I’m putting this thread here for a couple of reasons. One being that I’m too lazy and/or something else to sit here and type out a real long drawn out kind of thing about knowledge and reality. Another might be that I don’t mind people getting a bit nasty in a debate sometimes because it’s the case that thick skulls most certainly exist in the world and you sometimes get that feeling like it’s your duty to not leave them ignorant. This can present the kind of problems that “derail” what some might consider a more conventional approach to resolving a problem. It’s just downright bad behavior to act like an asshole when people are doing a little formal debate thingy.
But we’re not trying to debate. And we’re not trying to “solve” a philosophical problem by simply clarifying and/or fortifying our of perspective of it through some weird contest where there’s an incentive for effective bullshitting. We just wanna get a collection of rant house level posts on something as philosophical as the relationship between knowledge and reality and see how people tend to answer the question of how you know what is real. Let’s avoid authorities and links to outside sources. If you can’t teach it then you don’t know it.
So here we are in the rant house. That means even ladyjane is invited. If you guys could do me a favor and keep your posts under 500 words that’d be great.
I think to know what’s real you first have to posses an understanding of what you define knowledge and reality as and after that I’m not so sure.
Knowledge = justified true belief.
Reality = whatever is the case.
Two general ways of knowing what is real:
Sensory/empirical. (Self-explanatory).
A priori/analytic. These are things you know to be true by virtue of the meanings of the concepts you use, the definitions, or some other way other than experience.
Edit: I just realized that my post was just over 500 words. I really don’t think it would have been conherent without all 501 of them so nevermind. But not to fear, I’ve answered this question many times in other posts, so while being too long to contribute to the discussion they will be a bases for anyone to turn to if the want a second opinion. (Even my 'nvm’s are long, maybe you should limit 'nvm’s to five character (to leave open the possibility for one to say ‘nmv!!’ should ‘nvm’ not be enough.))
Whatever side of a brick wall I’m on is subject to my opinion, in fact coinsidentally there is a brick wall between me and my neighbor. You could divide it into East/West or my side his side but I prefer to divide it into the good side and the shit side. My side is the good side his is the shit. Once when running to catch a football I ran right into it, I found my self on the other side, that is I was then very much on the shit side.
After much thought on the matter, I find that the word “real” is essentially useless. What matters to me is sensation, whether I or others think of them as real or illusory. Whether I/they do or not, it doesn’t change the sensation. Calling it real (or not) is arbitrary and pointless in this respect.
Does tactile sensation identifiable as “brick wall” and the pain that presumably comes with running into one, mean “real” or “of the set, real”? Or do I just feel something.
Does the consistency with which I cannot be on the other side of it by trying to run through it mean it is real? Or is it just a useful pattern to note.
With a word with such meaninglessness, why not attribute it to anything you like? It is of no consequence.
In practice, “real” is just a social consensus on what sensations (or supposed thing-in-itself origins of these sensations) we have in common with others.
Whether this means more to you that others claim to share your sensations in a believable way, or if it doesn’t, is a value judgment. Whatever of the two you value more is a matter of whatever you want.
It’s not useless at all…
How else are you going to distinguish whether you are really sick, or are just a hypochondriac?
How else are you going to distinguish whether you’re really talking to your friend, or are experiencing skitzophrenia?
How else are you going to distinguish whether everyone is laughing at you, or if you just have a social phobia?
How else are you going to explain why the pencil doesn’t break in a glass of water, when it looks like it does?
How else are you going to tell your kid that the boogie man really isn’t in his closet?
It goes on. Fact is, if you confuse the real world with your mental life… you’re going to quickly go extinct.
Ohhhhh I seeeee… because there are some very strange points of social consensus among the demographic in the insane asylum… where you would clearly be a sympathetic ear. Is it just our consensus that the man there isn’t actually the present King of France? Or is he really not the present King of France?
If the consensus among scientists is that phlogiston exists, as it once was… does that mean that phlogiston existed, and doesn’t any more? Or is it that phlogiston really never existed?
If the consensus among people is that black people are less human, as it once was… does that mean that black people were really less human, and just aren’t any more?
If the consensus among people is that the earth is flat, and that you can fall off the end of it… does that mean that the earth has really changed shapes over time?
If the consensus is that dancing around a fire will bring rainfall, does that mean the rain is really going to fall?
Besides all of the other important reasons to think the word useful, one consequence is that you look utterly ridiculous when you don’t…
lol. I’m waiting for you to go Peter Pan on our asses, and tell us about fairies and flying out your window to Neverneverland. Some poor guy is going to end up on his front lawn with a pair of broken legs, if he starts thinking like you.
Yes, some things I think are real. Can I be wrong about them? Of course I can. I often am. Does that keep me from thinking that some things are real, such as the keyboard that I’m typing on, and the statistics about cancer for people who drink paint? No, of course it doesn’t.
Is what I am saying controversial, at all, to you?
There’s a lot of stuff I ‘know’ that I never really worked out. IOW I never sat down and applied some conscious epistemological choices to or double checked my official position on knowledge. Much of this is tacit - stuff I can do that is based on tacit knowledge - much of it is cultural, and those are not two non-overlapping categories. Then there is stuff I know that has been worked out more formally. Could have originated as intution, but then been tested over time via empirical [processes], could have been confirmed via empirical work of others…Then there’s stuff that I actually formally tested in a lab kind of way. Then there’s appeal to authority type stuff - my intuitive sense of the odds on the effectiveness of peer reviewed consensus science on topic X, for example. Then there is a whole set of negative knowledge - say knowing that people are not so saavy about the metaphysical assumptions of their ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ or other beliefs, or that they are not saavy about the way language/Culture is affecting their certainty. This ends up not having so much positive knowledge - like ‘most cats have four paws’ - but ends up a kind of skepticism. There’s gads of knowledge and ‘knowledge’ about other people I know well, then on down the spectrum as I know the ones in question less and less, but sometimes even some of the latter Group I feel I have knowledge about, given my experiences, confirmation through others and prediction, etc. There is stuff I try on, even for long periods of time, but then it fades. I suppose there are various kinds of natural selection involved, some with very focused conscious participation, some without.
But also running through all this is tentative ‘knowings’ or knowledge. Stuff that gets stronger or weaker. Stuff that may contradict some of the other stuff above. Many people present themselves as epistemological monads, but I have never met a single person who ‘knew’ and knew stuff only via their official positions on epistemology. And hey we all have to act, often, with less than ideal pre-decision research, so it’s not about contradictions, it is the lack of self-awareness these self-proclaimed monads seem to have. All these neat well-packaged epistemologists who have cleaned house so well they know they are units in relation to all their beliefs, they arrived at anything they would assert via their officially approved processes and know their unconscious biases (and knowledge for that matter) so well they can peer Review themselves and amazingly all they have ‘published’ is Clean. (I seem to have some Platonic ghosts here capitalizing occasional first letters)
Check out gettier problems
read some recent cognitive science on skewed self-evaluations
check out when that rage comes in and fuck discourse takes over
Fear is for advanced students…
Why are you putting ‘know’ in scare quotes? There’s no question but that the level of justification you need to claim knowledge about something-or-other varies according to context. Do you think you’ve pointed to some way of obtaining knowledge, or a way of being justified about claiming knowledge, that isn’t one of the two general ones that I mentioned? (I.e., empirical/sensory/synthetic versus conceptual/apriori/analytic)? Or are you just expanding on them, and making them more specific?
What does that even mean?
Everyone acts, not everyone claims to know everything there is to know before they act. Where is this lack of self-awareness? What specifically are the ideas that you think characterize whoever you are calling an “epistemological monad”?
Yes, and then check out Nozick’s response to Gettier problems.
Yes, because every epistemologist obviously claims that no epistemologist could be wrong.
Von I appreaciate your simple and concise input on the question. I think it’s constructive in that it gives a clear summary of one of many positions that I’m sure there are on the matter. You can’t write any off though if you’re going to have a complete understanding, and so I must assert that it’s in fact, NOT that simple. Thanks for showing us that you know some stuff.
Does anyone have any comments on von’s version of the answer? I’d love to keep this going.
If this thread dies fast I’ll have to start posting in the philo forum and the moderation there would cause me to have to work too hard and then we’d have nothing.
Bruah, for the record, I have no idea what epistemologists do with their time----and nor do many people who are not epistemologists. Frankly, I think most of them have families… big families.
Maybe I misinterpreted your question. Do you want to go all skeptical on people’s asses, and ask questions like, “How do I know I’m not dreaming?”, or “How do I know I’m not in the Matrix?”. —Because when you ask a question like that, you’ve raised the stakes. The level of justification you need for regular, everyday, claims to know something are not the same at the grocery store as when you are reading Descartes. At the grocery store, I know the Pepsi is $2 because I can see it right on the bottle. I’m justified in claiming to know that. But if you change the context, and include in the context that you want me to engage with radical external world skepticism, then I may have to refrain from claiming to know that the Pepsi is $2.
The Pepsi could be $5, or I could be in the Matrix----I just can’t trust my senses when you change the context of the question in that specific way.
It’s like in the Big Lebowski, how Walter kept getting mad at Donnie because he had no frame of reference. Same thing. We need a frame of reference, and our criteria for epistemic justification changes according to that. Other than working out the specifics, I have no idea what epistemologists do with their time…
What is real is that which can be apprehended within our sensate capacities. More importantly, is the acceptance that I can distinguish that which is real. That is KNOWING. All else is appeal to authority or group consensus. Moreover, all knowing is both conditional and provisional in a universe of process.