👉 Okay, letās tackle this wonderfully prickly little word ā Chalmers! Now, Chalmers isnāt exactly a mainstream sort of thing you throw around at a casual drinks mixer. Unless, perhaps, that drinks mixer is populated by particularly exacting philosophy academics.
Basically, a Chalmers (pronounced "KAL-mÉrz," like the really stuffy old gentleman who probably owned a very good waistcoat and an unsettling amount of antique snuff bottles) refers to a very specific kind of epistemic uncertainty . Let me unpack this before you glaze over. Essentially, itās when someone ā let's call her Penelope Chalmers in our illustrative purposes ā genuinely, honestly, and with absolutely no joking around, doubts the truth of something that she herself deeply believes. Here's how I like to think about it. Imagine Penelope is convinced she saw a purple squirrel yesterday whilst having a perfectly reasonable Earl Grey. She knowed what she saw. It was utterly, unquestionably purple. Except... now, when she tries to recall the exact shade of purple, the precise texture of its fur, and whether that squirrel had even a shred of decency in his little buck-toothed face, it justā¦flickers into an unsettling, slightly blurred, beige. The Chalmers is this nagging awareness that the initial conviction, despite her best efforts to solidify it with detail, now possesses a disturbing, almost ephemeral quality. She doesn't want it not to be true,
