phyllo
ANGRY WROTE:
phyllo wrote:
Perhaps ANGRY might have said AUTOMATICALLY believe things.
Why does this have to be a rationalization on his part, phyllo?
If the man does in fact use this method to weed out automatic belief, to examine things and not to automatically accept things based on faith and on the belief of others, how is that rationalizing and satisfying his ego?
That’s the way of the agnostic, the skeptic.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle
Skepticism ^
Think about it. People tell you things all day long. Friends, spouse, children, the news media (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines). You don’t verify most of that stuff. It’s not knowledge. Can you imagine being agnostic about it? How would you function and make decisions?
A lot of it isn’t knowledge, mostly bull crap. I see your point, my view so far from being on Earth 22 years is that true knowledge is rare when it just comes to you randomly, but not as rare when you seek it, it is still rare though. That’s why knowledge is power, if everyone had it I would imagine power would not exist or just wouldn’t be considered power anymore.
We’re not speaking of everyday mundane things here, phyllo. We’re speaking of things which are more meaningful to discuss let’s say, like in a philosophy forum 
; namely, religious beliefs, scientific theories, et cetera. or to simply muse about while withholding any kind of judgment. For instance, when I look up at the sky, in daylight or darkness, I sometimes muse and wonder about the concept of god. How can one not? (That’s kind of a bias there - or is it?) but that doesn’t mean that I accept the belief systems[s] of many.
We don’t need to clutter our minds with everything.
At the same time, I am agnostic of much which I hear about in the media or even of the tales of my friends - but I don’t delve into it. We choose our meaning.
Artimas,
Look at ILP. Could you use another word for the so-called power which stems from the knowledge in here?
Yes, we are. WW3A has made no distinction between mundane and non-mundane.
And is a news report on Syria a mundane thing? The lives of thousands of people will be affected by what you believe about that report.
It also seems odd that by simply classifying some things as non-mundane, you stop having beliefs about them. Can the mind maintain such rigid boundaries of thought?
You can withhold all judgements in a philosophy forum because the place is basically irrelevant.
In real life, you have to act on beliefs and knowledge. A scientist is not going to be agnostic about a theory in his field of study. It’s not practical to approach it in that way.
Can you choose any meaning that you want? Surely not.
Again. Language is for us. If you do not want to work with the idea that knowledge is a specific subset of beliefs, don’t. There are good reasons to do this. But we have freedom with language. To say that it is wrong to think of it this way is silly. Just to summarize:
Some people do this. I think it is a good idea. I will explain below.
I think a better word is ‘distinguish’ rather than dissociate. We do distinguish knowledge from other beliefs, those of us who use something like the JTB idea.
Knowledge would be considered a subset of beliefs. It would be beliefs that pass some kind of evaluation. Just like in science when something moves from hypothesis to theory, say. Beliefs can be of a variety of kinds. Some are weakly justified. Some are believed because of habit or tradition. Some are more strongly justified, but do not reach the cutoff point where something is called knowledge.
In systems where it is considered a belief it is consider a kind of belief. There is the set of US coins. Only the dime will fit in the slot for dimes. It is a coin, but this does not mean that all coins have the same qualities that dimes have.
Knowledge could be considered, also, a set of ideas.
If you have an idea that the sun is made of oats, this does not mean it is a good idea. It is however a conception you have.
If you have the idea that the earth rotates around the sun, this is also an idea. In this case however the justification may well be better and may qualify as knowledge.
That is correct beliefs may no be correct.
You are making this all binary. No justication, complete and absolute justification. That has no place in the real world and would mean that you do not believe in scientific methodology, for example. In science you can have something that has some support for it. It fits with current models. Some reseach results (seem to or do) support the hypotheis. But not enough for the scientific community to accept that it is true. Not big enough samples, some questiosn about other possible factors, etc. There is some justification, but not enough.
If I believe that women are mean because, through poor luck, say, the women I have known are mean, this is some justification. Just not enough to pass the cut off for scientific knowledge. We may look at a person and feels superior, but in fact many of our beliefs and even what many of us consider knowledge is similar, we just have higher cutoffs, but it still would not pass scientific muster.
There are gradations of justification. There is not perfect justification and knowledge today may not be tomorrow.
That does NOT IN ANY WAY CONTRADICT USING knowlege as a subset of belief. Knowledge, for example, could be considered those beliefs that are arrived at via understandin, logic and reason.
but not conflation is taking place. None. Zero. Zip.
We have the set of mammals. This does not mean that all mammals can fly even though bats can.
See???
Even though bats are mammals, they also have certain specific characteristics that allow them to fly.
This does not mean ANYONE HERE IS SUGGESTING THAT PIGS CAN FLY.
There is no reason to be concerned epistemologically. One can still be as rigorous as one likes if one works with knowledge as a subset of beliefs. One can be unbelievably skeptical and demanding in relation to all beliefs. And one can still have a set of knowledge one is satisfied with that distinguished this set from other beliefs that do not pass muster and do not get to be called knowledge.
No philosopher who uses, for example, jtb conflates knowledge with belief in the sense you are concerned with.
In the set of drivers, there are forumal one professional drivers. These people can do things that the larger set of drivers cannot do.
In the set of letters, there are vowels. When we say that vowels are letters this does not mean that T is a vowel.
Think of some idiot on the internet who is a writer. He writes. He is in the set of writers. This does not mean we conflate him with Tolstoy.
We have CRITERIA we use to create a subset.
One of the reason philosophy focuses on belief is because philosophy takes nothing for granted. So we have to begin at the experiential level. The individual who believes. Lay people can focus on knowledge and beliefs in the abstract, not in situ, and wax knowledgeable about which is which (always with great certainty). In situ the person who believes X is true has reached that conclusion through a variety of processes. Some good, some bad. So we look at the justification process and make determinations.
Many people use reason and logic to arrive at beliefs that are not correct. Perhaps one of their basic assumptions is not correct.
People reported rogue waves for a long time and scientists dismissed them as incorrect. The scientists justified their belief based on then current oceanography and other scientific models. They justified their beliefs on the knowledge that emotions can affect perception. IN this case they were wrong. They had some justification for saying that the people reporting rogue waves were exaggerating. But as it turns out not enough justification.
You want everything in two nice separate boxes. Here we have the knowledge box where everything is the product of absolute reason and logic. Here we have the belief box where everything is based on faith and has no justification.
That is not the real world. The real world, in situ, has degrees of justification. And even rigorously arrived at, well justified beliefs that become part of scientific consensus have turned out to be incorrect. Even that. They were justified, but it turns out not justified enough. The great thing about science is that BUILT INTO THE CORE IDEA OF SCIENCE IS REVISION, WHICH
NECESSARILY
ENTAILS
THE IDEA
THAT IT IS NOT BINARY
BUT IN FACT
WE ARE DEALING WITH
DEGREES/GRADATIONS OF JUSTIFICATION.
Of course you are free to use the words the way you want. I do not consider you wrong for using them that way.
I don’t think it is the best use in a philosophical context, but that is a different issue.
To think that we are wrong for using it our way, that’s loopy.
The horse has been led to water, gentlemen.
Well there are a few other factors you see, some of it is not knowledge, maybe even a lot of it isn’t, some of it is hard to comprehend as well. True knowledge is rare, I don’t know what we would call it if it were so common. Perhaps just skills for benefitting the self?
Power in my perspective is when you can change things outside of yourself… of which normally you have little to no control over, but at the same time the self will change as well.
Or perhaps power is not just knowledge, maybe power is also the action of applying what you do know to reality… to hasten/slow change.
Each human him-/herself and humans themselves are what we call “media”. Actually they do not need other media (books, newspaper, radio, tv, internet and so on) than themselves.
One can become more powerful by knowlege but also or even more by belief.
Power doesn’t have to always come about from knowledge. Abusive power can come about because of a lack of knowledge. Knowledge is a tool - just as knowledge in the wrong hands, mis-interpreting it, deliberately or otherwise, can bring about abusive power.
Applying what we know to reality is practical wisdom and intelligence. Crows are intelligent creatures because they are problem solvers.
We are at times unintelligible creatures because we add to problems rather than seeking ways to solve them, seeking solutions.
…or by a mis-interpretation of knowledge or by a mis-interpretation of belief, believing something which was not meant in the first place - to suit one’s own purpose…focusing only on what one chooses to see rather than seeing a fuller picture. That is the other, side-of-the-coin dangerous nature of belief.
“A different important point to consider is how Nazi officials, such as Alfred Baeumler (Bäumler) interpreted Nietzsche’s work. Alfred Baeumler was a pseudo-philosopher for the Nazis who played an important role of portraying ietzsche as the ‘godfather of fascism’. In one of his books called der Philosophund Politiker he writes about the relation (he saw) between the Nietzsche and Nazism, “The German state of the future will not be a continuation of Bismarck’s creation, but will be created out of the spirit of Nietzsche and the spirit of the
Great War”25. Wikipedia claims that he was “one of the few influential philosophers in Nazi Germany”. This leads to believe that the Third Reich would have been more inclined to accept what Nazi philosophers had to say about Nietzsche instead of what Nietzsche actually meant.”
For instance, Nietzsche’s Will to power …
“…On the other hand, what Nietzsche meant by the “Will to Power” was entirely different. The will to power (German – “der Wille zur Macht”) is a model to explain human behaviour, is the driving force of man; ambition for achievement, having a higher position in life. All these are symptoms of the will to power.”
The simplest formula is:
some knowledge is derived from belief , example>hypotheticals- as in 'what if, such & such
Most belief is derived from some knowledge of hypotheticals,
But not all belief is derived from knowledge- based on 'some knowledge is not hypothetical, because that kind of ‘knowledge’ is merely a pre-intuitive
automatic function of the sympathetic nervous
system.
The point being, is, that knowledge and belief are
vast umbrellas , covering their relative descriptions,
for one, and their post-criptions on the other.
Knowledge is described as = to belief at a time, when
description and inscription were undifferentiated,
they were tied to very basic functions of survival.
The critical doubt arose, at a time, when these definitions became more broad spectrum, and began
to be different.
Now, in common language, doubt is forced upon , with such expressions as ’ I don’t believe what you
say’- ; with belief differentiated from saying-
meaning.
Way before, common understanding was based on
purely literal and objective belief, forced on the fact
that few people wrote, and the spoken language had to be by various reasons taken at face value.
Some of these reasons were attributable to minimize variance , to minimize the effects of primal force which threatened to disorganize life. Adherence, reification,and social welfare were dependent on
maximum cogency of a unitary public narrative.
Variant private belief, developed from more control over the environment, especially after writing became more of a vehicle of evolving symbolic re-presentation, generally.
.
Yes why must I believe things automatically or even after the fact? Why can’t I remain agnostic until knowledge occurs?
I’ll tell you. It’s basically taking things with “a grain of salt”. How many times is the media/news in error about their reports? How many times do you believe what they say is true on “breaking news stories”, before the revise the story a dozen times, do you believe each revision? Or do you not just realize that you do not know, they do not know but are doing their best to give you what they can.
My wife, my kids tell me things - but do they really understand what they are telling me? People tell me lots of things. Some people like, some people forget. Why must I believe their account to be true? Why can’t I remain agnostic? Of course I can act on good faith of their accounts, but that doesn’t mean I believe it to be true.
WW_III_ANGRY
After the fact of what? Evidence and proof?
Aside from that, there are some things which we realze that may not be proof of evidence in their totality. We’ve had that experience. Something once known and believed to be so, becomes uprooted and changed. So, being agnostic can be a good thing because we decide to withhold judgment.
At the same time, we can’t allow our agnosticism to make neurotics out of us. We don’t necessarily have to take a leap of faith in things which haven’t been proven but we can take a leap of faith in “knowing” that at least for now, the knowledge which has just been proven is real for NOW. That’s our relationship to reality and the unknown. Being human, we’re fallible creatures but at least we’re honest when it comes to admitting our mistakes; that is, if we value reality and truth.
If that made any sense. lol