Only if you qualify name as “real name”, and if you choose to ignore the context of the reference (which I think you would to avoid “relativity”).
K iff JTB. So simple, yet so complicated.
The tripartite definition gains its strength from reference to publicly demonstrable justification, ontological correspondence, and subjective, private belief. These three imply private knowledge, as knowledge implies justified true belief.
However, one, two, or all three can be arguably omitted. I like to omit truth all the time, belief often, and justification at other times.
The problem with three-year-olds is that their surety does not imply any understanding of the words they are repeating, either in the dictionary sense, and certainly not in the context of the statement, either private or within various discourses. Their surety is purely an emotional attitude, a faith, without rational connection, almost totally removed of meaning. Is that knowledge?
“The problem with three-year-olds is that their surety does not imply any understanding of the words they are repeating, either in the dictionary sense, and certainly not in the context of the statement, either private or within various discourses. Their surety is purely an emotional attitude, a faith, without rational connection, almost totally removed of meaning. Is that knowledge”
This is not the problem with 3 year olds, it is the condition of 3 year olds. Their knowledge, as all knowledge, consists in their experience of surety. If their experience of surety is diminished, so is their “knowledge”. When enunciating “truths” (or falsehoods) their experience of surety would mostly consist only in their understanding of themselves within a social matrix, as enunciating subjects, given the reaction of listeners to their words. This experience of surety is also a part of formal “knowledge”, and plays its role in all enunciations, propositions included. To declare is to orient oneself within a network, within a (perhaps multiple) idealogical field(s); it is to find oneself as a subject, and the experience of surety in such is a part of “knowing”. In that way, even enunciations of “falsehoods” contains a kind of “knowing”.
The problem/condition you suggest that applies to 3 year olds, also applies to enunciations on philosophy forums, and everywhere else in the world, where are arguments are often presented as a regurgitation of memorized (safe) positions. The “knowledge” of such declarations is restricted to the experience of surety that such positions provide for the speaker. At worst, a position might only provide the experience of surety of aligning oneself with a respected authority and no more; or, if the position has been well thought out and wrestled with, the very same enunciation would reflect greater knowledge -perhaps also shown in the ability to apply the ideas to new situations-, as the layers of the experience of surety of the speaker would not only include aligning oneself with a respected authority, but also finding orientation in the world via the ideas themselves, the gradations of which would be too numerous to name. But in the end, the knowing of the speaker is simply the experience of surety which he or she has.
I mentioned it in an earlier post. The point is that in order to know you know, you have to know in the first place. So, to hold that in order to know, you have to know that you know, is to imply that you can know that you know before you know. (That you can know you know without knowing). And that is a contradiction. Knowing you know is not a necessary condition for knowing, because, on the contrary, knowing is a necessary condition for knowing you know.
Try this. Read it a few times. (if you could put it into notational logic for me I’d buy you dinner)
Knowledge is knowing that you know that what you think you know, other than that knowledge of knowing you know you might be wrong about what it is you claim to know you think you know beside the fact that you know you might be wrong, can be doubted, so “knowing you know” is, in fact, a necessary condition of knowing precisely because you can doubt what it is you think you know through the knowledge of the possibility that you are wrong. The knowledge of the possibility of being mistaken is the absolute knowledge.
It is entirely Cartesian. I swear to God I’m not trying to make this complicated. Let me try it like this:
Spontaneous knowledge is knowledge of the self as “knower.” This subject, “knower,” is pre-reflective and occurs before doubt can take place, as, obviously, to doubt that one exists one must exist to doubt it. It is the immediacy of awareness. The second effect is the doubting of the “self” as knowledgeable, which is the general argument against Descartes’ cogito running like this: "all that can be said is that there is thinking, but not yet that there is an “I” doing it, and the subject “knower” then becomes the doubter, but doesn’t doubt the world…he doubts himself. This is incorrect, and happens through a methodological removal of the subject “knower” from the known, which is not the world, but rather the possibility that one is wrong, at this point in the succession. The mistake is made when one supposes that the “self” is distinct from the world, but that the world is something other than what one doubts, and this scrutiny affords the error. Really, to the “knower” there is no world, but rather only his own thoughts of the possibility of an illusory world that is false in the case that he is right in doubting. See, it isn’t necessary that a real world exists that is other than himself for him to doubt something, as it could indeed be a “trick played by a demon.” What he doubts is, as Sartre put it, himself doubting himself doubting the world. The cogito is pre-reflective and ontologically necessary for knowledge to exist. The “I” is the absolute starting point in awareness. This is the reef of solipsism and it is inescapable.
The error is in the key word “before,” Ken. The timing is screwed up. One does know before they know, because they can doubt what it is they are waiting to find out after the methodological process takes place. Knowledge is doubting is spontaneous is immediate “I.”
Not-A (I could be wrong) exists before A (I think I’m right) exists. The original knowledge of the world is in the possibility that one does not have knowledge of the world, but rather the illusion created by the evil psyque (he…he…).
If this doesn’t make any sense we could discuss it further.
(sorry, folks, Ben musta just banned Epoche and re-instated detrop. I tried to log in as Epoche but it wouldn’t work. I’m baaaaack. Muwahahahaha!!)
Isn’t it clear that if KK were a necessary condition of K, that I could not know unless I knew that I knew? But, isn’t it equally also clear that I could not know that I know unless I know? Thus KK is a necessary condition of K, and K is a necessary condition of KK. But K and KK cannot be necessary conditions of each other. If P is a necessary condition of Q, Q must be a sufficient condition of P. Therefore, KK cannot be a necessary condition of K, and so, K does not entail KK. Thus, KK is a sufficient, but not necessary condition of K.
But let me make a qualification: P and Q may be necessary and sufficient conditions of each other. In that case, P=Q. Now, are you maintaining that KK and K are equivalent?
"One does know before they know, because they can doubt what it is they are waiting to find out after the methodological process takes place. Knowledge is doubting is spontaneous is immediate “I.” "
I have no idea what this means. I hope you do. I can no more know I know before I know than I can divorce someone before I have married her.
"One does know before they know, because they can doubt what it is they are waiting to find out after the methodological process takes place. Knowledge is doubting is spontaneous is immediate “I.” "
I never had you in the first place. And you no more can lose something you have never had, then you can know you know what you have never known in the first place. “I don’t know that Quito is the capital of Ecuador, but I know that I know that Quito is the capital of Ecuador” is just self-contradictory. Never mind all this “spontaneous doubting” and the “immediate I” Whatever that might be. Let’s just stick to logic, shall we?
The three-year-old experiences certainty of knowledge in repeating a dirty joke (X) he overheard his father tell a friend, therefore he knows that X, or does he only know that his father knows that X, because his father knows everything?
Is knowledge then equivalent to faith?
There are degrees of certainty. In a police lineup of pictures including a face I have seen but once, I carefully have to weigh certainties, as I can never be 100% certain. If you agree, then are there similar degrees of knowledge? And if so, is 0% or 100% knowledge that X ever possible?
To the degree that faith gives the experience of surety it is indistinguishable from “knowledge”.
“I carefully have to weigh certainties, as I can never be 100% certain.”
There is no 100% certainty in terms of ontological correspondence. But there is the 100% experience of surety - which simply is the absence of doubt. Keep in mind knowledge is the experience of surety, not the state of verified surety. There is no ontological verification outside of experience.
“then are there similar degrees of knowledge?”
Certainly there are degrees of the experience of surety, that which you call knowledge.
There is a sense of certainty which is psychological or subjective certainty. In this sense which is a near synonym of “confidence that a proposition is true” people can be certain or “confident” of opposites. Atheists are certain that there is no God, Theists, that there is a God. In this subjective sense of “certainty” there are degrees of confidence. I am certain I know what crimson looks like, not so certain that I know what scarlet looks like.
This sense of “certainty” the subjective sense, does not entail truth. You can be very confident that God exists, and God not exist.
The sense of “certainty” Descartes and other philosophers, like Russell, had in mind was not subjective (“feeling of confidence” certainty) but one which meant the impossibility of error. It is not merely that Descartes maintains that he is very confident that he exists. (Who cares about that?!) It is that Decartes holds that it is impossible for him to be mistaken that he exists (at least, when ever he says it or he conceives it). And that is the important philosophical and epistemological issue. Are there any propositions about which it is impossible that we should be mistaken? The other is merely a psychological issue about how sure you are about whether some statement or other is true. That’s a personal mattter.
If psychological certainty does not entail truth, as it does not. Philosophical certainty (if it exists) does entail truth. The issue is whether there is such a thing as philosophical (or what Descartes called “metaphysical”) certainty.
This is rather difficult to explain, symbols make it SO much easier… but I’ll keep trying.
Okay, I’m repeating the example here:
The important thing here is keeping your modalities straight. This is okay:
K(K(p)->K(q))
K(p)
.: K(q)
However, this is not:
K(K(p)->K(q))
p
.: q
My letter K (translated “I know that”)is my modality here, and the symbol “->” can be translated to “implies.” The arrow can also be thought of as your typical “if… then” statement
Think of the letter K (the modality) as a constant in algebra… you can’t just go chopping off the constant from a statement without changing the value of the number.
The symbol “.:” stands for “therefore”
The syllogism that I set up (which is the combination of premise 1 and 2 and the conclusion) is a classic form, called “modus ponens.”
All in all, you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get modalities to guarantee you a conclusion. This statement doesn’t even work:
K(p->q)
K(p)
.: K(q)
Translated:
I know that if I light a match then I will start a fire
I know that I light a match
.: I know that I will start a fire
The problem here is whether or not the knowledge is connected. I can know that if I strike a match, then it will start a fire… but I might not have thought about it.
Have you ever been told a proposition that seemed intuitively obvious and you said “I knew that!” If you had examined all the logical implications of your knowledge, then you would have derived that original proposition.
I surely does not follow that because If I know if I light a match, I will start a fire, that if I know I lit a match I know I started a fire. For the reason you give. If I know that X is a number that cannot be divided evenly except by itself and 1, it does not follow that I know X is a prime number, even though if a number satisfies that condition, it is a prime number.
Now, how has this anything to do with the KK principle? (K(p) → KK(p)?
Perhaps I should have picked a better example (or at least one that we can all identify with a little easier). That match one seems too intuitively obvious. I know that my head cannot go through metal. I know that it hurts when I hit my head on metal objects. I know that my car door frame is made of metal. I know that if I get inside my car then I have to duck my head so I don’t hit it. But I still get inside my car and bonk my head while getting in.
I didn’t hit my head due to a lack of knowledge, but my actions can be attributed to the inability of thinking through all the logical implications of my knowledge. So:
I know that if I hit my head on a metal thing then it hurts
I know that my car door frame is one such metal thing
I know that if I don’t duck my head then my head will hit the frame
.: I know that I have to duck my head to avoid pain
But I can still hit my head… Anytime a form of argumentation doesn’t guarantee its conclusion (in any example) then it isn’t a valid form.
This example is similar to the “(K(p) → KK(p)” example. Its pretty much the same confusion here. You are adding on an extra modal operator. Just because you know a proposition, doesn’t entail that you know that you know that proposition (that you know its meta proposition). Its possible you just haven’t thought out all the implications of your own knowledge.
There have been plenty of times when I’ve said “oh I knew that!” when confronted by some simple truth, but I hadn’t realized I knew it.