Is knowledge also a belief?

surreptitious57 · March 12, 2016, 10:17pm

Language can some times be ambiguous and particularly so with such a loaded word like belief that obviously means different things
to different people. This is why in debates like this it is absolutely imperative for everyone to define as clearly as possible their own
interpretation of the word. But equally as important also to accept any alternative definitions of it and realise they are just as valid
as their own definition. And so without both of these conditions being rigorously adhered to productive discourse is just not possible

WW_III_ANGRY · March 12, 2016, 10:23pm

Uccisore:

WW_III_ANGRY:

As is defined in epistemic framework that seems to be taken for granted since Plato.

It only seems that way because you’re ignorant of epistemology. Nothing has been ‘taken for granted since Plato’; it has been examined and re-examined from every possible angle the human mind can examine it. Gettier would be an obvious example, since we’ve been talking about him this whole time.

You did already state that “we’ve known since Gettier at least that Knowledge is not justified true belief” and that an additional jump is needed, however, why not just throw away the whole idea?

Because ‘throwing away’ whole ideas isn’t something we do without some sort of fucking argument, and you have not provided one in any way, shape or form. This is very straightforward- according to how ‘belief’ is defined in epistemology, knowledge is a type of belief. If you want to make up a new definition of ‘belief’ such that it formally excludes knowledge, you are free to do so, but you haven’t actually introduced anything new to philosophical thought, you’ve merely played a word game- a word game that you will have to re-play every time you have a philosophical conversation with a new person who is confused as to why you aren’t using words the same way as everybody else.

Centuries of academic philosophy elitism building on itself, JTB being proven wrong and academic philosophy elitists seem to want to rationalize it anyway.

You apparently live in a fantasy land in which you make up stories about what philosophers are doing and thinking, in lieu of you having actually studied what they are thinking and doing. Be straight with me- do you actually have the foggiest fucking idea what modern epistemologists are saying about anything, to justify the above accusation? You just postulated academic elitists defending JTB in spite of (I assume you mean) Gettier ‘proving it wrong’. Give me some examples. Who are the academic philosophy elitists that are ignoring Gettier to defend simple JTB? You can’t mean me, since the only reason you’ve even heard of Gettier is because I told you about him.

I guess it would be a shame to throw out the concurrence of the likes of Hume on the matter, but Hume didn’t really focus on this so much. Not many have strictly focused on this matter, that I’m aware of.

Because you aren’t aware of epistemology in general, right? Plantinga, Chisholm, Russell, I think Ernest Sosa, John Greco, L. Zagzebski…Gettier’s work has been very influential in epistemology, and tons of people have addressed it. Pre-Gettier, the justification of belief was a primary concern of Hume, sure, but also DesCartes, Locke, Reid, Berkeley and of course Kant.

I agree, my point is that the common philosophical definition is based on that continued usage of knowledge and belief that rooted in Plato and not much else. Why?

Because it presents an accurate representation of the way people think.

So why can’t we have a different framework? Can we not? Any logical reason why the current framework must be?

So that’'s your angle? “Let’s re-define a bunch of words in ways that will confuse everybody, when the old definitions were perfectly fine, because why not?” Feel free! Use common philosophical vernacular in a way that will guarentee nobody understands what the hell you’re talking about without you constantly re-explaining your basic terminology.

Are you appealing to argumentum ad populum here?

No more or less than you making up stories about what the ‘academic elites’ are doing so you can paint yourself as heroic in your defiance of them. But yes, when numerous un-associated people tell you that you’re fundamentally wrong about a subject that, let’s face it, you really don’t know much about, it’s time to listen to them.

“Belief” means something in philosophy due to what reason? Tell me why it means that and why it has to remain that?

Because the phenomenon X of ‘a person thinking a proposition is true or false’ is a ubiquitous subject of philosphy, and so there’s bound to be a word to describe it. If you try to chop that concept up, and force there to be one word for some of these occurances and another word for others of these occurances, the response will just be to force another word to come up to describe them both as a collective- since that’s inevitably how they will be discussed most of the time.

So, if you manage to convince people to change their vocabulary so that some instances of X as ‘beliefs’ and some instances of X as ‘knowledge’ and badger them into denying that one is a subset of the other, they will eventually come up with some new term- like SuperBelief- to describe all instances of X. So you’ll have a situation where Belief and Knowledge are considered completely different (because you won this preposterous non-debate), and yet both fall under the category of “Superbeliefs”. The epistemology will not be changed in the slightest- Superbelief will just mean what ‘belief’ used to, Belief will mean what 'unjustified belief" used to, and “Knowledge” will mean basically the same thing as it did before, unless youv’e got some violence in mind for that vocabulary that we haven’t talked about yet.

The reason for this self-regulation of the language into a situation in which you changed essentially nothing but people’s vocabulary is that these terms all seek to describe a reality impervious to your desire for a ‘different framework’. Similarly, if you decided that tigers are no longer cats, and were able to impose your will on the language, a new word would simply come up to refer to ‘tigers and cats’, since despite your desires, they really are quite similar and bound to be referred to collectively often enough to need a word for it.

Why can we not provide a better definition that includes all aspects of what belief and knowledge entail, and not base it on some oversimplification that knowledge is thinking something is true and so is belief therefore knowledge is belief.

Because ‘we’ haven’t actually studied epistemology, and don’t ‘we’ actually know what ‘we’ are talking about sufficiently to provide a better definition that will suit the purposes of the people who actually use these words- namely, that of describing reality.

Both belief and knowledge are much more than thinking something is true and epistemology realizes that, so what benefit is it that this categorization persist?

No, belief is not much more than thinking something is true (or false, don’t forget that). It literally is that and nothing more. Knowledge is that, plus some additional criteria.

I would agree that it would be very difficult to understand something such as this in a new light - but an attempt can be made and in turn can be understood.

Yes, an attempt can be made to understand why this one guy on the internet wants to use ‘belief’ and ‘knowledge’ in bizarre, non-standard ways. I have made that attempt, and my conclusion is that it’s occuring due a combination of political (pro-skeptic) motiviations and a lack of understanding of actual epistemology.

Truth must be a category of belief as well because they share certainty.

Like take this for example. It’s patent nonsense. Anybody with a basic understanding of epistemology would roll their eyes or laugh at this. Truth is a relationship between a proposition and a state of affairs. It’s obviously not a belief, and has nothing to do with certainty.

because acceptance of something as true in belief and acceptance of something as true in knowledge is different.

Yes, they are different. But they both fall into the category of ‘thinking a proposition is true’, and the word we use for that category is ‘belief’. Again, if you switch the vocabulary around, there will simply be a different word for this same categorization, and nothing in philosophy will change, except that certain concepts will be harder to express.

I have reason.

Not any that you’ve demonstrated here. You’ve basically raged against ‘the establishment’ and demanded me to tell you why you can’t have your way.

I would say not every other epistemologist on earth. Perhaps those in bed with elitist academia,

And you have the gall to accuse somebody else of argumentum ad populum. Your every post is rife with this heroic portrayl of yourself as rising against the ‘elitists’ with your nonsense.

So depending on the justification and reason, I contest that a theory of how beliefs can never be justified can be laid out.

Of course it can, if you sufficiently twist the terms ‘belief’ and ‘justified’ into something that bares no resemblance to how the rest of the world uses them. I can lay out a theory of how beliefs can eat sheep and howl at the moon if all the relevant terms are mine to define. But neither your word game nor mine will change the fact that

‘the reasons we have for thinking a proposition are true or false can be good reasons or bad reasons’.

This is presently referred to as a belief being justified or unjustified. You would presumably use a different sentence to describe that exact same state of affairs. It changes nothing.

Yes its recognized but I contest it isn’t recognized in as concise a manner as I propose philosophically.

And I contest that you haven’t the foggiest fucking idea how the majority of epistemologists regard this distinction and that the above is just a fantasy story. Honestly, I think that’s where your position falls apart- you’re telling me all these stories about what the field of epistemology does and doesn’t do, what the ‘elitists’ belief and what they don’t, and I…simply don’t believe you. I’m not prepared to accept that you have ready really much of any epistemology at all, certainly not enough to be making pronouncements on the state of the field.

Belief isn’t needed for knowledge as I already explained

That is entirely possible given however you define ‘belief’ and knowledge’. You may as well say ‘woof woof isn’t needed for meow’ for all the difference it makes to me. What’s important is that knowledge is a specialized instance of thinking a proposition is true or false. I haven’t seen you disagree with that so much as insist that it’s terribly important that we use different words to describe it.

why and contested based on the proposition of belief being unjustified and knowledge being justifiable.

Right, those are the definitions you made up. Within your near-English language that you speak when dealing with epistemology, the sentence “belief isn’t needed for knowledge” is true. Within some other guys near-English language, the sentence “Knowledge eats carrots and leaves me painted eggs every Easter” is true. You aren’t challenging any underlying concepts, you’re simply insisting that people should prefer your near-English language to English.

No, doubting is not a belief, it is a state of uncertainty. I make no claim that x is likely or unlikely when I doubt.

A belief isn’t an uttered claim, it’s a state of mind with regards to a proposition. Thinking proposition X is true, false, likely, unlikely, or of unknowable probability are all beliefs. This is easily demonstratable since any of these an be re-written in the affirmative, i.e.,

“The likelihood of X is undiscernable” or “X is false” or “I don’t have sufficient information to draw a conclusion about X” are all propositions that a person can think are true, and so thinking is thus a belief.

In other words, if you doubt X, then you think ‘X is unlikely’ or ‘there isn’t enough evidence to conclude anything about x’ or something similar to that is true. That would be the belief that you have. If what you meant to say is that you have no opinion at all about X (for example, you’ve never heard of X or have only heard of it in passing), then that may be a different story, but that’s not how other human beings use the word ‘doubt’. For all I know. ‘doubt’ is another of those terms you’ve made up your own definition for though, so who knows what you actually mean.

Where in epistemology does anyone even think such a thing? I would like to know.

That any proposition about probability can be converted to a simple positive or negative statement as I showed above isn’t a matter of epistemology so much as a matter of setential logic.

But your response here is mostly noise, lets get to reason and logic yes? Not noise…

I find it highly likely that you’ll just not reply to the logic and reason I give you, as you have in the past.

Ok you’re not providing me a logical negation of why it isn’t the way I think, you’ve made an assertion about Gettier that I didn’t disagree with, but you haven’t ruled out my assertion with reason… Both my assertion and yours are compatible as I understand it, until you explain why. My understanding is based on a synopsis of the Gettier problem here -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem

Yeah, stop arguing with me about Gettier based on a wikipedia article that you skimmed. His actual paper is easily available. Gettier’s conclusion was that JTB are required for knowledge, but something else is required in addition.

Yes, and thinking something is true isn’t the trait of knowledge that I am stating exists in the state of knowledge, it is more.

Yes, knowledge is more than merely thinking something is true. But that is a part of it, and anything that is minimally ‘thinking something is true’ is a belief. There are all sorts of kinds of beliefs, which are very different from each other- guesses, theories, knowledge, convictions, delusions. These are all beliefs, and they are all quite different from each other, because ‘belief’ is a very basic concept.

I am contending that it is an oversimplification here. Knowledge is understanding something that is true,

Which makes it a belief. Whatever else may be required for something to be knowledge, the above makes it a belief. You’ve just admitted that modern philosophy is correct about this, according to you. You can change the definition of ‘belief’ all you want such that the sentence “Knowledge is not a belief” is true when you (and only you) utter it, but that will not change the fact that knowledge is a type of belief as those terms are commonly defined, which means the answer to the question posed in your OP is ‘yes’.

If I asked “Are dogs a type of cat?” as a thread in the science forum, everybody would say ‘of course not’. If I revealed that by ‘cat’ I meant ‘for-legged mammal’, it wouldn’t change their answer, and it certainly wouldn’t change anything about the actual nature of cats and dogs. It would just mean that 1.) I asked a trick question, and 2.) I have a funny way of talking.

Uccisore if its been examined I would say it hasn’t been examined thoroughly enough. We already had this discussion and as I see it has only been touched on lightly, or in very myopic fields such as how to understand certain things, not everything. You say I haven’t provided an argument, but then what are you arguing against? Nothing? Apparently you’re not making sense then. I’ve mentioned my argument many times and you’re again repeating “according to how ‘belief’ is defined in epistemology”, which I already argued is not the right way to define it and provided reasons why it isn’t the right way to define it. You don’t argue against the reasons though - you agree, it seems. But still say well epistemology defines it this way, so it must be that way, essentially. If you understand how philosophy works you would know philosophy has in the past brought new paradigm shifts in understanding. You are not able to provide a coherent argument why a paradigm shift is impossible in epistemology, and even my argument which apparently isn’t an argument, but something else you wish to rationalize it as.

Your emotional response though is beginning to become telling, you claim things that you couldn’t possibly know, like I never heard of Gettier before you mentioned him here. My argument doesn’t rest on Gettier - but a further more comprehensive thesis would. I already referenced Gettier before you even replied on this thread. It’s even in my OP in Reddit. In any case your response is indicative of your unreasonable nature on this matter. Since maybe the first time we ever engaged each other on the boards (I don’t remember anything else - ) I don’t know what your nature is however. But so far, not very confident in your argument by stating “Fucking” and showing anger instead of showing reason and making wild claims that I know are false. You also aren’t rebutting against specific claims and merely assuming I don’t know what I’m talking about. In any case, it seems based on all that I have already received my constructive criticism from you and have no need for your deconstructive criticism because its not logic or reasonable, its merely insulting and unreasonable. But I am not offended anyways, I’m sure there’s good reason why you’re responding emotionally, I did provide some cutting remarks on your lack of argument already that probably angered you more than anything else. As mentioned already in this thread: " More the knowledge lesser the ego, lesser the knowledge more the ego.” But your responding seems indicative of ego and not reason. So I take it you really don’t understand how to argue against what I stated, but you want to very badly. As you already alluded to me wanting this very badly, but that seems to be a projection. I don’t. I just want to know. Right now I am at a state of ultimate uncertainty and am looking for ways to negate this sentiment of mine or continue further. Currently I need to continue further based on everything that was presented to me by you and others - particularly others on reddit.

You stated also "
And I contest that you haven’t the foggiest fucking idea how the majority of epistemologists regard this distinction and that the above is just a fantasy story. Honestly, I think that’s where your position falls apart- you’re telling me all these stories about what the field of epistemology does and doesn’t do, what the ‘elitists’ belief and what they don’t, and I…simply don’t believe you. I’m not prepared to accept that you have ready really much of any epistemology at all, certainly not enough to be making pronouncements on the state of the field. "

Here you go, seemingly again making a wild claim about what I know out of emotionalism. Click the link.

quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dod … 4.0011.008

You claim epistemology shows how knowledge and belief are reprentative the way people think, without any reason to show how thats the way they think. In any case, Gettier shows it isn’t how people think and now you want to continue rationalizing that the general theory still stands. But offer no reason how other than the epistemological definition and not any insight on knowledge and belief.

I certainly am not raging against anything, I am seeking more clarification, answers and reason why. I have been directed to seek more answers and counter more arguments against my stance. That is all I have been shown in my post so far, which is pretty much what I wanted. If you don’t have anything more to offer you can stop responding or misrepresenting my stance. You don’t really seem to fully understand what I am saying anyway, and part of that could be my fault but part of it could be your fault as well. In any case, other people have understood what my intentions are and have guided me well, and so have the naysayers in their way

I am not attempting to use different words to describe it, I am attempting to describe it more coherently and clearly because I don’t think the mind thinks at its deepest levels that knowledge and belief are the same, in ones mind. If they do, then they are wrong. Most people are wrong about beliefs anyway, because its never logical to believe. Its always best to know you don’t know. So people need to be taught how to think the right way, essentially and how to discern their beliefs from their knowledge, because epistemology isn’t doing them any justice in this manner currently, by conflating belief and knowledge in one sense of belief and knowledge that doesn’t really have any basis in the mind - as we treat them differently- and as such the reality of the situation.

WW_III_ANGRY · March 12, 2016, 10:26pm

Yes I agree -that’s why I pointed out my definitions early on. Uccisore is only attempting to think that the epistemic sense is the only one worth fighting for, because …? Its accepted in academia? Whatever

WW_III_ANGRY · March 12, 2016, 10:27pm

Uccisore:

For those who don’t want to read all that, a summary of what’s going on in this thread:

New atheists and internet skeptics use ‘belief’ in a certain way.

Epistemologists use ‘belief’ in another way.

Because of that difference, a statement like “I don’t have any beliefs” is understandable and admirable to the internet-skeptic, but self-refuting balderdash to the epistemologist.

This is fine as long as the two groups keep to themselves.

What’s going on here is an attempt to replace the epistemological definition with the internet-skeptic version.

This is bad, because the internet-skeptic version means something like “Those unfounded and preposterous convictions held by religious people and my political enemies” which isn’t nearly precise or rigorous enough to use in serious philosophy.

Please don’t misrepresent my position, that is not what this is about.

Uccisore · March 12, 2016, 10:33pm

But we’re in agreement that you don’t know, right? This is just part of your fantasy story in which epistemologists that you haven’t read and in all likelihood can’t even name are shirking their intellectual duties because heard they don’t agree with you about things.

No, I’m arguing against a series of bald assertions and bad analogies for the most part.

My argument for why your desired shift in vocabulary can’t change epistemology is right there in my post that you quoted. That’s right. You literally just quoted me saying the thing that you accuse me of not saying in the self-same post.

Let’s see if you ignore it again, as I predicted.

OK, I’m deleting the ‘what a terrible person Uccisore is’ diatribe, looking for an actual response to any of the points I made…

Wow. There goes 80% of your post…reading on…

Yep, that’s it.

You asked for a logical rebuttal to your position, I gave you one, predicted you’d ignore it and offer no reply, and that’s exactly what you fucking did- and anybody reading this thread can see it.

Reposting the rebuttal that you asked for then ignored and declared I was unable to provide:

"Because the phenomenon X of ‘a person thinking a proposition is true or false’ is a ubiquitous subject of philosphy, and so there’s bound to be a word to describe it. If you try to chop that concept up, and force there to be one word for some of these occurances and another word for others of these occurances, the response will just be to force another word to come up to describe them both as a collective- since that’s inevitably how they will be discussed most of the time.

So, if you manage to convince people to change their vocabulary so that some instances of X as ‘beliefs’ and some instances of X as ‘knowledge’ and badger them into denying that one is a subset of the other, they will eventually come up with some new term- like SuperBelief- to describe all instances of X. So you’ll have a situation where Belief and Knowledge are considered completely different (because you won this preposterous non-debate), and yet both fall under the category of “Superbeliefs”. The epistemology will not be changed in the slightest- Superbelief will just mean what ‘belief’ used to, Belief will mean what 'unjustified belief" used to, and “Knowledge” will mean basically the same thing as it did before, unless youv’e got some violence in mind for that vocabulary that we haven’t talked about yet.

The reason for this self-regulation of the language into a situation in which you changed essentially nothing but people’s vocabulary is that these terms all seek to describe a reality impervious to your desire for a ‘different framework’. Similarly, if you decided that tigers are no longer cats, and were able to impose your will on the language, a new word would simply come up to refer to ‘tigers and cats’, since despite your desires, they really are quite similar and bound to be referred to collectively often enough to need a word for it."

Uccisore · March 12, 2016, 10:42pm

Some definitions map onto reality and some don’t, though. And some definitions group states of affairs up into useful collections, and some don’t. I’m free to define ‘dog’ as ‘four-legged animal of the genus ‘lupus’, and also large milky-white collections of condensed water in the lower atmosphere’, but grouping dogs and clouds up as the same thing doesn’t help matters. Similarly, saying “Sharks aren’t fish because fish don’t bite people” isn’t very useful compared to a scientific definition of fish.

So yes, you’re right to a point, but there are constraints on what makes a definition good or bad if we imagine that we’re actually talking about the world, and not babbling. That’s basically what’s happening here- WW III seems to think that philosophy is essentially babbling (making word-sounds that don’t have any connection to reality) and so if he decides words mean something completely different than they did yesterday, there’s no objective reason not to use his definitions. The problem of course is that in philosophy as in anything, certain groupings of concepts are going to come up again and again thanks to reality, and so the same words for the same things will be needed: the subjects of philosophy have a natural resistance to arbitrary grouping, in other words.

WW_III_ANGRY · March 12, 2016, 10:43pm

Uccisore:

WW_III_ANGRY:

Uccisore if its been examined I would say it hasn’t been examined thoroughly enough.

But we’re in agreement that you don’t know, right? This is just part of your fantasy story in which epistemologists that you haven’t read and in all likelihood can’t even name are shirking their intellectual duties because they don’t agree with you about things.

You say I haven’t provided an argument, but then what are you arguing against? Nothing?

No, I’m arguing against a series of bald assertions and bad analogies for the most part.

You are not able to provide a coherent argument why a paradigm shift is impossible in epistemology, and even my argument which apparently isn’t an argument, but something else you wish to rationalize it as.

My argument for why your desired shift in vocabulary is right there in my post that you quoted. Let’s see if you ignore it again, as I predicted.

OK, I’m deleting the ‘what a terrible person Uccisore is’ diatribe, looking for an actual response to any of the points I made…

Wow. There goes 80% of your post…reading on…

Yep, that’s it.

You asked for a logical rebuttal to your position, I gave you one, predicted you’d ignore it and offer no reply, and that’s exactly what you fucking did- and anybody reading this thread can see it.

Well appeal to authority then, go ahead, you know you want to. Its running through your blood, bubbling out in “Fuck you” fashion

Here,

I’m arguing against your bald assertions Uccisore, and your bad analogies. You gave a logical rebuttal in your mind which was actually an appeal to authority. Your rebuttal didn’t address the nature of belief and knowledge, but mere word usage. Word usage is not the crux of the matter. I don’t care if people say belief when they mean knowledge, or vice versa. I am talking about a specific concept that I am explaining why and how it isn’t necessarily explored thoroughly enough by epistemology and needs further review.

Perhaps epistemology can change the dynamics of how the word is used. IF you tell me what I believe, I can say nothing based on how I use it and how many others do. But that depends on me just being disciplined enough to have no beliefs, again, based on how I use it. Nonetheless, there are plenty of definitions that I didn’t define that agree with what I stated, because they aren’t inclusive of how epistemology defines it and we don’t use them inclusively. Language is dynamic, but not the meaning of the concept at heart and that meaning is amiss in epistemology and needs revision. Besides, there are some epistemologists more recently now, out there that do question knowledge as a belief in the sense acadmeia does en masse, you know. It’s not all elitism and taking it for granted out there.

Uccisore · March 12, 2016, 10:56pm

Is pointing out my argument that you ignored an appeal to authority? Why are you saying this nonsense instead of replying to my points? You specifically asked for them after all.

Then quote me and rebut it if you think that’s what I’ve done. Making up stories about what you wish my argument was now that we’re on a fresh page and you aren’t quoting it anymore doesn’t get you anything. Are you playing to an imagined crowd, or actually having a conversation with me?

The problem here is that the difference between belief and knowledge has actually been explored to fucking death for centuries, so the idea that it hasn’t been questioned is dubious at best. It is doubly dubious coming from somebody who needed me to explain to him what Gettier said, and has admitted that they are basing their understanding of Gettier on a Wikipedia article. You need to make your argument on something other than ‘the field of epistemology is in sorry shape’, because anybody who questions you is going to come to doubt that you know enough about epistemology to pass that judgment. You whine about me making a personal attack when I say things like this, but when you have the hubris to condemn the entire history of Western analytic philosophy, you invite it. People are naturally going to ask themselves “Who is this guy to declare that all of epistemology is myopic?” and when they seek to answer that question, well- you know better than I do what they’re going to discover.

You just got done saying this isn’t about definitions, but about concepts. Now you’re saying you’re pushing for epistemology to change it’s definitions. It’s this lack of consistency that leads to trouble.

Again, because you still haven’t addressed it: the condition of “Thinking a proposition is true” is common enough and ubiquitous to philosophy that there will always be a word for it. At present, the word is ‘belief’. That is why knowledge is a belief- because it is a type of ‘thinking a proposition is true’, and that’s what belief means. If the vocabulary is switched all around such that all these concepts have different terms attached, it will remain true that “Knowledge is a special type of 'thinking a proposition is true”, and thus, knowledge will be considered a subset of whatever the word for ‘thinking a proposition is true’ is. That is the answer to your question of why epistemology can’t simply change to suit you.

There. That’s my fifth fucking time making the same argument, and you’ve ignored it every single time.

Right, you ‘have no beliefs’, because you use the word ‘belief’ to mean something completely different than how it is used in the philosophical sense. To an epistemologist, a person claiming to have no beliefs is speaking nonsense. If you want to change how philosophy uses the word belief, then first of all good luck, and second of all see above- you’ll simply change the vernacular and not what anybody thinks about anything.

WW_III_ANGRY · March 12, 2016, 10:57pm

Also from the SEP on knowledge:

1.2 The Belief Condition
The belief condition is slightly more controversial than the truth condition, although it is certainly accepted by orthodoxy.

Although initially it might seem obvious that knowing that p requires believing that p, some philosophers have argued that knowledge without belief is indeed possible. Suppose Walter comes home after work to find out that his house has burned down. He says: “I don’t believe it.” Critics of the belief condition might argue that Walter knows that his house has burned down (he sees that it has), but, as his words indicate, he does not believe that his house has burned down. Therefore, there is knowledge without belief. The dominant view, however, is that Walter’s avowal of disbelief is not, strictly speaking, literally true; what Walter wishes to convey by saying “I don’t believe it” is not that he really does not believe that his house has burned down, but rather that he finds it hard to come to terms with what he sees. If he didn’t genuinely believe it, some of his subsequent actions, such as phoning his insurance company, would be rather mysterious.

A more serious counterexample has been suggested by Colin Radford (1966). Suppose Albert is quizzed on English history. One of the questions is: “When did Queen Elizabeth die?” Albert doesn’t think he knows, but answers the question correctly. Moreover, he gives correct answers to many other questions to which he didn’t think he knew the answer. Let us focus on Albert’s answer to the question about Elizabeth:

(E)
Elizabeth died in 1603.
Radford makes the following two claims about this example:

Albert does not believe (E).
Albert knows (E).
Radford’s intuitions about cases like these do not seem to be idiosyncratic; Myers-Schutz & Schwitzgebel (forthcoming) find evidence suggesting that many ordinary speakers tend to react in the way Radford suggests.[3]

In support of (a), Radford emphasizes that Albert thinks he doesn’t know the answer to the question. He doesn’t trust his answer because he takes it to be a mere guess. In support of (b), Radford argues that Albert’s answer is not at all just a lucky guess. The fact that he answers most of the questions correctly indicates that he has actually learned, and never forgotten, the basic facts of English history.

Since he takes (a) and (b) to be true, Radford would argue that knowledge without belief is indeed possible. But either of (a) and (b) might be resisted. Those who think that belief is necessary for knowledge could deny (a), arguing that Albert does have a tacit belief that (E), even though it’s not one that he thinks amounts to knowledge. Alternatively, one might deny (b), arguing that Albert’s correct answer is not an expression of knowledge, perhaps because, given his subjective position, he does not have justification for believing (E). This reply anticipates the next section, involving the necessity of the justification condition.

At least the SEP grants room for change non this issue, unlike you Uccisore

But no, orthodoxy says so

Mictlantecuhtli · March 13, 2016, 12:40am

WWIII, please respond to my previous post.

Mictlantecuhtli · March 13, 2016, 12:42am

Also, could we not say knowledge is filled with its own ego, biases, prejudices, and assumptions?

This requires a lot of belief and believing even without a hundred percent certainty or clarification.

Uccisore · March 13, 2016, 1:29am

So that’s what you chose to post instead of interacting with my argument? The argument you specifically asked me to provide you, I must add.

Why?

Did you notice that the SEP gives refutations of both alleged instances of knowledge without belief, or did you just paste that up there without actually reading the whole thing, in a similar manner to how you treat my posts?

Are you aware that posting examples from the SEP of epistemologists questioning the ‘belief’ criteria for knowledge refutes your oft made assertion that the belief criteria for knowledge hasn’t been sufficiently examined by epistemologists? Why would you refute your own position like that?

Arminius · March 13, 2016, 1:55am

Oh, yes, I did (with other words, of course), but you did not understand it.

Do you understand your own words?

Arminius · March 13, 2016, 2:55am

WW_III_ANGRY:

Arminius:

WW_III_ANGRY:

Why isn’t it true?

It is useless because without understanding nothing can be said to be of use. To ascribe a “use” for something, anything, requires understanding of what that “something, anything” is and does - and what it should do or does naturally. IF there’s no conscious awareness of existence, it doesn’t matter what anything does. Thus useless.

Like I said: Understanding in a very primitive sense does not mean what we understand when we use the word “understanding” in a human sense. Remember: Your thread is about belief and knowledge; and an amoeb does not need to understand what information means (you should not always confuse all living beings with human beings!), it does not need to believe or to know in order to be informed in the sense of “being in form”. “Information” originally comes from “being in form” (there is no need of belief and knowledge). Do you understand that?

You asked me what the common root is. I have given you the answer several times, but you have not understood it, and that is the problem, your problem.

Stones do not beleive and not know. Primitive living beings do not beleive and not know, but they are „in form“ (they live) without believing and knowing it.

That is great insight of yours as that receiving information is being informed. Is being informed mean understanding? Well, yes it does, essentially. I don’t know what you mean by primative, but any sort of knowledge is knowledge, regardless of how menial it is. Like I said, does an amoeba receiving information mean it is understanding it?

No.

Are you sure that you agree?

That is - again - not true. I gave you an advice (“you should not always confuse all living beings with human beings!”) but did not say that you stated this or that. Giving an advice does not necessarily mean that a statement was given in a text (in your case: your text in your posts) but that in could be in your thoughts. Note the subjunctive - “should”, “could” - in my sentences.

I think that you are confusing all living beings with human beings in your thoughts, not necessarily in your posted statements. Do you know the distinction (difference) of your thoughts and your posted statements? I am trying to understand why you are writing so much nonsense. Now my conlusion is: Your statements or your thoughts or both your statements and your thoughts are false - but never none of them.

The reverse is true. “Being informed” can but does not necessarily mean “understanding”. “Being informed” and “being in form” (it is like: “to live”) belong together, and this has primarily nothing to do with your interpretation of “understanding”. A cell does not need to humanly understand its information.

Remember: Your thread is about belief and knowledge. A cell does not have a belief and a knowledge in the sense that you mean. The “belief” and the “knowledge” of a cell are the same: information (coming in form, being in formed, being in form) in a primitive sense which means without understanding and all other mental processes an anthropocentric human being always hastily interprets into all living beings.

surreptitious57 · March 13, 2016, 3:22am

Being informed is not necessarily the same as understanding although it can be. What it does is provide one with information
But it says absolutely nothing about whether or not that information can be correctly processed or interpreted. If it can then
it is understood and if it cannot then it is not understood. Now to understand something is to know it. Since as I have already
said all knowledge is information but not all information is knowledge. And so knowledge is therefore a subset of information

surreptitious57 · March 13, 2016, 4:06am

rationalskepticism.org/post1 … n#p1939134

Uccisore · March 13, 2016, 4:38am

One of the main reasons why knowledge is best understood as a type of belief, in addition to what I’ve already given, is that knowledge is part of a continuum: there’s guesses and horrible reasoning and blind hopes on one end, and absolutely certain self-evident truths on the other, but there’s also every possible grade in between. Knowledge and believe are the same type of thing because there is clearly no hard break where one stops and the other begins. Whether or not information can be correctly processed is just one of those considerations- some knowledge doesn’t require much if any interpretation, some knowledge is an interpretation of some basic fact.

surreptitious57 · March 13, 2016, 5:15am

Knowledge is certainly part of a continuum with regard to science. This is because science is primarily an inductive discipline so deals
with what is probably true rather than what is definitely true. So it is an eternally self correcting system. For this is how it progresses

Uccisore · March 13, 2016, 5:53am

Yep. Science is one of those fields that if you plot it on the continuum of all of human knowledge, it would be somewhere in the middle- scientific claims are often very-well justified beliefs that don’t meet classic definitions for knowledge, since as you say they deal with probabilities. Fracturing belief and knowledge into two completely different things would leave us with no place to attribute scientific theories.

James_S_Saint · March 13, 2016, 10:38am