The justification condition is quite clearly understood as being about the reason(s) the individual believes what he does. Your quote doesn’t say otherwise (in fact it explicitly mentions justified false beliefs). The debate between internalists and externalists is over what constitutes good reasons. Regardless of which side is correct, it is nonetheless about the reasons the individual believes what he does. — Michael
Correct.There is no point arguing fellow forum members. The JTB definition is such that justification doesn't imply truth. — Agent Smith
The criteria for truth (for claims such as the ones being discussed) is that some state of affairs is as described by the proposition. Consider for example proposition A1 ("The carrier is under A1") before my first strike, from my battleship example here. A1 is true if the computer placed the carrier on A1 in its game representation. That truth is independent of justifications.What is the criterion for truth, if not justification? — Agent Smith
Each time I make a play and receive "hit" or "miss" information, I gain some information for which of the 100 propositions are true. I may or may not eventually be able to use this information to form a true belief about where the carrier is in that game. But the carrier being in a certain place on the game board does not depend on my figuring out where that place is.How do we know that a given proposition is true? — Agent Smith
Well, yeah, it is justification. Keep in mind though that justification is about knowledge, and knowledge is person-relative (each person has their own perspective and knowledge). Truth (of these sorts of claims) by contrast is ontic; it is person-independent.It can't be justification of course; why mention truth separately? — Agent Smith
But "truth" does not (generally) describe justification in the first place. It describes a state of affairs. I can describe what must the case (i.e., what configuration a state of affairs must have) in order for a proposition to be true without knowing if it is indeed the case (i.e., if the state of affairs is in fact in that configuration).Hence, the 'truth' part of JTB is not distinct from the justification part. It's just a particular type of justification. — Isaac
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/truetrue 1 c : being that which is the case rather than what is manifest or assumed. — Merriam Webster
Yes, I agree. One such reason might be "my epistemic peers have thrown every conceivable test at it and they all believe it's the case" a justification. — Isaac
Hence, the 'truth' part of JTB is not distinct from the justification part. — Isaac
At the very least you finally understand that truth is distinct from the actual justifications we have. — Michael
I've never said anything to the contrary. If I have, I'd rather you quote me than attribute positions to me I've never held. — Isaac
a trivial social media forum — Isaac
Hey now — Srap Tasmaner
It’s not the only justification — Michael
So, no, we cannot simply treat truth and justification as the same. — Michael
And now you’re contradicting yourself yet again:
At the very least you finally understand that truth is distinct from the actual justifications we have. — Michael
I've never said anything to the contrary. If I have, I'd rather you quote me than attribute positions to me I've never held. — Isaac
You were accepting that truth can be inaccessible and that’s how we can be wrong. Presumably you wouldn’t say that justification is inaccessible? — Michael
If you think something I've said is inconsistent, you could just ask, rather than playing this childish game of trying to catch me in a contradiction. As I said, one day you will win that game, I don't proof read my comments that accurately. I don't see what you think you're going to gain by it though. — Isaac
Your proposition refers to "the actual justifications we have", mine refers to "justifications" sensu lato. — Isaac
If you can’t maintain a consistent argument - if you continually say contradictory things - then your argument has failed. — Michael
This isn’t the same thing as the fact that a community of epistemic peers with access to a time machine would believe that it rained last night were they to throw every conceivable test at the hypothesis.
Therefore my belief being true isn’t the same thing as my belief being justified.
This is why the JTB definition has separate conditions for truth and justification. If in another scenario I believe what I do because it’s my interpretation of a Tarot card reading then my belief would be true but unjustified, and so not knowledge. If in another scenario the community of epistemic peers would believe that it didn’t rain but that a fire truck passed by with its hose on then my belief would be justified but false, and so not knowledge. — Michael
So, in checking if some belief is 'knowledge', we're just looking for some specific justification, not something else in addition to justifications. "My tarot cards say it's raining" is not good enough for 'knowledge', but "My epistemic peers haven’t exhausted all the predictions they can make and every single one has worked out as expected", may well be. — Isaac
if you want to argue that the distinction is irrelevant with respect to knowledge then you must argue that both justified false beliefs and unjustified true beliefs count as knowledge. — Michael
In my previous post I gave clear examples of a justified true belief, an unjustified true belief, and a justified false belief, and explained that the first can count as knowledge but that the second and third can’t. Do you disagree with that analysis? — Michael
Beliefs which are well-justified can be treated as knowledge. — Isaac
What you're calling a justified false belief is just a belief whose justification isn't good enough. — Isaac
What you're calling an unjustified true belief is a belief whose (high quality) justification is not known to the person holding it. — Isaac
It is entirely possible that my belief is well justified but also false. — Michael
No, it’s a belief that isn’t true but that I have a good reason to hold. — Michael
the justification condition is referring to the reasons the person believes what he does. — Michael
S knows that p if S believes that p, S (1) has one or more good reasons for believing that p, and (2) a community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe that p were they to throw every conceivable test at the hypothesis that p. — Michael
If a belief is false then it clearly was not well-justified. — Isaac
No. If a belief is false then it clearly was not well-justified. The justification must, logically, have been insufficient, since whatever test our epistemic peers used to determine it's falsity was clearly necessary but lacking, hence an insufficient justification. — Isaac
You're just repeating the same error without addressing what I've said about it. Do we routinely define reasons as only either 'good' or 'not good', or do we, rather, grade reasons being able to see that some are better than others whilst others are even better still? If yes, then why insist on this odd language where everything scalar is treated binomially? — Isaac
Yes. I'm saying there exist a high quality justification (hence we can say it's true), of which the believer is unaware (hence unjustified). In this instance, you could indeed say the belief was unjustified but true, but this doesn't get around the fact that if the believer became aware of the high quality justification they would have a belief which counted as knowledge on the basis of justification alone (just now justification of a sufficient quality), so JTB fails. — Isaac
(2), if S were to be aware of it, would be a justification. Hence it's possible for S to merely hold (1), and still have knowledge where his (1) is "that a community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe that p were they to throw every conceivable test at the hypothesis that p." — Isaac
All I'm arguing is that your notion that T is just more J fails to describe what T is in regards to JTB. How you apply that to your understanding of deflationary, coherence, and pragmatic positions of truth is a separate matter.So are you arguing that deflationary, coherence, and pragmatic positions on truth are wrong, of that they just don't even exist? — Isaac
I don't quite get what you're saying. — Agent Smith
(A) What is the criterion for truth, if not justification? — Agent Smith
(A) and (B) are different questions. (A) is asking what the criteria for truth is. (B) is asking how we find out a proposition is true.(B) How do we find out a proposition is true? — Agent Smith
Have you read Gettier’s little paper? — Srap Tasmaner
What’s the difference between saying that a belief be well justified and saying that one has good reasons for a belief? Splitting hairs on this wording is missing the point. — Michael
Knowledge isn’t just hypothetical. We have it in real situations where we don’t have access to the beliefs of some community of epistemic peers who have comprehensively tested a belief. — Michael
That we can sometimes use the truth to justify a belief isn’t that a belief being true is the same as a belief being justified. — Michael
Knowledge is JTB right (for you)? You agreed that T could be that a community of epistemic peers have exhaustively tested the hypothesis and found it sound, right? Now you're saying we can have knowledge outside of needing that latter condition. So how? — Isaac
Naturally then you'll equate 'false' with not or very poorly or weakly justified. — Srap Tasmaner
It's consistent, but way off the reservation for talking about Gettier, which assumes you can have, in your circumstances, what anyone would consider very good reasons for your belief, which happens to be false. — Srap Tasmaner
I know you describe your position as a kind of realism, but it's not a kind anyone wants. — Srap Tasmaner
That makes it hard even to state your position. — Srap Tasmaner
I’m saying that a belief being true isn’t sufficient for it to count as knowledge. A lucky guess isn’t knowledge. A true belief brought about by a Tarot card reading isn’t knowledge. Knowledge requires that one’s actual reason for holding the belief is sufficiently good (whether you want to understand “sufficiently good” as a scale or not). — Michael
especially given that we almost never have access to the beliefs of a community of epistemic peers that has comprehensively tested the hypothesis — Michael
the fact remains that I only know that your name is Isaac if I believe that your name is Isaac, if my belief is sufficiently reasonable given the actual evidence I consider when forming my belief, and if your name actually is Isaac. — Michael
I don't dispute that. I'm disputing that 'actually is...' is any different kind of thing to 'I believe'. — Isaac
Yes, I agree with that, even with my 'epistemic peer' definition of truth. If a person isn't aware of that justification (despite the fact that it exists) but rather uses another, flawed, one, then they can't be said to have knowledge. This doesn't change the fact that both are forms of justification. — Isaac
You're changing your position again. You were saying that the truth is what a community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe were they to comprehensively test some hypothesis (and which can be inaccessible, hence why we can be wrong). That's not the same thing as what I believe (given whatever limited evidence I have available to me). — Michael
When the JTB definition says that a belief must be justified it is saying that the individual's belief must be sufficiently reasonable given the actual evidence they considered when forming their belief. — Michael
S knows that p iff:
1. S believes that p,
2. S's belief that p is sufficiently reasonable given the actual evidence that S considered when forming his belief that p, and
3. A community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe that p were they to comprehensively test the hypothesis that p — Michael
Nothing about the JTB definition of knowledge has anything to do with what I or the language community believes. — Michael
I just remembered, Gödels' incompleteness theorem. Didn't he combine language and math to prove that math was finite or something like that? — john27
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