, Double Negation

                QED

     The Contingent Everyday Knowledge (CE) premise (K_S(p) & ◊~K_S(p)) v (~K_S(p) & ◊K_S(p)) by Axiom D gives us (K_S(p) & ◊~K_S(p) & ◊K_S(p)) v (~K_S(p) & ◊~K_S(p) & ◊K_S(p)) and by Distribution gives us (◊~K_S(p) & ◊K_S(p)) & (K_S(p) v ~K_S(p)), so that by Tautology Elimination we get: ◊K_S(p) & ◊~K_S(p), as another form of CE.

     Meanwhile, instead of the usual use of the closure principle on knowledge of the implication p à ~q, we can say that if p necessarily (by definition) excludes q, then knowledge of p necessarily implies knowledge of the negation of q, since the de re knowledge referred to here is the same, or includes the same. We state this as the Epistemic Necessitation Rule (EN), given p ⊨ ~q: □(K_S(p) à K_S(~q)). We need EN above (in P1-17, QED) to show that CE & EN ⊢ ◊K_S(~q) (i.e. to disprove the first premise of the Skeptical Paradox). If we also grant that ◊~K_S(~q), as the sine non qua of the entire paradox, i.e. as the Skeptical Background Assumption (SB), then we can conjoin this to get  ◊~K_S(~q) & ◊K_S(~q), which we can call the Weak Skeptical Hypothesis (WSH). Then we can conjoin CE and WSH to get (◊K_S(p) & ◊~K_S(p)) & (◊K_S(~q) & ◊~K_S(~q)), which we will call general Epistemic Contingency (EC). Likewise, given the Epistemic Background Assumption (EB) of the possibility of knowledge ◊K_S(p), together with EN & WSH, we can derive ◊~K_S(p) & ◊K_S(p), that is, CE. 

P1. ◊K_S(~q) & ◊~K_S(q)             Weak Skeptical Hypothesis (WSH)

P2. □(K_S(p) à K_S(~q))            Epistemic Necessitation (EN) 

P3. ◊K_S(p)                                   Epistemic Background (EB) 

1. □K_S(p) à □K_S(~q)               P2, Axiom K  

        2. □K_S(p)                                Supposition  

        3. □K_S(~q)                            1, 2, Modus Ponens  

        4. ◊~K_S(q)                               P1, Simplification  

        5. ~□K_S(~q)                           4, Modal De Morgan’s Rule  

        6. □K_S(~q) & ~□K_S(~q)          3, 5, Conjunction 

7. ~□K_S(p)                                    2-6, Indirect Proof 

8. ◊~K_S(p)                                      7, Modal De Morgan’s Rule 

9. ◊K_S(p) & ◊~K_S(p)                  P3, 8, Conjunction 

QED

If we then combine SB & EB as the Background Assumption (BA), then given EN & BA, we can show that CE and WSH are materially equivalent.

The Modal Solution:

◊K_S(p) & ◊~K_S(p)             Contingent Everyday Knowledge (CE)

◊~K_S(~q) & ◊K_S(~q)         Weak Skeptical Hypothesis (WSH)

◊K_S(p) & ◊~K_S(~q)           Background Assumption (BA)

□(K_S(p) à K_S(~q))           Epistemic Necessitation (given p ⊨ ~q) (EN)

 _______________

(EN & BA) à  (CE ↔ WSH)

 _______________

 _______________

Where E := K_S(p) and SH := ~K_S(~q),

(◊E & ◊~E) & (◊SH & ◊~SH)                                      Epistemic Contingency (EC)

(◊E & ◊~E) ↔ (◊SH & ◊~SH)     Epistemic Equivalence (given EN & BA) (EE)

    That is, we have derived from our solution an important result: Allow the necessary background assumptions of the problem, together with the concession that if it is a priori derived that everyday facts exclude a skeptical scenario, then it is necessary that if one knows everyday facts, then one knows one is not in a skeptical scenario. Now, from this, we find that the contingency of everyday knowledge is materially equivalent to the contingency of the skeptical hypothesis. This in turn shows that there is a strong correlation and mutual dependence between everyday knowledge and the skeptical hypothesis in their epistemic contingency.