That people are fallible means that they sometimes misuse the term "knowledge" or "know". They sometimes claim to know things that they don't. — Andrew M
Isn't that a fundamental philosophical problem - What is truth? If philosophy is questioning what truth and knowledge is, then it seems to me that there is a problem in what truth and knowledge is, and we are having a difficult time in doing it. So you've basically explained the philosophical problem we have. You may think that you know what you're talking about when you say, "truth" and "knowledge", but others obviously disagree or else this wouldn't be a major philosophical problem.Well, it seems to me that you've no way of talking about what sorts of things can be true - such as knowledge claims - and what makes them so. — creativesoul
A case can be made that knowledge isn't something other than our conventional use of the word 'knowledge.' — softwhere
Just because 'knowledge' is a noun doesn't mean there's a definite entity called 'knowledge.' — softwhere
This also applies to 'reason' (used as a noun). — softwhere
While philosophers have often trafficked in decontextualized essences, other philosophers have pointed out the problems with this approach. — softwhere
Why do they claim to know things that they don't? If they claim to understand what knowledge and knowing is, then how can they misuse the terms? — Harry Hindu
Truth is the actual state-of-affairs. — Harry Hindu
If it is a common understanding that what we claim we know can be faulty (which doesn't mean that it necessarily is all the time), then it should be obvious that when we claim we know something, doesn't mean that truth is necessarily involved. Truth has to be something separate. — Harry Hindu
What matters is the quality of the case, not its mere existence. — Bartricks
Where have I said that there is an 'entity' called 'knowledge' (I am arguing that there is not)? — Bartricks
Rather, they're just fiddling with Gettier cases — Bartricks
Well, it seems to me that you've no way of talking about what sorts of things can be true - such as knowledge claims - and what makes them so.
— creativesoul
Isn't that a fundamental philosophical problem - What is truth? — Harry Hindu
What is it that we are trying to accomplish when we say, "I know <something you "know">"?Here's the definition of use from Lexico: "Take, hold, or deploy (something) as a means of accomplishing or achieving something; employ." In the context of our discussion what are being deployed are words and sentences.
— Andrew M
What is it that we are trying to accomplish or achieve in deploying words and sentences? What caused words and sentences to appear on this screen for me to read? — Harry Hindu
Then why does it feel like you possess knowledge when you don't? When you've already had the experience of claiming you have knowledge and then find out that you didn't, then that should cause some concern for any other knowledge you claim to possess AND cause concern about your very understanding of what "knowledge" is. When having knowledge and not having knowledge are indistinguishable at any given moment you make a claim, then how can you really know what you are talking about? How can you ever say that you are claiming some truth at any given moment?Yes, and no-one disagrees with this. There is a language distinction between what we claim we know (which can be false) and what we know (which can't be false). When someone claims to know that it is raining when it is not, they have made a mistake - and they don't have knowledge. — Andrew M
Contradiction.I don't find it to be.
It's certainly a commonly asked philosophical question. We look to how the term "truth" is used. We find out what is being said in those different uses(what is meant).
No problem. — creativesoul
Contradiction.
If people use the term in asking what it is, then doesn't that mean that there isn't a clear understanding of what it is? — Harry Hindu
To be more blunt, strong cases have been made (later Wittgenstein, for instance) against thinking that knowledge is something definite like an attitude of 'Reason.' And what does the capitalization add? It suggests that 'Reason' is a kind of divinity. As I've written in other posts, there's some historical truth in that. But it's dicey in this context, is it not? — softwhere
If you look at my posts in this thread, I started to sketch a different approach — softwhere
But I made a case for my view, and once more you are merely reporting that there is some mysterious counter-case. Why not make that case? — Bartricks
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pineal-gland/#DescViewPineGlanThe first [rule of thought] was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgement than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt. — Descartes
As for why 'Reason' has a capital R, it is both in order to distinguish Reason - the source of the norms of reason - from the faculty, 'reason' that we use to detect those norms, and from 'reasons' which are the directives constitutive of the norms themselves. So, reasons are norms, norms have a source - Reason - and we have faculties of reason by means of which we detect them. — Bartricks
There is patently a difference between simply believing something is true and knowing something (it is implausible that it is just some arbitrary linguistic convention) — Bartricks
What is it that we are trying to accomplish when we say, "I know <something you "know">"? — Harry Hindu
Then why does it feel like you possess knowledge when you don't? — Harry Hindu
When you've already had the experience of claiming you have knowledge and then find out that you didn't, then that should cause some concern for any other knowledge you claim to possess AND cause concern about your very understanding of what "knowledge" is. When having knowledge and not having knowledge are indistinguishable at any given moment you make a claim, then how can you really know what you are talking about? — Harry Hindu
How can you ever say that you are claiming some truth at any given moment? — Harry Hindu
I think this forum is great for discussing our readings away from this forum, but I don't at all think that online debate is a substitute for that reading. — softwhere
What is neglected in such a principle is the nature or way-of-being of this 'I' and this stuff, language, that thought is made of. — softwhere
There is much more to the case against language as a nomenclature for mind-stuff essences, but this is a start. — softwhere
What's the case for this source of norms? If you look into thinkers like Hegel, you'll find the idea of cultural evolution, where ethical norms and the norms of intelligibly are unstable. — softwhere
What is the relationship between use and meaning? What does it mean to use words? What entails "use"? — Harry Hindu
thoughts aren't 'made' of language, they're states of mind) — Bartricks
If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?
Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant. — Wittgenstein
What start? — Bartricks
So I have to read Hegel now?! — Bartricks
Science lays before us the morphogenetic process of this cultural development in all its detailed fullness and necessity, and at the same time shows it to be something that has already sunk into the mind as a moment of its being and become a possession of mind. The goal to be reached is the mind’s insight into what knowing is. Impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there.
...
What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and proving consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not. — Hegel
The case is this: norms of reason exist (so, prescriptions, demands, that kind of thing). Only a subject can issue a prescription. Therefore norms of reason are the prescriptions of a subject - Reason. — Bartricks
It means that you can't tell the difference between rain and water hosed on the window until you go outside. So, you don't have proper justification to claim that it is raining by just looking out the window, just as you don't have proper justification to know the shape of the Earth or it's movement in space without the proper view to inform you of what actually is the case.Consider a parallel example. Does discovering that it wasn't raining when you thought it was cause concern about your understanding of what "rain" is?
It shouldn't, unless there were some further reason to think there was a problem with your understanding (e.g., people consistently referring to what you call "rain" as "snow"). — Andrew M
Exactly, so our observations aren't proper justification for knowledge. I already said that since our justifications can be flawed, then we can never know whether or not we are using the term in the correct way, unless we obtain the proper perspective in order to have proper justification.Because a mistaken belief doesn't feel mistaken when you have it.
To people several hundred years ago it looked as if the Sun went round the Earth. But what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the Earth turned on its axis?
As far as appearances go, both look the same. The difference is in the explanatory hypotheses. — Andrew M
Yes, because from the perspective of being on the surface of the Earth, you can't tell the difference. Well, you can if you take other observations, like the movement of the Sun across the background stars and the movement of the planets, but this just proves my point - that you need other observations, not just one, to claim knowledge. Once you go out in space, you see the difference. So only in making the proper observation can we say that we possess knowledge and we obtain the proper observations when we are objective in our perspective. One observation isn't enough justification to make a knowledge claim.To people several hundred years ago it looked as if the Sun went round the Earth. But what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the Earth turned on its axis? — Andrew M
No...
We use every term when asking what they mean, so if what you said were true, it would mean that we do not have a clear understanding of any term...
:yikes:
We do though, so... you're quite wrong. — creativesoul
I'm trying to tell you that maybe you shouldn't take this old view for granted. — softwhere
All the stuff you didn't quote and respond to. If you don't understand something, then please ask for clarification. Pretending that I didn't go to any effort is silly. — softwhere
A strong theory has to make sense of its own possibility — softwhere
toy examples — softwhere
I do see grown adults asking what "knowledge" and "god" is, so maybe there is something different with these terms. Maybe if you'd stop being so facetious we could have a respectful back and forth. — Harry Hindu
Another path is saying, "I know that it is raining" is talking about your knowledge, not the rain. You are talking about the state-of-affairs that is your knowledge, not the weather. So, while you may know what rain is, you don't know much about your knowledge because it isn't raining outside. — Harry Hindu
It seems to me that you don't have proper justification to claim to know anything until you make the proper observation from the proper perspective. — Harry Hindu
So only in making the proper observation can we say that we possess knowledge and we obtain the proper observations when we are objective in our perspective. One observation isn't enough justification to make a knowledge claim. — Harry Hindu
I don't like the wording here. It doesn't make any sense to say that some state-of-affairs is a truth-maker, as if some state-of-affairs makes some other state-of-affairs called the "truth". Which state-of-affairs are we talking about when using our knowledge - the state-of-affairs that made the truth, or the state-of-affairs that is the truth? Claims don't bear truth if they are wrong.The standard use in philosophy is that a state of affairs is a truth-maker while a claim or a belief is a truth-bearer. So states of affairs obtain or fail to obtain (e.g., it is raining) while claims are true or false (e.g., Alice's claim that it is raining). — Andrew M
Now it sounds like you've taken my argument. If we are brains-in-vats, do we know what rain is? All of these alternate possibilities, while I concede are far-fetched (brains in vats) or not the norm (hallucinations), are what make one a skeptic of one's own knowledge and skeptical of our understanding of what knowledge actually is. If we can't have proof that one's knowledge is actually true, then it is illogical to say "truth" is a property of knowledge.With the rain example, if we went outside we presumably shouldn't be mistaken about whether it is raining or not. But that still falls short of a guarantee or proof. People sometimes have hallucinations, holograms are possible, and there will be other possibilities I haven't thought of. (And that's before getting to the more skeptical hypotheses of brains-in-vats, Descartes' evil demon and the like.) — Andrew M
What is "proof"?However if only deduction provides a guarantee or proof, then the only mistake-proof claim we could make would be of our own existence, per Descartes. Which is a very different thing to ordinary knowledge of the time of day or whether it is raining (that doesn't require a guarantee or proof). — Andrew M
That sounds like the same thing.Yes, that is my view. We can be mistaken about whether we know it is raining just as we can be mistaken about whether it is raining. — Andrew M
All of these alternate possibilities, while I concede are far-fetched (brains in vats) or not the norm (hallucinations), are what make one a skeptic of one's own knowledge and skeptical of our understanding of what knowledge actually is. If we can't have proof that one's knowledge is actually true, then it is illogical to say "truth" is a property of knowledge. — Harry Hindu
But what's wrong with my analysis? — Bartricks
Failing to properly quantify premisses(not specifying "some" and implying all when it is not). — creativesoul
I have not equivocated over the term 'reason'; rather I have carefully specified the different uses to which it can be put. — Bartricks
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