Suppose that it is true (as it is) that Paris is the capital of France. And suppose that it is possible to be mistaken that Paris is the capital of France. Does it follow that it cannot be known that Paris is the capital of France? More generally, can we know that some statement is true if is is possible to be mistaken about whether it is true, although we are not mistaken that it is true?
Kennethamy,
to suppose that it is true that Paris is the capital of france begs the emytomological question of “What is it for something to be the capital of something?” To which we would find a series of economic and political factors, as well as social, for ascertaining whether one city or another is the capital of a country. The concept of ‘capital’ in the context of a capital city of a country is understood to be applicable only to one city. Following the criteria of what city is a capital and why, it would be impossible for one to be mistaken that Paris is the capital of France, unless they were truly ignorant of the topic which would have more to do with ignorance than anything you are trying to hit upon, or so I assume.
For you to lay out the ground work as supposing two things which completely contradict each other, is to say imagine it being both true and not true that I exist. This is foolish, unless we begin to differentiate between degrees of correctness or degrees of supposition.
In a straight forward kind of way, taking what you said I will say: it is quite possible for it to be true that Paris is the capital of France (it is the actual capital) while it also being possible for someone to be mistaken about what the capital of France is (someone may not know and think it is some other city). In this case it would not follow that it cannot be known that Paris is the capital of France, all the person need do is ask someone or open up a map, or do some research on the internet, etc.
Kennethamy stated:
Keep in mind that no statement is true in the sense of absolute truth (understanding something in its entirety). For me to say “I moved an apple” is a level of truth in that I did actually move an apple. So we know that that statement is true. Although we believe it to be true we are also mistaken about that truth because we don’t truly understand this thing we call an apple, furthermore, we don’t understand ‘movement’ in it’s entirety. In this sense, if I have understood you correctly, it is possible to be right about something (because of what it means [semantics] to you, society, etc) while also being wrong (because of the lack of knowledge of reality and what is REALLY going on).
What’s your take?
I think the issue centers more around the concept of knowledge itself. The question is whether knowledge requires certainty. If knowledge requires certainty, this would be a very high standard and we would know very little, only perhaps that we exist and some logical and mathemathical truths, etc. It would be difficult to have any “knowledge” of the world since we could be wrong about Paris being the capital of France (they could have moved the capifal last night, we could all be in the Matrix etc.) Since Descartes, most philsophers have given up on the idea that we could be certain about empirical concepts such as chairs, capitals and planets. Most have agreed that we can’t get certainty here. They instead have focused more on justified belief, that is “Do I have good reason to think P?” or “Is P probably true?” leaving “knowledge” as a technical term as a concept requiring certainty. Of course in ordinary language “I know P.” can mean both “I am certain that P.” or “I am pretty sure that P.” or “I believe that P.” So, in the technical term, philosophers would say that you can’t “know” that Paris in the capital of P, since you could be wrong, but our ordinary usuage of “know” can include propositions that we are less than certain about. Descartes thought that we could have certainty, and hence knowledge, about empirical matters, but most people now think he was wrong.
Whether it is true that Paris is (or is not) the capital of France is not the point, since in my question I ask you simply to suppose it is. This is not an issue about truth, but about knowledge of the truth. So, what is truth, and even whether it is true that Paris is capital is irrelevant.
My question was simply this: is it possible to know something is true (such as that Paris is the capital) when, at the same time it is possible to be mistaken about it?
I ask this question because although all of us (when we are not discussing philosophy) believe we do know that Paris is the capital of France and, since that is only an example, many others things just like that (such as that George W. Bush is the 43rd president) but also, that it is possible that we are mistaken about such things. Now philosophers have told us that those two beliefs, that we know something, and that it is possible for us to be mistaken about that thing, are inconsistent.
But, as I pointed out above, we do believe we know many such things, and it looks as if (and it seems to me true that) it is possible for us to be mistaken about those things. Furthermore, it would seem to be inconsistent for us to say something like “I know such-and-such, but it is possible for me to be mistaken that such-and-such is true.” So, at the end, the question is whether we do know all these matters we think we know, or whether philosophers who maintain we cannot know these things because we might always be mistaken ( even if we are not mistaken, because remember, I am assuming that what we claim to know is true.) are right in supposing we do not know these things.
Haven’t we gone over this sometime somewhere before? 
If you suppose France is in Paris, and if you say, “France is in Paris” then it is true, the truth and knowledge of truth match perfectly. As far as I can tell, it is not even logically possible to be false. But this isn’t a big deal because you’ve presupposed the answer.
Not very interesting.
If you drop the supposition and come back to the world we live in, and say, “France is in Paris.” Can you be right? Sure. No big deal:
“France is in Paris” is true if and only if France is in Paris.
Can you be wrong? Sure, a nuclear bomb or bombs obliterates the city leaving nothing left, it’s not there anymore.
Knowledge is possible even if any particular proposition that claims knowledge (though strictly speaking, proposition don’t make claims, we do) can be wrong.
I see no inconsistency.
To begin with, truth is a necessary condition of knowledge, not a sufficient condition of knowledge. There are many truths I do not know, as, for instance where George W. Bush is at this instant. So, if I understand what you said (and it is hard to tell) you are mistaken in thinking that if follows from something’s being true that I know it (unless you think I am omniscient)
Second, Descartes devotes his First Meditation to arguing that if it is possible to be mistaken about something, then even if you are right, you still do not know that something is true. That is because he believes that if it is possible for you to be mistaken (he calls it the possibility of doubt) then whether or not you are right, you do not have adequate justification for your claim that you know that something. Furthermore, Descartes argues, in the First Meditation that it is possible to be mistaken about any empirical proposition (true or not). (What I mean by “empirical” is "based on sense perception). And therefore, Descartes holds that we cannot know that any empirical proposition is true. (This paves the way for Cartesian Rationalism. But that is another story)
So, Descartes thinks that if it is possible for you to be mistaken, that you do not know what you claim to know (whether or not you are right) That is why I wanted to put aside (or as Husserl would say, “bracket” the question of whether what I claim to know is true.)
Many philosophers have followed Descartes in this view, and it was an orthodoxy even into the 20th century in Anglo-American epistemology. The question then is whether Descartes and those who have followed him are right in holding that the very possibility of error implies the impossibility of knowledge. (And this view also seems to be one of the main arguments of skepticism)
Nothing of what you have said seems to me to address this issue. All you address is the issue of truth, which, as I have pointed out, is irrelevant to the issue of justification. It is the issue of justification or the epistemological issue which Descartes discusses. That is whether, true or not, a proposition is justified by the evidence, since, as I pointed out, true or not, we do not know that a proposition is true unless it is adequately justified. (That is one important difference between knowledge and belief. Knowledge must be justified, else you do not know. A belief may or may not be justified, but whether it is or not, you believe.)
P.S.
- I hope you were talking about Paris being in France, and not France being in Paris.
- “Paris is in France” if and only if Paris is in France is true whether or not Paris disappears or is blown up. That Tarski sentence only give the truth-condition for the sentence, Paris is in France. It is also true that “Santa Claus lives at the North Pole” iff Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, and, as much as I hate to break it to you, there ain’t no Santa Claus.
Oooops!
Ooops! France is not in Paris? or, Ooops! There ain’t no Santa Claus? or, Ooops! Tarski’s truth condition is correct whether or not what it mentions exists? or, Ooops! the issue about knowledge has nothing to do with truth, but, instead, concerns justification, so you have not addressed the question (And Descartes’ question) of how we can know when it is possible that we are mistaken? Or, just, Ooops!
But of course that’s not what I intended, I meant that if something is true and you know it is true, then it is can’t be false (precisely because you are omniscient).
But I have made a mistake here (Well, besides confusing cities and countries 
), I had assumed that when you say that “can it be known” that the justification was already a given. I hadn’t realized that that was what you wanted to talk about.
My bad.
But thanks for the hint.
Of course if I know some proposition is true, then that proposition is not false, since if it were false, I could not know it. Truth is a necesssary condition of knowledge. That has nothing to so with omnisicence which is the capacity to know all truths. Rather, it is just a necessary truth about knowledge. (Of course, I may think I know something that is false, but then, I don’t know it.)
But justification must be just what is at issue when someone like Descartes argues that the very possibility of error shows that what appears to be known is not. What did you think the First Meditation was all about and Cartesian skepticism is all about? (It is a wholesale attack on empiricism as a justification for knowledge) The fact that I happen to state the truth is no reason to think that I know the truth. It might simply be a happy guess.
The question, then, is, whether the very possibility of error is inconsistent with knowledge.
Peirce’s fallibilism argues that here knowledge and certainty are at the bottom of the issue. The possiblity of error is inconsistent with certainty (the impossiblity of error); but the possibility of error is not inconsistent with knowledge (the inactuality of error). I cannot be certain when it is possible I am mistaken: But, I can still know, even if it is possible I am mistaken. What is inconsistent with my knowing is that I am mistaken, even if it it possible that I am mistaken. Descartes’ great error (in epistemology) and in this he has been followed by those who should have known better like Russell, was to run together (as you like to say) certainly and knowledge, and infer the unobtainability of the second from the unobtainability of the first. It is a curiosity of the history of philosophy, that both the Rationalists (including Plato) and the classic Empiricists, made the very same error (although there were glimmerings of uneasyness with the confusion in Hume) Finally Peirce pointed out that:
- Knowledge is different from certainty
- Knowledge is possible, certainty is not.
And, 1 and 2 are called “fallibilism.”
This view (whick still needs working out, of course, so what I have above is only programatic) is, it seems to me, a paradigm of philosophy. It clearly points the way to solving a philosophical problem because, for one thing, it shows what classic skepticism was about, namely the denial of knowledge was the denial of certainty, and, for another thing, it point to a solution of the problem, since it points out the distinction between certainty and knowledge, and argues that skepicism is wrong because it it thinks it has killed knowledge, when, in fact, its fire was directed against certainty.
As Russell writes someplace, the value of a philosophical theory consists in its ability to solve problems. In this case, fallibilism seems able to solve the problem of philosophical skepticism set by Descartes.[/i]
But is the conflation of knowledge and certainty an error or a definition?
Peirce says:
from “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities” in Pragmatism: A Reader, pp. 4-5.
In this quote, at least, Peirce seems to argue a pragmatic reason for abandoning the Cartesian method, not a logical one (I’ve emphasized the part where my reading comes from in the text above). It seems to me that it isn’t until Davidson or Quine that we get an actual reason for abandoning the doubt as such (but I could be wrong here so I’d rather just say that they come up with at least one reason for Descarte’s error). That is, Peirce says here that we can’t doubt everything and be satisfied with the outcome rather then the impossibility of doubt without first accepting other things that we know.
But Peirce is mistaken here. We can doubt anything (even what is closest to our hearts) piece by piece. What we can’t do is doubt everything at once and still be able to doubt. It may be foolish, even dangerous (see my thread on Dennet’s consciousness theory), to do so, but it has very little to do with self-deception or sincerity.
But enough of that for the moment:
I have no problems with fallibilism in either Peirce’s or Popper’s version, but I can’t tell what the difference is between solving a problem and redefining the word knowledge so that there is no problem. I think braskie’s comment above says much the same thing with a different take.
PS I said knowledge (that what we say is true) was possible even though we could be mistaken. You said that what we say can be true and that that is a necessary but not sufficient definition of knowledge. How are ‘possible’ and ‘sufficient’ synonymous? The thing I didn’t do was talk about justification but like I said before I had assumed that whatever we were talking about was already, in some sense, justified.
PPS What’s your opinion of Gettier counter-examples?
I think that is right.
But once we distinguish between knowledge and certainty (and, by “certainty” I mean what Descartes seemed to have meant by it. Not subjective certainty , or the feeling that you can’t be wrong, or what he called “moral certainty” or certainty for all practical purposes, but infallibility, the impossibity of error) then the question which arises is why should we equate knowledge with certainty?
If we accept the classic (Platonic) notion of knowledge (disregarding the Gettier objection for now) that knowledge is true (adequately) justified belief, as giving the truth conditions for knowledge, then one of the truth conditions is that the proposition we claim to know true. Not that it is impossible that what we say we know is false, but only (to repeat) that what we say we know is actually true.
But to hold that when we know we have to be certain is to place a stronger condition. It is to say that it is impossible for what we know to be false. Now, this need not mean that we can know only necessary truths. That it is modally impossible that we should be mistaken. It might only mean that it is _epistemically impossible that we should be mistaken. In effect, that would mean that inductive justification would not be adequate, so that, given such a certainty condition, science would not afford us knowledge.
But that would seem to me to make the equation of knowledge and certainty unacceptable. It would be to accept the mathematical paradigm of knowledge rather than the scientific paradigm. And for what reason? (As an historical matter, one of the great “paradigm shifts” in philosophy occured in the 18th century when the “experimental method” took the place of mathematics as the model of knowledge of the world. Hume’s epistemology can be understood as an expression of this shift: in particular his distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact.)
There is nothing in the definition of knowledge that dictates that knowledge implies the impossibility of error. On the contrary, the definition of knowledge implies only the inactuality of error-a very different thing. So it seems to me that the burden of proof falls heavily on those who hold that knowledge implies the impossibility of error; to repeat, for at least two reasons:
- The definition of “knowledge” supports only the inactuality of error (and not the impossibility of error)
- The equation of knowledge with certainty effectively bars science from giving us knowledge.
Knowledge requires certainty only in the Indian theories of cognition. they have more rigt to be called epistemology than the Western Epistemology including also doxa into its area of investigation - and not only episteme, correct knowledge (Indian prama), as the name Epistemology suggests. That’s why Germans are much more consistent when they call the Theory of Knowlege Gnoseologie (at least where there is need to use adjectives, like gnoseologisch, and the clumsy erkenntnisstheoretisch).
I know nothing about Indian philosophy, nor anything about whether they have more “right” (whatever that might mean) to be called “epistemology” than Western philosophy. But, I don’t see why that is more than historical or cultural interest. The only question is whether knowledge implies certainty or not. Whether or not this or that group believe it does or not is simply irrelevant.
To know something, one must know all of its properties; to use it for a process x, one must only know a number of its properties as pertain to x. Knowledge of things is not necessary to science - only knowledge of the uses of things, ie of some of their properties within our area of experience.
tentatively put forward for demolition.
I don’t know what “knowing something” means except when that something is a proposition like, I know that Quito is the capital of Ecuador. But is that what you mean? I cannot know an apple, although I can know that something is an apple. I can know my friend Joe, but that means, I am acquainted with my friend Joe. And my knowledge of Joe need be only slight. I guess that is why I call him “an acquaintance.” To know that something is an apple, I don’t have to know about every property of that piece of fruit, do I? After all, a child may know that something is an apple, and not know much about the properties of apples. Don’t you agree?
On the contrary, it is necessary for an atomic physicist to know everything he can know about atoms in order to construct a bomb or a reactor.
No, I don’t. Knowledge of the class of objects a given object lies in is achieved by induction from limited sense-data. This is an example of the use of a limited set of properties to achieve a goal.
This is not a counter-example; indeed, it is a further example. Atomic physicists use accumulated knowledge on the behaviour of atoms to design nuclear devices. New properties may unveil new optimisations, but these merely create new processes x,y,z,…
Please understand: I do not mean to say that knowledge of things is not desirable to science. It is evident that it is, since once one has knowledge of something one can confidently say that no new processes can be derived from it. However, knowledge of things is absolutely not necessary to science.
It is not English to talk of “knowledge of things.” It is English to say that we know that something is true about something. As for instance, we know that it is true that an apple is a fruit. I don’t understand the sentence, “We have knowledge of things.” I can translate it only as “We know that some propositions are true of some things” Do you mean that? If you don’t, then you will have to give me an English language translation of the sentence “We have knowledge of things.” or “We know things” where that does not mean that we know true propositions about things. How can I decide whether or not “knowledge of things is not necessary” when I haven’t any idea what you mean by the phrase, “knowledge of things.” What things? What kind of knowledge? My friend has a great deal of knowledge of computers. Is that what you have in mind? I have some knowledge of the game of chess. How about that? Does that qualify. I have the strangest feeling that you have in mind something super-duper, that doesn’t make sense, and no one has.
About the example of the child and the apple: Does the child know that the object is an apple? That’s a yes or a no. I did not say that the child had a botanists knowledge about the apple. Only that the child knew that object was an apple. Now, what exactly is supposed to be the matter with that? Are you saying that if the child is not a botanist, that she knows nothing. She probably also knows that the apple is round, and is likely to be sweet, and so on. And, just what is the matter with inductive knowledge? Most, if not all of the knowledge any of us has, is inductive knowledge. And, what’s more, that is how it is very likely going to remain.