To the extent that "objective" is in opposition to "subjective" and whether something is "known" is an evaluation of subjects, I find the idea of "objective knowledge" to be non-sense. One might certainly say that any member of a class of subjects would judge the same given certain criteria, but that is not "objective" in the sense I believe most who use such a term would hope for.

Regarding my fear of objects, it is rarely the case that a thought will make my head explode, but a well swung hammer will. So if there is something for me to fear, I am confident that objects make the cut.

,

I've re-read your posts a few times, but I'm still not quite sure how to respond. Do you mind elaborating the point you wish to discuss?

Now you're just playing with language. Knowledge is provisionally verified information. — T Clark

But I’ve never verified it, provisionally or otherwise. I’ve just accepted that the reports of others (in word or picture) have been helpful before.

As to metaphysics, I am dancing on the door step of the distinction between subjective knowledge and intersubjective knowledge (while totally avoiding objective knowledge). I am not, however, dealing with the issue. For what it is worth, I am a process epistemologist and unconcerned with the “what there is”, rather I am concerned with what is done. The object is never accessible or knowable regardless of your metaphysics and so it isn’t helpful as anything besides a linguistic convenience to even make reference to it.

Nothing exists but me, and I don't exist either. — T Clark

That would be metaphysics (rather than epistemology) and I don’t talk about such things.

As for talking about myself, that is the way language works. It is simple enough to take for granted that “I” does some useful stuff when talking and that it makes for a convenient narrative device when trying to unify the noun that is telling then narrative, but we shouldn’t confuse acting as if for the sake of utility with either belief or argument.

Your point about Paris is pretty spot on. We fly to Paris when we want to see the Eiffel Tower and not to New York - not because we know that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, but because our best information makes it far more likely to find it there (if at all) rather than New York. So “knowledge” in that sense is the sort of thing that assists us in increasing the likelihood of desired outcome. What is interesting about this is “knowing” where the Eifell tower is is a bit of intellectual slight of hand - what we know is that “acting as if” regarding certain pieces of information from certain sources increases our chances of desired outcome and that it is convenient to claim knowledge with respect to such pieces of information even if a particular piece of information is wholly unrelated to any outcome we may desire. In other words, knowledge is typically communal rather than personal and the most important a bits of information (especially these days) are necessarily communal and outside the ability of any single person to test and/or apply to their purpose.

This is not nihilism, it's solipsism. Not the same thing. — T Clark

Not sure why you’d think that is solipsism and not nihilism. In this case, we are discussing epistemology and, so far as I know, epistemological nihilism makes the claim that no knowledge is possible while solipsism makes the claim that only one thing can be known. Where in my writing did I make the claim that something can be known, let alone the claim that only one thing can be known or that the only knowable thing is that my mind exists?

I long ago came to peace with the idea that non-referential indexicals and other tricks of language account for much of the problem of “my mind” and that my version of “mind” is both constructed and re-constructed so seamlessly that even if I conquered the idea that there was something to “I”, I’d hardly know what it is and would find that anything to be said about it is conjecture.

Frankly my views on it are anathema to a civilized audience.

Justification strikes me as an ethical evaluation, i.e. that given a particular set of circumstances (both with respect to X and the way in which we have decided X is acceptably established as true), one should believe X. So rather than doing the work of establishing knowledge from JTB by way of internal evaluation (“Do I have sufficient warrant to believe X” or “Do I have sufficient warrant to believe X is true?’), justification is actually the way in which we evaluate the claims of other people’s claims to knowledge. The reason that this distinction is important is because we simultaneously 1) recognize (at least currently) that belief formation is not necessarily (or perhaps even a little bit) the result of some higher order epistemic evaluation that compels belief and 2) demand that the only warrant for belief is higher order epistemic evaluation. This highlights a feature of justification - that it is a social phenomenon about mental coercion rather than an effort at accurate description about why an individual assents to a particular belief.

In essence, I am arguing that “knowledge” is about social conventions (yes, yet another entry in our language community) and the power to demand either that people accept or reject a particular belief. There is no content to discussions of knowledge aside from “you should agree with me” because I (or my reasoning) can compel you. Differently, arguments about epistemology are probably arguments about impotence of intellect.

T Clark’s contributions are (at least on first blush) a refreshing break from the tyranny of conventional JTB talk. Even if his ideas ultimately lead to a social construction of provisional knowledge which people should accept given the current warrant, it leaves room in the conversation for people to give warrant as needed to their particular circumstance where the consequences of being wrong become unacceptable for the individual. I get that the intellect (the power of the pen) is meant to be greater than the body (the power of the sword), and one can see the development of ideas about truth and knowledge independent of conventional power being worthy pursuits, but it is consequences outside of our individual control that end up playing the bigger role in our social expressions of belief, truth, justification, and knowledge.

One does not define things logically (cf. systematic definition), one simply defines them and sees what, if anything, their logic can do with those definitions.

Regardless, the problem remains unaddressed. You place “religious belief” in a category of belief defined by criteria that are not features of religious belief except on your definition

all mixed and formed into a concrete slab of hard shell faith — Corvus

I wonder what you make of religious existentialists who spend lots of time doubting and making it abundantly clear that certainty is far from their minds.

Unfortunately, I am a nihilist so….

On the upside, I like T Clark’s recent quote.

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' — T Clark

So I’d say something is true when it would be counterproductive to say it is false, i.e. so contrary to the expected social/linguistic norm that denying the gold seal of my affirmation that a fact “is true” undermines my relationships. My problem is that I think my assent (provisional or otherwise) adds nothing to the conversation of “is true” because the state-of-affairs is what it is regardless. Do I believe “a fact is true”? Why invest so much emotion or mental energy? I’d go with, “Does acting as if appear to further my agenda more than acting as if not?” Indeed, I am known to say things like, “I know that Australia exists and it is true that Australia exists, but I don’t believe it.” (Sorry Banno). Like I get it, in our language game and bandying about of epistemic criteria, Australia makes the cut for all purposes but some perverse skeptical doubt. Never-the-less, I have no vested interest in the truth of Australia’s existence and until it matters, my actual assent is neither here nor there.

Or if we are to cut to the chase, I might very well end up saying that I subscribe to the deflationary theory of truth in so far as I am going to make sense of all of this truth talk. Appending “is true” to something is more like an amplifier/social cue than conveying any new semantic content. Simply asserting the proposition “X” is sufficient for my analysis.

So where are we left with your JTB on my view? Not in a very good place. Facts don’t matter, truth is meaningless, and belief is an aside. You may not wish to get me started on justification.

Are we talking about facts or facts? So far as I can tell, facts are the things we putatively make statements about and then judge such statements true when they stand in the right relationship to those facts or facts are the sorts of things from which we understand “true” in a particular language in-so-far as the way use true is in reference to facts.

In either case, facts simply are and we assess in which circumstance we rightly say “are true.” Facts don’t establish themselves and have no agency to do so, nor are they evaluating truth. We establish something as a “fact” in our language and murmur “are true” in relation thereto, but the state-of-affairs that we may be (or may not be) making reference to when we discuss facts is entirely independent of our reference.

I feel that religious beliefs are totally different types of beliefs to other beliefs in that it doesn't need rationalising, evidence or explanation. — Corvus

This is probably the trouble. Beliefs simply are - the way that they arise is the subject of study in a variety of fields. You seem to have reached a conclusion about how "religious beliefs" arise that is totally counterfactual, arrived at through no rationalizing, evidence, or explanation, but will now hold firm to your conviction. Is your feeling a religious belief?

One need only to look at the similarity of theistic expression to see that it is a cultural phenomenon constructed in individual interactions, explicit schooling, communal expression, etc. Indeed, someone's theistic commitments can be viewed as an interpretive lens through which to evaluate "evidence" and "explanation." For instance, if someone is narrowly missed by a car speeding past them, a theist might say, "What a wonderful example of God's providence" and add the experience to the otherwise overflowing pool of evidence of god's presence in the world, while a non-believe might say, "About time Musk got those damn Tesla's to stop driving in to people in crosswalks" and not even assign the experience to the "evidence for/against god" bucket. Same experience, different epistemic placement, and belief about god utterly unchanged.

Reasons are hardly any different and even in formal language, one evaluates the soundness of an argument by whether a false statement is the conclusion of true premises. Bearing in mind that argument has no relationship to truth (we can argue about theories of truth later), if someone's truth, i.e. "God does not exist" is denied as the conclusion of an argument, one can be relatively confidant that the person will deny the reasoning as being sound just as assuredly as they will attack the premises. Regardless, reason is often the tool used to convince other people to believe what we want, not the tool we let others use to change our beliefs.

The issue is not that theist lacks evidence of necessity, but that certain sorts of theists maintain beliefs in a god whose attributes do not lend themselves to typical epistemic evaluation. There are many non-religious beliefs that suffer the same trouble, e.g. that what is is reliable indication of what was or what will be. After I demonstrate to you that memory is constructed and human reasoning is flawed, you will still go on believing what you will even though there isn't a stitch of "evidence" that you could produce that would support your belief.

I couldn't imagine. Sorry. — Corvus

Certainty is hardly justified here. I'm sure you can imagine lots of things if you were willing to be a little less certain.

Corvus,

Though there is some romantic appeal to the idea that beliefs arise from some sort of mental evaluative process, I don't think that I agree, especially when it comes to things like "God".

Whatever Kant thinks about the topic, a six-year-old believes in God long before they would say "I believe it will rain tomorrow." People are socialized to certain sorts of belief and engaging with those beliefs as if they arise from abstracted naval gazing is off.

For my part, finding useful distinctions of belief is related to the context. When discussing what is meant by "I believe in God" by the average theist or "I don't believe in God" by the average atheist or "I don't know if I believe in God" by the average agnostic, trying to parse between belief that stems from higher thought or lower thought is neither the difference between the views nor relevant to the way by which the holders of the views came to them. Sure, belief in god seems awfully more important than "I believe it will rain tomorrow," but that is a fact about how we think about god talk rather than belief being a special case when talking about god.

I think a quick detour is in order. A language community is not meant to be simply "people who are using language with one another limited to the context of the use of language", but rather a community that broadly gives meaning to symbols (be that a Mass or a war or a word like "dog") in similar ways (without delving into whether each member of the community uses or interprets each symbol or collection of symbols in precisely the same way). So yes, historically religious conduct is much larger than words (or "language" in that type of context), but it was not my intent to limit language communities to just words.

As for Jim deciding for herself whether or not her conduct is religious, I wonder what Jim's opinion ads to our understanding. For instance, in the case referenced, the chaplain is a member of religious order, but there still seems to be quite the debate as to whether his atheism precludes his religiosity regardless of his views on the matter. If meaning is use and Jim calls herself religious, I suppose it is one more piece of evidence in favor of Jim being so, but as participants in the language community (or at least this forum), don't we get to evaluate Jim's conduct for ourselves?

The things of ultimate concern, Ciceronianus? I believe they include Epicureanism, Eudaimonia, and cats on mats, no? Or maybe it is desire is the root of all suffering and self-abnegation is the way out. I never can remember.

Corvus,

Your division seems a bit "just so" and contrary to how most people would understand the interaction of belief and certainty.

"I believe X" is a statement of sentiment, i.e. that the utterer assents to the truth of a proposition.
"I know X" is statement of sentiment to the extent it can be reformulated as the claim "I believe I know X", but it is more importantly a claim about epistemic warrant, i.e. that the criteria for knowledge of the utterer are met.

"I believe my mother is my mother" is a sentiment.
"I know my mother is my mother" is a claim.

Depending on definitions, it may be that your mother is not your mother, e.g. you were stolen as a baby and raised by someone pretending to be your mother in a context where all available evidence indicates that she is your biological mother despite her not being so.
On the one hand, the epistemic claim is prone to intersubjective analysis (or even self-analysis) in-so-far as we can both identify the epistemic criteria and the facts/claims/etc. relevant to that criteria and make our own decision about whether the utterer knows his mother is his mother or not. That is to say, we can respond "You are wrong!" to a claim of knowledge, but not to a claim of belief (though we could question the accuracy of the self-report of belief). Both of these things are aside from certainty.

"I am certain x" is a sentiment about both knowledge and belief.

When one is certain, one is stating their belief that both a) they assent to the proposition "X is true" and that b) they assent to the proposition that "There are no further factors relevant to my epistemic criteria that could change my claim to knowledge." Again, this is the sort of thing subject to analysis such that at the end we can say, "Despite your certainty, you were wrong."

As this relates to atheism and theism and agnosticism, earlier posts have variously touched on these themes. Atheists and theists are generally making a statement of belief, i.e. "I do not believe in X" or "I do believe in X" without necessarily expressing their claim as to epistemic warrant for belief or claims of knowledge or their belief as to whether additional information is available that would change their evaluation of knowledge.

An agnostic seemingly withholds belief as a result of their commitment either to belief only in the face of certainty or belief after sufficient epistemic warrant to claim knowledge. In some cases the agnostic makes the claim that there can be no factors which are relevant to epistemic analysis and so both knowledge and certainty are impossible. Regardless, the lack of certainty is not a feature exclusive to the agnostic.

Consider a much less loaded case - you are sick and wish to see a doctor. You may very well have doubts about whether the doctor can help you and you are far from certain that they will, and yet you believe that the doctor will help you.

Thanks. I'll keep the link thing in mind for awhile.