If math is discovered (knowledge), the B (belief) in the JTB definition of knowledge is an error. — Agent Smith
I don't see how either of those things follow.If math is invented (knowledge), the T (true) in the JTB definition of knowledge loses significance. — Agent Smith
In the ordinary sense (of folk language games, of the type we would play when we say "the table is solid"), "R murdered W" can only be true if the state of affairs is such that R murderedkilled W, regardless of what a community of peers agrees on. — InPitzotl
they are more critically points being made, with said points challenging some previously made point — InPitzotl
I've heard nothing here challenging the notion of sufficient to warrant belief. — InPitzotl
if PO and PS have different truth values, they cannot possibly be applying the same truth criteria. Since they have different truth criteria, they cannot possibly be the same proposition. So all that really follows is that a particular sentence can express different propositions in different contexts. — InPitzotl
You don't even understand the point (I can say that with the hindsight of reading your entire post... oh boy, is it broken). The point was an extension of this post:Yeah, this is the point I thought you were making. — Isaac
...your claim here is about how people use "an actual word" in real language games (referring to 3, the T condition of JTB). Here I'm offering rules of fiction as examples of how people use actual words in language games. By the way, this is the third indicator of such I've given in these interchanges.Again, we're talking about an actual word here that people use in real language games. — Isaac
Regarding that, Dr. Richard Kimble did not murder his wife — InPitzotl
But you said this: "What you've said doesn't seem related to what I'm arguing in the slightest"If I agreed with it, I wouldn't bf making the point I'm making would I? — Isaac
Nope, not going to even start debating the meaning of the word "challenge" here. Just pretend I invented a shade of meaning of "challenge" relevant to your charge: "What you've said doesn't seem related to what I'm arguing in the slightest". Pretend it means related to what you're arguing in the slightest in just the right way such that if you agreed to it, you wouldn't be making the point you're making.they are more critically points being made, with said points challenging some previously made point — InPitzotl
...
But there's no challenge. — Isaac
Nope (see below).You're just repeating a basic correspodence theory of truth. — Isaac
That's irrelevant to your claim: "we're talking about an actual word here that people use in real language games".I don't hold to such a theory. — Isaac
Why I hold to this (but see below) theory is irrelevant here, because it's not the topic here. The topic here is "we're talking about an actual word here that people use in real language games".or discuss the reasons why you hold to a correspondence theory — Isaac
No, I have offered here as an indicator of how people use the actual word in real language games how they use the word in fictive language games. Also, this is the third indicator I have offered for how people use the word.but as yet, all you've done is simply declare it to be the case — Isaac
Well, you are missing any support for something you keep claiming outside of 100% horse grade pretense, and any semblance whatsoever for any sort of falsibiability condition.as if I might have somehow missed the concept. — Isaac
As advertised, all it's doing is addressing a particular non-trivial reading of this:Again, this simply assumes a theory of truth — Isaac
...and that's still ambiguous out the wazoo (and I directly invited you to rephrase it). The reading it addresses is one where your "This table is solid" being true in one sense and false in another "as such" suggests anything at all about the JTB theory of knowledge. Assuming JTB for this purpose is not problematic.I'm arguing that both 'know' and 'true' have different meanings in different contexts and as such JTB has no special claim to be a definition of 'knowledge'. — Isaac
or discuss the reasons why you hold to a correspondence theory — Isaac
In terms of what I've described, there's no difference between these two views. So why do you think it's a correspondence theory in the first quote and then suddenly a coherentist theory in another?here a coherentist theory it seems — Isaac
Gettier doesn't claim that his characters know. On the contrary, he claims that they have a justified true belief and not knowledge. That's the point. — Ludwig V
The mistake is to try and classify it as knowledge or not. — Ludwig V
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However, this “no false lemmas” proposal is not successful in general. — SEP
He's saying, see, their using JTB and it failed to give knowledge. He's conflating one's claim to knowledge with actually having knowledge. — Sam26
However, this “no false lemmas” proposal is not successful in general.
— SEP
That's at least some places to start if you're sympathetic to the "no false lemmas" response. — Srap Tasmaner
The one thing everyone agrees on is that there is no knowledge here, so I wonder why you think there's a problem saying there is or isn't.
The question comes down to whether the main character's belief is justified or not; the stories create situations in which it isn't possible to give a straight answer. — Ludwig V
If justification and truth run on separate tracks, then justification can sometimes lead, quite reasonably, to falsehood, just as we can sometimes hold true beliefs by luck. (Lotteries provide the clearest examples for both: you can pick the winning number, without justification, and you can only be justified in believing that you didn't, given the odds, but you can't know it.) — Srap Tasmaner
"No false lemmas," by stipulating their conjunction, doesn't really address the main issue: either the true, justified lemma is knowledge, or it should face a Gettier case of its own — that is, you will be lucky that your premise is true. (If it's knowledge, then we've taken a step toward Williamson's E = K, the idea that rational beliefs are based on knowledge; but to claim that knowledge must be based on knowledge is either empty — because of course we'll take valid inference to be knowledge-preserving — or circular. If there's a third option, it's pretty subtle, but maybe there is.) — Srap Tasmaner
I'll admit, though, that it does seem to help. In Russell's example, checking the time from a clock that's stopped, had you looked a minute earlier or later, you would have formed a false belief, so you were lucky to have looked when you did. Now suppose that the clock was working and had the correct time, but stopped right after you looked; now I think we want to say you do have knowledge even though a minute later you would have formed a false belief. You were genuinely lucky in looking while the clock was still such that it was knowledge imparting. — Srap Tasmaner
So what's changed? If you look a minute later, we're exactly in Russell's scenario; a minute earlier, and you're fine. What if we compress things: suppose the clock stopped this time yesterday, briefly surges into life as you approach, just long enough to tell the right time for a minute or so, and then fails again. Now your window of luck is a range of a minute or so — too early or too late is still Russell, but for a brief span, the clock is knowledge imparting. Does that sound right? It sounds a bit dodgier now; you have been nearly as lucky as in Russell's scenario. The clock starting again feels wrong; had it started a minute earlier it would carry on being ahead until it failed, later and it would remain behind. What's missing is the clock actually being set; if a worker had just gotten the clock to work, and set the right time, you would again be acceptably lucky to look while it's keeping the correct time, even if it only did so for a minute before the worker cursed and set to work again.
To say that the clock has been set properly is to say that the time it displays is not only true, but justified, I suppose. But we can keep pushing the problem of luck back into these ceteris paribus conditions, which will grow without bound. Was the worker going by his own watch? What if his watch only happened to have the correct time? We're either going to continue demanding that truth and justification stay conjoined, or we're going to allow them to separate at some point, and that's the point at which Gettier will take hold.
Perhaps though what we're seeing here is that Gettier is the inevitable result of treating beliefs as atomic, and that the revenge cases are indicating that our beliefs never confront reality singly but as a whole, the Quinean view, I guess. — Srap Tasmaner
I was aware that not everyone agrees with "no false lemmas". I confess that I don't know what the full definition of a lemma would be so I'm not in a position to argue with them. For the sake of brevity, I ignored them. The "apparent dog" is not an impressive counter-example. An apparent dog is not a dog. One might argue that a robot dog is a kind of dog, but that would blow the point of the story, so we don't need to worry about that. — Ludwig V
S (a person) knows P (a proposition) iff
1. S believes P
2. P is true
3. P is justified
When (1) S believes P it means, for S, P is true or S thinks P is true. — Agent Smith
It's dusk, you're a farmer. You go into your fields and see a cowish shape (it actually happens to be a cloth swaying in the wind). You conclude that there's a cow in your field. There, in fact, is a cow in your field. — TheMadFool
But I don't quite understand why you say it is humanly impossible. It seems to me self-contradictory to assert "I believe that p and it is not the case that p". It is equivalent to "p is true and p is false." (Moore's paradox, of course.)It is humanly impossible to knowingly be mistaken(to knowingly hold false belief). — creativesoul
I was under the impression that belief was one of the paradigmatic propositional attitudes.Beliefs are not equivalent to propositional attitudes. — creativesoul
It is true that sometimes people explicitly verbalize a belief, whether to themselves or others and sometimes they don't - and of course, animals believe things, but clearly don't verbalize them. But I don't understand why that makes any difference here.Believing that a cloth is a cow is not equivalent to believing that "a cloth is a cow" is true. — creativesoul
So it is clearly not knowledge or even justified true belief because the J clause fails. — Ludwig V
Assuming that we are not talking about the truth-functional definition of implication, it is clear that even if p does entail q, one is not entitled to deduce q if p is false. So the cases all fail. — Ludwig V
Yes, it is a reasonable argument. I didn’t pay attention to the point that if S is justified in believing that p, S is justified in asserting that p.This seems a reasonable argument. — Michael
I find Lewis's contextualism a pretty obscure doctrine, so I'm not ready to go there yet, and I have more reading to do before taking on contextualism in general. Your view seems to be some sort of hybrid, in which knowledge is still a sort of justified belief, but what counts as justification is context-dependent. (Usually contextualism passes right by justification.) — Srap Tasmaner
Must the farmer forevermore wonder whether the bright spot is a cow or an old shirt? Because we know he was mistaken once? We might well ask, but Lewis specifically does not make such demands on the farmer, who either will or won't. This is a puzzling theory, that the less imaginative you are the more you know. — Srap Tasmaner
I agree that
It is humanly impossible to knowingly be mistaken(to knowingly hold false belief).
— creativesoul
But I don't quite understand why you say it is humanly impossible. — Ludwig V
It seems to me self-contradictory to assert "I believe that p and it is not the case that p". It is equivalent to "p is true and p is false." (Moore's paradox, of course.)
And I don't understand what you mean when you say
Beliefs are not equivalent to propositional attitudes.
I was under the impression that belief was one of the paradigmatic propositional attitudes.
Perhaps you are referring to your point that
Believing that a cloth is a cow is not equivalent to believing that "a cloth is a cow" is true.
— creativesoul
It is true that sometimes people explicitly verbalize a belief, whether to themselves or others and sometimes they don't - and of course, animals believe things, but clearly don't verbalize them. But I don't understand why that makes any difference here.
As Williamson notes, "Knowledge doesn’t require infallibility. What it requires is that, in the situation, you couldn't too easily have been mistaken." — Andrew M
Which is the Harman-Vogel paradox that Ludwig V referred to. Jennifer Nagel has a useful survey of some of the responses (contextualism, relativism, interest-relative invariantism, error theory) and her own solution (dual-process theory) in "The Psychological Basis of the Harman-Vogel Paradox". — Andrew M
Moore's paradox has him wondering why we can say something about someone else that we cannot also say about ourselves. He offers an example of our knowing when someone else holds false belief and then pointing it out while they still hold it. He asks, "why can we not do that with ourselves?" or words to that effect/affect. — creativesoul
What we cannot believe is that "a piece of cloth is a cow", or "a barn facade is a barn", or "a stopped clock is working" are true statements/assertions/propositions/etc. If we do not know that we believe a piece of cloth is a cow, if we do not know that we believe a barn facade is a barn, if we do not know that we believe a stopped clock is working, then we cannot possibly explicitly verbalize it. — creativesoul
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