Comments

  • The Mind-Created World
    I meant to say that taking intuition of space and time as a process of my perception raises the question of how "objective" it is. That ties into Kant's beef with Berkeley who treats space as an experienced phenomenon. Kant argues that it is, rather, an a priori condition for sensibility: — Paine
    Space and time are big issues in philosophy, and I'm not an expert. But I do agree that we do not experience space as a phenomenon. I wouldn't say that it is a condition for sensibility, but rather a principle of interpretation of the phenomena.
    I'm afraid, though, that I simply have no grasp of what he means by saying that it is an intuition. Is it something like a brute fact?
    My other problem is how we can conceive of space without objects in it, when we cannot conceive of what I call objects without their spatial dimensions and position in relation to each other. The mathematical representation of space - as a graph with three axes and an origin seems to separate space from what it contains, but I think that is an illusion. The graph has no meaning except as a way of locating objects.
    I realize that a priori means before experience, but what does the metaphor mean here? (I realize that it is a deeply embedded metaphor that has become a regular way of speaking. But I detect an ambiguity here, whether before means a stage in a process or a position in a structure, supporting or enabling experience. My metaphor for understanding the a priori is framework vs content, setting up the rules of a game vs playing the game. I think that that Kant thinks that the a priori tells us something about how the world is - about possible worlds.

    The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth." — Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, page 374, or page 69 in the linked document
    My word. That is a surprise. He sounds like a radical 20th century analytic philosopher.

    Space and time, together with all that they contain, are not things nor qualities in themselves, but belong merely to the appearances of the latter: up to this point I am one in confession with the above idealists. But these, and amongst them more particularly Berkeley, regarded space as a mere empirical presentation that, like the phenomenon it contains, is only known to us by means of experience or perception, together with its determinations. I, on the contrary, prove in the first place, that space (and also time, which Berkeley did not consider) and all its determinations a priori, can be known by us, because, no less than time, it inheres in our sensibility as a pure form before all perception or experience and makes all intuition of the same, and therefore all its phenomena, possible. It follows from this, that as truth rests on universal and necessary laws as its criteria, experience, according to Berkeley, can have no criteria of truth, because its phenomena (according to him) have nothing a priori at their foundation; whence it follows, that they are nothing but sheer illusion; whereas with us, space and time (in conjunction with the pure conceptions of the understanding) prescribe their law to all possible experience a priori, and at the same time afford the certain criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion therein. — Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, page 374, or page 69 in the linked document
    This just defeats me. Perhaps you can paraphrase it for me?
    ".... space ..... can be known by us, because .... ... and makes all intuition of the same (i.e. all perception and experience) ....possible."
    Well, yes, with reservations.
    Does "space .... and all its determinations a priori," mean Geometry?
    What does "(sc. space)inheres in our sensibility as a pure form before all perception" mean?
    "... experience, according to Berkeley, can have no criteria of truth, because its phenomena (according to him) have nothing a priori at their foundation"
    "...space and time .... prescribe their law to all possible experience a priori, and at the same time afford the certain criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion therein."
    That's roughly the definition of the a priori, using a metaphor, which I think clouds his meaning. The kind of law that is a prescription defines the possibility of breaking it. But if the a priori defines possibility, there is no possibility of breaking it.
    I would need some argument to accept that space and time are the criterion for distinguishing truth and illusion. I would have thought that non-contradiction and identity would be essential - or is that what he means by the "pure conceptions of the understanding."?

    I, too, am learning from this discussion. — Paine
    That's all right, then.

    I will try to respond to some other of your comments but need to get back to painting a specific appearance. — Paine
    I see from later comments that you are painting a door. That's a hard task, because a vertical surface promotes drips. I was, however, rather surprised. I always thought that the only way you could paint an appearance was by painting a picture.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    ↪Sam26

    All right. That's very clear.

    By contrast, probabilistic reasoning always carries qualification: no matter how small the probability of error, there remains some chance that the conclusion is false. Thus, probabilistic conclusions can approach certainty in degree, but they can never be absolutely certain in kind. — Sam26
    So where does probabilistic reasoning fit? An example of a conclusion that can approach certainty in degree, but never be absolutely certain in kind. Bear in mind, that probability is, by definition, defined by an outcome, of which the probability, by definition, is 1 or perhaps 0. (I'm not saying the outcome always has to happen, just that each probability defines an outcome.)
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    ↪Sam26

    Yes, I understand that position. I won't pick it apart here.

    I wanted to point out that mathematical probability is mathematically certain. It has uncertain elements, but even there, the degree of uncertainty is certain. We can consider coin-tossing as an abstract structure and see the implications of the rules, without any appeal to empirical probabilities. So the statement "There is a 50% probability that the coin will land heads" and "The coin will land either heads or tails" are mathematically certain.

    All that changes when we consider empirical probabilities. Here, nothing is certain and the language changes to reflect that. However, there are some elements that need to be regarded as certain. In an actual game of coin-tossing, we do need to be certain of the result of each toss; if there are any uncertain outcomes (the coin lands and stays on its side, or turns into a bubble), they need to be discounted, or included as a third possible outcome. (Where we are basing our estimates of life expectancy on past data, that, too, needs to be certain.) Probabilistic reasoning needs some things to be (or be regarded as) certain, though never mathematically certain.

    Bayesian probability is different again, since it assigns a probability to a single outcome. I'm not at all clear what meaning can be attached to that. But it does seem to me that the outcome of the experiment must be (treated as) certain, or there is no result and the prediction fails.
  • Hume and legitimate beliefs
    However, I think it is a misrepresentation to call Hume a sceptic about this issue. — Ludwig V
    I meant that Hume does not question the idea of causation itself; he questions, and rejects, a particular account of what (efficient) causes are.

    Ludwig rightly emphasizes that Hume rejects the idea of causation as a metaphysical reality. — Banno
    I was referring partly to his rejection of metaphysics as such, and to his criticism of the traditional conception of causal powers.
  • Hume and legitimate beliefs
    Operant and classical conditioning in animals (and in humans), for one example, would be impossible without such innately held means of association. — javra
    That's right. For Hume (by implication), association of ideas and impressions is the one piece of equipment built in to your minds. (Contrast Kant). The thing is - again by implication - it is a causal account. Again, it would be very odd, wouldn't it, if a sceptic about causality proposed causal relationships to explain what causes are. I think the best way of understanding this is by comparison with Wittgenstein's exasperated "This is what I do."

    On this view, causes are not waiting out there in the world to be discovered; they are part and parcel of the way we interact with the world. — Banno
    Yes - emphasis on interaction. Hume doesn't seem to escape from the passive observer trying to piece the world together. But causality plays a vital role in our ability to do things in the world and to change things in the world. I think there is still a hunger for something beyond regularities - as everyone keeps reminding me, correlation is not causality. If that's not looking for a secret power, what does it mean? Regularities are a brute fact, perhaps.

    but it's clear Hume rejected the Aristotelian idea of causation, replacing it with habit and custom. — Banno
    Well, yes. But we do still use purposive explanations; the difference is that we only use them in specific domains and we don't (most of us) have a grand overall hierarchy of purposes and values. However, I'm not sure that material and formal causes make much sense any more.
  • Hume and legitimate beliefs
    But, as facts go, Hume never once claimed that causation was in fact illusory … hence, that there was no objective truth to causes (not in these or any other words). — javra

    That's true and you have a point. But it is an argument from silence and as such falls short of being conclusive. There's a complication, though, that Hume is quite explicit about metaphysics and about the "Schoolmen's" concept of power. So far as I know, he doesn't explicitly discuss whether there is a reality distinct from experience, which is a bit odd. I don't know what to think.

    However, I think it is a misrepresentation to call Hume a sceptic about this issue. He provided an account of causation as the result of an association of impressions and ideas that leads us to believe in causal relationships through "custom or habit". The issue about this account is that it seems to assert that we have this custom or habit but not to justify it. However, I think there are grounds for thinking that he thought that account did justify our custom.

    Mr. Locke divides all arguments into demonstrative and probable. In this view, we must say, that it is only probable all men must die, or that the sun will rise to-morrow. But to conform our language more to common use, we ought to divide arguments into demonstrations, proofs, and probabilities. By proofs meaning such arguments from experience as leave no room for doubt or opposition. — Enquiry, section VI, Probability, footnote to title
  • The Mind-Created World
    Berkeley is, in fact, mentioned by name at the beginning of the Refutation of Idealism: — Paine
    Yes, I knew that he explicitly criticised Berkeley somewhere. Thanks for the reference.

    One question is how far outside of myself have I gotten if it is my intuition of space and time that allows for the possibility for the experience. — Paine
    I'm not sure, but I think the correct answer starts from the fact that space and time are infinite. But it seems absurd to say that I have (actually) got infinitely far outside myself just because I have a mathematical function in my head that is infinite.

    Berkeley, who declares space, together with all the things to which it is attached as an inseparable condition, to be something that is impossible in itself, and who therefore also declares things in space to be merely imaginary. Dogmatic idealism is unavoidable if
    one regards space as a property that is to pertain to the things in themselves; for then it, along with everything for which it serves as a condition, is a non-entity.     — CPR B274
    I'm pretty sure that Berkeley would not recognize this critique. As I remember it, he argues (rightly. as it turns out) that space is relative, not absolute. He does claim that space is not absolute, but that doesn't mean that he claims that space is impossible. Since he doesn't have a concept of things-in-themselves, it seems a bit of a straw man to space can't be a property (??) of them. It would seem, however, that Kant thinks that space is absolute. How does that square with his idea that space is an intuition? Thinking about this, it seems that Kant's (and Berkeley's) conception of space seems to be that it is something that exists as a vessel or a medium in which objects have their existence. I don't see that. The existence of objects in space and space itself are not two separate discoveries. Each depends on the other, conceptually speaking.

    The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me — B275
    Well, yes. Except that the distinction between me and objects outside me requires that both are established in the same argument. I don't see how one could establish my own existence first and then establish the existence of objects in space outside me. Now we have to go back to the cogito and its implications.

    I, represented through inner sense in time, and objects in space outside me, are indeed specifically a wholly distinct appearances, but they are not thereby thought of as different things. The transcendental object that grounds both outer appearances and inner intuition is neither matter nor a thinking being in itself, but rather an unknown ground of those appearances that supply us with our empirical concepts of the former as well as the latter. — CPR A379

    If, therefore, as the present critique obviously requires of us, we remain true to the rule established earlier not to press our questions beyond that with which possible experience and its object can supply us, then it will not occur to us to seek information about what the objects of our senses may be in themselves, i.e., apart from any relation to the senses. — CPR A379
    The way he expresses this thought is - a bit awkward, because he seems to allow us to formulate our questions and then ask us not to press them. But once a question is asked, it is necessary to respond, either with an answer or an explanation why the question is illegitimate. Sadly, experience does in fact pose questions to us that invite us to push at the boundaries. My favourite example here is the discovery of pulsars. This happened because a radio signal received by a radio telescope in Cambridge (UK) that in some ways was entirely unremarkable could not be explained, until an entirely new kind of astronomical object - the pulsar - was posited and then proved (by experience with some help from mathematical calculations) to be the explanation. Kant's limit seems arbitrary.

    But if a psychologist takes appearances for things in themselves, then as a materialist he may take up matter into his doctrine, or as a spiritualist he may take up merely thinking beings (namely, according to the form of our inner sense) as the single and sole thing existing in itself, or as a dualist he may take up both; yet through misunderstanding he will always be confined to sophistical reasonings about the way in which that which is no thing in itself, but only the appearance of a thing in general, might exist in itself. — CPR A379
    This isn't psychology as we now know it, is it? Still, that's not important. I have say, I was pondering whether one could argue that appearances exist and therefore are real in their way and consequently things-in-themselves. It seems I've been headed off. But I still need to ask how appearances can be appearances of things-in-themselves and things-in-themselves be completely unknown.

    I'm grateful for your patience with me. I may be raising objections all the time, but I am learning as well.
  • The Mind-Created World
    You describe these objects as "actual, physical objects beyond the senses". — Ludwig V
    I did exactly the opposite:
    I misunderstood you. I'm sorry.     — AmadeusD
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    Much of our knowledge comes through — Sam26
    Yes, that's quite right. I think, though, that philosophers have always been more interested in how new knowledge is acquired, so tend to focus on that. What they don't pay enough attention to, in my opinion, is how important the spread of knowledge is and how dependent new knowledge is on knowledged that has already been acquired.

    Almost all justification is fallible, not just testimony. Why? Because most knowledge relies on probabilistic reasoning, including science. — Sam26
    That's complicated. Some probabilistic reasoning is absolutely certain. The odds of a coin toss are exactly and without doubt 1/2. Empirical probabilities less so, although in practice they seem to work quite well. I don't know how reliable Bayesian probabilities are, but, given the difficulty of verifying them (in one-off cases), I set even less store by them. But note that probabilities have no meaning unless and until there are outcomes - at which point the probability becomes 1 or 0.
    Fallible justifications are a bit different. In many cases, no proper estimate can be made because the outcomes cannot be listed and weighed. In others, the fallibility is only a possibility and disappears when the outcome is known.
    Then there are the Wittgensteinian hinge propositions and other indubitable propositions. How far they stretch I am not clear. But it does seem likely that much of our everyday knowledge is more probabilistic than we like to recognize. (People treat the time their train leaves as a certainty, but they know full well that trains are often disrupted by one thing or another.) They ignore that because they can do nothing about it and it doesn't happen too often.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    To better understand the ready-existent regulations by which something operates is not the same as pigeonholing everything into rules of one’s own creation. — javra
    The search for definitions is often a matter of codifying what we actually do. It is a very hard thing to do perfectly, partly because the rigidity that goes along with that can end up in conflict with the more flexible and dynamic practices of actual use.

    a mystic’s understanding of reality at large cannot be shared in the complete absence of JTB knowledge regarding this understanding, via which the understanding could then be convincingly communicated to others. — javra
    There are various understandings of the world and some of the things in it that can't be communicated through propositional true/false knowledge. But there are other ways of communicating - poetry, pictures, music, dance.

    More mundanely, though, most understandings among adult humans in a society are commonly held by all individuals (e.g., the understanding of which side of the road to drive on). — javra
    Surely that example is easy to communicate in common-place ways. What is harder to communicate by means of articulate rules is different. Curiously, how to use words is one of them. But how to be respectful or friendly are not like that, either.

    But consider how kids learn language: they must come to their own understanding regarding what words in their proper contexts signify. One cannot impart this understanding to children directly (in contrast to how a JTB can be directly imparted among adults), but can only lead the way toward it via affirmations and negations regarding what is correct. This until the understanding clicks. — javra
    Yes, but you know when the understanding clicks because you know when the child is using the words correctly.

    JTB, on the other hand, will require a) belief (that is both true and endlessly justifiable in valid manners in principle), b) some measure of understanding, and c) awareness. — javra
    Doesn't this show that all three are interwoven as different aspects of knowledge?

    The five justificatory routes identified in JTB+U illustrate this point. — Sam26
    I was very pleased to see you include testimony. Because it enables us to pass on what we know It is critical to our practice of knowledge. We all stand on the shoulders of others and our society would be greatly impoverished if testimony were not an effective way of communicating it. However, accommodating it in the standard JTB framework is tricky. It requires acceptance of fallible justifications.

    In this way, JTB+U brings Wittgenstein’s therapeutic insight into constructive form: it dissolves confusions about “know” by looking at use, and it offers a framework that captures the grammar of knowledge as it is lived in our forms of life. — Sam26
    Yes, I agree with that.

    Sometimes knowledge enters philosophical consideration in the form of a propositional attitude. — frank
    I thought that knowledge just is an attitude to a proposition. In what other form could it enter into philosophical consideration? I think it is useful to see "know" and "believe" in the context of "think", "suppose", "imagine", "deny", "assert" and Frege's puzzle is indeed a puzzle.

    ↪frank

    Some philosophers and linguists also claim that sentences like ‘Jill wanted Jack to fall’, ‘Jack and Jill are seeking water’, and ‘Jack fears Jill’, for example, are to be analyzed as propositional attitude ascribing sentences, — sep article on propositional attitude reporting
    Well, there's some truth to that. But I think that it misses the point and over-extends a useful idea. It would be a bit misleading, wouldn't it, to parse "I wish I had a red flower for a buttonhole" as expressing a positive attitude to the proposition "I have a red flower for my buttonhole"; the object of my positive attitude is the red flower, once it appears in my buttonhole.
  • The Mind-Created World
    And that's just the nature of what a mistake is, something which eludes judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover
    OK. It's just that it seems to me that there are always endless ways to screw things up, but very few to get things just right. Though some mistakes may be small enough to be unimportant.
  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪Paine


    The proof that is demanded must therefore establish that we have experience and not merely imagination of outer things, which cannot be accomplished unless one can prove that even our inner experience, undoubted by Descartes, is possible only under the presupposition of outer experience.
    I'm very much in sympathy with the sentiment. But Kant was right not to mention Berkeley here. He does distinguish between those experiences which have a cause that is not myself and those that are caused by myself. His criterion is that the latter are less "vivid" than the former.

    If intuition has to conform to the constitution of the objects, then I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori.
    On my understanding of a priori, we don't know anything about how the world is before we experience it. The clue is in the label - the a priori is what we know before experience. But if it is just a metaphor, we need to be a bit careful in interpreting int. It's hard to see how we could know anything about the objects of experience before experience. On the other hand, mathematics and logic could be seen as telling us about what objects are possible in experience.

    I'm fascinated by the phrase "conforms to the constitution of objects"? It's another metaphor. Does it mean "is true of.." or perhaps "applies to.."? Am I wrong to be reminded of the picture theory of meaning, or perhaps of W's idea that language describes the world because it is structured (logically speaking) in the same way as the world.

    The analogy with Copernicus is to demonstrate how mutually exclusive the two standpoints are. — Paine
    Yes, I get that. I suppose it's not an unreasonable idea. But it doesn't explain the metaphors that riddle his language.

    How some of us went from this location to reading "things-in-themselves" as "mind independent" is a long and winding road through perilous terrain. — Paine
    Yes, indeed. I hope lunch was good.

    We don't know anything of objects or phenomena in general a priori—in terms of what commonalities we can know about all objects without actually consulting particular objects in real time, we must reflect on their general characteristics as perceived. That is we must reflect on prior experience of phenomena in order to see what they all have in common. — Janus
    Yes. Does that fit with the standard analytic view of the a priori? I think not. Yet there is something important here, I suspect.

    Experience is prior in time to knowledge but the possibility for experience is prior as a condition. — Paine
    I don't think you can separate experience from knowledge in that way, unless you think you can catch the wild goose of raw experience.

    In the Preface, objects of experience are either made present to us through an intuition that has to "conform to the constitution of the objects" or by means of our processes of reason. — Paine
    Are there two roads to the same destination or different roads to different destinations?

    I am once again in the same difficulty about how I could know anything about them (sc. objects) a priori, or else I assume that the objects, or what is the same thing, the experience in which alone they can be cognized (as given objects) conforms to those concepts, in which case I immediately see an easier way out of the difficulty, since experience itself is a kind of cognition requiring the understanding, whose rule I have to presuppose in myself before any object is given to me, hence a
    priori, which rule is expressed in concepts a priori, to which all objects of experience must therefore necessarily conform, and with which they must agree.     — Bxvii
    The bolded passage is the slide from something I understand to something I don't. Our experiences of objects are not the objects (dare I say "themselves"). Yet I can see a point here. What we know of objects must be based on how they appear to us. I part from Kant where he says that all we can know is the experiences/appearances. They themselves show us what reality is and that reality is not limited to what appears, what we experience.

    Perhaps, but I think it is the tool, as the means to the end, which actually overcomes the circumstances. It is more proper to say that the means is what brings success rather than the will. If it was just the will, you could will yourself to success. Instead, success is highly dependent on the tool employed. — Metaphysician Undercover
    I think that this is glass half-full/glass half-empty. I'm very much inclined to represent human beings as iinter-acting with the world, rather than mastering it. The latter version reminds me too much of the Biblical idea that we dominate the world. In some ways, that seems true, especially these days. But climate change reminds us that we don't.

    "Mistakes in producing or choosing the symbol to be used as a representation". That would be a mistake of trying to use the wrong tool. We were talking about the different types of mistakes which are possible, and whether each type could be recognized. — Metaphysician Undercover
    I don't know whether a complete catalogue of possible mistakes is possible. Perhaps it is.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    There's know that and there's know how. Sometimes it's know of. In some cases, it might be a combination?

    I know how you feel.
    You should know better than to eat wild mushrooms.
    I didn't know which path I should take.
    I want to know what it's like to jump from an airplane.
    How do the migrating butterflies know the way to Mexico?
    I love you more than you'll ever know.
    Frank doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

    I don't think it's really necessary to build a formula for each usage. Do you?     — frank
    Of course, there's "know that .." and "know how ..". I'm not sure about "know of..". Perhaps knowledge by acquaintance as well?
    Whether you want a formula or not for each of your examples probably depends on how much store you put on them. I wouldn't necessarily want to set up a different kind of knowledge for each of your examples. Knowledge applies in a wide variety of language games and we can expect its definition to be adjusted to suit each context. Still "I know how you feel" is clearly different from "I want to know what it's like to jump from an airplane" and "I love you more than you'll ever know". All of them are different from "I know when it is high tide".

    We don’t need epistemology to know; epistemology is an after-the-fact rationalization of what life already does. Epistemology is like a priest arriving after the festival, declaring rules for the dancing that already happened. — DifferentiatingEgg
    Yes. I can see that you are sceptical about the point of philosophy and it is indeed doubtful. However, rationalizing what life already does is what philosophy does best, it is does anything at all. Compare Augustine on time.

    This is what to me the butterfly question, for one example, would most likely addresses: how does a butterfly (granting it is in some way sentient even though not sapient) behaviorally understand how to navigate their way toward Mexico. — javra
    The fact that they do it is powerful evidence that they do know what they're doing. Perhaps one day we'll understand how they know the route . But it's not impossible that we might come to the conclusion that the butterfly doesn't "really" understand or know what it is doing or why. It's a very limited bit of know-how - not the same as understanding how to navigate the world. Compare migrating wildfowl which are rather less limited and more flexible.

    [JTB type of] Knowledge is always in terms of concepts and can be passed on by means of words or other symbols. Understanding is not conceptual, and therefore cannot be passed on. It is an immediate experience, and immediate experience can only be talked about (very inadequately), never shared. — https://www.anthologialitt.com/post/aldous-huxley
    It depends what you mean by "shared". We can both understand how to drive a car, even though I cannot understand on your behalf, nor you on mine. It's a bit like eating in that respect.

    I’m very curious to see if anyone can discern any other species of knowledge via the way “to know” is used within language that would not fit into any of the three categories just mentioned. (I haven’t yet found any.) — javra
    I don't see any reason to suppose that list is complete. But much depends how you distinguish a species of knowledge from knowledge of different kinds of subject-matter.

    JTB is fits into many different language-games, and the definition is based on Wittgenstein's family resemblance idea. — Sam26
    You are right about that. Partly, the flexibility is the result of the flexibility of justification which is "played" in different ways in different language-games - just as winning is differently defined in different games. But I think it is most at home in the context of "know that.."
  • The Mind-Created World
    I don't think so. First, i didn't say anything about how mistake would be determined, only that we ought to believe it is possible. Then, when we look at the primary feature of determining mistakes, mistake is commonly a matter of not producing the desired result. This doesn't imply truth or lack of truth. — Metaphysician Undercover
    In general, that's right. It depends on the project. But sometimes the aim of the project is truth, so in those cases mistake does imply the (possibility of) truth.

    I think there is a relationship of mastery, like a tool masters the circumstances it is applied to, to produce the desired end. The representation (symbol) is a tool, the living being uses it, and this tool assists the being in survival, as well as making use of its environment toward its ends, and perhaps some other things, dependent on intention. — Metaphysician Undercover
    H'm. But it is odd to say that the tool masters the circumstances. I always thought it was the user who mastered the circumstances by using the tool. But isn't there a case for describing the tool as adjusted to or fitting in with the relevant circumstances. A carpenter's saw is good for cutting wood. For metal, you need a hacksaw. Hammers for nails (appropriate in some circumstances). Screwdrivers or spanners in others. Certainly, the enterprise is to adjust circumstances in certain ways; but one needs to recognize what can be changed and what can't.

    Kant's terminology is intimidating. I think the way Kant speaks in the Preface to the Second Edition is a good outline to his intentions and what he means by experience, intuition, and cognition: — Paine
    That is much more helpful. At least, I seem to be able to get my head round the argument. I wasn't much impressed by the analogy with Copernicus, however. Yet it is an ingenious thought. Maybe there is some sort of parallel. On this reading, my doubts focus on his "a priori" and especially the requirement that the a priori tells us something about the objects in the world. However, I'm delighted to learn that there are objects in the world and that we can know something about them. Some wires may have got crossed between here and the belief that we only know phenomena (are phenomena objects in the world, I wonder) and we cannot know anything (much) about objects or being in "themselves" (unless objects (being) in themselves are not objects in the world.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    I think it's just an expression of one of the meanings of "knowledge." — frank
    OK. Then can you tell me anything about the other meanings?
  • Complete!! read-thru of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    I agree there is an important difference that my pain is in my body, as in: not your body, but also that it is “mine”. — Antony Nickles
    Yes, we are agreed about that. But now, what is my body, and what yours? How do we tell the difference> I think that it is implicit in what W says that my body is what I feel pain in and your body is what you feel pain in. Where I feel pain becomes a criterion for distinguishing my body from the rest of the world. (Not the only criterion - there's the possibility of a criterion along the lines of my body being what I am in control of, or what I directly control. But it is more complicated that the pain criterion.)

    Plus, he seems to believe that it is true (we could), only to better understand what the skeptic wants to deny. — Antony Nickles
    I think that's exactly right.

    But to say “I know your pain” is not to try to equate ours, but to identify with you; to say “I feel your pain” is to console you. So then the context of saying it is “impossible” might be in the sense of giving them the space to be alone in their pain, — Antony Nickles
    Yes. It gets confusing, doesn't it? At one moment we are saying "I know your pain" because we've had an injury like that. The next we are saying "You can't know my pain" because you can't feel it. It may be that there is no truth of the matter, that the illocutionary force attached to each is the real point.

    But perhaps this does not “fulfill” what he wants, which is to “try to find the form of expression which fulfills a certain craving of the metaphysician which our ordinary language does not fulfill and which, as long as it isn't fulfilled, produces the metaphysical puzzlement.” — Antony Nickles
    This is the puzzle he leaves us with. I wish I could work out what a philosophical, as opposed to a psychological, approach to it might be.
  • The Mind-Created World
    the different types of mistakes which are possible. — Metaphysician Undercover
    That's quite a tall order. But still, if they can all be determined as mistakes, it follows that there must be a truth of the matter, beyond appearances.

    Suppose that we consider words as an example of a representation. — Metaphysician Undercover
    That tells me a lot about what you mean by "representation". You don't mean that the representation is similar to or resembles or looks like its object. So now I need to know what kind of relationship you think there is between the representation and what it is a representation of.

    I figure a representation happens when what is given through sensible intuition becomes an object one can have knowledge about: — Paine
    Do you mean what I would call an experience? Something that one might be "directly" aware of? Are you gesturing at a "raw" (uninterpreted) experience? I don't see how anything like that could become a table or a chair. I do think that Kant's point about appearances apply also to experiences - they are always experiences of something; it seems obvious that the object of an experience cannot be the experience, but also experiences cannot also be objects of experience. This is really quite bewilderning.

    I'm sorry, but the quotations don't help me.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    Possibly I also haven't been clear about why the PoV matters -- who is doing all this. The phrase "point to" is meant to raise this question. — J
    You are right. It makes a lot of difference what the context is. My apologies if someone else has responded while I've been away.

    I think you've been assuming, in this discussion, that a single person is taking all these steps, but there's nothing in JTB that requires that. We don't ask, "Have I verified that this sentence is true?" but rather "Is this sentence true?"; we don't ask "Have I provided good justifications?" but rather "Are there good justifications?" — J
    JTB amounts to a procedure for working out whether some random belief is actually knowledge. It's not exactly a discovery procedure for knowledge, because the belief needs to be given - unless it is actually a hypothesis.
    If the random belief is someone else's claim to knowledge (and perhaps, in a way, all one's beliefs are claims to knowledge, if they are beliefs without qualification). The JTB makes most sense if we suppose that someone (A) is evaluating someone else's (B) belief that P. Then, (1) the justification needs to be B's justification. (2) P needs to be true. (3) ex hypothesi the belief is B's belief.
    What seems odd at first sight is that, if A goes through all of these steps and accepts them, A knows that p. But I don't think that is a bug. I think that it is a feature. It should not be surprising that members of a social group have ways of sharing information. If we didn't have such a system, we would almost certainly invent it.
    I don't think it is circular, but it does presuppose that, to put it this way, A needs to be qualified to carry out such an evaluation, that is, needs to understand the relevant proposition in its linguistic and epistemic context, which means that A needs to be competent in the relevant skills. The same applies to B. I think this observation picks up the idea of understanding.
    When the justification in question is conclusive, the T clause is otiose. When the T clause is false, the J clause is otiose.
    It is unfortunate that the format here makes it difficult to emphasize that propositions cannot be considered individually, as if they were atoms. They are always part of a system..

    JTB wants to pin down the correct use of "I know"; I'm suggesting that it might be more profitable to look at the ways we actually use "I know." I don't think they correspond to JTB. There are many things I believe I know, but am not certain they are true. JTB would argue that, therefore, I'm using "know" incorrectly. Whereas I'm saying that it's JTB that needs correction, not me. This latter position lacks punch, of course, unless the "me" can be turned into "us" with sufficient frequency. We need a fairly widespread agreement on the faults of JTB in order to claim that it doesn't capture our common practice. — J
    I'm all for paying attention to how "know" is actually used. But it may not be easy to discern a single, consistent use, or uses may be different in different contexts. There are some common uses of "know" that, I think, philosophy needs to discount. If I place a bet on an outsider in a race, and exclaim "I knew it would win", it is a rhetorical use of little interest to philosophy. At most it expresses the subjective certainty of the speaker. I don't see that little tidying up for philosophical purposes would go amiss.
    I do think that there is fairly widespread agreement that it is surprisingly hard to formulate a generally acceptable articulation of JTB. If someone could come up with a reasonably acceptable alternative - and perhaps the view that "know" is a primitive term is one such - I would expect it to attract support.

    So the bridge from practical refutation in everyday life, which often involves the testing of individual hypotheses under the assumption of true auxilliary hypotheses, doesn't withstand skeptical scrutinty and the standards demanded by scientific epistemology - an essentially unattainable standard, relegating JTB to the realm of the impossible, or to the realm of semantics that is epistemically vacuous. — sime
    OK. So what's your alternative?

    On the first point: understanding is not the same as justification. Justification is the giving of reasons that satisfy the standards of a language-game. Understanding is a matter of concept-mastery, the ability to use terms correctly within that grammar. A student can repeat reasons in a way that looks justified, but without grasping the concepts, they do not understand—and so they don’t know. The “+U” is needed because justification can sometimes be mimicked or borrowed without genuine uptake. — Sam26
    Adding another clause to JTB just to ruling out mimicking or parroting seems a bit over the top. What is much more important is to recognize the importance of the competence of the knower, as you do, of course.

    The framework is sound; what fails is our use of it. — Sam26
    Well, I would agree that we presuppose that the framework is sound. But I don't think they are necessarily set in stone and they may need to be modified.

    The structure of BT by itself does not seem to get around the problem that fitness vis-á-vis reproduction/survival does not seem to necessarily track with truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Perhaps not. But if truth was not at least compatible with reproduction and survival, we would surely abandon it or die out. Though some events in the world make me wonder whether that is the case and how committed most people are to truth. Perhaps truth is not as important as we philosophers like to think it is.
  • The Mind-Created World
    But later, he's saying we must pre-suppose them (despite, not being able to know them). — AmadeusD
    Kant is right to emphasize that appearances are always appearances of something. But he does not press the consequences of this observation. It sets up a close relationship between appearance and reality and undermines the idea that appearances are entities that exist independently of what they are appearances of. It even suggests to me the somewhat surprising possibility that appearances are, or at least can be, what reveal reality to us, rather than concealing it.

    Deciding what is a mistake in Kant is more difficult. We don't have the object of representation in hand to compare with another supposed object in the unexperienced bush. — Paine
    "Difficult" is a very mild description for this situation. It suggests that you think that "representation" is not really an inappropriate concept to apply here. But you also (seem to) accept that there is no real evidence for such an object "in the unexperienced bush". So I'm rather puzzled what to make of this.

    Instead of insisting that there must be real independent objects, because we perceive objects, as Amadeus seemed to be doing, we ought to accept the possibility of mistake. — Metaphysician Undercover
    It's hard to disagree with that. But if we accept that possibility, should we not, by the same token, accept the possibility that there is no mistake. We could then ask which of those possibilities is actually the case. Or even question the framing of the question.

    Perhaps I'm not grasping this, but if someone is perceiving "something" then that is "objects" broadly (and in the way i suggest it be used here - I'm not suggesting there are (or that we could know that there are) actual, physical objects beyond the senses). These could simply be that which is required as an assumption for hte perception to obtain. I content roughly that. — AmadeusD
    That makes a lot of sense. But you seem to me to be giving with one hand and taking back with the other.
    You describe these objects as "actual, physical objects beyond the senses". But since we cannot, apparently, go beyond the senses, these objects turn out to be unavailable to us, which places them beyond our reach. Kant realizes this and so adopts the concept of the object-in-itself or being-in-itself. These concepts are hard to grasp. On the one hand, we know that they exist. On the other hand, we know, and can know, nothing whatever about them. Given that existence is not a predicate, this "knowledge" doesn't seem to amount to very much.
    What all this even harder to understand is that physics appears (!) to have provided us with a view of the world that describes objects-beyond-appearances as radically different from what appears to us, on the evidence of what appears to us.
    When you say that actual physical objects are an assumption or presupposition, you seem to leave open the possibility that that assumption is wrong - or at least that a different assumption or pre-supposition may also result in a not incoherent alternative conceptual structure. Compare what happens when you abandon the parallel postulate in geometry. We need something a bit stronger than this.
  • Complete!! read-thru of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    Now the answer of the common-sense philosopher--and that, n.b., is not the commonsense man, who is as far from realism as from idealism--the answer of the common-sense philosopher is that surely there is no difficulty in the idea of supposing, thinking, imagining that someone else has what I have. But the trouble with the realist is always that he does not solve but skip the difficulties which his adversaries see, though they too don't succeed in solving them. The realist answer, for us, just brings out the difficulty; for who argues like this overlooks the difference between different usages of the words "to have", "to imagine". "A has a gold tooth" means that the tooth is in A's mouth. — p. 48/49
    It's fascinating to see how W moves from distinguishing between the "common-sense philosopher" and the "common-sense man" to discussing the argument between realism and idealism and back again. There's a web of distinctions and differences here which is extremely difficult for philosophy or philosophers to negotiate. But getting caught up in it seems completely pointless. The last sentence is what's important.
    I'm wondering, though, whether there is a reference here to the Oxford philosophy.

    Suppose I feel a pain which on the evidence of the pain alone, e.g., with closed eyes, I should call a pain in my left hand. Someone asks me to touch the painful spot with my right hand. I do so and looking round perceive that I am touching my neighbour's hand (meaning the hand connected to my neighbour's torso). — p. 50
    I had a lot of difficulty about this. Perhaps it's an example of what you talked about earlier - Wittgenstein considers some very extreme examples, because he wants to give his opponent all possible rope - explore the remotest possibilities.
    So he concludes with:-
    [quotep.53]I said that the man who contended that it was impossible to feel the other person's pain did not thereby wish to deny that one person could feel pain in another person's body. In fact, he would have said: "I may have toothache in another man's tooth, but not his toothache".[/quote]
    This was very helpful. But, for me, there is a connection between where I feel the pain (what I point to as the location of the pain) and it being my pain. The difference between my pain and his pain is a difference in my pointing when I point to the seat of the pain. Very roughly, if it is not based on criteria, it is my pain. If there are criteria (reasons, justifications) in play, it is not my pain. Then there are exceptional cases - psychosomatic pain, referred pain, phantom pains. Then we also need to take note of the differences between the various senses.

    He decides that these are cases where we must be aware of something before we could judge what is the case, as in needing to understand an order before being able to obey it.
    A peripheral case that does not appear to fit the above “beforehand” necessity is “I must know where a thing is before I can see it” (p.50) perhaps because I would be told what it is, not where, and then I would search for it and know where it is in the seeing of it. After seeing how these cases work completely differently, he makes the leap to postulating that “What I wish to say is that the act of pointing determines a place of pain.”     — Antony Nickles
    His conclusion is all right. But I'm not at all sure that the path to it is secure. It is all very well to say that one needs to understand an order before being able to obey it, but "before" here is not a temporal "before". (You are quite right to put "beforehand" in scare quotes.) The understanding and the ability to obey are one and the same thing - inseparable. Obeying the order correctly is one of the criteria for understanding it.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    we can deduce, from the fact that we have JTB of X, that X is true. — J
    That's circular. You can only satisfy the JTB if you know that X is true.

    My concerns with JTB are all about how the truth of P is supposed to be established — J
    That is indeed a problem. But we can't solve all the problems at the same time. For the purpose of defining knowledge, we can assume that we have a concept of truth and worry about what it is on another occasion.

    If you tell me, "I know X, because I have JTB of X," and I believe you, then I know, or at least believe, that X is true, without knowing anything about its truth conditions. — J
    Well, that seems a bit radical. Most people, I think, believe that knowing at least the outline of the truth-conditions as part of understanding the meaning of what one is signing up to.

    Is personal verification of the truth conditions the only truth-guaranteeing justification? Or, if "guaranteeing" is too strong, the only good-enough justification? — J
    So you accept knowledge based on authority. I'm a bit surprised - it is quite unusual for philosophers to accept that. They usually, if only by implication, seem to believe that only first-person verification is satisfactory. That's a very strict criterion and cuts out most of what we (think we) know.

    An alien civilization inimical to ours might choose tonight to destroy our solar system. That is not impossible, or incoherent, or against the laws of physics, etc. — J
    That's fantasy, not a real possibility. On the other hand, the possibility that one of our superpowers will make that decision and actually try to do it. That's a real possibility.

    Doesn't that have to answer the possibility question. If P is true, it cannot possibly be false. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    I'm a bit puzzled about you are getting at here. It's my move in a chess game. I have various possibilities with the rules. Many of them have little or no strategic or tactical value. I decide on one and make it. All the other possibilities are ruled out. They were possibilities, but are no longer. Similarly, when I set out to decide whether P, there are (barring complications) two possibilities - that it is true, or that it is false. If I decide (correctly) that it is true, then the other possibility is ruled out.

    What sort of concept though? Rorty's move to redefine truth as "what our peers let us get away with is a conception of truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    I don't think we have to develop our understanding of knowledge to be compatible with every theory of knowledge. If we are not committed to a theory, we take for granted our existing concept, whatever that may be. It we are committed to a theory and it makes a difference to the epistemology, then, of course, we need to take it into account.

    Rather, it is, do we think P is possibly false. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    For me, the question whether P is true and the question whether I think that P is true are the same question - or rather, the answer to whether P is true determines whether I think that P is true. Something similar would apply to a question whether we think that P is true.

    Affirming P is a sort of endorsement. "It is good to believe P," where "good" is also "hurrah for..." — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Quite so. Asserting P is a speech act, and it has various effects, which are usually called forces. The standard taxonomy has three, as I'm sure you know. The difficulty is to utter P without some sort of illoctuionary or perlocutionary force. The ground for thinking that the content is distinct from the ancillary forces is that we can utter the same proposition with different illocutionary forces. We can assert, deny, suppose, know, believe and think that p.

    No matter how hard they reasoned about the groundlessness of their own knowledge, they would still run from rabid dogs like Pyrrho or climb a tree to get away from raging bull elephants like Sanjaya. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Yes. Though that formulation of the point leaves open the possibility of claiming special status for the theoretical context that is philosophy. It is probably better to point out that such sceptical beliefs have no significance.
    On the other hand, one might give up on digging oneself into ever deeper holes in pursuit of grounds and admit that knowledge, in the end, is a self-supporting structure. If it's good enough for the planet, it is surely good enough for knowledge.

    Hence, in most ordinary circumstances, one will affirm knowledge of what one will do later on in the day (or else of when one’s airplane will arrive), this serving as one example among many. — javra
    Knowledge of what one will do later in the day is not quite the same as having intentions or plans for what one will do later.

    If one instead prefers to remain on the safe side, one can instead simply declare it as a belief one has. — javra
    There is no safe side. One may prioritize avoiding believing something false, but that raises the risk of failing to believe something true. Both are wrong.

    I think there is a problem with this account, and I think the problem is precisely what Gettier points up. Gettier shows that someone can have belief, truth, and inconclusive evidence, and still fail to have knowledge. (But I am going to come back to your earlier posts in this vein. I am still catching up.) — Leontiskos
    OK. You know where I stand on Gettier. Though I would like to add that the analysis I gave earlier of his case 1 is not a model for other examples. The point of attack is the same, but the analysis has to be worked out in each new context.

    Hume would say that even if you've pocketed the 9-ball in this identical situation 1,000 times in the past, it doesn't follow that you will pocket it this time. — Leontiskos
    No, of course. Though as Hume points out, you are going to believe that you will succeed next time because you have succeeded before. Who's to say that's wrong, given that deductive logic doesn't apply.

    if the identity of mind and object is true, then you do not have global uncertainty. — Leontiskos
    If that's what Aristotle or Aristotelians say, I can see a certain sense in it. But there is the tricky problem how I avoid being burnt to a crisp by the sun.

    What is at stake here is an argument against truth dressed up as an argument against JTB. — Leontiskos
    You may well be right.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    "I know that I know ..." is pure pleonasm
    — Ludwig V
    Upon reflection, I think you might be right (at least in the JTB context that isn't committed to fallibalism).     — Count Timothy von Icarus
    I do accept that there may be some qualifications and caveats and that it seems very hard for fallibilism to escape from the problem that we can't be said to know p if p is false.
    However, if we pair JTB with a sort of fallibalism that denies any certitude to beliefs, ... I do think it follows that we can never know that we truly know anything. .... Another way to say this is that, if we believe our own belief might be wrong, we don't seem to believe that we know it, since knowledge is necessarily true, and we can hardly believe that something that is true might also be false. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    To be honest, those kinds of fallibilism seem incoherent to me. Something that might be false may in fact be true. To put it another way, the possibility of p being false seems to me to be irrelevant to the question of knowledge. What is relevant is whether p is or is not false, on the assumption that if it is not false, it is true.

    One solution here, that I'm sure no one will like, is to simply do what analytic philosophers have done for "evaluative" knowledge claims. We could suppose that statements of knowledge and statements of fact should simply be reinterpreted the way evaluative statements are, such that: "P" is "hurrah for asserting P!" or "I believe P," or "from my perspective, P." — Count Timothy von Icarus
    In one way, you are pushing at an open door. "Know" is one of a large group of terms that express an attitude to, or an evaluation of P. But such an approach would need to include assertion as part of their meaning, as well as an attittude towards what is asserted. But it's very complicated. "Know that p" includes an evaluation of p as true, so it indirectly asserts p. "S thinks that p", on the other hand, includes an evaluation of p as false and therefore denies p. Supposing that p is more complicated; it doesn't assert or deny p, but asks to treat p as true (usually for the sake of an argument. And so on.

    ... it's on us to show why we think there needs to be something of the sort where "P is *really* true," and that we must be able to assert that this is so.. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Well, my approach would be to explain that certainty and doubt, possibility and impossibility, etc. are meaningless without a concept of truth.

    After all, others' first-person experiences and beliefs are generally accepted to be ineluctably private, so prima facie there can be no empirical support for them, whereas there can be no empirical support for anything outside of such experiences for us. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    You are treating those philosophical ideas as if they are true or make sense. If they don't make sense, we need not bother with them when defining knowledge.

    If it's right that we can't know X is true via JTB (since it's an element of JTB, not a result, and would require a previous demonstration of knowledge), then we might never know whether we know a given X, since we wouldn't know if X was true. — J
    But we don't know that X is true via JTB, but via whatever the truth conditions are for X.

    So we have two distinct notions of truth in play: Intersubjective mathematical truth, for which the truth maker is independent of Johns judgements whether or not his judgements are correlated with intersubjective mathematical truth, versus what we might call "John's subjective truth" in which the truth maker is identified with the neuropsychological causes of John's utterances. — sime
    This is a false dilemma. John's subjective truth will be conditioned by his understanding of what mathematical truth is, which he has learnt through interaction with others who teach him. Unless that has happened John may have a subjective opinion, but it doesn't count as a mathematical opinion.

    John has to live with the possibility of being wrong. — frank
    Sure. He also has to live with the possibility of being right. But he can live with neither possibility unless he knows what it is to be wrong - or right.

    I see doing mathematics as a physical activity, involving pencil and paper, computer, or neural activity. — Janus
    OK. Is there any activity that you see as a non-physical activity? Unless there is, you've deprived "physical activity" of its meaning.

    If say I am certain that something is the case, then I mean that there cannot be any doubt about it. Then I would say I know it to be the case. If I think something is the case but there is any possible doubt it, then I would say that I believe it to be the case, but do not know it to be. — Janus
    There is a difference between the possibility something might not be the case and it actually not being the case. You are treating mere possibilities as if they were actual.

    Say I believed that something is the case, and for very good reason, despite thinking that there was some small possibility which could cast a doubt about it—then I would say I believed it, but did not know it, to be the case. Then say I found out that the small possibility of doubt had been unfounded—I would then say I now know it to be the case. — Janus
    That seems reasonable. I'm still doubtful about your "small possibility".

    But if I had justifiably believed it to be the case previously, despite thinking there was a small possibility of doubt and the small possibility of doubt turned out to be a mistake, then according to JTB I would have already known it to be the case despite the fact that I didn't think I knew it to be the case. That would be knowing despite not knowing that you know. And that just seems weird to me. — Janus
    Why? Where does it say that it is not possible to know something but not to know that you know it? It isn't like a pain or a taste, where what I say determines the truth. I suspect that you are thinking of the first person "I know that I know..." But it is perfectly possible for me to say "Janus knows that p, though he thinks that he believes it."

    an objection to any theory which says that truth is supposed to be established prior to justification and investigation, — Leontiskos
    No, you are quite right. Justification and investigation are how we determine the truth.

    In seeing an unsound justification and a sound justification as equivalently sufficient conditions for knowledge. — Leontiskos
    The issue here turns on justifications that provide evidence, but not conclusive evidence. In the context of JTB, such justifications can work, because the T clause denies claims to knowledge based on partial justification when their conclusions are false.

    Can the justifications for thinking it true be themselves true even if the theory is false? — Janus
    Yes, if the justification is not conclusive - i.e. not sufficient.
  • Complete!! read-thru of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    This is the most-succinct, elucidating summary I’ve come across (of course needing to know what he is getting at with “expression”, and what the description would be presumed to be of, but still, well put). — Antony Nickles
    I'm glad you think so. I'm acutely aware that further explanation is needed. One issue is to sort out the difference between his use of "expression" in the context of propositions and sentences to mean something like a way of putting something or articulating something. (There might be a translation issue there.) The other is to say a little more about the relationship between "Ouch" and "I am in pain". I feel that Wittgenstein stops short at saying that "I am in pain" replaces "Ouch" and does not describe it, or the cause of it. However, "I am in pain" is actually part of language and one needs to see how "I am in pain" relates to "S/he is in pain", given that the latter follows from the former.

    I would offer that the method of “Ordinary Language Philosophy” does not give privilege to our common sayings, nor is the point that they are true (“common sense”). — Antony Nickles
    Well, it shouldn't, but is often discussed as if that is the idea. Wittgenstein doesn't involve himself in those issues, but seems rather to just take ordinary language for granted; I'm not at all sure what he would have said about the Oxford School. Ryle has a good account of this in "Dilemmas", in which he maintains that the importance of our untechnical discourse is that it is where important concepts that underpin all technical discourses are found. I think his argument with conventional philosophy would be that those theories distort and bowdlerize them, depriving them of the proper sense. But he (and Austin) do rather give the impression of thinking they can be some sort of conceptual police.

    The initial relevance of bringing up examples seems to just be to point out how our practices (feelings, etc.) work differently than in a metaphysical framework. — Antony Nickles
    Yes. I often feel that his primary concern is to open our eyes to differences, and this does make his writing very different from many other philosophers, who seem primarily concerned to sweep differences away, or at least under the carpet. He seems quite happy to make his points and leave us to draw our own conclusions. One thinks of that remark in his preface that he would not like his work to save others the trouble of thinking for themselves. But it does make him rather more elusive that most commentators seem able to cope with. Everything gets formulated into arguments and conclusions. But without that, perhaps we feel we can't "find our way about", as he puts it.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    Not quite. I'm saying that this would be the unwelcome conclusion if this way of construing JTB is adhered to. To avoid this conclusion, I'm suggesting we alter or abandon JTB, not our confidence that we can know we have knowledge. — J
    H'mm. Maybe. But I think you may be getting into an unnecessary tangle because you (seem to be) focused on the special case of "I know that I know.." Anyone who asks themselves the question whether they know that p is to ask themselves the question whether p. When the latter question is answered, the answer to the former question is also answered. (Of course, this can't be generalized; it does not follow that S knows that p follows from p. That's the first person case is a limiting case.)
    I recognize that in certain circumstances "I know that I know that p" might have a point. But it doesn't add any cognitive value to p asserted by me. (So long as p is true.)

    I read Wittgenstein as saying, for instance, that if knowledge is justified true belief, then we don't know we are in pain - becasue the justification just is the pain - but he also insisted we "look, don't think", and so that nevertheless he would note we do use "knowledge" in this way. — Banno
    Yes. Things are often not quite straightforward with Wittgenstein. I don't know what he would say. But I stick to the view that "I know I am in pain" is a non-standard use of "know", based on the similarity that it would be very strange to assert of anyone that they are in pain and do not know it. Such cases as there are emerge from the fact that other people can tell whether I am in pain or not, so they can't be used to support pain as a logically private experience - which, after all, is his main target.

    There was a time, when cars became commonplace, were the corpses of slow-witted dogs littered the streets, their mangled remains a common sight that might well be used to explain how one felt after surgery. — Banno
    H'm. Survival of the fittest. But I suggest that that use would be an expression of pain, rather than a description. In which case, not knowing would not be the issue.

    The conclusion, perhaps unpalatable to Sam, is that we do use talk of knowing in ways that are not only about justified true beliefs. — Banno
    Well, yes. Knowing how and knowing by acquaintance might be examples. But that's a restriction of the scope of JTB, not a refutation. JTB may be a mess in many ways, but the lack of any articulate competition suggests to me that it does capture something important.

    Now it's tempting to think that therefore the JTB account amounts to only justified belief. But this fails to recognise that there is also a difference between somethings being believed and its being true. That difference is what allows error. — Banno
    Yes. That's why we would need to invent the concept of belief if we did not already have it.

    The "T" is JTB is not about deciding if the proposition in question is true - that's the prerogative of the "B" - it is about insisting that we cannot know what is not true. — Banno
    Am I right to take you as saying the B clause reports the view of the knower/believer, but the T clause reports the view of the speaker and commits them to changing their mind if it turns out later that they are wrong.

    If everything we cognize is counted as "physical", then would not metaphysics, thought of being what is beyond the scope of physics, or any other science, be thus taken to be dealing with the non-cognitive? — Janus
    Yes. But I reject the antecedent. We cognize many things that are not physical. Mathematics for a start.

    I don't know...perhaps you are misunderstanding me—I'm not talking at all about being cautious in trying to avoid false beliefs. but about avoiding thinking and saying that I know something if I cannot be certain about it. — Janus
    I take the point. But a lot depends on how you define certain. If you define it as something that's not possibly wrong, I would have to take issue with you. Something that is possible can possibly be actual and can possibly not be actual. So the strongest definition of certain is too strong.

    I'm not certain what you are saying here, but the question that comes to mind is whether it is possible to know something without knowing that know it. The very idea just seems wrong to me. JTB does seem to make this possible, and for me that is to its detriment. — Janus
    Maybe I'm confused. In general, I think that "S knows that S knows that p" is not ungrammatical, but is empty. The only kind of case that would give it some content is a situation in which S knows that p, but is confident that they know that p. (Someone who answers questions correctly and can justify their answer, but is hesitant, for example.) But their hesitation is not about whether they know, much less whether they know that they know; it is about whether p.

    If Descartes considered this he would still be faced with the question of being able to doubt the purported real world just as much as he can doubt the virtual world of the Matrix. — Janus
    I suppose you are right. If he did find some convincing evidence that he is being fooled by an evil demon, he would have to doubt whether he is being fooled by an evil demon. Before he could accept this alternative view about reality, he would have to subject it to his methodological doubt.

    It's VR all the way down...? — Banno
    Yep, I guess it could be. — Janus
    I have sometimes wondered whether we should not start by accepting that we are all already brains in a vat.
    Alternatively, we could accept that some things are self-supporting structures and do not require foundations.

    we shouldn't forget that the two notions of truth (causally determined versus community determined) aren't the same notion of truth. — sime
    But causal processes aren't true or false - except when we have determined a suitable interpretation of them, or set them up in such a way that an interpretation of them can be derived from them.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    Because to already know that the piece of information is true, that knowledge would have to have been verified via JTB. — J
    If knowledge were a matter of accumulated atomic pieces, then you are right. But it isn't. We learn how to do colour and at least some of the colours at the same time, and elaborate from there. We learn about solid objects as we encounter them before we can even conceive of them. Then we can deal with individual solid objects as they crop up, whether we have encountered that specific kind before or not.

    (This all assumes you think JTB is a good yardstick for knowledge, of course.) — J
    Have you got a better candidate? I don't recall encountering one.

    If he cannot know that he knows what a knife is, then he can, at best, merely know that he believes he is experiencing a knife. — Count Timothy von Icarus
    Knowing what a knife is is only partly a question of knowing that it has a sharp edge and a handle. It also involves having the know-how to identify knives and distinguish them from spoons and swords. That requires input from other people, who have been teaching me what objects are and how to classify them since before I could speak.

    It seems to me that he cannot know that he knows on his own. "I know that I know ..." is pure pleonasm. But it is an important feature of my attributing knowledge to someone that, by passing on the information that he knows, I endorse the knowledge. So "know" not only has space for endorsement by other people, it is built in to the concept as an unavoidable commitment. If I want to avoid commitment, I say that they believe that p. (If I actually disagree, I can say that they think that p.)

    in fact in the case of metaphysics I would say there can be no certainty at all, that it all comes down to plausibility, because we are dealing with the non-cognitive. — Janus
    If metaphysics is about the non-cognitive (which needs a bit more fleshing out), are we sure that certainty and plausibility even apply?

    The Matrix Hypothesis I think is absurd, because it posits that there is a real world in which the virtual world we inhabit is sustained, and this means the need for explanation is just pushed one step further back. — Janus
    Yes, that's right. In the case of the Matrix, it turns out that the real world is the same kind of world that the simulation places us in, so the fundamentals haven't changed. In fact, as we know, there is a case for saying that we already know that the real world is radically different from the world as we know it. No solid objects, everything consists of wavicles. What a nightmare!

    Why do we need to talk in terms of 'knowledge that' when nothing is lost by talking instead of 'justifiably believing that'? — Janus
    Well, if there were something to be gained, it might be a change worth making. But so long as we distinguish between true beliefs and false ones, the issues remain. But what are the issues? As I sit here, it is possible that a meteorite or similar is hurtling towards me and will land on my head. I could move and so avoid that disaster. But the possibility applies to anywhere else I might move to. So not only is the probability uncomputable and vanishingly small, but there is nothing I can do to avoid it - apart from living a mile underground, which would have its own limitations and dangers. So I take my cue from my society and ignore the possibility. I haven't been wrong yet.

    I think these discussions usually leave out half the issue. If it is wrong to believe something that might not be the case, then, presumably, it is equally wrong not to believe something that is the case. The more cautious you are in avoiding false beliefs, the more you risk not accepting true beliefs. There's no safe territory. But surely to worry endlessly about possibilities that make no difference does not look like a particularly beneficial or even entertaining occupation.


    I would say that it we determine that something is possibly false then we don't at all need to "abandon it" but merely to abandon the pretense that we know it to be so, for the more modest claim that we believe it to be so. — Janus
    We can only pretend something that is possible. So if something is possibly false and we can pretend to know it, then it must be possible to actually know it.

    ↪Banno
    This comes out in an anecdote related by Fania Pascal[/quote]
    Thanks for the link. I shall read that soon - possibly today!
    It sent me down the rabbit hole, wondering what it is to know what anything feels like and whether it is appropriate to read philosophical significance into what he said. He may have meant the remark simply as a kind of "buck up" reminder. That's something that is, perhaps, rather out of favour nowadays, but at the time, it was common place. I was brought up on "Worse things happen at sea". Once I grew up enough to wonder what the relevance was, it stopped working.
    If it does have philosophical significance, we're in the territory of private experiences, aren't we? Wittgenstein doesn't think I know about them - at least not in the same sense that I know about the pain of others. Not because the truth is elusive, but because it is not clear that truth really applies to my responses to my own pains. So the idea that I can know what someone else knows when they are in pain seems - inappropriate. A topic for another discussion sometime.

    The facts that help you decide on your attitude are irrelevant to whether p is true or not. — Banno
    I take your point. Whether I believe that p and on what grounds is a matter that is entirely distinct from the question whether p is true. That distinction is important when I am considering the beliefs of other people. But when I ask myself whether I believe that p, surely I need to consider whether p? When I have decided whether p, I know whether I believe it or not. From my point of view, there are not two questions here, but only one.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    By pre-JTB I mean that we would enter the "JTB situation" already believing that X is true. Our belief in X is not a result of what is about to happen if we successfully apply JTB, hence not knowledge. The difference between believing and knowing is important here. If, in trying to determine whether I possess a piece of knowledge, I ask myself, "Is X true?" (a JTB requirement for knowledge), I can only reply, "I believe so." I can't say, "I know it is," because this initiates the vicious circle. — J
    I'm a bit confused by all this. Someone passes on to me a piece of information. Normally, I would just accept what I'm told because this informant is very reliable. But for some reason I decide to examine this claim more closely. So I set aside my assumptions including my belief that what I have been told is true. Then I ask myself the questions... Short story, anyone with any sense entering a "JTB situation" would and should set aside any assumptions that have already been made.
    But there is a problem about the T clause. It is clear that it is not about what my informant knows or beliefs and ot about what I know or believe. Yet any verdict I give on the truth or not of the information is inescapably only what I know or believe. The effect - the significance - of the T clause, so far as I can see, is to require me (and not just my informant) to take responsibility for the truth of the information - to endorse it, in other words. As a result, my claim to knowledge continues to be vulnerable after I have made my decision; if it should turn out to be wrong, I will have to withdraw my claim. On the bright side, if my informant's justification was a bit dodgy, my claim will stand so long as no refutation appears.

    The problem that I have with the idea of knowledge being defeasible is that if it isn't true it isn't knowledge, so if what I think I know is possibly false, then I don't really know it—so I say instead that I believe it and that it is belief, not knowledge, which is defeasible. — Janus
    I think one defeats a claim to knowledge if it is false. Possibly false is far too strong and leads to us abandoning swathes of what we know quite unnecessarily. "possible" does not imply "actual".

    It can just as well be an activity or an event. We can still ask what it is, taking "is" in one of its many familiar usages. The question was whether there's a "correct way" to describe the activity of hallucinating using the word "see." I'm saying, no, it's terminological; "see" can work either way. — J
    Hallucinating isn't usually something that I do; it's something that happens to me. I think of it as an event or process. The point of the concept of hallucination is to allow us to recognize Macbeth's behaviour ("Is this a dagger I see before me?" etc. etc.) as what it is, the behaviour of someone who is seeing a dagger, but cancelling the actual dagger. Compare pretending or acting.
    I think it is true that we can equally say that Macbeth is seeing something that isn't there or Macbeth thinks he sees something that isn't there. I would say that the first alternative suggests that there is some thing that he sees that isn't there and so I prefer the second option. `

    We've talked about this in the context of Williams' book on Descartes. I think you're being too harsh. — J
    Oh dear! My memories of that are, I'm afraid, a bit vague. Perhaps I am being too harsh. I would accept that there is a balance to be struck. But I am quite sure that not all possibilities are equally possible. The awkward bit is that the dividing line between them is not at all clear. There's possibilities like the ones that Eliza dreams about when she sings "wouldn't it be loverly" in My Fair Lady or we can be fascinated by like "Battle Star Galactica". I classify these as fantasies and I think they have only have significance for psychology or the philosophy of psychology. There's other possibilities like whether there is still honey for tea or the cream is still fresh. They do have significance for epistemology. Possibilities can change their status. Something that is a fantasy at one time can become a dream and ultimately a reality.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    But if this relationship is a causal relationship between the object of the belief and the mental state of the believer, then how is a false belief possible? — sime
    It isn't. Which is why the relationship between the object of the belief and the mental state of the believer is not a causal relationship.

    the intentionality of a mental state has nothing to do with the opinions and linguistic biases of a community, — sime
    That's a very good point. But the object will be framed in a language, and that language will be the framework will have been learned from the community.

    And hence as with the example of a thermometer, either humans have intentional belief states, in which case their beliefs cannot be false due to the object of their beliefs being whatever caused their beliefs, else their beliefs are permitted to be false, in which case the truth-maker of their belief is decided externally by their community. — sime
    Well, the first option is not an option, so it must be the second. But it's not quite right to say that the truth-maker of specific beliefs is decided by the community. The community teaches us about truth and falsity and how to determine it in general. Individuals then apply that framework to specific cases; disagreements will be discussed within the community and, often but not always, an agreement will be reached. (Sometimes the belief will be one that is not determined by the shared rules.)

    On the other hand, if the community gets to decide the truth-maker of your use of S irrespective of whatever caused you to utter S (the principle of minimal charity), then you cannot know that S is true until after you have used S and received feedback. In which case, the truth of S isn't a quality of your mental state when you used S. — sime
    Not quite right. Given that I have learned how to determine truth and falsity, I can make a decision. I don't need feedback on each case. Nonetheless, the feedback that I receive is important in maintaining the framework that we have all learned. (It is not impossible for the community to be wrong.)

    the question seems to be whether I have to know that X is true. — J
    Yes and no. I think it is more accurate to say that the requirement of truth is a kind of absolute liability. I make my judgements, but they may turn out to be wrong later on. In that case, I have to withdraw my claim.

    We can loosen that requirement, and say that "X is true" is pre-JTB and therefore not a knowable instance of truth. This seems to resemble more closely our actual practice. — J
    It's true that we rarely consciously and specifically apply the JTB. It's a formalization of what (normally) we actually do in a messy, informal way. I don't understand what it would be for something to be "pre-JTB".

    For what is a hallucination, and how do we talk about it? Is there an obvious consensus? Some would describe hallucinating as "seeing something that isn't there"; others would describe it as "thinking you see something that isn't there". Is there a meaningful difference, apart from choice of terms? — J
    Asking the question "what is a hallucination?" in the sense that you seem to mean it presupposes that a hallucination is an object. It leads us to posit various other pseudo-objects as if they could magically explain away what puzzles us. But they can't. The whole point is that there is no object. But if you ask what leads us to say that someone is hallucinating, we look at what someone says and does - attributing a hallucination to them presents what's going on in a way we can understand. It is still puzzling and we look for explanations - there's no way round that.

    He detested skepticism and believed he had refuted it. (And we have a perfectly good modern version of the Evil Demon: the "Matrix hypothesis.") — J
    Very true. It is odd that there seem to be no philosophers who actually accept scepticism. They all try to explain it away or neutralize it. Mostly, other philosophers accept the destructive moment, but reject the constructive response.

    He points out that it would be possible to doubt them. — J
    The problem is that he does not consider what actual limitations there are on doubts, and reduces it to the possibility of saying "I doubt that..." in front of almost any proposition. But if we ask what the content, the reality, the significance, of the doubt is, we find nothing.

    Let's say I'm in a "JTB situation"; that is, I want to find out whether I possess a piece of knowledge. Will the justifications that I cite -- the J in JTB -- for why I believe X refer to the same sorts of facts that, out in the world, would show whether statement X is true or false? — J
    I think that the justifications are mostly the same sorts of facts that would show whether X is true or false. But there can be justifications to the effect that I am in a position, have the skills, to know - which are of a different kind or level.

    I'm not convinced that Wittgenstein accepted JTB, in the way Sam26 seems to think. I read him in On Certainty more as pointing out that if we do accept JTB then these are the consequences - there are for instance things that we might casually say we know that are rules out as knowledge by the JTB account. — Banno
    I don't think that JTB is the kind of thing that the later Wittgenstein would want to accept or reject - pointing out the consequences of acceptance and rejection and leaving us to make up our own minds is much more his style.

    We can't know how a dog that has been run over feels. — Banno
    I get the point. Applying JTB to a dog seems inappropriate, because the dog doesn't speak. As always with animals, applying our descriptions of what we know and feel to them needs to be done quite carefully. But I think we can attribute beliefs to dogs - and other animals, and we can ask how why they believe what they believe and assess whether their beliefs are true or not. The same applies to experiences - there's no doubt, IMO, that they feel pain, sometimes less and sometimes more. So I don't understand why you say this - unless you are thinking of our inability to know what it's like to be a bat.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    Logic. But I'm thinking of Davidson here, too - interpretation and the principle of charity fit in with your comments regarding empathy... — Banno
    Yes. That's not an accident. But what I'm especially interested in is, put it this way, the glitches in natural language that require us to develop or learn conceptual dodges that enable us to cope. My reply to @J earlier (bottom of last page) is a nice example. It's in a grey area between logic and psychology, but it is where, IMO, the later Wittgenstein is operating. The Blue Book is an excellent example, just because he is developing his methodology.

    Belief only makes sense against a background of truth; it is, after all, what is thought true as opposed what is actually true. — Banno
    That's true. But it requires, not just introspection, but an awareness of other people as different in certain ways. Arguably, that awareness is even essential to self-awareness and introspection beyond what Wittgenstein calls expressions in his discussion of pain, as in " the verbal expression of pain replaces crying, it does not describe it" (PI 244) and "How can I even attempt to interpose language between the expression of pain and the pain?" (PI 245.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    Introspection is not immune from mistakes, because it is most always inferential. That one experiences what one presently experiences is, on the other hand, a brute given. — javra
    H'm. I can see that one might use the words in those ways. But I would have called what you call the brute given, what I know by introspection, and called what you call introspection ordinary knowledge. But there is a fuzzy line between the experience of pain and the interpretations of pain (as caused by falling down or whatever). My doubts about what you are saying are around the fact that what you call he "brute given" is only by extension something that I know about. That requires me to distance myself from the experience itself and think about it in a way quite different from the simple reaction ("Ouch!"), which does not mean "I am in pain", which requires conceptualization.

    As one very common example, visual experiences that occur during REM periods of sleep are all seen with the mind’s eye. So then people can’t say, “I saw X in a dream last night”? Yet this is common practice. — javra
    I think the practice is all right. When I say "I saw X in a dream", I defuse the standard meaning of "see" by adding "in a dream". That signals that I'm aware that I didn't "really" see X. (Contrast the small child who wakes up in the middle of the night terrified by the wolves all round the house.)
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    I'd suggest that here truth is foundational, and knowledge derivative. — Banno
    I'm not sure whether you are talking logic or child development here. But it seems to me that, from a child development perspective, this must be right. The development of empathy in small children has been much studied - admittedly the primary focus is on emotional empathy, but awareness of the different perspectives of other people (emotional and cognitive) is included. The philosophical relevance is that this is where the concept of knowledge becomes necessary for understanding what people do - or don't do. (Belief, it seems to me, must come later.)
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    But in any case, this is about choice of terminology. We could say to the drunk, "No, you didn't," and mean either "You saw nothing" or "What you saw wasn't a pink elephant." Neither one is obviously correct, apart from pedantry. — J
    This is spot on. But I don't think it is just pedantry.

    I'd say the mistake is in the use of "see". — J
    I don't think there is any mistake at all. You are presenting a tediously familiar philosophical "problem" but in a way that makes us to look at the problem in a different way. The conceptual resources in your presentation do not allow a satisfying description of the situation. As you say, two contradictory answers seem both to be true. If you say the drunk saw nothing, you are not taking into account what they say and what they do - they do in fact behave as if they saw a pink elephant. If you say, what the drunk saw was not a pink elephant, you invite the question what they did see, and there is no answer, apart from nothing.

    But we're all three dividing up the conceptual territory the same way. — J
    I take it that the three of us are 1) someone who says the drunk saw nothing, and 2) someone who says what the drunk saw was not an elephant and 3) the drunk who says that they saw a pink elephant? ln which case, you are quite right. But your description is excluding the "straightforward" answer that the drunk is hallucinating a pink elephant.
    So we can see that the concept of a hallucination resolves the problem - it squares the circle of three answers, none of which is satisfactory. I'm irresistibly tempted to say that it was (in some sense) designed to do just that.
    In a sense, of course, it just kicks the can down the road, because the puzzle about what a hallucination actually is remains. Many philosophers have "resolved" it by distorting our concept of experiences, appearances, images or inventing a yet more puzzling concept like "sense-data" to explain the phenomena. But that is not a solution. It just kicks a much bigger can down the road. Common sense doesn't do that, but moves towards an explanation why all this is happening. So we needn't go down the philosophical road, but simply say that Macbeth's weird behaviour is the result of his guilty conscience or possibly a vision sent by God.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    ↪Michael


    Okay. Presumably someone has to bring me food and drink and take away my waste. Do they come in to the room or push it in through a hatch. Do we talk - can I talk? Has this gone on since I was born, or how old was I when I was imprisoned here? Do I have access to books and videos and music? Do I know why I am imprisoned here? Is it for ever, or indefinitely or for a fixed term. All that makes a difference, doesn't it?
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    Yes, and, again, that was the entire point of the example given. — javra
    I'm afraid I didn't realize that. Fair enough.

    The person’s knowing that they are seeing a pink elephant is knowledge by acquaintance; it is non-inferential and so not contingent on justifications; — javra
    Does that mean that you are thinking of seeing the pink elephant as introspection and so immune from mistake? I can't help feeling that applying the description "pink elephant" to whatever I am seeing is not immune from mistake.

    In which case the intentionality associated with the believer's mental state is irrelevant with respect to the belief that the community ascribes to the believer — sime
    I don't quite understand this. Our community ascribes false beliefs to people all the time and that's why they are called "intentional"

    Beliefs refer to the actual physical causes of the believer's mental-state - in which case the believer's intentionality is relevant - so much so, that it is epistemically impossible for the believer to have false beliefs. — sime
    I don't understand this either - apart from the first part. If beliefs did refer to the actual physical causes of the believer's mental state, we could never ascribe them to each other, since we mostly have no idea what they are.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    On what grounds can you justify the likeliness of something changing outside the room if you've never been outside the room? — Michael
    I.ve been around long enough to know the difference and to know what a fly is.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    I don't think we have any criteria for determining what's real and what isn't in the philosophical sense. It's interesting to consider that this might be a dream or some kind of collective construct. — frank
    Each to their own.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    I didn't say that it is, just that it could be. We don't know. — frank
    OK. But if you say we don't know, you are suggesting that if certain things happened, you would know. What might those be?
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    Still, it could be a collective dream. It really could be. We don't know. :grin: — frank
    What's the evidence that it is?

    All I can do is assume. But perhaps it looks and behaves very different when outside the room. It’s impossible for me to know. — Michael
    No, you can work it out. If it is, say, a fly in the room, it is unlikely to change much outside the room. If it is a chrysalis or a caterpillar, it will likely be very different outside the room.
  • What is real? How do we know what is real?
    Still, I wonder: if we treat “reality-in-itself” as simply “what resists explanation until new concepts arrive,” doesn’t that risk reducing it to nothing more than the horizon of human cognition? In that case, the notion stops doing the metaphysical work Kant meant for it, and becomes more of a pragmatic placeholder. Do you think that’s an adequate way to interpret the tradition, or is something lost when we set aside the stronger claim that something exists independently of our ways of knowing? — Truth Seeker
    I'm not sure that I'm interpreting the tradition, because that suggests that it makes sense. That's what I question. If I'm right, there is no metaphysical work for the concept to do.
    I don't reject the claim that some things exist independently of our ways of knowing. I don't think that conceptualizing those things as unknowable is coherent - it gives with one hand and takes back with the other. I'm not always sure how we draw the line between what is independent of our ways of knowing and things that only exist because we think they do. Mathematical objects, for example, are hard to classify. There are much more interesting - and answerable - questions inherent in that approach.

    On your last point, I agree that philosophers often overgeneralize. But if
    “reality-in-itself” and “being-in-itself” are different, as you suggest, how would you articulate the difference without collapsing one into epistemology and the other into ontology? What criteria let us say: “this is about reality” vs. “this is about being”? Or is the best we can do to recognize that the distinction is heuristic rather than hard and fast?     — Truth Seeker
    The difference is hard to articulate. But I'm clear that most things that are not real do nonetheless exist, for the most part. But things that do not exist are not even usually even unreal. It is easy enough to draw the distinction when you consider specific cases, but very hard to generalize over all real things or all things that exist. I doubt whether such generalizations are even coherent.

    As an analogy, let’s assume that I’m trapped in a windowless room. Something enters the room. I can see that it exists and what it looks like and how it behaves now that it’s in the room, but I don’t know that it existed or what it looked liked or how it behaved before it entered the room (or after it leaves); perhaps it’s very different (or doesn’t exist) when not in the room. — Michael
    I don't think this analogy is helpful. What things can enter a windowless (and doorless) room? Sounds, maybe? Not much else. How did I get into the room? It seems that you do know what kind of thing the something is while it is in the room. That will give you a basis for working out what existence it has outside the room. I can see that you are trying to articulate the kind of vision that Berkeley has, but if it does anything, it makes Berkeley even more implausible.

    So this may be a collective dream. We don't know. — frank
    I don't think it is a question of whether it is or is not a collective dream, but of how one chooses to think about it or how one decides to approach and cope with the reality we experience.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    If there were only one proposition, then how could there be an entailment? Gettier's argument depends on the entailment, and entailments involve at least two propositions. "The man who will get the job" does not refer to either Smith or Jones. It is a descriptor. What this means is that, contrary to your view, Smith is not uttering a tautology when he says, "Jones is the man who will get the job." Such an utterance is not the same as, "Jones is Jones," even for Smith. — Leontiskos
    I think we are still talking past each other. I take your point that there is an entailment involved and that this must involve two propositions. I also take your point that "Jones is the man who will get the job" and "Jones is Jones" are not equivalent, even though A=A.

    Let me try again:-
    .. suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the fol1owing conjunctive proposition:
    (d) Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket. .....
    Proposition (d) entails: (e) The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.
    Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment from (d) to (e), and accepts (e) on the grounds of (d), for which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (e) is true.     — Analysis. vol. 23 (1966)
    I think we agree that (d) and (e) are two distinct propositions, and (d) implies (e).

    But imagine, further, that unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will get the job. And, also, unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket. Proposition (e) is then true, though proposition (d), from which Smith inferred (e), is false. — Analysis. vol. 23 (1966)
    That's right, because (e) also follows from (s) "Smith is the man who will get the job, and Smith has ten coins in his pocket." Now we know that if Jones gets the job, (e) will be true, and if Smith gets the job, (e) will be true. So it also follows that (e) is true, because whoever gets the job will have ten coins in his pocket.
    But Smith only knows that if Jones gets the job, the man who gets the job will have ten coins in his pocket. So Smith is justified in believing (e) if "the man who gets the job" refers to Jones. He is not justified in believing (e) if (e) refers to Smith. So he is not justified in believing (e) if it refers to "whoever gets the job".

    Your theory amounts to the idea that when Smith says, "The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket," he is saying something false. But when someone else says the exact same sentence, such as the hiring agent who knows that Smith has ten coins in his pocket, he is saying something true. — Leontiskos
    No, I would not say exactly that. I do say that, given what S believes, when he asserts that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket, he is asserting something that he does not know to be true. But when the hiring agent says the same sentence, that needs to be interpreted in the light of their knowledge and beliefs, and the hiring agent does know that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Are we to say that Smith's belief is false? It depends whose point of view you regard as the appropriate context.

    The "exact same" sentence may have different meanings if it is used (asserted) in different contexts. Suppose that A is 20 years old, and B is 40 years old. If A says "I am twenty years old", A is saying something true. If B says "I am twenty years old", B is saying something false.
    I say that "I am twenty years old" said by A is a distinct statement from "I am twenty years old" said by B. A statement is a sentence as it is used in a specific context. Whether it is the same proposition or not, I do not opine, because, IMO, the concept of a proposition is not sufficiently clearly defined.
    But if you are thinking of a proposition as something like the meaning of a sentence, I think you will still have trouble saying that "I am twenty years old" expresses the same proposition in both contexts, because it is true in one context and false in another. But you might say that "I am twenty years old" said by A means "A is twenty years old" and similarly for B. In that case, you still get two distinct meanings for the sentence and therefore two distinct propositions.

    "The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket" has different references in different contexts. In the context of Smith's beliefs, it refers to Jones. In the context of our knowledge, it refers to Smith. There is a third context, and so a third meaning for this sentence, and that is the context before anyone knows who will get the job. As it happens, in that context, we know (but Smith does not) that whoever gets the job will have ten coins in his pocket.

    So I think a material conclusion can differ from a formal conclusion, for example when both say the same thing and yet the "therefore" of the first is merely valid whereas the "therefore" of the second is sound. — Leontiskos
    Could you please explain to me the difference between a material conclusion and a formal conclusions? I'm not familiar with it. I may have forgotten what it is.

    I would go farther and say that you can see that their argument is correct. It's not so much a matter of trusting them. — Leontiskos
    I would accept that. But I do have a reservation about the data. Unless I can make my own observations (or experiments), I have to trust the report of them. In order to pass on knowledge, we have to be able to assume a common context to at least some extent.

    As one banal example, why must something which by all accounts appears to all everywhere to be a vase on a table in fact necessarily be a vase on a table—such that it being a vase is true—rather than, say, being an extraterrestrial alien which is camouflaged as a vase, or else an advanced hologram — javra
    It depends what you mean by "necessarily". I suspect that you have in mind logical necessity, and that is not possible, because "there is a vase on the table" is contingent. In one way, I'll accept that we can imagine that the vase on my table is an alien or a hologram. But there is not a shred of evidence for either possibility, so there is no rational basis for an actual doubt. It is and empty possibility. In fact, when I try to imagine it, I cannot imagine how that possibility might have come about, except by a further fantasy which has little or no connection with reality. Contrast the possibility that the vase on the table is actually a listening device with a camera, planted by an evil agency to entrap me. But then, I can rule that out, so it is in a different class.

    But I also think that is too strong and that we do know some things with certainty, because I don't think skepticism based on the bare logic possibility of error should be taken seriously. — Janus
    Quite right too. (I sometimes wonder what distinguishes Descartes' evil demon from a paranoid fantasy.)
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    The reason I don't think it works is because if Smith were using "the man who will get the job" to refer to Jones, then there would not be an entailment involved. — Leontiskos
    But Smith is using "the man who will get the job" to refer to Jones. Since Jones will not get the job, Smith's deduction is based on a false premiss and the conclusion is not justified (but not refuted either).

    In that case rather than there being an entailment, Smith's two propositions would just be saying the same thing with different words. — Leontiskos
    I don't follow this at all. Smith is not considering two propositions, but only one, and that proposition is false and so does not entail that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket, so Smith's belief is justified only in a weak sense. It might be sufficient for the J clause in the JTB, but it is certainly not sufficient for the T clause.

    Let me try again:-
    But imagine, further, that unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will get the job. And, also, unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket. Proposition (e) is then true, — Analysis. vol. 23 (1966)
    It all depends on how you interpret the sentence "The man who will be appointed has ten coins in his pocket". As it stands here, the reference of "the man who will be appointed" is not fixed, or rather is fixed differently in the context of Smith's beliefs (where it refers to Jones) and in the context of the God's eye view of the narrator (and the audience) of Gettier's story (where it refers to Smith). In the context of Smith's beliefs (e) is justified but false, and in the context of the narrator and the audience, it is true. I don't know what criteria you have for "same proposition", but it seems to me that if a given sentence is true in one context and false in another, that sentence is expressing different propositions in each context. Certainly the same proposition cannot be true and false at the same time.

    I don't think this is right. Someone can "justify" a claim to you and thereby show you that it is true. Thus one can learn from another on JTB precisely through the other's justification. — Leontiskos
    Yes, perhaps I was a bit hasty there. Though if someone tells me that the earth goes round the sun, I can demand their proof and they can, no doubt, provide it - the data exist and the interpretation can be explained to me. But I would have to trust the data, or, perhaps collect a fresh set of data.

    Again, in fallibilism, no justification (which is always epistemological in its nature) can guarantee the ontological occurrence of some given truth in question. — javra
    That's a bit sweeping, isn't it? Certainly, an absolute guarantee of an empirical truth seems to be built in to their definition as contingent. But, if the conditions are met, surely we can guarantee the truth. Then there are the embedded or hinge propositions, which seem beyond the possibility of any coherent or rational doubt. Perhaps our choice is not between fallibilism or infallibilism across the board. After all, not all propositions (candidate truths) are of the same kind.
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