The facts that help you decide on your attitude are irrelevant to whether p is true or not. — Banno

Whether I believe that p and on what grounds is a matter that is entirely distinct from the question whether p is true. — Ludwig V

That's the part I'm questioning. What does it mean to you that something is true? I'm guessing it would be some version of Tarski truth. So how could that possibly be independent of the grounds of justification? That seems to be setting up truth as some quality or property that just is. But we all know that's not right: truth is a property/attribute/quality/judgment/or whatever of propositions, not objects.

So, is the idea that we can possess knowledge (i.e., possess beliefs that are justified and true) but we can never know that we possess knowledge (unless perhaps the object of knowledge is our own beliefs or experiences)? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not quite. I'm saying that this would be the unwelcome conclusion if this way of construing JTB is adhered to. To avoid this conclusion, I'm suggesting we alter or abandon JTB, not our confidence that we can know we have knowledge.

The Matrix Hypothesis I think is absurd, because it posits that there is a real world in which the virtual world we inhabit is sustained, and this means the need for explanation is just pushed one step further back. — Janus

But Descartes' doubt isn't about explanation. He believes it's possible to doubt whether my experiences are veridical -- that is, of the things they appear to be of. He's not questioning experience in general. The Matrix hypothesis would represent such a doubt.

any verdict I give on the truth or not of the information is inescapably only what I know or believe. — Ludwig V

This is the nub, I think: It can never be what you know, only what you believe. Never, that is, without raising the specter of the vicious circle. Because to already know that the piece of information is true, that knowledge would have to have been verified via JTB. (This all assumes you think JTB is a good yardstick for knowledge, of course.)

I think it is true that we can equally say that Macbeth is seeing something that isn't there or Macbeth thinks he sees something that isn't there. — Ludwig V

Good. Seems that way to me too.

We've talked about this in the context of Williams' book on Descartes. I think you're being too harsh.
— J
Oh dear! My memories of that are, I'm afraid, a bit vague. Perhaps I am being too harsh. — Ludwig V

Harsh on Descartes, not me, I hasten to say; your forum manners are impeccable. As for vague memories . . . don't get me started. Aging is a fog, obscuring near and far.

Dunno if any of this helps or not, — Mww

I appreciate it a lot, thanks.

The differences in the text is so subtle.
….In the Aesthetic, we have intuitions which are given as “the matter of objects”;
….In judgement of mathematical cognitions, we have “….exhibition à priori of the intuition which corresponds to the conception…” for which the matter would be irrelevant;
….In judgement of philosophical cognition we have conceptions which conform to the intuition insofar as “…the intuition must be given before your cognition, and not by means of it.…”. — Mww

Clearly these are differences, as you say. I'm focused still on the discussion in the Prolegomena, where Kant says:

In one way only can my intuition anticipate the actuality of the object, and be a cognition a priori, namely, if my intuition contains nothing but the form of sensibility, antedating in my mind all the actual impressions through which I am affected by objects. [Kant's italics] — Prolegomena 282

How do you interpret this? How might it apply to 7+5 and the use of fingers?

I think that the justifications are mostly the same sorts of facts that would show whether X is true or false. But there can be justifications to the effect that I am in a position, have the skills, to know - which are of a different kind or level. — Ludwig V

Yes, I think so too. Let's see what @Banno says, and then I'll try to show where I'm going with this.

We can loosen that requirement, and say that "X is true" is pre-JTB and therefore not a knowable instance of truth. This seems to resemble more closely our actual practice.
— J
It's true that we rarely consciously and specifically apply the JTB. It's a formalization of what (normally) we actually do in a messy, informal way. I don't understand what it would be for something to be "pre-JTB". — Ludwig V

By pre-JTB I mean that we would enter the "JTB situation" already believing that X is true. Our belief in X is not a result of what is about to happen if we successfully apply JTB, hence not knowledge. The difference between believing and knowing is important here. If, in trying to determine whether I possess a piece of knowledge, I ask myself, "Is X true?" (a JTB requirement for knowledge), I can only reply, "I believe so." I can't say, "I know it is," because this initiates the vicious circle.

Asking the question "what is a hallucination?" in the sense that you seem to mean it presupposes that a hallucination is an object. — Ludwig V

I didn't mean it to. It can just as well be an activity or an event. We can still ask what it is, taking "is" in one of its many familiar usages. The question was whether there's a "correct way" to describe the activity of hallucinating using the word "see." I'm saying, no, it's terminological; "see" can work either way.

The problem is that he does not consider what actual limitations there are on doubts, and reduces it to the possibility of saying "I doubt that..." in front of almost any proposition. But if we ask what the content, the reality, the significance, of the doubt is, we find nothing. — Ludwig V

We've talked about this in the context of Williams' book on Descartes. I think you're being too harsh. If it should turn out that I am really a brain in a vat or a Matrix-bound person, then my doubt about the objective references of my experiences is well-founded. It's not merely a linguistic construct. Indeed, this possibility seems much more plausible to me than the Evil Demon! -- though still pretty unlikely. In any case, perhaps we've just set different "limitations on doubts," and what seems doubt-worthy to me, doesn't to you. But surely this kind of doubt signifies more than nothing, wouldn't you say? It's a thinkable thought, and not nonsense.

In the case of the conception of a priori itself, Kant did not mean it with respect to time as such, but with respect to placement in the system as a whole. — Mww

Good.

To then say a priori, as it relates to time, is before experience, is not quite right, — Mww

Yes, that's what I was suggesting.

Now we see synthetic judgements a priori are only representations of a very specific cognitive function, a synthesis done without anything whatsoever to do with experience, and of which we are not the least conscious. — Mww

But then why does Kant say:

We must go beyond these concepts by calling to our aid some intuition which corresponds to one of the concepts -- that is, either our five fingers or five points . . . -- and we must add successively the units of the five given in the intuition to the concept of seven. — Prolegomena 268

But we stop dead in our cognitive tracks, when the very same synthesis is just as necessary but for which immediate mental manipulation is impossible. — Mww

Kant notes this in the same section: "larger numbers . . . however closely we analyze our concepts without calling intuition to our aid, we can never find the sum by such mere dissection."

the cognitive part of the system as a whole, and in particular the part which reasons, does something with the two given conceptions… — Mww

I still read this "something" as requiring intuition. Do you not see it that way?

OK. Bear with me. Let's say I'm in a "JTB situation"; that is, I want to find out whether I possess a piece of knowledge. Will the justifications that I cite -- the J in JTB -- for why I believe X refer to the same sorts of facts that, out in the world, would show whether statement X is true or false?

Example: X is "Taurize is a village in France." My justifications for believing X would be, let's say, "I've looked in a reliable atlas, and spoken to someone who's visited Taurize and confirms this." (And we could tighten this up ad infinitum, but you get the idea.) Now suppose I want to find out whether X is true -- whether Taurize really is a village in France. Would the facts necessary to do this be the exact same ones cited as my justifications for believing X? Are the two sets completely congruent?

The problem I have is that he doubts things on the mere logical possibility that he might be deceived by an Evil Demon. — Janus

This may seem like quibbling, but he doesn't actually doubt things. He points out that it would be possible to doubt them. Of course he knows that no sane person is going to doubt most of their own experience, but that doesn't satisfy his Method. He wants the grand prize -- absolute certainty, beyond even the possibility of doubt. I personally feel that we don't need that in order to do metaphysics and epistemology; Descartes disagreed, hence his Method. But we really shouldn't see him as raising "philosophers' doubts" for the sake of skepticism. He detested skepticism and believed he had refuted it. (And we have a perfectly good modern version of the Evil Demon: the "Matrix hypothesis.")

Justification is only for beliefs, not for those things known with certainty. — Janus

OK, that seems like a good way to look at it, with perhaps the caveat that it's reasonable also to ask, "Why are you certain?" or "What makes you rely on this experience?" (similarity to previous ones, presumably). These aren't requests for justifications in the same way that asking for a justification of a belief is, but their aim is to ask for an account, a rationale. I can't simply reply, "Well, I just do." This rarely comes up, of course, but it's worth noting.

Also, you can say that Descartes "feigned" skepticism, but he wasn't trying to fool himself or others. He wasn't just being annoying. He was trying to pursue a method he believed would lead, by elimination, to clear and certain knowledge.

Like @frank, I'm not sure I get this. "That is a prime number" is true (or false) regardless of what John thinks about it. The question is, How confident can he be that he knows which is which? Of course there are fuzzy cases, but let's just consider this straightforward one. Isn't he trying to bootstrap himself into a JTB?

Maybe this is a good way to frame the problem in terms of JTB:

Do I have to know that X is true in order to use it as the T in a JTB statement? Is that knowledge the result of a previous application of JTB? etc. I know you think this can be dissolved, but I still don't see how. Truth is certainly foundational to the whole set-up, I agree, but the question seems to be whether I have to know that X is true. We can loosen that requirement, and say that "X is true" is pre-JTB and therefore not a knowable instance of truth. This seems to resemble more closely our actual practice.

I cannot justify that I have that knowledge to you, if you believe me you take it on faith. — Janus

Agreed. I think we're speaking of self-justification here. Can you justify to yourself that "I am thinking X" is necessarily true? This starts to become merely verbal, depending on what sort of thing you think a justification is. Self-evidence, on some accounts, requires a justification, or at least an explanation. On other accounts, it's the very thing that obviates justification. Does it much matter which construal we pick? What matters is the concepts in play, not our terms for them.

But your description is excluding the "straightforward" answer that the drunk is hallucinating a pink elephant. — Ludwig V

That was kinda deliberate. For what is a hallucination, and how do we talk about it? Is there an obvious consensus? Some would describe hallucinating as "seeing something that isn't there"; others would describe it as "thinking you see something that isn't there". Is there a meaningful difference, apart from choice of terms?

In a sense, of course, it just kicks the can down the road, — Ludwig V

Precisely, as I just described. But the can isn't important, in my opinion, so this shouldn't bother us.

I think your knowledge of Kant is deeper than mine, so please say if you don't agree with my interpretation of these passages in the Prolegomena.

A priori means “prior to experience.” If you tell me you have seven beers in the fridge and I bring to another five to give you, I can know you have twelve beers without opening the fridge door. That’s a trivial example, but it illustrates the point: the truth of 7+5=12 doesn’t depend on checking the fridge. — Wayfarer

Right, that's the standard interpretation, but think about it: Prior to how much experience? Can I know about the 12 beers if I don't know what beer is? Can I know it without knowing about counting? Can I know what 7 or 5 or 12 anythings are without lived experience? So where do we imagine the "a priori judger" standing, so to speak, when they make their judgments? (BTW, you can see immediately that this is yet another place where Rodl's important questions about propositions surface.)

Indeed. Hectoring rather than conversation.

It’s a perfect case of the synthetic a priori . . . — Wayfarer

The debate about this often centers on how "prior" the a priori is supposed to be. What is the ideal situation in which an a priori judgment is imagined to take place? Prior to what, exactly, can we know that 7+5=12? Prior to what can we know that antimatter exists? Prior to (or independent of) observations, perhaps, but prior to any experience of the world whatsoever? Priori to knowing how to count? "A priori" and "a posteriori" have conventional interpretations, and a better Kantian scholar than I could perhaps tell us precisely what Kant envisaged, but the division doesn't feel like a "natural kind" to me.

Yes, it's just terminology, as I said. I certainly don't feel strongly about it. We can use an ambiguous term like "see" any way we want to stipulate, as long as everyone knows what that is!

hallucinations and mirages are not introspections (aka, self-examinations of one’s own being, thoughts, etc.) … but imaginings (such as can occur in daydreams) seen with the mind’s eye — javra

That sounds right -- but it also means that we can't say the drunk saw a pink elephant. Seeing with the mind's eye is a metaphorical extension of what it means to see something.

I can't help feeling that applying the description "pink elephant" to whatever I am seeing is not immune from mistake. — Ludwig V

I'd say the mistake is in the use of "see".

But in any case, this is about choice of terminology. We could say to the drunk, "No, you didn't," and mean either "You saw nothing" or "What you saw wasn't a pink elephant." Neither one is obviously correct, apart from pedantry. But we're all three dividing up the conceptual territory the same way. (And I think @sime is getting at this too, with their A and B analyses of beliefs.)

Oh good lord, sorry, I meant the Prolegomena. :grimace:

Synthetic a priori = adds new content, but is knowable independently of experience.

That last category was Kant’s unique insight. Mathematics is built around it — “7+5=12” is not analytic, because “12” isn’t contained in “7+5,” but it’s still a priori. — Wayfarer

Let's slow down on this one. Kant doesn't speak about "content" in the [Prolegomena] (where the 7+5 example is discussed). He says that the concept of "12" is not the same as the concept of "7+5". According to him, we need an "intuition" ("perception" would probably be our way of saying it today) of the physical in order to discover "12". (He suggests that our five fingers, and then seven fingers, would do the trick.) "Hence our concept is really amplified by the proposition 7+5 = 12, and we add to the first concept a second concept not thought in it." What Kant regards as analytic here is the judgment that 7 and 5 must add up to some number -- but this does not tell us what particular number.

The place where this can be challenged, I think, is the reliance on intuition. If this is truly the case, don't we have to question whether the judgment is indeed a priori? Kant addresses this in Sec. 281: "How is it possible to intuit anything a priori?" I don't want to take this any farther, except to say that the case for math as a series of synthetic a priori judgments, even on Kant's own terms, is far from closed.

But Wittgenstein disagrees with Moore’s depiction of this form of certainty as a kind of empirical knowledge. — Joshs

Yes, that's a good link to Moore and Witt. In this context, I'm not so concerned to ask whether there is such a thing as direct knowledge -- or rather, I take it as given that there is. The problem is to explain what we mean by that, and what can count as a justification for our confidence in it. Witt, as I understand him, is raising a doubt not about the "knowledge" part, but about whether it is empirical. That's also what I was moving toward, in saying "If 'I am having thought X' needs a justification, we'd have to look elsewhere." Hinges and forms of life are good candidates.

I agree that when it comes to claims of knowledge, justification is required. On the other hand I know many things with certainty that require no justification simply because they are directly known―in these cases justification just doesn't enter the picture. — Janus

And this resembles the "A or ~A" case, where it's difficult to see it in terms of justifications. Still, I think the conclusion we ought to draw from this is that we're not quite sure what a justification is. What sorts of reasons may play a part in justification? (We noted earlier that a "good justification" is very unclear, in many cases.) If you ask me for my justification in believing "I am having thought X right now" and I reply, "I am directly observing this occurrence as we speak," have I offered a justification? Perhaps so; that's one way of understanding what reasons count as justification, though I'd probably also need to say something about the previous reliability of my direct observations. Or we might conclude that "directly observing" and "having" are two ways of saying the same thing, so no actual reason has been offered. Then, if "I am having thought X" needs a justification, we'd have to look elsewhere.

The problem I think you see is of your own creation. Or so it seems to me. — Banno

You may well be right. But I haven't yet satisfied myself one way or the other. Your input, as always, is appreciated.

That bird looks sad. Is he a cousin of the fly in the fly-bottle? (I also notice that he could leave the cage anytime he wanted to.)

it could have been better written. — javra

No worries, I'm not always a model of precision myself.

the proposition of “the planet is physical and roughly spherical” is taken to be an instance of knowledge, thereby being [a] JTB claim — javra

OK, good, so on this construal, JTB becomes a reasonable description of our ontic and epistemological requirements. We're not saying that "The planet is physical and roughly spherical" is known to be true, pre-JTB. Nothing is known to be true, in that non-fallibilist sense.* Rather, we bring our belief and our (presumably pretty impressive) justifications, and fill in the "T" with some such formula as you used above. The result is knowledge. This should make us suitably modest about what knowledge actually consists of, but at the same time extremely confident that the target statement is knowledge if anything is.

* The monkey wrench is logical and other putatively analytical truths. I think such statements require a different series, and type, of arguments to explain what knowledge of them would mean. Historically, was JTB proposed as being useful for determining that kind of knowledge? I'm used to thinking of it as an attempt to evaluate knowledge claims about the world, but I don't know the back-story. There's something odd about asking whether "If A, then not (~A)" is a belief, or how we might justify it. But I'll leave that for others.

You seem to be expecting something from the JTB account that it does not provide. It's not a theory of truth. — Banno

That's true (sorry!), but it's a theory of knowledge that includes, as one of its criteria, that a statement be true. So if JTB tells us that X is known, it must also tell us at the same time that X is true.

But see my response to @javra, below.

This is a very helpful analysis. It sharpens the question, Are we meant to take the knowledge guaranteed by JTB as infallible or certain (@Janus's question)? You argue convincingly that we can't -- that this can't be the point of JTB. So if we're happy to substitute "has no reason to suppose that one’s 'belief that X' is not in fact ontologically true" as a synonym for "knowledge", then all is well. I don't know whether every proponent of JTB would be happy with this, though.

To try to reduce possible confusion, how this works in practice: “I know that the planet is physical and roughly spherical,” is a claim of JTB. — javra

Here, I wonder whether you misstated your target sentence. Are you talking about a JTB claim for "The planet is physical and roughly spherical" or for "I know that the planet is physical and roughly spherical"? A great deal depends on this, so I'll wait until you reply before going on.

inside reasoning is non meta reasoning. And must be used to determine truth of an argument generally. Rather than using a meta lens like psychology or sociology or genetics.
— Jack2848

Yes, that's right. Typical 'outside' claims, of the type Nagel is criticising in that essay, are claims that attempt to justifiy reason based on evolutionary biology. — Wayfarer

And I would add that such claims help themselves to terms like "justify" or "explain" as part of their discourse about why reason can be reduced to biology! This would seem to be a performative contradiction, as Nagel says. Or else our entire understanding of what it means to justify or explain something has to change radically.

Q1a. Yes.
Q1b. Yes.
Q1c.Yes - follows from Q1a: if you believe it, you believe it to be true. — Banno

But Q1c was not about belief, but rather truth. Yes, it follows from believing something that I also believe it to be true, but that's not a reply to Q1c, which asks "Is it true?" Nothing I believe can supply the answer; it depends on the facts.

JTB is supposed to help us evaluate knowledge claims -- keep us epistemologically honest. And on this construal, it can't.
— J
It doesn't tell us if they are true or not, so much as if they are known or not. — Banno

That's what I don't see how to separate. We both agree that only true things can be known. So if JTB tells us that X is known, it must also tell us at the same time that X is true.

I'm good with all that. Just wanted to make the case that almost anything we claim to be true requires some (potential) justification.

If something is true by definition or if something is logically self-evident, or if the proposition concerns something being directly observed, then I would say we need no further justification. — Janus

I agree. But all three of these things -- truth by definition, logical self-evidence, and the reliability of direct observation -- are ways of demonstrating justification. To understand this, imagine explaining any one of them to an intelligent child. They all involve steps, cogitation, judgment, insight. We don't simply see why they are true, or at least not usually. In fact, as you know, the reliability of direct observation can be challenged, and the challenge is precisely for a justification as to how such observations lead to truth.

JTB sets out criteria for a sentence to count as knowledge. It is not a method for determining the truth of some sentence. — Banno

That's right. So, anticipating your investigator image, using JTB would go something like this:

Q1. Do I have knowledge of X (a proposition)? Depends on . . .
Q1a. Do I believe X?
Q1b. Can I justify my belief in X?
Q1c. Is X true?

Q1b is problematic, as we've noted, but let's allow that we understand what a "good enough justification" would look like. So we can go down the list:

Q1a. Yes.
Q1b. Yes.
Q1c. ????

What can we say about Q1c that doesn't involve an appeal to knowledge? We want to say, Yes, X is true. But we would have to know that, just as we know the first two answers, and we can't, because that begins the vicious circle.

I think what you're suggesting is that instead we should say, "I don't know if X is true. Such knowledge is impossible without circularity. But if it's true, then I know X. And if it isn't, then I don't." So, as you say, a strictly descriptive or criteriological formulation. However, I maintain that this is not only useless, but contrary to the spirit of JTB. JTB is supposed to help us evaluate knowledge claims -- keep us epistemologically honest. And on this construal, it can't.

That the sentence is true is one of the criteria for the sentence being known. This says nothing about how we determined if the sentence is true. — Banno

That's right. But then what should we use JTB for?

There is a difference between "P is true" and "J determined that P is true". JTB specifies that the sentence must be true, not that the sentence must be "determined to be true".

This seems to me to be the source of your confusion. — Banno

Well, I think it's JTB that's confused, not me. Because as I said to @Srap Tasmaner, what use is JTB if it can't show us how to tell whether we know something or not? Being told, "Well, you would know it, if it was true" is pretty thin gruel and, as I said, not to the purpose of JTB as I understand it.

You seem to have an image of an investigator looking at a sentence and saying "ok, Criteria one: I believe this sentence; criteria two: this sentence is justified by such-and-such; but criteria three: how can I decide if the sentence is true?" But that's not how the idea would be used - there's an obvious circularity in such a method, surely. If you believe the sentence (criteria one), then you already think it to be true and criteria three is irrelevant. — Banno

Good, this is a helpful image. And if we set it up like this, then it's another way of showing how JTB is faulty. Because it's absolutely right that the T criterion becomes irrelevant; that's what I've been arguing, using a different approach, all along. I would emphasize the justifications rather than the belief, but it comes to the same thing.

I think we can be skeptical any such theory is possible, either on general grounds of human fallibility or even on logical grounds (the problem of the criterion),

So what are we about? — Srap Tasmaner

Agreed. I'd be much more interested in a theory that could show how, in practice, we're able to make pretty good distinctions among degrees of likelihood, knowledge, certitude, etc. The case of analytic knowledge is perhaps special, but I won't open all that up in this context, since even a piece of analytic knowledge must have some justification.

I think JTB is intended as a test for knowledge, yes, not merely a description (to which no one has access!).

@Sam26 does seem to want to say, "My claim to know certain things is justified because I used a really good epistemology." I don't think it works that way. — Srap Tasmaner

Maybe not exactly, but I think Sam is nonetheless on the right track. We do know certain things, and we are justified in claiming we do, and without a really good epistemology (or epistemological practice), we'll make mistakes. I think a flexible JTB(+U) schema can help us understand how all this is possible. We just have to avoid some sort of essentialism or "definitionalism" (as @Banno has pointed out) about what counts as knowledge and justification. There are just too many uses, contexts, and practices.

That is, it suffices for the proposition to be true or false, whether there is any way to determine its truth value or not. — Srap Tasmaner

But that's the part I find incoherent. Is the idea that P need only be truth-apt in order for "P is a JTB" to represent knowledge? That can't be right. We need to know if it's actually true. So if we can't determine T in some way independent of J, how are we supposed to use JTB as a test for knowledge? What is the criterion that allows us to import "T" into the formula, if we can't know whether X is T?

If I justifiably believe that P, then if P is the case, I am in a state of knowledge that P, and if not then not. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes (leaving aside the earlier questions about "good justifications"). But if JTB can't help us tell the difference between being in a state of knowledge that P, and not being in that state, what good is it?

When do I ever know something is true apart from having the right justifications? — J

We know analytic statements are true. — Janus

But do we know this apart from the right justifications? I don't see how. Even something as clear as modus ponens can and must be explained and justified; we don't say "I just know it."

If we say, a person S knows that P when P is the case, they believe that P, and their belief that P is "justified," in whatever sense we give that word, then what S says or is entitled to say about their possible knowledge that P just doesn't enter into it — Srap Tasmaner

You're quite right. My use of "I can say" was loose talk, borrowed from a certain style of discussing these problems. More precisely: "what I can say" = "what I can think or believe to be correct or reasonable, and hence assertable in this sort of discourse." The actual saying or asserting isn't necessary, or even the point, as you show.

the difference between "P is true" and "I know that P is true".

These are not the same. — Banno

Right. As I wrote, above:

But JTB is not about what makes something true, but how I can say [see reply to Srap above] I know it to be true. The truth or falsity of the proposition under discussion remains what it is, no matter what I know or don't know. — J

But the T in JTB is dependent on P's being true, not on the circularity of your knowing that P is true.

Am I misunderstanding you in some way? You seem to miss this very obvious point. — Banno

Yes, I think we're a bit at cross-purposes here. The T in JTB is absolutely about something's being true. My question is about how we'd know it to be true. You seem to be saying that there's an independent way of determining whether X is true -- a pre-qualification, so to speak -- that will allow us to import the T into JTB, and then talk about our justifications. That's what I find confusing.

The entire question falls inside the scope of human activity, not ontology. Truth, as I know you firmly believe, is a property of propositions, not objects. If X is true, then X is a proposition. Yes, this proposition describes something else (fact, state of affairs, call it what you will), but that is a different matter. "The T in JTB is dependent on P's being true" -- yes, but if we don't ask "How can I know this?" then I don't understand how we'd ever be able to use T in JTB.

Having said all that, it's entirely possible that I've misunderstood you. :smile: So feel free to clarify.

A question remains though― what use is something's being true if we don't know it. — Janus

That's more or less what I'm wondering too, though I'd limit my wondering to the use of "true" in JTB.
I can conceive of other contexts for claiming that the concept of truth is useful, even if we don't know whether a given X is true.

Are you [@sime] saying that, a priori, we cannot know false propositions - that all the propositions we know are not false? — Banno

Yes, that's the right question, and returns us to the issues around JTB. JTB proposes that only true propositions can be known, AND that there is a way to determine truth apart from justifications. Crucial here is "determine truth," not "make X true." X will be true (or false) regardless of whether we can determine it to be so, but if we can't determine it to be so, how are we supposed to construct the T leg of JTB?

So maybe the “absolutely fantastic” fact isn’t that reason is supernatural intruding into nature, but that nature itself is fecund enough to give rise to symbolic beings whose grasp of universals is more than merely biological. — Wayfarer

Sure, works for me. I don't think we can insist on precision of language when talking at this level. We both are pointing to something quite extraordinary that seems to need explaining, or at least understanding.

The Koyré quote is interesting, though overly dire in my opinion. My take: Science often forces us to question where and how value and meaning arise, but rarely presents us with any reasons to doubt that they do; philosophers do that. So it's a good thing, a good challenge, for philosophy, to sharpen up our responses.

As is so often the case when I read broad statements about culture, like this one, I wonder who exactly is supposed to be believing and saying this stuff. I have several scientist friends and they certainly don't talk, or live, like this. Are these perhaps meant as unpalatable conclusions that scientists ought to draw, if they were consistent? A version of "What you're saying amounts to . . . "?

So now the task seems to be to 'explain' reason - this I take to be the task that the 'naturalisation of reason' has set itself. — Wayfarer

Yes. But as you point out, that's only one way to understand the explanatory task here. Nagel and sometimes Putnam want a different kind of explanation. I have little interest in naturalistic/evolutionary explanations of what reason is, but I very much want to know why it is, how it can be the case that the supernatural (non-pejoratively) arises within the natural. I believe this is the explanation of reason that Nagel also wants. Considered from a certain angle, there is something absolutely fantastic, or fantastical, about it -- how could such a fact have arisen?

Now on either construal of explanation, reason is indeed that which explains. And here, we want the rationale for reason itself. There is a sense, as Nagel shows, in which reason can explain itself: that's the "what" question. However . . . the worry is that any attempt to answer the "why" question is vacuous or incomplete. Is it explanatory to say, "The cosmos reflects an order and an intelligence" or "Human reason reflects the Logos" or to speak of "a natural place for reason in the grand scheme"? Mind you, I'm extremely sympathetic to these views, and I think they're probably close to the truth, but can we really say that they explain anything, as stated? Haven't we just provided a fancier description of what wants explaining? Or are they "a clue to the exit," the place where philosophy stops?

Have you read Logos, by Raymond Tallis? A good discussion of this issue.

PS -- offline till Monday . . .

The J in JTB is supposed to exclude cases of epistemic luck: the truth of your belief, if the belief was not formed in the right way, is not enough for us to count it as knowledge. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. I took that to be understood. My question -- the "right question" part, I guess -- was what sort of answer a person would give if they were asked why X was true but also told, "You may not give your justifications." We feel there should be some answer to this, since after all it isn't our justifications that make a state of affairs true.

But JTB is not about what makes something true, but how I can say I know it to be true. The truth or falsity of the proposition under discussion remains what it is, no matter what I know or don't know. But my knowledge, according to JTB, depends on three things, two of which -- J and T -- seem viciously circular in this context, which again is epistemological, not substantive about the world. (And I raised, above, the question of whether even B can stand up, if I think I have a justification for something I don't actually understand: "If I believe something without fully understanding it, and I'm asked to give an account of what I say I believe, can I do it? Or would this reveal that the B of JTB in fact doesn't apply? - that I literally don't know what I believe." This connects with @Sam26's proposed criterion of "understanding.")

I think that all your very pertinent questions come down to versions of the same issue, which @Banno has also picked up on, namely whether the T in JTB is doing any useful work.

(I was asking) whether when you thought it was raining you would have said you knew it was raining. — Janus

Not if I was a proponent of JTB. Since, at that time, I had no way of knowing whether the "raining" statement was true apart from the cogency of my justifications, I would/should have said, "I believe I am justified in saying it's raining."

But this raises the deeper problem. When do I ever know something is true apart from having the right justifications? How can we make truth independent of justification -- make J and T genuinely separate criteria? Even the truth of analytic statements can be justified, indeed must be. Perhaps the idea is that some justifications cannot be insufficient or misguided. We can somehow know beforehand that there cannot be any defeaters.

And this connects with your questions about knowledge and certainty. I understand why JTB, taken rigorously, suggests that knowledge must be certain. Otherwise, how do we get "true" to do anything that "justified" isn't already doing? But if we decide to equate "true" with "certain," we get a possible answer.

The only issue with any of this is that it doesn't fit the way we actually think and talk about knowledge. I know the sun will rise tomorrow, in spite of being able to imagine defeaters. We'd have to say I didn't, on this view. Keeping J and T separate isn't worth paying this price, it seems to me.

The trail it sent me down was the implied ‘divinity of the rational soul’ in medieval philosophy (stemming from Aristotle’s ‘active intellect’.) — Wayfarer

Yes, that was certainly an attempt to explain how reason can be, and do, what it is and does. We're still trying to work out whether this is an explanation, or whether it uses language to explain away something we don't yet understand. And it's no help, as you point out, that this question is so often appropriated for a theological response.

Yes, that's eloquent. And again, what I respect so much about Nagel is that he isn't willing just to stop there. He still perceives a problem -- namely, how can it be the case that reason is this sort of thing, and that we humans are placed in the kind of relationship to it that produces "thought from the inside"?

Hence, It seems to me, ↪J's reservations. — Banno

Yes. Though maybe more in my post directly above that one.

But to be sure, at the core, we do not know things that are not true, we do not know things that we do not believe, and we ought be able to give an account as to why we know some proposal. — Banno

Right, there's something basically correct and useful about the JTB concept. I'd modify "an account as to why we know some proposal" to "an account as to why we believe or say we know some proposal."

What might be problematic here is some expectation that there be no exceptions, no fuzziness as to what counts as knowledge and what doesn't. — Banno

I've objected to the unclarity around justification vs. truth, but this is important too. As you say, we can just stipulate what "knowledge" will mean, and get on with it, but that's not very satisfying. The fuzziness around "knowledge" and "knowing" is what JTB tries to de-fuzz. If we agree that we can know things that aren't certain, then there may be room for degrees of knowledge as well. If the justification-truth circle is indeed a vicious one, as I suspect it may be, then we may have to settle for a less-than-perfect conception of what it means to know something,

Ideas can’t be explained in terms of something else, they are the fundamental coinage of rational thought. — Wayfarer

This idea is picked up in Thomas Nagel's The Last Word as well:

Whether one challenges the rational credentials of a particular judgment or of a whole realm of discourse, one has to rely at some level on judgments and methods of argument which one believes are not themselves subject to the same challenge. — The Last Word, 11

Nagel is honest and deep enough to also acknowledge:

Yet it is obscure how that is possible. Both the existence and the non-existence of reason present problems of intelligibility. — The Last Word, 11

So, as you say: THE key question of metaphysics. Nagel has done as good a job as anyone to make the case that reason is indeed "the last word."