I tend to be of the opinion that Ethical Egoism results in an aporia of human relations where trust is rendered as an impossibility. — thewonder

Which means that it is not in our self-interest to just take our own needs into account. Further, most of us are social mammals with empathy. So to varying degrees and varying due to situation, we don't like to see others suffer, we like companionship, we love some people, there is a lot of win win stuff, so someone taking their own needs into account must necessarily takes the needs and life quality of others into account. Only damaged social mammals would not.

So if the ethical egoist things that being selfish means not taking into accout the needs of others, they are damaged or dumb or both.

Though really my argument is not an arguement against ethical egoism, as long as the person realizes what being human entails and is not too damaged.

It would be an improvished life, which some do live, if they only care about themselves. A not fully human life. It is not in anyone's self-interest to lead that life.

It has a location--a lot of them, actually because that's what space is. — Terrapin Station

Yes, it's a bit like asking where in the elephant is the elephant.

Answer: everywhere.

It's location is here and around here for a long ways in all directions.

I think you'd need to argue for this. It's not a scientific conclusion. — frank

It's a good practical one. I use that conclusion all the time in interactions with others and it leads to expectations being met. This is of course fallible and depends on many factors - like how well I know them, how much time we had to communicate, how often do we seem to take the same ideas in the same ways as far as expected behavior and further communication - but I can even tweak things given my knowledge of others and myself and the context. IOW I have a sense of how close our senses of something will be or not. And sometimes....

...they can be as similar as, say, two copies of a music CD. — Terrapin Station

in the ways I experience the results.

Indeed, if they don't see how it could be integrated to their models then they find it more convenient to assume that the anomalous phenomena are hallucinations or delusions of those who experienced them, or to assume that eventually these phenomena will be explained in some mundane way that doesn't challenge their fundamental assumptions. People who spend their whole career working within a set of assumptions don't want to see these assumptions challenged, because their career depends on them, so they will fight to defend them no matter the evidence. — leo

But the truly sad thing is that even if these phenomena are real, they are merely assuming that it would go against current science. It could simply be forces, phenomena, realms, whatever, that haven't been detectable, so far, by scientific measuring, and which do not contradict what we know about other phenomema they have been able to track.

Some says ghosts are real. Scientists immediately make assumptions about the necessary ontology of ghosts, then conclude that it goes against current science. But within there own history, changes have come that put earlier models into more restricted frames (but do not eliminate them) or change some of the metaphysics of the science but not the use of the former knowledge - say in the example of Einstein demonstrating false assumptions in Newton, but not at all reducing the effectiveness of Newtons theorums in their contexts. And their assumption that it must be a binary winner take all clash is as radically speculative as they accuse their opponents of being.

Monday morning quarterbacking. With time and distance and additional information things look a lot different than they did then. — Fooloso4

It looked like bullshit then. The Neocons had openly suggested via the project for a new century that they find a way to get in that country. The terrorists were Saudis. They had a photo of......? Where.....? I notice you didn't respond to the fact that the very people selling the war, the people around Bush, had been with Bush 1 and Reagan and sold weapons to Hussein, and had nto admitted that that was perhaps not a great idea - heck, they even made money off Iran who Sadaam was fighting. The administration had ties to oil and rebuilding companies hwo later got contracts. There was so much evidence then that the people selling the war had other potential motives, which is why there were serious skeptics. If the media had done some real ciritical reporting, well, maybe. But they did not. They had dozens of enormous reasons not to trust what was being sold, even though the neo-cons had actually announced a few years earlier that they wanted to find an excuse, yes, they actually openly were looking for one, to gon into that country. And that's why people were skeptical then, while the bs was in the news. People like me. You are monday quarterbacking the critics of media then who were already in motion. And not going a good job of it.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the term 'fake news' originally referred to the deliberate manufacturing of false information, but quickly came to mean any information that is claimed to be false. — Fooloso4

I think there is a range of complicities as I argued a few posts up. There were assumptions made, for example, about Colin Powell's photos, that good journalists should know better than to assume. It is a hard thing to think a government would make up a bunch of stuff to get people to go to war and that their motivations could be crass and economic. Of course many of the same people who were in the administration played down Hussein's gassing of the Kurds, gave him weapons when he was pretty much the same dictator they were demonizing now, so there were good grounds to question the information they were giving. On the other hand there were tremendous pressures not to do that. Not doing your job dependant on what in the end are personal concerns (which one may not be fully or even partially conscious of is complicity.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/aug/13/pressandpublishing.usa

The funny thing is that even in their mea culpas they refer to the 'minority' of skeptics. But that is also confused. There were very few people presenting information that WMDs were there. Then the newspapers without rigor and with paradigmantic bias and self-protective bias presented that 'information' as facts. Well, sure after that there was a minoriy of skeptics. But if rigorous treatment of administration motives, disinformation, past history with that country,had be carried out, there might not have been a minority skepticism but a majority one.

They, meaning every news outlet that reported on what what the White House claimed, were not complicit in the manufacturing of lies, but yes, when, for example, the television networks carried Colin Powell's U.N. speech live, they played an unwitting role in spreading those lies. — Fooloso4

And when they did not effectively or at question the lies. When,for various conscious and unconscious motivations and fears, failed to do their job adequately. And in some cases perhaps more consciously went along. I am not ruling out the latter. There are many reasons to go along with power and also they may share values with those actively lying. But I was emphasizing how complicity can manifest in many different ways.

If those who maintain the consensus refuse to challenge their fundamental assumptions, outside ideas do not get through to them. Evidence that the model doesn't fit some observations is seen as a sign that there are some variables to tweak in the model, or that those who made these observations are crazy or hallucinated, but not as a sign that the model needs to be fundamentally changed. In the end it is not some outside truth that determines the consensus, it is people. — leo

Connected to this is the assumption that phenomena, if correctly interpreted by those experiencing them, entail that all of science or some large area is now false. Which is generally not the case. Science itself does manage to integrate really radical shifts - such as the whole qm set of phenomena - and it doesn't mean that everything before gets thrown out. IOW when faced with an anomolous phenomenon, to them anomolous, they interpret what it would mean, as if this could be known, and as if it would be catastrophic in relation to current knowledge. As a way of saying it is not possible. The idea of not weighing in on the possibility seems completely lost. It is as if they must draw a conclusion now. And that conclusion will be in the negative..

Of course I wouldn't, in absolute terms. So I'm reduced to guesswork, as we humans so often are. There has never been even the smallest piece of scientifically-acceptable evidence that God has detectable/measurable existence in the space-time universe that science describes so well. So I reluctantly guess that this will continue to be the case. What alternative is there? — Pattern-chaser

Well, being agnostic about it. There are all sorts of things that there was absolutely no evidence for that then turned out to be there or the process behind something to the building blocks to something. There was absolutely no evidence there was water on Mars. There was absolutely no evidence that elephants could communicate over large distances. And in the later case natives and Westerners who stated their belief in it were told they were wrong. The ultrasound comminucation was found. We just found out we hadn't noticed most of the matter and energy in the universe. There was absolutely no evidence, then there was a bit, then more, and now it is consensus accepted that there is dark matter and energy. That's most of everything. That space and time are not absolute. No evidence for that. In fact there was no evidence when Einstein deduced it. Only later, after technology changed, could we test it. The examples could go on and on, many seem now right in front of our noses.

I think he’s an atheist troll. — Wayfarer

Oh, sure, show everyone how much more clear and concise you are than me.

If we look at Christian pacificism there are advocates from many branches of Christianity going way back. Yes, gnostics are included.

Ah. Good point. They are liberal on social issues. On matters of war, they take the establishment line. That's the whole point. The NYT helped Bush lie the country into war. Sure they're social liberals. Their support for the Iraq war and their suppressing the story about Bush's illegal domestic surveillance until after the 2004 election gives the lie to the claim that they are any kind of peacemongers.

And today? They are leading the charge toward a war with Russia. The NYT is not for peace. Nor are most liberals anymore. It's been a long time since Vietnam.

What's left of the anti-war movement, anyway? Me and Tulsi, that's about it. — fishfry

Don't leap regarding me. I am against war and I know the NYT is effectively pro-aggression whenever it suits the neo-cons. I can't remember why I originally said that, but I would guess I meant that it is not just conservative newspapers who are involved. It is all mainstream ones. And yes, they are really pushing the demonization of Russia/Putin, implicitly intervention in Syria on the ground. I haven't read them regarding Iran but it would surprise me if they go along. Chomsky wrapped this up long ago for me.
Even regarding Vietnam I am pretty sure they were pro war for years. And then you are already in, and getting out is harder. So, it's a kind of facile opposition and one that shows little real ability to stop people using them as propaganda to get what they want.

And these days liberals and the Left hate Putin more than the right, especially the alt.right . Partly due to Trump.
It's amazing. I am no fan of Putin, but it seems to me he entered Crimea, legally or not, near his own country, where lots of people who identified as Russians lived. I can easily black box the issue of whether this was right or wrong, since by comparison the US has entered many many countries, some with nearly no americans in them. Has military bases all over the place, such as in Africa and special forces fighting sometimes openly sometimes black ops all over the world and is helping Sadia Arabias horrendous war in Yemen with technology and intelligence and war machines.

In any case, unlike genuine fake news (!), the NYT at least publishes corrections, listens to criticism, and tries to correct the record. — Wayfarer

This a category slip here. Fake news is the articles and reports. The NYT is a newspaper. If it later, after the primary goals of the fake news have taken effect, makes corrections, they still published fake news earlier. A very short gap between error and correction - one which precludes the consquences of the fake news - that's might let us skip the label fake news. That's a mistake. But years....

By your logic every news outlet that covered what George W. Bush claimed, what Dick Cheney claimed, what Colin Powell claimed, what Condoleezza Rice claimed, what Donald Rumsfeld claimed, and what others in the government, military, and intelligence claimed about weapons of mass destruction are complicit as purveyors of Fake News. — Fooloso4

That complicity is complicated. It is not that everyone was rubbing their hands together like villains in a silent film while they played their parts in getting those articles to the public. They were given information by the government that they had a hard time disbelieving enough of it

in their positions.

There was fear affecting what the could openly question.
There was fear affecting what they could notice.

The rage that could be aimed at the newslets and the individuals working there would be enormous if they appeared not patriotic in the time following 9/11. That causes people to do all sorts of things, many of which they don't even want to notice themselves. No one likes to notice that one is acting out of fear when one is also supposedly being professional. And this involves setting aside critical thinking one would apply in other situations.

The small group that knows what their propaganda really is is conscious. They use or create a situation and a framing of the situation that puts incredible pressure on other people to be unconciously complicit. Then I think they had as a back up that, well, Sadaam is bad anyway so even if it is partially or fully bullshit, we are not doing a horrible thing. And so when Bush shifted to 'we are there to liberate and help the Iraqi people' the media made that shift without much blinking.

Conspiracies often do not need conscious for fully conscious complicity. They just need to put people in uncomfortable situations - there was also economic pressure indirectly - and paradigmatic pressure - 'they wouldn't really lie this horribly' - in the other parties. They bear responsibility. They are complicit, but for not being thorough, for not listening to inner voices that would have smelled something hinky, for not allowing themselves to deal with their fear and notice how it was controlling them.

But not in a backslapping, heh, heh, backroom complicity way.

I am truly glad to see the defense of illegal drug use has gone in a such a creative and abstruse direction. And that wasn't me being facetious.

Gnostics are dualists, seeing ‘this fallen world’ as a trap, and all matter evil and a source of misery, the only escape from which is gained by asceticism and denial of the world. Nothing about traditional gnosticism was 'human-centred' - in fact that's the main reason they lost the battle with orthodoxy. Although I suspect that this is one of those conversations where facts don't matter, so I'll butt out. — Wayfarer

He has said here or in another thread that his is talking rather than warring with other religions and this talking comes from his hostility. So it is a theological and religious fight, if carried out with words. IOW it is very hard for him to back down even on small points. And yes, I have noticed over the years that he is very selective about what counts as gnosticism. Even presenting quotes from the very gnostics he quotes that go against his position never leads to a concession.

I can't see it. — Banno

I hope that means you can't find the original post or the one it was replying to..... Here we go....

It's even more basic than that. Colour is a real phenomenon by any account and not a merely "mental" phenomenon.
— Janus

That's debatable and a minority position called color realism. Wavelengths of light and reflective surfaces are real. Whether either of those could be said to be colored in the way we experience color is controversial.

Compare this to feeling hot or cold, which relates to the amount of energy the particles in a volume of space has. Our experience of the energy can result in feeling cold or hot, but the space doesn't feel that way. Similarly, our experience of color relates to visible light reflecting off surfaces of objects.

Even granting color realism, it certainly wouldn't apply to all of our conscious sensations. Kicking a rock and feeling pain is a perceiver dependent experience, not a property of the rock

That's debatable and a minority position called color realism. Wavelengths of light and reflective surfaces are real. Whether either of those could be said to be colored in the way we experience color is controversial.
— Marchesk

Nothing is quite like we experience it. All vision shows things from an angle based on where our eyes are, rather than, say, from all directions at once. Everything is filtered, selected, interpreted. This would mean that nothing that we refer to is real. Since, it seems, actual qualities of the objects of perception lead to our seeing of specific colors, it seems to me there must be some color realism. It would be wrong to think that if there were no experiencers than the empty earth would have trees that look green - to no one, I guess - but it is not a random trait or aspect. Qualities of the things lead to our experiences. Which is the best we can hope for and would constitute a kind of realism, since no perfect realism is possible. Or I suppose I would put it that it's not binary, with perfect realism vs. some non-realism. There are degrees. — coben

I was taking his as saying that our experience of color has nothing to with the objects. I think it has something to do with the objects. He argues that since the qualities we experience are not like the qualities that stimulate the experience, they are [my words] 'mere qualia'. But since....

Nothing is quite like we experience it. All vision shows things from an angle based on where our eyes are, rather than, say, from all directions at once. Everything is filtered, selected, interpreted. This[if we followed you logic] would mean that nothing that we refer to is real.

I added in the bolded this time to make it clearer.

I certainly could have argued this better, but in no way I am denying the existence of things. In fact my argument is quite in the opposite direction, though not focused on that issue. It is arguing there is connection even in those qualia where what we experience is likely quite different from the objects 'out there.'

Nothing is quite like we experience it. All vision shows things from an angle based on where our eyes are, rather than, say, from all directions at once. Everything is filtered, selected, interpreted. This would mean that nothing that we refer to is real.
— Coben

That inference is just invalid.

Everything is always, already interpreted...

Every thing.

Hence, there are things. — Banno

I don't think you understood my post. Please read it again in full and the post I was responding to. I was using a quick reductio and to a large degree we are agreeing.

Loves takes two as one cannot have true love alone.

Regards
DL — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Why not try actually responding to my post instead of just stating something without connecting it to the points I made. What you wrote here does not contradict what I wrote.

And not rational.
— Coben

That was what your reply was, yes. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

What is this a playground with clever comebacks?

That's not true. We look and check for ourselves to see if the cup is on the table, and we do not look at the justification.

There is no god's eye view needed. — creativesoul

And I just realized how rude this post of yours was. You did not interact in the slightest with the arguments I presented. You simply say one part is wrong and repeated something you said earlier. Even if you did understand the category jtb is in and what it is proposed to deal with and do, you are a terrible dicussion partner. I mean, seriously. Good riddance.

t w

That's not true. We look and check for ourselves to see if the cup is on the table, and we do not look at the justification. — creativesoul

You are responding as if I am saying you cannot be confident that there is a cup on the table when you see what you decide is a cup on the table.

That example has nothing to do with the idea of JTB.

JTB is a proposed way of evaluating whether a belief should be considered knowledge.

EVALUATING. KNOWLEDGE.

We don't look at the justification, you say.

But that's what the process of deciding whether something is knowledge is.

You are treating JTB as if it is a failed theory of perception.

It's a suggestion for how we determine if something should be considered knowledge, and that must include looking at the justification.

Now I understand why we are having problems. I don't think you understand what JTB and the category it is in are about.

Of course even your ability to trust your perception is based on implict justification. But sure, you don't need to think about justification and yes, you'll reach out and find that cup in the vast majority of situations.

JTB is not a heuristic for dealing with the things in your flat.

It's a description of what some people think are the criteria one should use

when deciding if a belief is knowledge.

So when you say you don't have to look at the justification, you are confused about what jtb is.

IMagine scientists writing papers where they say that bacteria X causes stomach ulcers and that this belief they have should be considered knowledge.

When asked why anyone else should agree - that is what criteria did they use to determine it was knowledge not some less rigorously arrived at belief - the scientists said it's knowledge because it's true. Now that saves a lot of paper since journal articles would be simply the conclusion, but it seems like a weak theory of knowledge.

And it is not a way to analyze beliefs. Cause pretty much everyone believes their beliefs are true.

I'm done.

What I was hoping to accomplish was you offering why we'd think that the existence of anything hinges on us. (And that should have been pretty obvious.) — Terrapin Station

Once the model implicit in the question is on the table, one would be swimming uphill starting to respond. Once, say the subject object split is assumed, for example. The subject here, controlling the existence of things out there.

I'm not an anti-realist or solipsist, so it's not my position, but it seems like answering that question is problematic for those who are, but because it presumes realism.

I don't know what a more neutral formulation would be,since that would depend on their philosophy, its ontology. And there's certainly nothing wrong with formulating the question from your perspective. But it's also a Trojan Horse.

OK, but the point for me is not that we can know, with any absolute certainty, that our beliefs are true in any absolute sense; but rather to unpack the logic that is inherent in the ways we think and speak about truth. So, past false beliefs may have seemed at the time to be justified true beliefs, but if they were indeed false, then they were false then, just as they are false now. — Janus

Sure. But my point is the usefulness of jtb. Is it a smart way to decide what is knowledge, given that we can only determine something like extremely good justification. Why not just leave it at that? What is the act of adding on the adjective true, knowing that we may, as a species, realize later it isn't. We can still call the conclusions knowledge. And, in fact, I think this is how scientific epistemology works.

So, we can know, within suitably circumscribed contexts, whether a belief is true or false. For example it certainly seems vanishingly unlikely that the justified belief that the Earth is roughly spherical will ever turn out to be false — Janus

Fine, so we all that knowledge, because it is an extremely well justified belief.

We act, certainly, as if it is true, and that's workign out great. I have no problem with that.

But notice how true is functioning in your schema.

It is functioning as an intensifier. It is saying something like extremely good before justification.

It is not some other kind of criterion. It is simply saying 'and this justification is so good we doubt it could change.'

It is not referring to some process of evaluation outside of the justification processes: the evidence and so on

I think it's also worth considering that the pragmatist (Peircean) conception of truth which is something like "What the community of inquirers will come to believe when there is no longer any reasonable doubt" is also perfectly compatible with the JTB model. — Janus

I am looking at jtb as a definition of knowledge. I have no problem accepting all sorts of things as knowledge or scientific knowledge that are extremely well justified.

My point is the 'true' is misleading. One because it implies there is some other criterion, when in fact it is just saying the justification is great while being a word with absolute connotations. Two because it is not necessary. Three because it does not in any way reflect the actual process, say in science, for deciding something is knowledge. There is no 'meeting the justification criteria process' then the 'meeting the truth criterion process'. There is only the gathering of enough evidence (read justification) to convince the scientific community that this is knowledge. I could see using j nstbf b, as in

justified not shown to be false belief.

But jtb to me implies that there are two criteria when there is only one. There are degrees of justification and science is on the rigorous end. A different in degree of justification. Not two criteria.

I'll give up here. Hopefully I managed to reach one of you. I am not sure I can formulate it any better. Please check out my responses to creativesoul since I expressed it a bit differenly there. But I don't think I can do any better.so I will leave it at that.

Yes, I'm saying it's beyond science, but not that this is a failing of science. God is not detectably present here in the world (I mean detectable by any form of scientific measurement), and this will not change unless God does. — Pattern-chaser

How do you know that?

We have found all sorts of things we could not before. Scientific measurement is not static.

If you want to argue that God must be utterly transcendent, which some but not all theists believe, then you have a foundation for saying that (empirical) science can't demonstrat God's existence. But then, how would you know God is utterly transcendent?

I think you are misusing the word faith.

If a student is poor in math and has not begun a logic trail in his mind that recognizes how 2 + 2 = 4, throw as much faith at him that you like, but he will never grasp math without logic and reason which are anathema to faith — Gnostic Christian Bishop

And he will never grasp math without intuition. And the great mathematicians allow criteria like elegance lead them to examine certain lines. I am using faith to mean processes that are non-rational.

Martin Luther.
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.” — Gnostic Christian Bishop

That's what he, one individual thought, at one time. Much of the rest of the time he presented reasoned arguments. But in any case, it's not much evidence of anything.

Seriously?
That would be stalking, not sharing love with another. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Stalking is a set of unwelcome behaviors. Feeling love for someone is, well, a feeling. Feeling like this is a person to be with. And some people are obviously better at this non-rational reaction to other people than others.eot

If you share love through faith, then it cannot be a true love as true love must have works, deeds and reciprocity. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I am saying that love is a kind of faith, especially in the beginnig when you have nto spent a lot of time with the other. And actually I think love is underneath works, deeds and reciprocity. Parents' love for children, even romantic love. Yes, of course those are good parts of a relationship, but the love is underneath and causal. And not rational.

You are talking about faith based on facts and a logic trail. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

So is love. Though later facts may back up the original love.
So is our faith in memory. Which seems justified, but by memory. So, we wake up in bed, and use faith to decide we will, in the main trust our memories.
We use faith in learning, in fact telling people they will succeed increases their success even if the person saying knows they are poor students.
We use faith in many steps in our logical reasoning. There are qualia that say we checked our argument enough. Qualia that say it makes sense. Qualia checks that tell us we would have noticed if the other person was right, and since we received no warnings then we must have been both logical and right.
All the people who have strong intuitions use faith. Of course to convince people they may need later to demonstrate evidence. But police, doctors, top poker players, soldiers and many others use intuition - iow not able to know why they want to make a certain choice - and some of them are better than others at intuition. It is not guessing.
We all rely on intution, here in our bodies, in time, with limited knowledge. Some people call intuition faith.

And yes, some people can be bad at it.

I don't think this is right; there may be justified false beliefs, as in the example of the cardboard cutout sheep in a paddock I referred to a couple of posts ago. From where it is viewed it is indistinguishable from a real sheep, so I have no reason to believe it is not a real sheep, at least on immediate viewing. Say I am going by at high speed and only catch a glimpse of the cutout for a couple of moments, then I will not have time to notice that it is not moving; something which, if noticed, would be good reason to doubt it is a real sheep.

Another example: the ancient's belief that the Earth is flat could be counted as a justified false belief. There would be countless examples of justified false belief. — Janus

Yes, but these support my assertion.

We do not now know what justified beliefs we have now will turn out to later be considered false.

I am not arguing that all justified or even extremely well justified beliefs are true.

I am saying that we do not know which of our currently held well justified beliefs will turn out not to be true.

I agree that there is a difference between a jtb and a jb even a very well justified jb. But here's the thing....we don't know which beliefs are very well justified and this will last and which are very well justified and will be ovoerturned.

You both keep mentioning that there are false justified beliefs

and I want to say..........................precisely!

Earlier in the history of science there were beliefs held by the consensus of the scientific community that we now know to be false. I think it made sense for them to consider those ideas knowledge. However it turned out they were not true and they

did not have the skills to test for truth after they used their justification.

Again: I am not saying that all even extremely well justified truths are true.

I am saying that all we have is our justifications and these may well turn out to have been for false beliefs.

We do not text hypothesis X, use all the evidence as justification, then check the truth. We just work out good justification.

Now we can check to see if anything contradicts, shows it to be false.

I could see an argument for justified and now shown to be false belief. Which is bascially what science does.

It calls certain beliefs knowledge when they are extremely well justified and there is nothing that says they are false.

But to say something is justified and true
§1) implies a two step process with two criteria when we in situ only do the justificaiton and have not other trick to determine if it is true. 2) it may be overturned.

We can try to falsify what is currently called knowledge.

We have no idea how close we are, knowledge wise, to all that can be known and what can be done. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

You basically just agreed with me. Science does not disagree with what he said. Nor does it agree. It remains agnostic.

Speculative nonsense is all we can have of what we do not know, especially of the supernatural. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Actually we can have somewhat justified beliefs about things we do not know. It is not binary, even in science. There are degrees of evidence and models that we use that imply things that we have not yet demonstrated, and then individuals can know things that they cannot prove to others, and more.

I hadn't heard of that. A proposition is an abstract object, though. It has no location. — frank

the conduit metaphor is a folkmetaphor for language, so it's not literal.

Things like 'I put my ideas in words and sent off the letter. He read the letter but he didn't get my ideas from it.'

https://msu.edu/~orourk51/800-Phil/Handouts/Readings/Linguistics/Reddy-TheConduitMetaphor-1979.pdf

Reddy's point is that this metaphor is problematic and other metaphors for language might be better. Not so we speak/write more accurately, but because the way we think metaphorically about language makes us less useful and knowledgable, when using it. That we are actually confused about what language does and is.

You're all over the place — creativesoul

Yes, I am trying to come at it from a number of angles because it is tricky to get people out of a bird's eye view - where they know which are the very well justified beliefs that are true and which are not - to an in situ one where we don't known which one's are merely very well justified and will be overturned.

There's one basic disagreement between us that is worth discussing here, because it's what piqued my interest regarding what you wrote. You claim that the truth criterion is redundant when regarding JTB. You further state and imply that there's nothing more about the "true" aspect of JTB than what we have regarding the justification aspect.

I'm saying - flat out - you are mistaken.

The ground for my saying that is that justification is inadequate for truth. If the aspect of being true were redundant regarding JTB, then there could be no such thing as justified false belief. — creativesoul

That actually supports my argument.

We are here at a particular point in time. We do not know which of the beliefs we have that seem both true and well justified will turn out to be false, precisely as in the examples you gave from within science.

We have Scientist 1 who reaches belief X through a series of experiments. Other scientists test also and the belief X is extremely well justified.

1) it may be overturned
2) those scientists do nothing more beyond examing the justification to say it is true.

Now one could say that knowledge covers well justified beliefs that have not been shown to be false. But that is not the same as true.

And note, you justified the use of justified true beliefs as a label for knowledge by saying that there are false justified beliefs. 1) I obviously accept the existence of the latter and 2) the existence of those does not demonstrate that the label 'true' is useful.

For us. Here at this moment in time, knowing that our ideas may be overturned in the future.

It is not that a jtb not different from jb

It is that we don't have access to anything more than justification. And justifcation is weak the moment we find something that says a belief is false, and says it well.

YOu are looking down from the sky and say
Belief X is justifed and true

which is different from beleif Y which justified but not true.

That's a God's eye view.

I am looking at, for example, the history of science and saying we mere humans do not have some extra process we can use to text if it is true.

So, yes, there is a difference, but we in situ don't have anything other than our justifications. Our sense it is obviously true may be wrong.

In science not just any justified belief is considered knowledge. It must have a great deal of evidence including wide range testing and a lack of strong counterevidence.

In science we have something like extremely well justifed beliefs are knowledge.

They do not then do some other experiment to show that it is true. Any other evidence or experiment would merely add to the justifcation.

When the scientific community is done amassing evidence and concludes that idea is so well justified they consider it knowledge, what step do they take to check if it is true?

I'm interested if anyone else arrived at this conclusion or whether it makes sense. — Wallows

Without emotions, there can only be behavior, not ethics. Technically of course one could generate some 'logical' set of behaviors, but it would either be random, or it would be grounded on emotions and what we would like things to be like. And what we would not like things to be like.

So pick one. NYT stories on Saddam's WMDs that drove the country into a disastrous war that we're still stuck in: Fake News or not Fake News? — fishfry

The NYT is considered liberal. Conservative papers and liberal ones in general supported the WMB disinformation campaign and together helped the Bush Admin get us into that war. It certaily wasn't like there was some conservative outcry against that war. More on the Left were skeptical, but in general the mainstream media en masse supported the BS.

I've noticed from time to time that some posters on this forum misunderstand that the contemporary meaning of "proposition" is not Bob's speech. It's that thing that Jim grasped after aligning himself with Bob's frame of reference. — frank

Language elicits experiences. At least that's one way of looking at language. I think in a way you are in the areas of Reddy's conduit metaphor for language, which goes into hidden folk theories of language where it is a conduit, a container for knowledge rather than something that can, but does not necessarily, elicit certain thoughts in the other person.

https://msu.edu/~orourk51/800-Phil/Handouts/Readings/Linguistics/Reddy-TheConduitMetaphor-1979.pdf

Propositionless communication is what I was thinking of. — frank

I suppose some looks from my wife are propositionless but they convey meaning. I now know something I did not before the look. Because the look is not referring to something, but is part of that something. Let's say her anger at what her mother just said. (this may be missing the whole point of the thread, but hey...)

And yet there are justified false beliefs. Paradigm shift happens by virtue of peeling them away from conventional certainty. Copernican revolution. Einstein's On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies and General Relativity are exactly such cases which show that what were justified beliefs held to be true were not true, but were justified nonetheless. — creativesoul

And those who believed them would have said they were true. And any belief we have now that we consider extremely well justified in science may turn out to be false. In fact that is an foundational idea in science. So this would mean we could never consider anything knowledge ni science since consensus science now might turn out to be incorrect on issue X. So that would mean we could never use the t, since it might get revised. I don't think that's a useful model for knowledge. Unless you are saying that we know forever that General Relativity be found the be lacking as much as Newton's was. And then, how do you know that?

I don't understand this at all. What in the world does "access to truth" mean?

We can look to see if a cup is on the table. That's access enough, right? — creativesoul

Sure, in a naive realism. Not if this is a simulation or you are in a coma dreaming. And look I am not arguing that we can never take something as knowledge. I am saying that if we have criteria for knowledge and the first one is justification...

You justify your belief that the cup is on the table - explain your realism, good vision, ability to distinguish cups from other things, cite other witnesses.....

There's your justification.

There is no other process you go through where you now decide if it is true. Those things that justify your belief also make you think it is true.

We do not examine your belief in the cup first to see if it is justified, then to see if it is true.

In the specific case of saying we are going to base knowledge on these criteria

is it justified
is it true

we have no extra process to test the latter. Whatever process that is is included in the former.

That's access enough, right?

And let's look at this again. When I read this question it is as if I am saying y ou cannot consider the cup being on the table to be the truth. Like I am a radical skeptic.

No.

What I am saying is that when we determine what is knowledge and we start with justification (which is the first adjective) we investigate the justification for the belief
and this will include ALL the reasons why we believe something.

There are no other things we check to see if it is true, after we checked to see if it was justified.

I don't doubt your abilities to identify cups, nor am I raising brain in a vat scenarios. I am looking at what we do when we decide something and we don't have two criteria we check off. We have the justification one.

I am happy to say this or that is true. I am talking about using jtb and I think it is silly to have two criteria, as if we check one and then the other. It is nto what we do when creating communal beliefs or knowledge. It is not what scientists do, for example.

And yet there are justified false beliefs. — creativesoul

Sure, see my post above to Janus.