How does the statement "the grass is green", when uttered by me, have any different meaning to "I believe the grass is green" (or " I know the grass is green ")? Unless I'm lying, my saying " the grass is green " automatically entails that I believe the grass is green.

Break the statement down. According to JTB, you're saying "I believe the grass is green" and "it's true that 'the grass is green'". Now since you can't rationally claim the latter with entailing tormer claim becomes redundant. So you're just claiming "it's true that 'the grass is green'", which deflates to "the grass is green". — Isaac

You’re confusing logical entailment with something like a 'performative' entailment. The phrase "the grass is green" doesn't logically entail the phrase "I believe the grass is green", even though in practice someone who (honestly) asserts one will (honestly) assert the other. This is Moore’s Paradox.

It is clearly about your beliefs. Since the actual truth of the grass's greenness can't be established, the comment can only be interpreted as comparing the expressed certainty of John's belief to the certainty you have in yours. — Isaac

It's not about my beliefs. You're conflating the propositional content of a statement with the reason for asserting it. You seemed to understand this before when you said "["I know that there is an apple in the bag"] is about my state of mind, ["there is an apple in the bag"] about the state of the world."

You obviously can't be comparing John's stated belief to the actual truth, since that is only an ideal. — Isaac

It's not an ideal. The actual colour of the grass is a real thing (the argument between direct and indirect realists notwithstanding), not imaginary or hypothetical. Even if I don't have direct access to this fact, I'm quite capable of understanding what it would mean for someone to correctly describe it. And regardless of my beliefs I can say "John knows that the grass is green only if the grass is green" which certainly shouldn't be interpreted as "John knows that the grass is green only if I believe that the grass is green."

Evaluations of knowledge and truth fail when we apply absolute standards.
Science showed us that those standards are useless and disabling. "Beyond reasonable doubt" is a far better standard than "absolutes". Statistical Standards are far superior since a knowledge claim is not just a true one...it also carries an instrumental value and we NEED to act upon it.
So we need to take the risk...and this is what is rewarding. This is why Tautologies are valueless and Inductive reasoning is the main characteristic of scientific knowledge. — Nickolasgaspar

I agree with everything you've written.

That is really encouraging. I appreciate your input

You seem to use "Knowledge" as an idealistic "quality" that a claim has it or not...when its the other way around. — Nickolasgaspar

You can call it idealistic, but I am not discussing platonic ideals. I am discussing the concept of knowledge, as we use it daily. A guess is not considered knowledge until it has been verified, not ideally, but in the mundane, everyday English sense.

Knowledge and truth are not(always) the same thing.
I.e. We know Relativity(in an ontological sense) is wrong but we still use it for its instrumental value. — Nickolasgaspar

I know how to use this technique, I know it has instrumental value, I know it doesn't match the world ontologically. The can all be true, justified claims.

Again, you're just repeating back to me what your preferred theory of knowledge is ("yet, you do not know it, because the truth is..."). You've not demonstrated that I don't 'know' it because the truth of the matter is what determines whether I know something. — Isaac

If it sounds like I am talking to you in absolutes, it is because I am appealing to your presumed competence as a speaker of English. If you think that you were right when you said "I know I have apples in the bag", or if the statement was correct until the moment you opened the bag, if you think that is how the word 'know' works, in the plain language you and appeal to while simultaneously disregarding , then we really have nothing further to discuss. You can cite a hundred dictionary definitions, that is completely irrelevant. Tell me, is this how "know" works for you?

Yes. I'm deflationist about 'truth'. I thought I explained that earlier by referencing Ramsey. The entire problem here is the definition of "I know" for someone deflationist about truth. — Isaac

Your initial argument was that the truth is inaccessible, and therefore cannot be a component of the concept of 'knowledge', because how can people access something which is inaccessable? And yet, people use the concept 'truth' itself quite happily, without giving Ramsey a second or even first thought. Even if absolute truth is theoretically inaccessible, this in no way prevents people from making use of the concept.

Whatever your theoretical notion of truth may be, you have to deal with the fact that truth is a component of the plain English concept of knowledge. To deny this, you have to account for all of the plain English examples I have given which strongly suggest that is the case. In spite of mental gyrations requiring meaning to shift with tense, which is in any case irrelevant, I haven't seen anything approaching that from you.

I've shown the problem with this above. If "I know" is simply a claim to knowledge, then we have to admit of the disjunction "I believe I know..." and "I know I know...". Then we have to admit of "I believe I know I know..." and "I know I know I know...", and so on. — Isaac

These marginal formulations could charitably be construed to communicate degrees of certainty. The fact that you can construct these cumbersome sentences is supposed to say what exactly?

we really have nothing further to discuss. — hypericin

:up:

The phrase "the grass is green" doesn't logically entail the phrase "I believe the grass is green", even though in practice someone who (honestly) asserts one will (honestly) assert the other. — Michael

Yes. I'm talking about the language use and the meanings those expressions have, I'm not assuming logical entailment, not even sure how expressions about belief could logically entail anything.

It's not about my beliefs. You're conflating the propositional content of a statement with the reason for asserting it. — Michael

Again, not 'conflating'. You keep going back to assuming I'd like to use the traditional theory but I'm confused about how it works. I'm not claiming any expert, in depth, understanding of conventional theories of truth, propositions, knowledge etc., but I am reasonably familiar with them. I don't agree with the distinction you're assuming is the case.

It's not an ideal. The actual colour of the grass is a real thing (the argument between direct and indirect realists notwithstanding), not imaginary or hypothetical. Even if I don't have direct access to this fact, I'm quite capable of understanding what it would mean for someone to correctly describe it — Michael

Imagining what it would mean makes it an ideal. It's not a real fact of the world for you.

regardless of my beliefs I can say "John knows that the grass is green only if the grass is green" — Michael

Your ability to say it is not in question. What it means is. The sentence is of the form "A is the case if B". If A is an empirical fact, then anyone can know it, including John. That means the expression "John knows A" would have to be sensical. But substituting, we get "John knows John knows that the grass is green", which is nonsensical, so A can't be an empirical fact.

You can call it idealistic, but I am not discussing platonic ideals. I am discussing the concept of knowledge, as we use it daily. A guess is not considered knowledge until it has been verified, not ideally, but in the mundane, everyday English sense. — hypericin

-Ok we are in agreement on that.

I know how to use this technique, I know it has instrumental value, I know it doesn't match the world ontologically. The can all be true, justified claims. — hypericin

_well I can not say that I know how this comment is relevant to my point that "knowledge" and "truth" do not always overlap. "I know" and "I use a specific knowledge" are two different things.

_well I can not say that I know how this comment is relevant to my point that "knowledge" and "truth" do not always overlap. "I know" and "I use a specific knowledge" are two different things. — Nickolasgaspar

You are conflating what it is you are "knowing". You can "know" or "not know" how to use a technique which produces useful results, and you can "know" or "not know" ontological truths. Just because you can "know" how to use a technique which does not correspond to ultimate reality, doesn't mean that knowledge and truth are disjoint.

Both are evaluations we use on claims that are either just in agreement with facts or they also do display an instrumental value. We can use a claim for its instrumental value while we are aware of its epistemic conflicts. The statement "the sun rises in the east" might be a true statement, but epistemically it has many issues.(nothing rises, the sun isn't moving etc).
All the other aspects you mention (technique etc) is irrelevant to my point.

The fact that you can construct these cumbersome sentences is supposed to say what exactly? — hypericin

The sentences should make sense if 'I know X' can be treated as an empirical fact. The sentences don't make sense. So there seems to be a problem with treating 'I know X' as if it were an empirical fact.

The sentences should make sense if 'I know X' can be treated as an empirical fact. The sentences don't make sense. So there seems to be a problem with treating 'I know X' as if it were an empirical fact. — Isaac

Really, these don't seem particularly uninterpretable. "I know that I know X" conveys either unordinary confidence (after all, knowledge is a claim, because as you point out we don't have access to absolute truth). Or, it affirms that you not only know X, but you are aware of the fact that you know. As opposed to the many things you may know peripherally or unconsciously. "I believe that I know X" is even more straightforward: You believe you have knowledge, but are not quite sure: perhaps you are not quite sure what you know is true, perhaps you feel your justification is possibly suspect. The further iterations are more rarefied and silly, but you can still assign an interpretation.

Those are two very different issues though. — Isaac

Truth and error? What is an error if not a statement that is not true? We have the notion of truth an falsity in order to be able to identify error.

I think the approach adopted in this thread is demonstrative of the philosopher's habit of theorising from too limited a set of cases. Don't think, look: sure it's true that the glass is on the table, that the cat is on the mat, that Pi is the ration of the diameter toe the circumference. But also that this sentence is in English, that you are reading this on an internet forum, that the bishop stays on its own colour, that Zelenskyy is President of Ukraine. Not to mention your true friend and the true tabletop.

Then there is the form "I know the bridge will hold", which as you say does look like a reinforcement of "the bridge will hold". But consider "We know the bridge will hold". This look more like an agreement, or "Do you know how to get to the club form here?", something from which we can move on...

The result of considering too limited a variety of cases is clear in @Nickolasgaspar's attempts to apply one view to all topics, the same error he made in the recent ethics thread; the scientism of applying that solution in the wrong place. When all you have is a hammer...

And I think many of @Michael's points apt.

So I'll go back to Tarski's analysis; or rather the inability to analyse:

p is true IFF p

That's as much as one can get out of truth. I don't think you will disagree, since you have understood Ramsey.

Which leaves us with the JTB account as a fine partial analysis of knowledge. If we know something, then it is true. If we know something, then we believe it. Both of these are well worth bearing in mind. It's inevitably what it means for something to be justified that causes grief. But of course one man's justification will be insufficient to convince another.

It's not truth that is problematic for knowledge, but justification.

The Theaetetus ends in aporia. These thread are never ending.

The result of considering too limited a variety of cases is clear in Nickolasgaspar's attempts to apply one view to all topics, the same error he made in the recent ethics thread; the scientism of applying that solution in the wrong place. When all you have is a hammer... — Banno

_the problem with your approach is that you have a hammer and a nail in front of you and you search for a screwdriver just because this hammer job "appears" to be difficult . You need to start working with what is available to you and then check if the job demands differnt tools.
This is the MN approach used by science and it has yield the best results so far.

Cheers.

Folk with a science background who think they can "fix" philosophy are a dime a dozen. Most fail to see that they are not even addressing the issues.

Not all knowledge is empirical. Applying empirical method everywhere inevitably fails.

Edit: to be sure, there are also folk such as @Isaac, who have a science background and are capable of engaging with the philosophical content of these threads, and so bringing some grounding into the discussion. It might be something to do with age.

Strawman. Science has nothing to do with the issues pseudo philosophers introduce in Philosophy. Their pseudo philosophy has issues with Logic and the actual goals of philosophy.

Not all knowledge is empirical. — Banno

-one more strawman. I always point to the objective nature of knowledge which happens to be empirical. Any new approach non empirical that can offer objective knowledge is welcome.

Applying empirical method everywhere inevitably fails. — Banno

-YOu are literally stating "using objective evidence everywhere is not a good idea"....sure, if lowering the standards of evidence is your way to introduce a faith based beliefs....that's the only way.

one more strawman — Nickolasgaspar

You keep using that term. I don't think you know what it means.

let me help you.
-"Folk with a science background who think they can "fix" philosophy are a dime a dozen"
-You are strawmaning my position. I am not here to fix philosophy, but to distinguish pseudo philosophy from philosophy...and my scientific background is irrelevant.

-"Not all knowledge is empirical."
-Strawman...I never made that claim. My position was always in favor of Objectivity not empiricism.

-"Applying empirical method everywhere inevitably fails."
-Never claimed that , an other strawman. Applying objective standards of evidence is how we evaluate our knowledge claims....allowing our arguments to become sound.

How does the statement "the grass is green", when uttered by me, have any different meaning to "I believe the grass is green" (or " I know the grass is green ")? Unless I'm lying, my saying " the grass is green " automatically entails that I believe the grass is green. — Isaac

What's stated in the quote above struck me as quite an important yet neglected consideration. The question was also not satisfactorily answered.

I'm extremely busy in everyday life, so I've no time to really discuss anything in depth on a daily basis. However, I would like to encourage further discussion of the above quote.

The utterance "the grass is green" differs in meaning from "I believe the grass is green" and/or "I know the grass is green". This difference is perhaps most easily understood by virtue of considering the truth conditions of each utterance. They differ significantly. When two utterances mean the same thing, they share the exact same truth conditions.

"The grass is green" is true if and only if the grass is green.
"I believe the grass is green" is true if and only if I believe the grass is green.
"I know the grass is green" is true if and only if I believe the grass is green and the grass is green.

Those are two very different issues though. — Isaac


Truth and error? — Banno

Sorry, no. I meant Error and knowledge.

Error is in hindsight "that went wrong", knowledge in foresight " I know the bridge will hold". The other way round each are perfectly sensical, but useless.

So error is important and inescapable (the bridge didn't hold, it's on the ground, what are we going to do better next time). Knowledge is just bragging, or showmanship, or politics. "I know the bridge will hold" (as JTB) doesn't help anyone over "I believe the bridge will hold" or just "the bridge will hold". It's nothing more than a boastful self aggrandisement " not only to I think the bridge will hold, but I have access to The Truth™, and I know the bridge will hold".

Hence my suspicion of those who need it to be about Truth. Merely competing for people's faith by convincing them isn't enough. They want their big stick back. You'll know, I expect, of the much studied relationship between political extremism and dogmatism. The more extreme the political group, the more they need to be the bearers of The Truth™. I bring this up just to say that theories of truth are political, we're not in mere idle philosophical territory.

I think the approach adopted in this thread is demonstrative of the philosopher's habit of theorising from too limited a set of cases. — Banno

I think it's the other way round. The cases presented here in support of a simple JTB are the very cases in which we hardly ever use the word 'know'. I mean, who says "John knows the cat is on the mat"? A primary school teacher perhaps, showing her children how to use the word in a sentence. In real life, no-one ever says such things. Partly because such cases are so obvious they don't need saying. In real life "I know" is reassurance ("I know you love me", "I just know I left my keys here somewhere"), or claims of political or social capital "He's an expert, he knows what he's talking about", "John knows where the treasure is hidden"...

I'll go back to Tarski's analysis; or rather the inability to analyse:

p is true IFF p

That's as much as one can get out of truth. I don't think you will disagree, since you have understood Ramsey. — Banno

Ramsey's view is slightly different. In “The Nature of Propositions” Ramsey showed how even the simplest of propositions was infinitely complicated such as to render an correspondence theory of truth problematic at best, if not redundant entirely. The examples he gave were Russell's facts, but much as we've been presented with here - "The apple is in the bag", "Zelenskyy is President of Ukraine". Such propositions (said Ramsey) are too complex to be truth apt.

I don't want to hijack @hypericin's thread into an exposition of Ramsey, but my critique of @hypericin's position derives, in part, from Ramsey's

we have seen no reason to suppose there are facts and if truth be indefinable, I think none can be drawn from the nature of truth; so if truth be indefinable we have no reason to suppose there are facts and therefore no reason for thinking true beliefs are related to facts in a way which false ones are not. — The Nature of Propositions 1921

... and trying to reconcile that with an ordinary language understanding of 'knowledge'.

He talks at length about the relation between degrees of belief and knowledge, he talks a lot about truth (from a nuanced redundancy position), but he doesn't (as far as I know) directly relate the two. If one reads "Truth and Probability", however, it is littered with references to knowledge, and without directly claiming it, all these uses are treated as if knowledge were a form of belief where the degree of belief were near 100%, so that's what I'm working with.

"The grass is green" is true if and only if the grass is green.
"I believe the grass is green" is true if and only if I believe the grass is green.
"I know the grass is green" is true if and only if I believe the grass is green and the grass is green. — creativesoul

It is the matter of the last that's in contention, so taking it as given would be begging the question.

One need only look at the form you've had to put it in. The other two deflate. There's nothing more to "it's true that 'P'" than 'P'. But in the last, you smuggle in P1 (the grass is green). All of a sudden, the unanalysabilty of truth as a property goes out the window. The proposition "it's true that 'X knows P'" is no longer reducible only to 'X knows P', now hidden within it is P itself.

I'm talking about the language use and the meanings those expressions have — Isaac

And this is where I think you're making a mistake. The meaning of an expression is its aboutness. As you said before, "I know that there is an apple in the bag" is about my state of mind, "there is an apple in the bag" about the state of the world. The two statements are about different things.

Even if in using the statement "the grass is green" I imply that I believe that the grass is green it doesn't follow that "the grass is green" means "I believe the grass is green". They have different propositional content (the aboutness).

Even if in using the statement "the grass is green" I imply that I believe that the grass is green it doesn't follow that "the grass is green" means "I believe the grass is green". — Michael

I don't think I'd claim that it does follow. My claim (in total) only requires that it can, ie it's opposite doesn't follow either.

Your claim that...

They have different propositional content (the aboutness). — Michael

...doesn't follow either. We certainly could treat them that way, separating propositional content from the implications of it's use, but we needn't. There's no logic or rule which compels us to.

They have different propositional content (the aboutness). — Michael

...doesn't follow either. — Isaac

You and I have already agreed that "I know that there is an apple in the bag" and "there is an apple in the bag" have different propositional content. That's a starting point for our discussion. I'm not saying that it follows from anything.

"The grass is green" is true if and only if the grass is green.
"I believe the grass is green" is true if and only if I believe the grass is green.
"I know the grass is green" is true if and only if I believe the grass is green and the grass is green.
— creativesoul

It is the matter of the last that's in contention, so taking it as given would be begging the question. — Isaac

It's neither been taken as a given, nor have I provided a case of affirming the consequent. I'm not a fan of informal fallacies.

The question was asked about what exactly the difference was between those three utterances when it concerns what they mean. I offered a precise clear answer. The question had not been adequately addressed prior to my having done so. I thought it quite important then. That sentiment remains.

Surely, we can all agree that knowledge must be true despite the fact that not all knowledge claims satisfy and/or are even capable of bearing that burden. If not, then there is no distinction between the second and third aside from terminological preferences for proclaiming one's belief.

One need only look at the form you've had to put it in. The other two deflate. — Isaac

Show me what you mean here, if you would, because...

There's nothing more to "it's true that 'P'" than 'P'. — Isaac

...is irrelevant to the meaningful differences between the three utterances. What you've said here directly above pertains to the redundancy when a sincere speaker prefixes their own belief statements with "it's true that". It also pertains to situations where a sincere speaker affixes a belief statement with "is true". This just shows that "is true" is superfluous and "it's true that" is redundant when accompanying belief statements. That's because belief statements presuppose their own truth.

It is worth mentioning that belief is not rightly understood solely by virtue of treating belief as propositions. They are not equivalent.

But in the last, you smuggle in P1 (the grass is green). All of a sudden, the unanalysabilty of truth as a property goes out the window. The proposition "it's true that 'X knows P'" is no longer reducible only to 'X knows P', now hidden within it is P itself. — Isaac

Smuggle in?

:yikes:

"The grass is green" is in all three. "P1" is in none. So, this charge could not be more wrong. Besides that, I'm steadfastly against the common accounting (mal)practice of treating belief as propositions. It paved the way for Russel's clock, Gettier, and Moore's paradox, but that's another topic altogether.

t's inevitably what it means for something to be justified that causes grief. But of course one man's justification will be insufficient to convince another.

It's not truth that is problematic for knowledge, but justification. — Banno

This is true, but it is not problematic, as far as JTB is concerned. Different people will in fact disagree on what is knowledge, due to disagreements about what is justification.

Consider religious knowledge. The religious will happily fill libraries with "knowledge" based on arguments from scripture. The primitive atheist will contest this knowledge because it is not true. The more sophisticated atheist will contest it because they consider its justification (scriptural, faith based, etc.) to be illegitimate.

These groups have irreconcilable views on what is knowledge, because they have irreconcilable views on what is justification. This is not a problem for JTB, but rather an affirmation: different concepts of justice imply marking different things as knowledge.

This only might be a problem if the aim was to elucidate knowledge's "ultimate", ontological essence. But this would be a foolish endeavor, knowledge is a human construct and it presumes too much that it should have such an essence. Rather, the aim is to clarify what it is people are conceptually picking out when they mark something as "knowledge".