• Blue Lux
    581
    The question "What is knowledge?" implies a being of knowledge; that is, an ideal form of knowledge, or perhaps 'The Truth Of Knowledge.'
    If knowledge is, how can we know that it is, and furthermore how can we know that it is indeed something and not merely presupposed?
    Is the conclusion "Knowledge is only as if it is knowledge"?
    If I say, I am. How can I know that I am indeed and not presupposing that I am and that I do know that I am, when it cannot be shown for sure to myself that the 'I am' is the predicate of the thinking?
    Is thus the truth of something, perhaps the fact of 'my existence' or 'my ego', only presupposed or assumed to be? Is it only as if it were?
    Is this playing semantics?
    In a nutshell, is knowledge superfluous and devoid of any specification?
  • Sir2u
    3.5k
    Is this playing semantics?Blue Lux

    Yes.

    How can I know that I am indeed and not presupposing that I amBlue Lux

    How could you presuppose if you were not.
  • gurugeorge
    514
    Eh, I think that's needlessly complicated. Knowledge is an objective body of symbolic structures (paper, ink, bits, words, etc.) that get their meaning from constantly-maintained social conventions (linguistic rules, habits), which purports to represent by means of those conventions the structure of the world. (Russell's "knowledge by description.")

    What's often confused with that is simply awareness-of. (Russell's "knowledge by acquaintance.") That's the confusion you're making here, I think (a confusion that's been made by modern philosophy generally, from Descartes to the Idealists).

    In a way, the larger, objective form of knowledge can be conceived of as a collective extension of awareness, and that would be the genetic/historical link between the two meanings. By being inducted into the larger body of knowledge, we avail ourselves of the experience (acquaintances with things) of others. But that's really just a metaphorical, sort of poetic way of looking at it. There is nothing like awareness, or a magnified or abstracted or rarified form of awareness, in the body of knowledge as such. Its representational quality is purely conventional.
  • gloaming
    128
    Knowledge, to me, is a set of information that affords the holder greater predictive capacity. You could argue that there is false knowledge, but that, to me, is introducing fly sh.. into the pepper.
  • creativesoul
    12k
    Justified true belief.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    The act of presupposing does not necessitate an I am. This is the Cartesian illusion.
    It is so because it does not incorportate intentionality, and just dissolves knowledge into either idealism or realism, which I refuse to accept.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    I am aware of Russel's distinction. But my own infinite regress in my own analaysis of this... I cannot be sure it is the result of a lack of a distinction. It just seems reductionistic to distinguish between two forms of knowledge which are at base doing the same thing by different means, which seems to me to be what 'knowledge' does in general. I could just as easily analyze knowledge in terms of what is a priori or a posteriori, and fragment the question further, and lack a unified characterization of knowledge, and furthermore of consciousness... For is consciousness not a knowledge of being conscious?

    What constitutes a knowledge of something? What is that which is known The Most? It would be feelings, experiences, correct? And so if the superlative demonstration of a known consists in its complete inability of being represented by words... What is knowledge? A question of this knowledge could only relate to knowledge by description; however, knowledge by description relates fundamentally to knowledge by acquaintance.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    And what of the Gettier problems?
    JTB is not infallible.
  • creativesoul
    12k
    What of the Gettier 'problems'?

    Case I has Gettier changing Smith's belief in a way that changes it's truth conditions, and case two has Gettier misrepresenting what it takes to believe a disjunction. Neither is a problem for JTB.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    Case one implies that the proposition was true not by virtue of a justified true belief, and that he had knowledge of what would be the outcome, but not based on a JTB.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    But aside from Gettier...
    If I know that I felt something. Is that knowledge so because I have a justified true belief of it or because I know that I experienced what it is I am referring to?
    But do I know that I know what I am referring to?
    If knowledge is based on a JTB then this would have to be true by virtue of a JTB... So the justified true belief is that knowledge is based on a justified true belief? This sounds circular.
    Furthermore, The knowledge of the justified true belief that knowledge is by virtue of a justified true belief rests upon what? A justified true belief?
  • creativesoul
    12k
    JTB does not apply to all the accepted uses of the words "knowledge" or "know" or "knowing"....
  • creativesoul
    12k
    In order for S to know P, S must be justified in believing P, and P must be true. This too has it's issues, but that's what JTB is about.

    Not all belief is properly represented by P. That is one of the problems inherent in JTB that allows Case II to gain purchase.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    Knowledge is at base abstraction. Knowledge boils down to a characterization of what it is to be human, not of what anything else is.

    "Never believe anything to be true unless it can be shown to be absolutely false." William Blake said something along the lines of this.
    And so, related to knowledge, knowledge is 'asymptotic' to truth.

    "Meaning is not ever found in the analysis of a predicate, the kind involving only meanings of the words themselves. A cat is not going to be found in the analysis of what a cat is. This is the case because the meaning of something seems to always relate to the whole of that something, specifically the 'appropriation' of that whole, not the understanding or 'knowledge' of the parts, or the constitution. The whole is so 'greater' than the sum of its parts, which are infinite, metaphorically 'asymptotic' to the whole (the totality, the meaning). Aetiology is thus incapable of founding meaning in any direct way. Meaning seems to be only indirectly disclosed by knowledge."
  • creativesoul
    12k
    Knowledge boils down to a characterization of what it is to be human, not of what anything else is.Blue Lux

    Rubbish.

    "Never believe anything to be true unless it can be shown to be absolutely false."Blue Lux

    That is on point actually. It's called falsification. It's not about knowledge so much as it is about warrant. That too is what underwrites JTB.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    If a metaphysics always presupposes an epistemology then an epistemology always presupposes a metaphysics.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    How could a knowledge establish anything other than that premised upon a HUMAN knowledge? Unless, of course, knowledge is based on a divine metaphysic....
  • creativesoul
    12k
    Yeah, you're throwing all sorts of different things out here...

    Not a bad tact actually.

    Separate the true claims. Gather them all in one place. See what can be made out of them all together.
  • creativesoul
    12k
    I'm not even sure what "'a' knowledge" is supposed to mean.

    A bit of knowledge, perhaps?
  • Blue Lux
    581
    Exactly... Knowledge is the real rubbish.
  • creativesoul
    12k
    Human knowledge is existentially dependent upon humans. That's common sense. It does not follow from that that human knowledge cannot be about other things.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    But these 'other things' are what?... Ahh... Adhering to the epistemology of realism?
    And these other things... How do they exist?
  • creativesoul
    12k
    I'm adhering to my own philosophical position, which places the utmost importance upon getting human thought and belief right.
  • gurugeorge
    514
    It just seems reductionistic to distinguish between two forms of knowledge which are at base doing the same thing by different means, which seems to me to be what 'knowledge' does in general. I could just as easily analyze knowledge in terms of what is a priori or a posteriori, and fragment the question further, and lack a unified characterization of knowledge, and furthermore of consciousness... For is consciousness not a knowledge of being conscious?Blue Lux

    No, no, that's the confusion I think you're making: awareness is awareness, knowledge is a different thing, only very loosely connected with awareness.

    Awareness is presence-with, an aspect of Being. Knowledge is more like a tool.
  • creativesoul
    12k
    Things other than humans exist.

    Are you disagreeing?
  • Blue Lux
    581

    Things other than humans exist.creativesoul
    Consciousness is not a thing.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    I think knowledge is superfluous.
  • creativesoul
    12k
    This is beginning to look like an exercise in gratuitous assertion with a bit of red herring and non-sequitur thrown in for good measure.
  • Blue Lux
    581
    Is it....

    "Truth! Rapturous delusion of a god! What does truth matter to human beings!
    And what was the Heraclitean "truth"!
    And where has it gone? A vanished dream, wiped from the faces of men, along with other dreams!--It was not the first!

    Of all that we with such proud metaphors call "world history" and "truth" and "fame," a heartless demon might have nothing to say but this:

    "In some remote corner of the sprawling universe, twinkling among the countless solar systems, there was once a star on which some clever animals invented 'knowledge.' It was the most mendacious minute in world history, but it was only a minute. After nature caught it's breath a little, the star froze, and the clever animals had to die. And it was time, too: for although they boasted of how much they had come to know, in the end they realized they had gotten it all wrong. They died and in dying cursed truth. Such was the species of doubting animal that had invented knowledge."

    This would be man's fate were he nothing more than a thinking animal; truth would drive him to despair and annihilation, truth eternally damned to be untruth. All that is proper to man, however, is faith in the attainable truth, in the ever approaching, confidence-inspiring illusion. Does he not in fact live BY constant deception? Doesn't nature conceal virtually everything from him, even what is nearest, for example, his own body, of which he has only a spurious "consciousness"? He is locked up in this consciousness, and nature has thrown away the key. O fateful curiosity of the philosopher, who longs to peer out just once through a crack in the chamber of consciousness--perhaps then he gains an intimation that man rests in the indifference of his ignorance on the greedy, the insatiable, the disgusting, the merciless, the murderous, suspended in dreams on the back of a tiger.

    "Let him hang," cries ART. "Wake him up," cries the philosopher, in the pathos of truth. Yet, even as he believes himself to be shaking the sleeper, he himself sinks into a still deeper magical slumber--perhaps then he dreams of "ideas" or of immortality. Art is mightier than knowledge, for IT wants life, and knowledge attains as its ultimate end only--annihilation."

    Nietzsche - On the Pathos of Truth
    @gurugeorge
  • Sir2u
    3.5k
    The act of presupposing does not necessitate an I am.Blue Lux

    So who or what is presupposing?

    It is so because it does not incorportate intentionality,Blue Lux

    Does being need intentionality? Don't quote what someone else said, explain what you think.
  • Blue Lux
    581

    Oh sorry I can't not quote someone. I can only regurgitate the thoughts of other people, because I have no thoughts of my own...

    Being does not 'need' intentionality.
    Consciousness is by virtue of intentionality. Consciousness is a sort of being, but is not a being-in-itself as might be an intentional object.

    There is nothing that necessitates there being something that does the presupposing. All there is is a presupposing.
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