Defining knowledge

[Impenitent]

but what are you naming? the appearance or thing in itself?

all you have is a name…

-Imp

[wvoelcker]

@zenofeller

alright let us work systematically then.

knowledge is the system of all fully qualified propositions considered as true by the subject. hence there can be operationally defined john’s knowledge, the british parliament’s knowledge of matters of afgan foreign policy et seq.

truth is the quality of a proposition that is not contradictory to a system. hence the truth of a proposition depends on the system in which is evaluated.

justification, or reasoning, is a string of propositions that fit an arbitrary pattern, used by a certain subject or group or subjects to estimate the truth of a given proposition with respect to an [usually complex] system.

a system is a set of non contradictory propositions

a proposition is a predicative linguistic structure

a linguistic structure is any set of linguistic symbols and is predicative if it contains more meaning than the sum of its parts.

now regarding knowledge as justified true belief becomes obviously a redundant approach, that is usefull for the purpose of education/communication between humans. while it is clear that the only relevant quality of a proposition is wether it is true or not within a given system, the demand for justification is simply a matter of method, aiming to simplify the education/communication process by avoiding the undesired position of having to prove a negative, because it is always alot harder to prove a negative than to assert the respective affirmative. hence the concept of burden of proof.

ofcourse the concept that truth is relative to a system will be hard to swallow by many, but alas there is no helping it. there is no absolute truth, and can not be absolute truth for very many reasons. moreover, the belief in an absolute truth is just as naive (in the sense it breaks about the same logic rules and reasonable expectations) as beliveing in santa claus.

I never got global relativism… ok, I haven’t thought about it too much, but it seems that such statements as “In the 16th Century they thought it was true that…” seem to suggest an absolute view of at least the concept of truth. I.e. what it’s really saying is “they thought it was true that… but actually it’s not”. Even if you suggest that the latter is not actually what was intended, but in fact “they thought it was true then… but now we think it’s false” there still seems to a tacit belief in the existence of absolute truth, in as far as there ought to be something to have a difference of opinion about.

Btw, I always thought the same went for internalist views on knowledge. If you have to “know that you know” something before you know it… how does it make sense to say things like “everyone used to think they knew who the killer was, but now they’re not so sure”?

Ok, I know this sounds naive, but… views?

Cheers, Will

[Rounder]

Knowledge is the content of the past, our past memories and experiences. Knowledge can never be truth, but can be fact. The similarity is neither can be negated. The reason I say that knowledge can never be truth, is that our world is not static, its constantly moving, what was true a minute ago is not true now. No theory can ever be proven, a theory is merly a working hypothesis until it is disproven. Truth is the what is, whats around us at this moment, and knowledge can never experience truth.

[zenofeller]

imp you can not name the thing itself unless you take the [fundamentally religious] stand that the transcedent can manifest, ie that jesus can be the bread and its blood can be the wine etc. its the same sort of reasoning. to periphrase parmenides, that which is is and necesarily is, and that which we talk about we talk about and necesarily talk about.

and the dictionary is just a convention. just like playing bridge is a convention. it makes entirely unlikely natural occurences meaningfull to us (such as two men and two women spending a few hours shuffling small colored pieces of plastic) and thus keeps us from getting bored. but it does not pretend any privileged relationship with the transcedent, indeed nobody says the english language is more real than french. well nobody i listen to anyway.

[wvoelcker]

@Rounder

Knowledge is the content of the past, our past memories and experiences. Knowledge can never be truth, but can be fact. The similarity is neither can be negated. The reason I say that knowledge can never be truth, is that our world is not static, its constantly moving, what was true a minute ago is not true now. No theory can ever be proven, a theory is merly a working hypothesis until it is disproven. Truth is the what is, whats around us at this moment, and knowledge can never experience truth.

What about knowledge of the future? E.g. i know that tomorrow 2+2 will still = 4.

[Gadfly]

@wvoelcker

@Rounder

Knowledge is the content of the past, our past memories and experiences.

Knowledge can never be truth, but can be fact. The similarity is neither can be negated. The reason I say that knowledge can never be truth, is that our world is not static, its constantly moving, what was true a minute ago is not true now. No theory can ever be proven, a theory is merly a working hypothesis until it is disproven. Truth is the what is, whats around us at this moment, and knowledge can never experience truth.

OK, It looks like were confusing Conscience with knowledge. Our conscience is made up of all of our past expierence and is the basis for making good judgements WITH knowledge.

Knowledge / Knowing is a cognitive relationship between a knowing subject and a known object; so knowing will be considered as that type of consciousness that is intentional (where there are two aspects subjective and objective) and results in a cognitive relation between the knowing subject and known object. That awareness which can be called knowledge should be viewed as having gone through at least the first three levels of cognition (4 levels of cognition: Expierence, Understanding, Judgment, Response). There are four modes for doing this.

acquaintance - the relation is one of familiarity
insturmental - the relation is one of acquired skill
informational - the relation is one of retained facts and procedures
wisdom - the relation is one of truth, good, justice, etc…

So now Truth (and certitude)

To describe truth we need to do it in terms of something. Since the only way one comes to know truth is by way of knowing we describe truth in terms of what is necessary in order to satisfy the pure desire to know expressible as: “Is it so?”. One might consider this as purely subjective, but if one makes an objection that one KNOWS that knowing cannot deliver truth one perpetrates a kind of performative incompatibility by using knowing to declare that knowing does not reach truth – in other words what one does is inconsistent with the meaning of the thing done.

So what happens when one reaches the satisfaction of one’s desire to know expressed as: “Is it so?”? The individual becomes certain; yet often it happens that when one reaches certitude that one later realizes that what one thought satisfied this desire to know was insufficient. This realization may issue in a change of mind of just that what one was certain about needed to have more conditions fulfilled that what one thought before: e.g.

“the ground is wet” (is a conditioned statement such that simply knowing its meaning is not sufficient to believing it to be true).

A further condition is added:

“John brought out the garden hose to that spot of ground.”

So we have:

IF “John brought out the garden hose to that spot of ground.” THEN “the ground is wet”

“John brought out the garden hose to that spot of ground.”

Therefore: “the ground is wet.”

But then one later realizes: “Wait a minute. Did John turn the water on?” In other words one realizes that more than the one condition of bringing out the garden hose needs to be fulfilled. In this case one’s certitude does not change from “It is true that the ground is wet” to “It is false that the ground is wet”. One keeps the statement as unconditioned where the conditions have been fulfilled, but the certitude is changed from being based on one condition being fulfilled to being based on two conditions being fulfilled. We could go on with still more conditions expressed as questions like: “Did the city have the water turned on?” “Did the city have equipment to deliver water?” etc. etc. When this goes on till there can be no more conditions that need to be fulfilled we have arrived at “the ground is wet” as virtually unconditioned. So we can describe truth as that judgment expressible as a proposition such that ALL the conditions for satisfying one’s pure desire to know have been fulfilled on the third level

One might object that such a view is never attainable, for how can one know that ALL conditions have been fulfilled? But what one can know is that ONE more has been fulfilled and so one’s certitude can grow accordingly until it becomes virtually unconditional.

Future Knowledge, your looking at knowledge as a copy-process where “copies” of what is out there is stored in here. Knowing is:

1. An interaction between object and subject so as to produce a satisfaction of the pure desire to know.
2. Becoming familiar between subject and object.
3. Bonding of subject with object so as to form a kind of organism.

In the act of knowing the subject becomes master (does not mean exploiter) of objects, and co-subject with other subjects, but in such a manner that a general overall order and harmony is made with the whole cosmos (reality).

[Max_Majestic]

I’ve thought about this some more and I think I’ve discovered the problem. When my professor says that “truth relies solely on the justification”, I think he’s mistaking an epistemological boundary for a metaphysical reality. It may very well be that how we humans attain knowledge is reliant on our justification for a certain proposition, but that really doesn’t have much to do with the reality of truth. There could be a golden egg under a rock on the moon right now. No human has ever seen it. That certainly doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It either exists or it does not…so our knowledge of the egg is actually irrelevant. I can certainly see how our access to the truth is limited by our frail human cognitive abilities, but I think it’s a huge leap to take this limitation and use it to make a statement about the metaphysical reality of truth.

[Logo]

@Max Majestic

It either exists or it does not…so our knowledge of the egg is actually irrelevant.

I think you have it backwards. Whether or not it exists is irrelevant to us if we don’t experience it in some way.

[GoneFishing]

isn’t this on of those one way equalities?

The truth is a justification of belief.
but the justication of belief is not neccessarily the truth.

---

am i making sense, or am i just confusing myself.

[Max_Majestic]

@Logo

@Max Majestic

It either exists or it does not…so our knowledge of the egg is actually irrelevant.

I think you have it backwards. Whether or not it exists is irrelevant to us if we don’t experience it in some way.

Good point…I agree with your statement, but I still think there’s validity in my comment. I should have expressed this more clearly by saying that our knowledge of the egg’s existence makes no difference to the fact of the eggs existence…unless you want to start pelting me with George Berkeley.

[Future_Man]

[size=200]BARF![/size] …uggh sorry about that. just a reflex.

[Logo]

Thank you for that insight, Future Man.

@Max Majestic

our knowledge of the egg’s existence makes no difference to the fact of the eggs existence

Well, what is a fact? I suppose the best way to put your finger on what a fact is is to look at the kinds of things the word refers to. “Force=Mass x Acceleration”; “cars exist”; “the earth revolves around the sun”…these are facts. Why? Because we have experienced them to be the case. The statement “there is a golden egg on the moon” is only a fact if someone has discovered a golden egg on the moon. Our knowledge of the egg’s existence actually has direct bearing on its factuality.

[Impenitent]

@zenofeller

imp you can not name the thing itself unless you take the [fundamentally religious] stand that the transcedent can manifest, ie that jesus can be the bread and its blood can be the wine etc. its the same sort of reasoning. to periphrase parmenides, that which is is and necesarily is, and that which we talk about we talk about and necesarily talk about.

and the dictionary is just a convention. just like playing bridge is a convention. it makes entirely unlikely natural occurences meaningfull to us (such as two men and two women spending a few hours shuffling small colored pieces of plastic) and thus keeps us from getting bored. but it does not pretend any privileged relationship with the transcedent, indeed nobody says the english language is more real than french. well nobody i listen to anyway.

you said it yourself…

“that which is is and necesarily is, and that which we talk about we talk about and necesarily talk about.”

and immediately afterward

“the dictionary is just a convention”…“but it does not pretend any privileged relationship with the transcedent”

which is it? that which is is… (the thing in itself is the thing in itself)

that which we talk about and talk about necessarily… (language itself, not the thing in itself)

language having no ultimate meaning (it is pure convention) and no privileged relation with the transcendent (thing in itself)…

and there was no religious nonsense involved…

-Imp

[Max_Majestic]

@Logo

Thank you for that insight, Future Man.

@Max Majestic

our knowledge of the egg’s existence makes no difference to the fact of the eggs existence

Well, what is a fact? I suppose the best way to put your finger on what a fact is is to look at the kinds of things the word refers to. “Force=Mass x Acceleration”; “cars exist”; “the earth revolves around the sun”…these are facts. Why? Because we have experienced them to be the case. The statement “there is a golden egg on the moon” is only a fact if someone has discovered a golden egg on the moon. Our knowledge of the egg’s existence actually has direct bearing on its factuality.

I disagree. When someone goes to the moon and lifts up the rock exposing the egg, it doesn’t miraculously pop into existence from nothingness. It existed even before we got there. So, yes, the statement “there is a golden egg on the moon” remains an unproven hypothesis until the egg is actually discovered…but that only affects the statement. The actual existence or non-existence of the egg is completely unrelated to our knowledge.

[Logo]

@Max Majestic

When someone goes to the moon and lifts up the rock exposing the egg, it doesn’t miraculously pop into existence from nothingness.

Of course not. My comment was that its existence does not become a fact until it is experienced. However, it is philosophically unimportant and generally meaningless to talk about something existing, or potentially existing, apart from human experience. Unless, of course, all you mean is that this thing is a potential object of experience.

[Max_Majestic]

@Logo

@Max Majestic

When someone goes to the moon and lifts up the rock exposing the egg, it doesn’t miraculously pop into existence from nothingness.

Of course not. My comment was that its existence does not become a fact until it is experienced.

Ah, we were using the word ‘fact’ differently.

@Logo

However, it is philosophically unimportant and generally meaningless to talk about something existing, or potentially existing, apart from human experience.

I agree. It is meaningless to talk about something existing apart from human experience…except to say that there is no relationship between the two.

[zenofeller]

heh, so we managed an argument holding equivalent views ?

[kingbrath]

@wvoelcker

E.g. to take a classic gettier-style example, a famer looks out of his window and thinks he sees a sheep in a field, and thence forms the belief that the field in question contains a sheep. Of course, what he saw was not a sheep, but was, in fact, a large white dog, which he mistook for a sheep.

just wondering if this is an actual example Gettier uses and if so what reading is it from???

[Kennethamy]

@kingbrath

@wvoelcker

E.g. to take a classic gettier-style example, a famer looks out of his window and thinks he sees a sheep in a field, and thence forms the belief that the field in question contains a sheep. Of course, what he saw was not a sheep, but was, in fact, a large white dog, which he mistook for a sheep.

just wondering if this is an actual example Gettier uses and if so what reading is it from???

No, it is not one of the two counter-examples that Gettier offered to the view that a sufficient condition for knowing is justified true belief (he allows that these are necessary conditions). The sheep example is one of the well-known Gettier-type counter-examples in the literature. I want to say it was offered by Chisholm, but I really do not know.

[Kennethamy]

@Max Majestic

@Logo

@Max Majestic

When someone goes to the moon and lifts up the rock exposing the egg, it doesn’t miraculously pop into existence from nothingness.

Of course not. My comment was that its existence does not become a fact until it is experienced.

Ah, we were using the word ‘fact’ differently.

@Logo

However, it is philosophically unimportant and generally meaningless to talk about something existing, or potentially existing, apart from human experience.

I agree. It is meaningless to talk about something existing apart from human experience…except to say that there is no relationship between the two.

I suppose, then. that you think that it is “meaningless” to state that before there were human beings there were stars in the sky, and rocks on Earth?

“Meaningless” how? One sense of “meaningless” is, neither true nor false. Is that what you have in mind? Another sense of “meaningless” is “unimportant”. Is that what you mean? Another sense of “meaningless” is, “it doesn’t matter to me”. Is that what you mean?