Ok, I see, but there’s a problem which is considering the first principle, which is here that when I am not thinking I know that I can think, as « known ». How do we know the first principle, if the first principle is meant to be more fundamental than knowledge itself ? Maybe there is another formulation of this idea that avoids involving knowledge.




So are some axioms more reasonable than others or are axioms necessarily arbitrary ?

We often hear that courage is doing something even when one feels afraid.

What is fear?

I have exposed myself to fearful circumstances that were highly foolish and irrational. I do not consider doing so to be virtuous. Often, the motivations driving me in those moments seemed to come from some kind of clinging or resistance to change. I was trying to find some way to have control over the unraveling of events and circumstances that were already in motion. I might have then mistakenly thought that this was admirable or some quality to be appreciated but in reflection of those actions now, I see that this was only ignorance underneath the guise of courage. We can tell ourselves anything to justify behavior if we are determined to hold on to those belief structures. These were resistances to the flow and those actions put me in real danger that was harmful to myself and those around me.

I have likewise acted consciously and mindfully, choosing to move in a direction that seemed unfamiliar and thus was perceived as frightening when in reality, there was little real threat or danger and the outcome was more beneficial, healing and useful overall despite my resistances to traveling in that unfamiliar territory. In those circumstances, what I thought was fear was my mind distorting and attempting to predict an outcome which was unknown to me. Allowing myself to explore, remain curious and do something outside of my comfort zone even though I felt what I perceived to be fear required an inner strength and willingness that might resemble courage. — Universal Student

But what if you did not have fear when going in that unfamiliar direction? Would it be courageous anyway?

I think that my meaning is that an authentic quality of virtue is true. — Universal Student

I still don’t understand what « authenticity » means when talking about virtue, could you please explain some more?

"Reveals" implies that the virtue was always there, within the wisdom. — Universal Student

So if I understand well, wisdom finds the virtue and allows it to be expressed ?

Dormant perhaps, to be awakened and brought forth into potential. — Universal Student

So those qualities are present in the mind but they aren’t necessarily expressed?

Maybe the point is preciously that we are tempted by them? How could virtue exist, without the opportunity to restrain from temptation of the corresponding vice? It seems like we need contrast and comparison to maintain a balance of these existing things. — Universal Student

That is if you define vice as the temptation to do wrong. But couldn’t vice be defined as giving in to that temptation, in opposition to virtue which itself implies refusing to follow it?

This could be a possibility, only that I don't undestand what do you mean by "the ground on which knowledge stands". :smile: An explanation and an example would allow me to undestand it ... — Alkis Piskas

My understanding of it is that it is our means for gaining knowledge.

BTW, your very interesting topic will offer me the opportunity to learn soon more about the foundation of knowledge, a subject that I had never considered studying up to now. Thank you for this! :smile: — Alkis Piskas

Hopefully it will be as useful as you think it is then.

Syād, post-Agrippa('s trilemma) life has been tough for dogmatists. The quest to find a firm foundation for knowledge, the epistemic bedrock as it were, is an ongoing enterprise and the 3 approaches (infinitism, foundationalism, coherentism) still don't qualify as safe harbor. Instead of solving the problem, they merely ignore it. It's kinda like a patient who visits a doctor complaining of a headache, and the doctor, instead of prescribing medication, tells the fellow that, despite the pulsating waves of pain, there's no headache! :snicker: — Agent Smith

Perhaps instead of searching for the epistemic bedrock, it would be better instead determine whether or not such a bedrock exists.

Use theorems, proofs and axiomatic systems (i.e. indefeasible reasoning). — 180 Proof

Why do you think it’s indefeasible ? There’s nothing stopping us to question the axioms or the rules of the systems.

One should not understand this compulsion to construct concepts, species, forms, purposes, laws ('a world of identical cases') as if they enabled us to fix the real world; but as a compulsion to arrange a world for ourselves in which our existence is made possible:we thereby create a world which is calculable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us.

Our cognitive apparatus is not organized for 'knowledge.'

[T]he aberration of philosophy comes from this:instead of seeing logic and the categories of reason as means to the adaptation of the world to ends of utility (that is, "in principle," for a useful falsification) men believe to possess in them the criterion of truth or reality.
~Nietzsche — Pantagruel

Indeed, even the “tools for knowledge” we have created have led to the conclusion through evolutionary biology that our cognitive abilities evolved not for the sake of having more knowledge, but for the sake of evolutionary fitness. However, perhaps evolutionary fitness and knowledge are linked in some way, as knowing what kind of world one lives in helps a lot for survival and reproduction. But then again, knowledge of abstract concepts is not really useful in terms of evolutionary fitness, so perhaps we know more about concrete objects than we do about our environment and the objects in it.

I agree with Habermas, extending this reasoning, that in the context of this "transcendentally-logically conceived pragmatism" there are a wide array of "knowledge-constitutive and knowledge-legitimating interests" beyond the merely logical and technical. — Pantagruel

What do you mean exactly by “transcendentally-logically conceived pragmatism” and “knowledge-constitutive and knowledge-legitimating interests” ?

We cannot put forth foundationalism with certainty. — Manuel

Indeed we cannot. In fact we cannot put forth any theory of knowledge at all with certainty, because to do so implies that we assume some things about knowledge and how it is gained, else we can’t know whether the theory is correct or not.

we have a certain mechanism or capacity to acquire knowledge, yet we do not know what these mechanisms are. — Manuel

I think we do not even know whether those mechanisms exist in the first place because to know whether they exist we must assume their existence.

So we have to begin with consciousness as that with which we have the most confidence of existing and must merely do the best we can with what we are given. — Manuel

And what are we given exactly?

From reading those articles, I think that the general methodology of knowledge that comes out of them is:
Knowledge is gained through the verification of the logical consequences of propositions through empirical observation.
Propositions that pass a few tests are never truly certain, they could be falsified later on.
A proposition may be used to support other propositions.

Adopting this method allows for what could be described as inter-subjective verification of the falsifiable propositions through the means agreed upon by what we could call a community of knowledge-makers.

This seems to me to be an efficient way of gaining empirical knowledge, perhaps even the most efficient, because if we can’t get out of our own subjective experience, then we may as well take it as our basis because it’s the closest thing to an objective world we have. It also allows for precise verification which makes the acquisition of knowledge more clear and precise.

But for knowledge about more abstract objects, such as mathematics, we need another method. So what do you think is the most efficient way to gain knowledge about those abstract objects?

e.g. Neurath's Boat — 180 Proof

Interesting analogy. Problem being how do we know whether a plank is rotten if we aren’t sure of what standing on a plank that’s not rotten feels like ? How do we know if a belief is incoherent with “safer” beliefs if we don’t know what makes a belief safer ?

It's not a "seeming" (= apparent, appearing) inability. It's a logical statement and proposition. He said, "I cannot doubt of my existence while I doubt". Which is true, i.e. one cannot reject that. — Alkis Piskas

One cannot reject that on the grounds of logic. But if we’re searching for the ground on which knowledge stands, it’s at the very least questionable to use logic to guide us in our inquiries.

Descartes didn't use that statement "as a foundation of knowledge" or any kind of foundation for that matter. You and other people do. This statement became --I don't know when, but long after Descartes has made it-- "a fundamental element of Western philosophy, as it purported to provide a certain foundation for knowledge in the face of radical doubt." (Wikipedia). See, it is thought of (by people) as a certain foundation for knowledge. So, all that are interpretations. (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy does not even talk about any kind of "foundation for knowledge".) — Alkis Piskas

I don’t know much about Descartes or the different interpretations of his work, so maybe you’re right on this point.

Wisdom, on the other hand, may sometimes express misanthropic ideas. — Agent Smith

Why would wisdom express misanthropic ideas ?

My perspective is that aspects of wisdom are a threshold that once reached, resonate within the soul in such an way that virtue naturally will follow. — Universal Student

And where does courage fit into this according to you ?

true qualities of virtue lose their authenticity. — Universal Student

What does it mean for a quality of virtue to be authentic?

Virtue can be traced back to wisdom and wisdom reveals virtue. — Universal Student

What does it mean for wisdom to “reveal” virtue ?

I think that within the territory of virtue and wisdom, the innate qualities of the soul flourish in varying degrees of clarity. Examples of this would be honesty, integrity and resilience, to name a few.

By “innate” do you mean that they appear naturally, or that they are always there but must be cultivated by virtue and wisdom ?

There are other capacities involved in realizing full human potential. — Fooloso4

What are those other capacities then, and how do they relate to wisdom ?

I have some propositions for standards we could use. The first one is: “If a proposition is such that if it can be verified, then it must be true, it is a foundation for knowledge”. It seems that this standard could work because it keeps specifically those statements which are necessary in order for verification of the truth or falsity of any other proposition, nothing more, and nothing less. One such proposition being: “There exists a mind capable of belief”. If it can be verified, then there exists such a mind.

I also think that we should use the above standard because either we can know things, or we cannot know anything. If we can’t know anything, then we can’t know whether we can know anything. So, we are left with two possibilities: either we can know, or we cannot know whether we know. From a practical point of view, it would be better to assume we can know, because at the very least, we’ll have tried to know.

Next one is:”If a proposition is such that to deny it eventually leads back to it being true, that proposition is a foundation for knowledge”. It seems that this standard could work because it would implement all propositions which you must always consider. I think that one such proposition is the law of non-contradiction, because if one denies the law of non-contradiction, then one makes it possible for the law to be true and false at the same time, so it seems you can’t deny it completely.

I have knowledge already, there are things I know. Whether I have a philosophical foundation for this knowledge is irrelevant. I don't need a theory of knowledge to explain how I know things, instead I need to understand the phenomenon of "knowing". — IntrospectionImplosion

But it seems that if you don’t know how you can know things, then you can’t create new knowledge systematically.

A universal theory of knowledge requires certainty about things I don't think we can be certain about — IntrospectionImplosion

And what are those things?

Nice!

When you say that virtue is the natural outcome of wisdom, do you mean that wisdom always leads to virtue, or that wisdom encourages the flourishing of virtue ?

The term "state" can be misleading. It is not a condition. It is the realization or actualization of a capacity. — Fooloso4

So, wisdom means being wise, which means having realized one’s full potential?

Not blurry at all. There are no lines here either. Two things that are related are not each other, they are not one and the same thing. And that is the crux of the matter which you so adamantly don't want to see. — god must be atheist

Ok I see that my argument wasn’t very sound. But I think that knowledge, given that it implies at least in some way belief, may be classified as behavior, but of a mental kind. So, why do you think we shouldn’t consider knowledge as some kind of mental behavior?

It is not that wisdom is the state of human excellence, but that someone who has achieved human excellence is wise. It might be possible, for example, to be wise but in poor health. — Fooloso4

So "wisdom" is the state of being a wise person, which is having achieved human excellence ?

Going over what you have said, it seems to me that wisdom for you is the state of having achieved human excellence, so is my understanding here correct ?

Ok I see.

So, do you consider “wisdom” to be a synonym of “virtue” or do you think they relate to each other in a different way ?

A big subject, indeed the biggest. I would like to advise against taking the Cartesian "Universal Doubt" as a criterion for anything. You'll have noticed that there are all sorts of things which it never occurs to Decartes to doubt; that knowledge is possible, that "truth" and "error" are absolute categories, and that other beings exist, for example. He applies his own criterion in a very partial and disingenuous way. — alan1000

:up:

Descartes' cogito argument uses a well-known, time-tested, method of proof viz. reductio ad absurdum. I wonder if his argument makes any sense in paraconsistent logic or within a dialetheistic framework. :chin: — Agent Smith

I sense a pattern here (in the classical logic sense). The idea is to come up/discover a proposition whose falsehood would entail a contradiction. The cogito does just that. I have one viz. there are some truths. — Agent Smith

Maybe using logic at all for this issue is misguided, because to use logic would imply assuming its validity as a source of knowledge, so we’d already assume an answer from the start.

Pure gold, but it is not clear why you think this approach is primarily "practical", and does not form the basis of ALL knowledge? — alan1000

I think it is practical because it seems to me that it aims towards the facilitation of inquiry instead of aiming directly towards knowledge. Also, it looks as though it doesn’t consider the foundation as being an accurate representation of the actual state of affairs but instead as some assumptions from which we can start our inquiries.

But not everyone seeks knowledge of the good. They simply assume that what they seek, what they desire, is good. If, however, they were to seek the good rather than whatever it is they desire, then they would seek knowledge of the good. Or to put it differently, their desire would be to know the good. — Fooloso4

Yes, but knowledge is not a passive possession. It is the active state of the virtuous person who is wise. — Fooloso4

Ok I see.

So, first of all, what do you mean exactly by balance in one’s soul ?

Virtue is a mode of behaviour; wisdom is a mode of knowledge.
Behavour does not equal knowledge.
They can both be good, but that does not make them equal. — god must be atheist

I think the lines are kind of blurry here. Knowledge, no matter the definition given, definitely still is related in a very significant way to behavior. Does mental activity equal behavior then ?

the set of actions is a proper subset of the set of thoughts — Agent Smith

Interesting position, why do you think so ?

So if I understand your view of virtue and wisdom well, virtue is human excellence, which consists in balance in one’s soul and a person who has achieved human excellence is wise.

Also if I understand your view of goodness in general, the good is what everyone seeks, and what everyone seeks is knowledge of the good.

And then those two views are combined which leads to this reasoning:
P1: if to be virtuous is to have achieved excellence, this state of excellence being wisdom, and
P2: that knowledge of the good is the highest good, then
C: Knowledge of the good is virtue, which is wisdom.

Our actions may have unintended consequences. We may think doing this or that is good, but if the result is harm and suffering then is the action good? — Fooloso4

I think there are nuances in how responsible one is for the consequences, and that affects the morality of the action, the more responsible we are, that is, the more control one has over the consequences, the more the action is bad.

Rather than something achieved,the idea of human excellence is something to aspire to, like the just city/soul in the Republic, an image in speech. And, as with the discussion in the Republic, it depends not simply on an equilibrium, but the right balance of the parts, each seeking its own desire. — Fooloso4

Ok I see. And what is knowledge’s place in this ?

I think it depends on who uses the words. Someone who thinks that virtue is equal to good would mean the same thing by both words, while someone else would mean that good is a word to define, and virtue is an idea that may or may not be the exact definition of good. Someone else may think that good is the fulfillment of one’s purpose and that virtue is the means for achieving it.

What is good is not limited to what is virtuous. — Fooloso4

What then are those other good things other than virtue ? And what is it that makes something good ?

I

The good, according to Plato and Aristotle, is what we all seek. We do not, however, always agree on what the good is. In distinction from others, the philosopher seeks the good in the sense of inquiry into the question of what the good is. — Fooloso4

Ok I see.

Although we cannot control the consequences of our actions, we are not indifferent to them, they matter. — Fooloso4

Yes, we shouldn’t be indifferent to them, but I think that doesn’t mean that they can be good or bad, it means that we have to consider them when making a decision, but what is good or bad, in the end, is the action we take.

The Greek term translated as virtue is arete. It means the excellence of a thing. Human excellence is the realization of human potential. Someone who has attained human excellence is wise. — Fooloso4

So if I understand well, you think that to be wise is to have realized human excellence, and that to be wise is to have achieved some equilibrium of the soul ?

Rather than goodness being what gets one closer to that telos, what gets one closer to that telos is what is good, what is in accord with human nature. — Fooloso4

Ok I see.

If we look at the act itself we might regard it as good, but that does not mean it is a virtuous act — Fooloso4

If virtue = goodness, then wouldn’t that mean that a good act is also a virtuous act ? Or do you think that virtue is not equal to goodness ?

If what we regard as good in the act is not what was intended then the act was not virtuous even if the consequences are regarded as good. — Fooloso4

Yes, but goodness may not lie at all in the consequences in actuality. I think goodness lies only in the action and in the virtue, so the consequences are neither good nor bad, because it seems to me that the domain of morality is human action, as it’s the only thing under our direct control.

It requires continued work in order to maintain:

a stable equilibrium of the soul, — Fooloso4

The effort is to maintain a stable equilibrium of the soul. It is in this state of being that we are most likely to make good choices. This is not a state of knowledge. What the right choice is, is in many cases not something we know. Aporia is the condition for moral deliberation. — Fooloso4

Ok I see, but I don’t see how this ties into the issue of whether virtue is equal to wisdom.

But that is not what Plato and Aristotle thought. — Fooloso4

Does it matter what they thought ?

But for the purpose of this discussion, what is meant by knowledge is not justified true belief. — Fooloso4

If those are the terms on which you want to start from, so be it.

It means, as 180 Proof pointed out that hexis is a matter of praxis of active doing rather than a passive condition. It is not as if one attains a state of knowledge from which one can then act virtuously based on that knowledge. There is still, in particular situations, the need for moral deliberation. — Fooloso4

But the point of moral deliberation is to attain a state of knowledge from which we can act virtuously.

but to make the right choice in an attempt to do what is best. — Fooloso4

So, if I understand, we must put in continuous effort to make the right choice, and that right choice is knowledge?

Human experience is not the sort of thing that can be stepped into and/or out of to begin with — creativesoul

Yes, and it seems to me it is because we’re trapped in it.

so it makes no sense at all to claim that doing so is needed for anything else at all. — creativesoul

What do you mean exactly by “it makes no sense” ?

Understanding how language creation and/or acquisition happens leaves no room at all for serious well founded doubt regarding whether or not an external world exists. — creativesoul

I think it does leave room though. I think people acquire langage by noticing patterns in the way others use words to refer to concepts or objects. But those patterns are patterns in their experience. Whether or not this experience is representative of an external material world, that is the issue.

Of course, you might ask “then how come we refer to the same things, with the same words ? Wouldn’t that mean we all have a common experience, which would be at the very least sufficient proof of a an external material world ?” This argument can be answered to in multiple ways, some more skeptic than others, but the answer I’d give is: assuming that we do indeed use the same words to refer to the same patterns in experience, all we can know from that fact is that there are patterns existing across all of human experience, we can go a step further and induce that assuming there are systems causing all those different experiences such that they are not random, those systems most likely are similar, and we can go a step further again with induction and say that the input of those systems are likely similar too, and that that input is information from a common, shared external world. But notice we have arrived to this conclusion with inductive reasoning, so each step further is more risky than the last one.

Language creation seems to me to be much more of a historical and linguistic than a philosophical issue, so I’m going to sit this one out.

As I see it, this is a language trap. That it is impossible for one to step out of subjective experience is not an empirical hypothesis. It's just a lesson in metaphysical English, an articulation of how concepts tend to be used together by a particular, eccentric community (us), often mistaken for facts about immaterial entities like consciousness and knowledge and sensations. — Pie

:up:

Unfortunately, philosophy must be done within the limits of our concepts and language, so we’re going to have to be content with this, at least for now.

Children can learn virtues — Athena

:up:

they lack the years of experience required for wisdom — Athena

It seems to me that years of experience are neither necessary nor even sufficient for wisdom. They can definitely help foster it, but years of experience are useless without the use of reason to extract knowledge from them. Of course children have neither fully developed reason nor years of experience, but I’d say that, on average, they have some wisdom.

moderation must go with courage or you get a nut case with very bad judgment such as someone who has gone berserk. — Athena

:up:

he first discovers what sort of thing a virtue is by observing that the goodness is never in the action but only in the doer. — Fooloso4

Given that the main preoccupation of ethics at that time was the telos of human beings, it seems to me that goodness would be what gets one closer to that telos. So goodness would lie both in the action and the doer.

Socrates makes the point that knowledge can never be a mere passive possession, stored in the memory the way birds can be put in cages. The word for that sort of possession, ktÎsis, is contrasted with hexis, the kind of having-and-holding that is never passive but always at work right now. Socrates thus suggests that, whatever knowledge is, it must have the character of a hexis in requiring the effort of concentrating or paying attention. A hexis is an active condition, a state in which something must actively hold itself, and that is what Aristotle says a moral virtue is. [emphasis added]

Interesting point. But a little vague it seems to me. If we take the traditional definition of knowledge as justified true belief (at least just for the purpose of that discussion), and that we say that it is something requiring mental effort, what does it mean exactly? Does it mean that we have to continuously put in effort to justify it ? Or does it mean that we have to constantly put in effort to believe in it ? Or both ?

Ok I see.

Knowing is not enough because unless one acts one does not get rid of the phobia — Tobias

:up:

I imagine from there we can generalize and conclude that there is more to virtuous action than knowledge. So it seems virtue is not equal to knowledge.

And now we have also distinguished between wisdom and knowledge. So it seems the conclusion for now is: wisdom is equivalent to virtue but not equivalent to knowledge.

one cannot see that colours are essentially seen. That is a self-evident truth of reason, not something we are aware of sensibly. — Bartricks

Ok, I understand now.

But, hey, you still didn't answer me! :smile: — Alkis Piskas

Sorry for that! Do you mind saying what your reply was ?

Because unless our sensations resemble the world they are telling us about - and tell us about it in that way - they will not constitute perceptions of the world. — Bartricks

Ok I agree.

We do perceive an external sensible world. — Bartricks

This seems to me like quite the claim to make. Why do you think so ?

If our sensations were merely providing us with information about the world, then we would not be perceiving the world by means of them (that was the point the air traffic controller example was designed to illustrate - acquiring information about a matter is not the same as perceiving it). — Bartricks

:up:

Sensations can only resemble other sensations. — Bartricks

Resemblance in what regard ? What properties are you talking about when you talk about resemblance between sensations?

You can, but would that be virtuous? It hibk that in this ethical scheme the right thing to do is to try to get rid of this phobia — Tobias

The right thing to do is indeed to get rid of the phobia, but is knowing that you must get rid of it sufficient to get rid of it, or are there other factors other than knowledge at play ?

Sorry for not answering to you all earlier. I’ll do my best to answer faster from now on.

Regarding the myth of recollection ( anamnesis ) if one does not already have some sense of virtue how can it be recognized? If virtue is completely absent then it cannot be taught. It must in some sense already be present in a person. — Fooloso4

Good point. But that does not rule out the possibility that the sense of virtue may actually be something that originated completely from within the virtuous. Yes, for virtue to be taught at any given moment, the student must already have some sense of virtue at that moment. But only at that moment. So that sense of virtue does not necessarily come from within the person, perhaps it is acquired when someone endowed with reason encounters some particular circumstances. But then again, reason is a virtue. So maybe sense of virtue = reason.

virtue to be singular, universal to any particulars — Antony Nickles

:up:

This desire for predictability and consistency comes from a need for the consequences of our actions to be known in advance; that, with knowledge, we could act and always be judged correct or right. Without meeting those requirements we are "soothsayers" or "prophets", simply guessing. — Antony Nickles

Unfortunately for us, doing the right thing always involves at least some amount of guessing. So perhaps Plato desires something that we cannot ever completely have.

Are these 4 virtues internally consistent? — Agent Smith

I think we can all agree that they are at least.