Can this even be, given time passes? What could stay the same? — AmadeusD

Changeability is a spectrum.
Some things—like 2 + 2 = 4 or the concept of “1”—are unchanging. Others transform so quickly that we barely notice them: electrons or quarks in the cup of coffee you’re looking at right now, for instance. And then there is everything in between—changes that unfold over seconds, minutes, hours, days, or years.

This spectrum applies to knowledge as well. Some knowledge is immutable; other knowledge evolves over time. While all forms of knowledge share the same demand to truth, they must be approached differently. Justified True Belief (JTB) may suffice for static knowledge, but dynamic knowledge—knowledge of change—requires a different framework. The very recognition of change is a kind of knowledge in itself, much like your knowledge of yourself as a changing being.

The underlying question, then, is: How can change be grasped as knowledge at all?
This is precisely what Justified True Crisis (JTC) seeks to address.

Incidentally, this is also where the Ship of Theseus paradox becomes relevant—something that changes over time while still being perceived as the same. In that sense, this is not just a side topic, but a foundational philosophical theme.

@creativesoul One example is the claim that "change is irrelevant for JTB," while arguing for a monistic definition of knowledge and disregarding the role of (epistemic) time in Gettier cases; see contingency.

Good night sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite.

@creativesoul
I can readily accept that we don’t share the same conviction. I don’t find your argument convincing, and it’s perfectly fine with me if you don’t share my position. So far, I haven’t had the impression that you’ve taken the underlying dualism seriously (or at least contingency); instead, you seem to stick to your line of thinking, which is inevitably paradoxical. I don’t have the time right now to go into detail, and I don’t believe you’ve thoroughly examined the arguments I’ve presented. For further questions read the introduction piece, my comments or the essay with which I made my case and lost any burden whatsoever.

@JuanZu

Your answer avoids the core of both questions by replacing epistemological accountability with vague functional metaphors. If transcription rejects representation, how can it be assessed as true or false? Saying “it simply works” is not an answer—it’s an evasion.

1. Truth is reduced to function.
You compare transcription to translation or communication and argue it “works” by producing effects. But epistemic truth is not about effects. A placebo pill works—but it’s not what it claims to be. A broken clock shows the correct time twice a day, yet it doesn’t know the time. A political speech can move crowds and still be full of lies. Functionality is not sufficient for truth—and certainly not for knowledge.

2. You smuggle representation back in.
You claim transcription avoids representation by being a causal process, but even “causing understanding” requires structure, differentiation, and encoding—i.e., a representational system. A musical score is not the sound itself, but it represents it. A map is not the territory, but it represents spatial relations. Even a simple “yes” only means something because of its embedded structure. There is no escaping representation in language—there is only denying it while depending on it.

3. Ontological generalization doesn’t solve the epistemic issue.
Referring to “genetic transcription” or ontological transformation shifts the discussion from epistemology to biology or metaphysics. But biological processes don’t make beliefs justified or true. DNA transcription can be error-prone—mutations happen. So even your analogy proves the point: transcription doesn’t guarantee correctness. It’s a process, not a standard of epistemic evaluation.

Iiiiiiiiiin sum:
If transcription neither represents nor distinguishes truth from falsehood, it can’t be part of a knowledge theory. Your response replaces justification with causality, and epistemic evaluation with metaphor. Knowledge, however, is not what simply happens—it is what can be justified, challenged, and revised. Without that, we’re not doing epistemology—we’re doing poetry.

Still, it was genuinely cool to think about. The idea of reframing epistemic acts in terms of transformation instead of representation was provocative. Thanks for that impulse.

@javra

We cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow — even if it seems rational to believe so. The first major reason is the classic problem of induction, as formulated by David Hume. There is no logically necessary connection between past experiences and future events. The fact that the sun has risen every day in the past only gives us a strong expectation — not certainty — that it will rise again tomorrow. Our belief is inductively justified, but not logically or metaphysically guaranteed.

Example: A turkey is fed every morning by a farmer. It expects food each day — until one day, it is slaughtered. Its belief was based on past regularity, but ultimately false.

Secondly, the Gettier problem shows that even a belief that is true and justified may not amount to knowledge if it is accidentally correct. Suppose someone uses a flawed astronomical model to predict that the sun will rise tomorrow — and it does. The belief turns out to be true, but the justification was faulty. In such cases, the truth and justification align by coincidence, which undermines the epistemic link required for genuine knowledge.

Example: A student looks at a broken clock and says, “The bus will come in three minutes,” because the clock coincidentally shows the right time. The bus does come — but not because the reasoning was valid.

In Short: verification bad, falsification goooooood. KarlPopper approves this Message & JTB is not a fan of this. She becomes a dogmatic diva if father falsification rumors on her virtues.

Third, statements about future events are not timelessly true — and thus do not fulfill the Platonic standard of knowledge embedded in the traditional JTB (Justified True Belief) model. A statement like “The sun will rise tomorrow” is contingent, dependent on temporal and physical conditions. In contrast, real knowledge — as Plato describes it — must be based on eternal, immutable truths.

Example: The proposition “2 + 2 = 4” is true in all places and at all times. “The sun will rise tomorrow,” however, is true only if certain physical systems remain undisturbed — making it dependent, not eternal.

A fourth reason lies in the dynamic and unstable nature of reality. We do not live in a static world. Even if past evidence strongly supports tomorrow’s sunrise, unpredictable cosmic events could disrupt it — like solar anomalies, gravitational shifts, or even the philosophical possibility of simulation. This unpredictability introduces a layer of epistemic risk that undermines absolute claims.

Example: A massive volcanic eruption could darken the sky globally. The sun might rise, physically — but it would not be perceived. In this case, the meaning of “sunrise” itself becomes unstable.

Finally, we lack epistemic certainty because our access to the future is inherently limited. Our astronomical models are well-tested, but ultimately hypothetical and fallible. There is always a non-zero chance that new information or events could invalidate our predictions. Therefore, the statement “The sun will rise tomorrow” is a well-justified expectation, but not knowledge in the strong, infallible sense.


Conclusion: Although our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is highly reasonable, it fails to meet the strict criteria of knowledge due to its reliance on induction, vulnerability to coincidence, temporal contingency, and the unpredictability of the world. What we have is not certainty — but a well-grounded expectation that remains, in the end, fallible.

Response (JTC Perspective): From the standpoint of Justified True Crisis (JTC), the expectation that the sun will rise tomorrow qualifies not as infallible knowledge of a future fact, but as conceptual knowledge: the justified affirmation of a concept that holds under current conditions, while remaining open to epistemic revision. Within this framework, knowledge is not about asserting timeless metaphysical truths, but about maintaining orientation through conceptual structures that are coherent, context-sensitive, and situationally valid.

It is not knowledge of the world directly, but of its conceptual derivatives — the structured ideas we abstract from experience in order to navigate reality.

This belief is therefore not treated as ontically absolute, but as a fallible, yet operationally reliable assertion— justified within a defined scope. That scope is not “what will be,” but rather: “Given current knowledge and absent disconfirming information, the concept of ‘sunrise tomorrow’ remains applicable.” Within that conceptual and temporal frame, the belief is in fact infallible relative to its defined conditions, because it makes no claim beyond them.

In this way, JTC redefines knowledge as a dynamic epistemic performance, where infallibility is not global, but internally consistent within bounded, crisis-aware justifications. The key is reflexivity: JTC acknowledges the limits of what is known, and treats conceptual knowledge as both actionable and self-limiting — true not in spite of its limits, but because it defines them.

Change is irrelevant to JTB. At time t1(insert well-grounded true claim here) and viola! — creativesoul

Nope. Every (pseudo-)“knowledge” claim in the real world is problematic. Gettier cases are a direct counterexample to this thesis: the boss’s decision can change, and the clock might be accidentally broken. (Epistemic) luck is inherently defined by change—it’s a temporal category. There is no luck in a deterministic system. Every so-called “well-grounded claim” in non-static environments rests on credence and is therefore never absolutely certain. JTB can't handle this truth.

Present a counterexample:
Show me one dynamic scenario in which a belief is justified and true at (epistemic)time t₁, and remains a clear case of knowledge over all possible points in time—despite contextual change, shifting information, or epistemic instability. Enjoy.

I have questions :

- You propose transcription as an alternative to representation – but how can a transcription be true or false if it explicitly rejects the notion of representing something external? (In representational terms, something is true if it matches reality, and false if it doesn’t. Truth means accurate correspondence between thought or language and the world.)

- If a transcription doesn’t mirror reality but instead "imposes its own structure" or creates "an entirely different world," then how do you determine whether a transcription is epistemically successful or not?

- Could you give a concrete example of what a transcription looks like – in everyday life, science, or philosophy – and how one would judge whether it is better or worse than another?

- And what does transcription look like linguistically? Since any form of language already implies differentiation, structure, and thus representation, how can transcription escape this? Isn’t every linguistic expression already a form of representation?

@T Clark
Aww, that’s amazing. :) It fits perfectly with the themes we discussed earlier here. If I had more time, I would study Bacon in greater depth.

Your position turns classical monarchy into a proto-socialist employer-state—with the twist that it is still autocratic in form.

The idea that the state and the nation are the private property of the monarch, and that he therefore owes a salary to his citizens, reduces political rule to a purely economic relationship. In this model, citizens appear primarily as productive assets, whose value derives from their usefulness to the monarch. But rulership cannot be understood through economics alone—it rests on power, legitimacy, law, and social order.

As it’s said in Game of Thrones: “Power is power.” Rule is not legitimized by economic utility, but by actual power—and the ability to preserve it wisely. A monarch does not rule because he pays, but because he maintains power and secures loyalty. The first rule of any ruler, therefore, is to preserve power—for historically, every monarch is only one bad harvest away from being beheaded.

@Metaphysician Undercover I really enjoy writing with you.

I’ll definitely take a closer look at the light cone principle; it sounds very interesting, especially given how it frames causality and temporal order across different reference systems. That kind of relativistic nuance seems highly relevant when thinking about knowledge in dynamic, time-sensitive contexts.

As for formalism, I would see its value not as a denial of epistemic complexity, but as a strategic abstraction that helps us handle that complexity more clearly. Bertrand Russell emphasized formal logic as a way to bring rigor and transparency to philosophical analysis, especially in contexts where intuition alone can mislead. Similarly, Wittgenstein, particularly in the Tractatus, showed how formal language structures can outline the limits of what can meaningfully be said—and, by implication, where silence (or contingency) begins.

So while formalism may abstract from the flux of real experience, it also provides a frame within which uncertainty can be recognized and discussed, rather than hidden or mystified. In this sense, it remains a useful epistemic tool—even, or especially, in the face of contingency.

Knowledge is not always the same—its nature depends crucially on the kind of objects we are trying to understand; see your remarks on ontology. The structure of what we know determines the structure of how we can know it. The classical model of knowledge as Justified True Belief works especially well when we are dealing with static objects: things that are timeless, invariant, and independent of any observer. Mathematical truths, logical principles, or geometrical forms fall into this category. They do not change; they hold universally, and their truth is not context-dependent. In such cases, knowledge can be fixed and absolute. There is no room for contingency—no possibility that things could have been otherwise.

But many of the things we seek to understand are not static—they are dynamic. They unfold over time, they shift depending on context, and they are deeply tied to perspective. Political decisions, medical diagnoses, ethical judgments, historical interpretations—these are not states of being, but processes of becoming. Their truth is often provisional, subject to change as new information emerges. These are contingent realities: things could easily have turned out differently. And that is precisely where JTB begins to falter. It presupposes a stable truth, a single fixed point that can be justified and believed. But when the object of knowledge itself is in motion, this model fails to account for the epistemic dynamics involved.

Take, for instance, a medical diagnosis. Based on today’s data, it may be fully justified and considered true. Tomorrow, with new symptoms or better tests, it may need revision. Was the original diagnosis wrong? Not necessarily—it was true within its temporal and evidential context. The same applies to a weather forecast, a military decision made in the fog of war, or a policy shaped by incomplete data. These are not cases of error but of epistemic contingency. They demand a different kind of epistemology.

That’s where Justified True Crisis comes in. JTC keeps the structure of JTB—justification, truth, belief—but interprets it dynamically. Truth is no longer eternal, but indexed to time and circumstance. Justification becomes adaptive rather than static. And belief is no longer naïve conviction, but an assertion made in full awareness of crisis and fallibility. In this way, JTC does not abandon epistemic rigor—it deepens it by incorporating the ontological instability of dynamic objects.

JTC does not celebrate uncertainty—it makes it visible and manageable. It does not collapse into relativism, but recognizes that epistemic responsibility looks different when the object of knowledge is itself in flux. Those who insist on static certainty in dynamic contexts risk dogmatism. JTC, by contrast, models an epistemology of humility—one that knows that not all knowledge can be possessed; some knowledge must be navigated.

In this context, I’ve introduced the distinction between philosophía and philoprosdokía to articulate two complementary orientations within epistemology—and, more broadly, within philosophy as the love of wisdom (theory & practical orientation in one). Philosophía, the “love of (certain) knowledge,” seeks clarity, permanence, and formal structure; it reflects a top-down, analytical approach aiming at timeless truths and secure foundations. Philoprosdokía, the “love of expectation,” is attuned to temporality, contingency, and the unfolding of meaning; it aligns with the continental tradition’s interpretive, historical, and speculative character. Rather than opposing each other, these modes trace the spectrum between static and dynamic knowledge and echo Plato’s divided line: the former oriented toward the intelligible and unchanging, the latter toward the sensible and becoming. Together, they offer a more complete account of philosophical wisdom—one that integrates both structure and orientation, certainty and anticipation.

This distinction is not meant as a hierarchy, but as a hermeneutic tool—a way to understand different epistemic approaches in relation to the nature of their objects and aims. In this sense, it also mirrors the broader divide often drawn between analytic and continental philosophy: the former aligning more closely with philosophía in its emphasis on logical structure, language, and conceptual precision; the latter resonating with philoprosdokía, in its engagement with historicity, lived experience, and the open horizon of meaning.

Rather than reinforcing the gap between these traditions, the JTC framework—and the underlying distinction between philosophía and philoprosdokía—offers a shared space, in which both orientations find their place: one grounding, the other opening; one structuring, the other navigating. Together, they reflect the dual necessity of seeking understanding where stability is possible, and of maintaining responsiveness where contingency prevails.

Knowledge, in such cases, is not a state—it is a stance; see the quote at the beginning of the paper.

This dynamic interplay between philoprosdokía and philosophía also sheds light on the enduring challenge posed by Gettier cases. These thought experiments expose the fragility of knowledge when static definitions are applied to dynamic, time-sensitive scenarios. From the perspective of philosophía, Gettier cases appear as epistemic anomalies—exceptions to be patched. But through the lens of philoprosdokía, they are not failures, but symptoms of a deeper truth: that knowledge, when tied to contingent realities, resists fixation. JTC embraces this tension by reframing Gettier-style coincidence not as a flaw in the structure of knowledge, but as a sign of its temporality—an indication that some beliefs (credences) can only be justified within their moment, not beyond it. In this way, the Gettier problem becomes less a refutation of knowledge and more a doorway into a more flexible, temporally aware epistemology.

P.S. If you’re curious how this dual perspective plays out visually, take a look at the diagram in the JTC paper—it maps Static Knowledge and Dynamic Knowledge; Page 25.

"Why is there something... rather than nothing...” Good question.

@creativesoul

When belief is detached from the believer and treated purely as a proposition, the truthmaker relation shifts. The truthmaker is no longer embedded in the subject’s intentional context but tied to an abstract sentence whose reference becomes contingent. This shift is central to nearly all Gettier-style cases: there are atypical cases like the fake barn case. The Fake Barn case is atypical among Gettier cases because the subject’s belief is based on accurate perception and seems justified internally. The epistemic flaw arises not from faulty reasoning, but from an unreliable environment the subject is unaware of.

In my framework, I describe this as a Conceptual Coincidence: the belief appears justified and aligns with a true outcome, but the alignment is accidental. It’s like inserting a puzzle piece from a different set—formally, it fits, but the image is wrong. The outline matches, but the content does not.

A key factor here is time. In dynamic contexts, justification, truth, and belief do not remain synchronously aligned. What was once justified can lose its validity as new information arises—while the belief itself may still turn out to be true. Time, therefore, does not merely order beliefs chronologically; it introduces epistemic instability. Indexing or timestamping can document this shift, but they do not prevent it.

Dynamic Knowledge (DK) addresses such situations by treating knowledge as processual and time-dependent. Justified True Crisis (JTC) refers to the kind of knowledge asserted under these conditions—temporarily matching, but potentially revisable. The “correct” piece may later need to be replaced when more of the picture is revealed.

⸻

@Metaphysician Undercover

You’re pointing to an important distinction: knowledge operates between the poles of stability and change. In DK domains, propositional truth alone is insufficient because meaning and justification shift with time and context. That’s why I introduce Justified True Crisis (JTC) as the epistemic format suited to DK. It replaces the static notion of belief (doxa) with the structurally unstable moment of krisis.

Intuition plays a mediating role. It signals when assumed stability gives way to transformation—similar to Plato’s atopon, the strange or out-of-place. This is when a weiji-jump becomes necessary: a decision under uncertainty, justified in the moment, but open to revision.

In practice, knowledge does not always aim at truth alone. It often aims at orientation, prediction, or action. This makes truth one normative value among others. In dynamic contexts, epistemic justification becomes relative to goals, not absolute. The Rashomon Effect is one example: multiple perspectives coexist without convergence on a single, stable truth.

Timestamps, while not sufficient, are nevertheless necessary for any attempt to articulate change. The shift from being to becoming cannot be described adequately through a chain of static states. As Aristotle argued, change is not captured by a succession of positions; rather, it exists between them. It’s a different kind of phenomenon—continuous, processual, and epistemically elusive. Yet without temporal markers, we would lack the coordinates needed to locate, compare, or even recognize shifts in state. Timestamps provide the necessary structure within which the insufficiency of static snapshots becomes visible. They do not capture becoming, but they allow us to trace its outline.

In this context, DK is not a lack of certainty, but an ideal in its own right. Knowledge is modeled as a limit process: not something one has, but something one approaches. The limit in the DKa and DKh formulas represents the asymptotic approach to ideal knowledge in dynamic contexts. It shows that knowledge evolves step by step, reducing uncertainty over time, but never fully reaches absolute certainty: see as well bayesian epistemology as complementary approach. It models the continuous refinement of justified beliefs under changing conditions. I distinguish two complementary dimensions:

• DKa (Adaptability): How a concept (K) adjusts to a given context (C) at a specific time (t). Textually:
DKa(K, t, C) = the limit of f(JTC(K, t), Adaptation of K to C at t) as ε approaches zero.

• DKh (Historicity): How a concept (K) maintains coherence across different time points. Textually:
DKh(K, t) = the limit of f(JTC(K, t), Adaptation of K over time) as ε approaches zero.

DKa and DKh function similar to a time-change diagram, much like the way blood sugar is monitored in diabetics. DKa reflects momentary adaptations—like daily glucose levels—while DKh captures the overall trajectory, akin to the HbA1c value. This illustrates a key insight: to meaningfully understand a state over time, two components are required—its immediate responsiveness (adaptability) and its long-term continuity (historicity). Only together do they define a coherent identity through change (and time).

JTC mirrors the structure of JTB—justification, truth, and belief remain essential—but reinterprets them dynamically. Truth is no longer static but contextualized within time. Justification adapts, and belief becomes a crisis-aware assertion. Together, these preserve the functional core of JTB while enabling knowledge to operate under uncertainty. JTC is not a rejection but a temporal simulation of JTB—an epistemic snapshot in motion, like Zeno’s arrow suspended mid-flight.

John Stuart Mill argued that freedom of speech ends where it causes real harm to others. Kant went further: freedom is only possible when it’s limited by the equal freedom of all. In this view, boundaries don’t suppress liberty—they make it possible.

When speech dehumanizes or systematically targets others, it's not freedom under threat—it's the very space in which freedom and dialogue can exist. As Popper warned, unlimited tolerance of intolerance will ultimately destroy a tolerant society.

And like Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic, those who see truth as a tool of power aren’t seeking dialogue—they're seeking dominance. That’s not dissent. It’s the dissolution of discourse.

I think this touches on a crucial question: Is free speech a value in itself, or a means to an end?

In the U.S., there's often this almost sacred reverence for free speech as an absolute principle. But I’d argue that speech is only valuable insofar as it sustains the conditions for open, inclusive, and rational discourse. Once it begins to actively undermine those conditions – by dehumanizing people, inciting hatred, or flooding the space with bad-faith noise – its “freedom” becomes self-defeating.

For example: should a philosophy forum tolerate someone saying “I hope women no longer exist in 10,000 years”? Or “Blacks are genetically inferior”? Or “The Holocaust didn’t happen”? These aren’t edgy thoughts. They’re acts of exclusion. They don’t provoke thought – they shut thought down.

Take a practical case: imagine a female newcomer logs into this forum, excited to engage with deep philosophical topics, and then stumbles across a thread where someone writes “Women are a waste of time", “They make terrible friends and even worse girlfriends." or one of the other. That’s not just distasteful – it’s a message loud and clear: "You’re not really human here. You’re a problem to be explained, not a person to be heard."

Free speech isn’t sacred. It’s instrumental. And if it’s used to destroy the conditions that make real discourse possible, then drawing lines isn’t just justified – it’s necessary.

I think a reference to Popper's Paradox of Tolerance is very appropriate here. In an open discussion space like this, there should absolutely be room for controversial, even uncomfortable ideas – but that doesn’t mean we have to tolerate dehumanizing statements.

When someone writes that “women are a disappointment,” “a waste of time,” or that “hopefully there won’t be any female humans in 10,000 years,” that’s not an “unusual perspective” – it’s clearly misogynistic. Such remarks undermine respectful exchange and create a hostile environment that excludes and harms others – exactly what Popper warned about: if we tolerate unlimited intolerance, we destroy the very space in which tolerance can exist.

Philosophy thrives on the clash of ideas, not on the degradation of people.

@RogueAI beautifully written passage! :)

@JuanZu I find it exciting to think about it from a different angle. What I still struggle with is that knowledge seems so difficult to perceive. So, we’re working with reality, which is a good thing. And that’s what we do every day in our private lives and, let’s say, in science as well. Things happen—some we perceive, some we don’t—some we understand, some we don’t, and some we can justify, others not. That’s roughly the state you describe as harmonious, when thought of prior to any kind of language. But once we begin forming concepts, things become imprecise—and I agree with that. However, I don’t think it’s enough to rely solely on experience, because it doesn’t allow us to sufficiently anticipate how the world is to be understood. Only by digitizing the world into concepts can we make predictions about things not yet encountered. We can’t think the world 1:1 in all its atoms, nor perceive it that way in everyday or scientific practice. I hope I’ve captured the core of your thought.

@hypericin You point out two major problems that I also recognize:

1. Digitalization: Reality is digitalized through perception into something we can process. Things appear black or white … perception draws the line. But after many layers of complexity, things that are fundamentally different may appear the same—for example, a clock that’s broken yet shows the correct time, or more starkly, the man with ten coins who was thought to be Jones but turns out to be Smith. In a reality unshaped by linguistic digitalization, such a case wouldn’t pose a problem—we’d simply be surprised that Smith also has ten coins. Our expectation just wouldn’t have matched what turned out to be the case.

2. Alternatives: You bring up alternatives. That’s discussed in science
under the terms “relevant alternatives” and “possible worlds.” It’s a popular line of thought—and yes, there’s something to it, because the world can indeed be different from what we expect: see the lottery problem. Our expectations can be wrong, which is why Popper sees them as nets—something can always slip through. That’s why, in my view, we only ever have knowledge of concepts, but never of reality itself, since it could always turn out to be wrong. It’s a knowledge process that can never be fully completed, only made more precise.

Discussing these alternatives and finding the best concept we currently have is a collective process of weighing and refining: see Rashomon effect. After all, perceptions and assessments differ. Some people believe they’ll win the lottery, others think that’s very unlikely. These processes—especially when they’re self-reflective—I view, at a higher level of complexity, as DKorg: a kind of knowledge that’s aware of itself, like in societies or in individuals who think about their own knowledge and thus become aware of what they’ve learned. It’s like a knowledge about one’s own knowledge. Coming back to your point: JTC makes it explicit that our assessment can be wrong, precisely because we can be wrong. We’re not omniscient, as you once put it.

Viewing the universe as static only presents this problem if the observer is temporal and subject to change: I love the idea of the Trainspirit. xD
He himself is part of the knowledge question, because, as hinted in DKorg, he seeks knowledge of himself. Even the one who strives for this only has a concept of himself—and will have to adjust that over time. But stepping back a bit: when we freeze things—make them static and “unbecoming”—we can make absolute statements about them, at least insofar as we only refer to what can be logically derived. The same holds for mathematical, truly static knowledge. But this gets very complicated here, because the dimensions we have to consider when it comes to real things are far more diverse. It’s harder to calculate atoms, molecules, electrons, and quarks than just 2+2=4. Humans make mistakes because they are temporal and changeable. But we learn and adapt. So the JTC model has a basic assumption: the reasonable or rational believer.

There are some other problems tied to this, but I haven’t had the time to work them in or fully think them through. The published essay is also only half the story. It’s really important to also address perception, because there are various effects that need explaining. I’ve split it up because I don’t want people to get discouraged by a wall of text—36 pages is already too much. The JTC essay is the highest level I could reach on my own without the supervision of a professor. I work as a philosophy teacher, but not as an academic. And I’ve already put way too much work into it, not knowing whether it’ll ever pay off. But I still believe in it (for now) and feel responsible for the idea—and it’s a joy to talk about it with you all. :)

@T Clark If knowledge is to be defined, it must have necessary and sufficient conditions. These conditions indicate that whenever they are fulfilled, what is defined—here, knowledge—must always be present. That’s the point of a definition. JTB fails here because, as shown with the broken bottle, this knowledge state is subject to change. If time is a factor in the definition—because knowledge doesn’t work without it—then time must be included in the definition. It’s not enough to adjust belief or the concept retroactively, or to simply cancel out previous knowledge. It’s clear here that something wasn’t known, and that the definition fails. And yes, knowledge is proclaimed before the expected event occurs, but in dynamic scenarios, we see that this can be wrong, even though one did everything possible to avoid the error—just like in Gettier cases. Smith was adequately justified, but it turns out that this alone isn’t enough to guarantee truth: the boss ends up choosing Smith instead of Jones. Your approach also resonates with “reliabilism” in the sciences. Excluding truth entirely would be dangerous, in my opinion, because then nothing would actually have to happen or exist. What would we even be talking about then? The point about standards is very important in dynamic environments, because they arise only there, not in static ones—see epistemic contextualism (e.g., the Flight or Bank Case). My proposal, JTC, offers an alternative definition that counters this through a dual conception of knowledge by introducing the crisis, which describes a branching path and includes temporal awareness. On page 29, the exact conditions are clearly defined and less implicit. I definitely see myself in your perspective, and the attempt to make things less complicated is always a good one. How would you make time and changeability visible in your definition? After all, they are—at least in dynamic conditions—definitional.

That’s an interesting question @RogueAI – one I’ve actually never thought about this way before, since Gettier cases and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave usually aren’t connected in academic philosophy, at least not explicitly. So thank you for that. And yes, there’s definitely something to it: both deal with the question of what real knowledge is, and both expose forms of false or illusory knowledge. In Gettier cases, we have a “justified true belief” that, on closer inspection, turns out to be a mere coincidence. Similarly, the prisoners in the cave take shadows on the wall for reality, simply because they lack access to the bigger picture. Both scenarios reveal that knowledge requires more than justification and truth – it also needs context, perspective, and an awareness of epistemic change. In that sense, the Cave even anticipates aspects of the so-called (atypical) Fake Barn Gettier case: the illusion seems real because it occurs under epistemically unreliable conditions.

Plato covered an astonishing range of topics and shaped them in a way that still resonates – that’s part of why he holds such a foundational status. But that doesn’t mean everything else is just derivative. I think the idea that “all philosophy is a footnote to Plato” can be misleading. There are independent contributions. But maybe that’s not the point. We all stand in relation to what came before us – and that’s a good thing. The key is to stay aware of those connections so we can recognize what we might want to do differently.

@hypericin Yes, absolutely—we share similar perspectives. Still, Gettier remains important because he challenges us to explain the lack of supposed knowledge in a way that the current debate around Gettier cases fails to grasp. Highlighting the problems that arise from this and offering a way out of the conceptual fly-bottle is precisely what I aim to do.

Plato and Aristotle both knew—as I believe you do as well—that JTB alone is insufficient in dynamic contexts (though it may suffice in static ones), contrary to the dominant interpretation today. Consider, for example, Plato’s aporia at the end of the Theaetetus, or Aristotle’s view that statements about the future are contingent. If one were to claim that Plato believed JTB applies meaningfully in dynamic contexts, his entire theory of Forms—and the idea of the fleeting shadows of the sensible world—would be rendered meaningless.

Gettier appeals to our modern intuition that we can have knowledge of the temporal and changeable world, as @JuanZu also illustrates. Unfortunately, this assumption is flawed. Every perception—even when enhanced by technological means—is only an approximation of reality, because reality itself is temporal and mutable. What appears whole in one moment can be altered in the next. We cannot see when atoms are missing, nor can we perceive the flow of electrons. Our perception saturates reality in such a way that we experience things as unified objects or quantities, though they are fundamentally individual—take the example of the original kilogram (which wasn't a kilogram anymore because of radiation of itself), which has been replaced by definitions grounded in natural constants (which, at least for now, are considered invariant).

Subjective human perception cannot be eliminated by supposedly objective, yet still technologically mediated, perception. Technology may offer finer resolution than our senses, but it too is bound by the limits of perception. It is a substitutive tool—not a replacement. That’s why epistemic humility is crucial, and, where possible, the use of tools—as @JuanZu implied—is helpful.

But knowledge is only possible of concepts that attempt to capture this mutable and temporal world. And since, as @hypericin rightly noted, true knowledge in a changing world would require an omniscient perspective—which we cannot attain—we ultimately cannot possess absolute knowledge. Many resist this idea, which is why they cling to a kind of dogmatic pseudo-knowledge.

@T Clark

TL;DR: Your proposal works well as a practical heuristic. But without a clearer framework, many of the beliefs we treat as “knowledge” wouldn’t actually qualify — not because they’re false, but because their justification dissolves over time. Justified True Crisis (JTC) formalizes that pragmatism by asking why we treat something as “justified enough,” when we take the Weiji-Jump, and how we manage that risk epistemically.
Not to complicate knowledge, but to take its fragility seriously — and to ground it in conceptual knowledge: not claims about reality itself, but about the best models we have at a given time. Without that, we risk treating coincidence as certainty. And once the world changes, we confabulate continuity — while JTB keeps calling it knowledge, even if the bottle has already shattered.

In more Detail:
I see your point. You’re offering a pragmatic perspective that I broadly agree with: knowledge must enable action despite uncertainty. In my work on Dynamic Knowledge (DK) and Justified True Crisis (JTC), the goal isn’t to complicate things unnecessarily, but rather to methodically account for that uncertainty — without falling into dogmatic pseudo-certainty.

You write: “Knowledge is adequately justified belief based on the consequences of failure.” That’s very close to what I argue with JTC. The key difference is that JTC doesn’t just focus on the immediate utility of a belief for action. It also emphasizes the awareness of epistemic crisis — the recognition that our justification may be context-sensitive, fragile, or even coincidental. The Weiji-Jump (危机; meaning crisis, precisely combines this with the risk (危: wei) associated with uncertainty and the opportunity (机: ji) into one term.; Inspired by Kierkegaard’s concept of the "leap of faith") refers to precisely that moment: a decision is made despite uncertainty, but with a reflective grasp of the risks involved. I’m not just proposing a new definition, but outlining a form of epistemic responsibility — especially important in complex, dynamic environments.

Now, why does this need to be more than JTB or a pragmatic cost-benefit approach? Because those models collapse when confronted with time-sensitive or shifting contexts. Let me illustrate this with a simple case:

Imagine you see a bottle sitting on a table at 12:00. You say, “The bottle is intact.” At 12:02, you hear a crash — it has fallen and shattered.
Did you know the bottle was intact?

Under JTB: ✔ justified (you saw it), ✔ true (at the time), ✔ believed — so: knowledge.

But epistemically, your statement is unstable. What you actually knew was: “The bottle was intact at 12:00.” Without temporal indexing, your statement becomes retroactively misleading — even though it was “true” in a narrow JTB sense. The JTB model implicitly assumes that once a belief qualifies as knowledge, it remains so — even if the real-world referent (like an intact bottle) changes moments later, unless we explicitly update or retract the claim. But if we continue to treat the original statement as knowledge after the bottle breaks, we’re no longer tracking reality — we’re confabulating coherence where none exists. Consider as well Gettier’s job application case: at t₁, Smith believes he knows that “Jones will get the job” (definiendum) and “has ten coins in his pocket” (definiens). However, at t₂, it turns out that Smith himself gets the job and — unknowingly — also has ten coins in his pocket (similar to the broken bottle; new information).

This is where DK becomes essential (and more detailed):
• DKa addresses how a concept (e.g., “intact”) adjusts to the context and change.
• DKh tracks whether that concept remains coherent across time.

These two components are complementary; both necessary and jointly sufficient to describe knowledge in dynamic settings. JTC operationalizes this into a model for decision-making: not just whether you’re justified, but when, how, and under what conditions of risk you’re willing to treat a belief as knowledge.


@hypericin Great summary — yes, that’s exactly the core of dynamic knowledge. But the reason Gettier still matters is that it shows how easily we confuse fragile, coincidental beliefs for solid knowledge. It’s not just a theoretical issue — it’s a practical warning: we often act on what only seems justified in retrospect.

The Ship of Theseus illustrates how both identity and knowledge can shift over time — subtly, gradually — without us noticing. That’s the danger of dogmatic knowledge: it assumes timeless certainty and ignores change. In dynamic contexts, this isn’t just naïve — it’s a failure of risk management.

That’s where Justified True Crisis (JTC) comes in: it reframes knowledge not as a fixed state, but as a responsible, time-bound assertion made in awareness of uncertainty.

Here, conceptual knowledge plays a key role. It’s not knowledge of reality itself, but of our best available concepts — abstracted, structured, and always partial. We don’t access the world directly; we model it. As Popper argued, our theories are nets we cast to catch the world — but we must never forget they are nets.

JTC takes that seriously: it treats knowledge as something we claim through concepts, knowing they’re fallible — but also knowing they’re the most reliable tools we have to navigate a changing world.

@Metaphysician Undercover
You pointed out the tension between Parmenides’ being and Heraclitus’ becoming, referencing Aristotle, who saw these opposites as irreconcilable. Your proposed solution is a dualism that separates both aspects. This is precisely where my distinction between Static Knowledge and Dynamic Knowledge comes in:
• SK refers to timeless, secure knowledge (e.g., mathematics).
• DK is tied to changing conditions (e.g., the fastest route to work today).

Immutable and timeless elements (see deduction) are often conflated with mutable and temporal ones (see induction), as is the case in many Gettier examples. The expectation that knowledge should work the same way in inductive contexts as it does in deductive reasoning is, as you imply, unfounded. The epistemic monism currently dominant in the field is therefore deeply problematic. That’s why I wrote my paper Justified True Crisis—because this issue often goes unrecognized. It’s reassuring to know there are people out there who think along similar lines.

In relation to Plato’s Theaetetus, you argue that knowledge cannot be understood as “Justified True Belief” (JTB) because we can never completely rule out the possibility of falsehood. Therefore, “truth” cannot serve as a sufficient criterion, and JTB itself cannot be equated with knowledge. This interpretation reflects a typical post-Gettier skepticism, namely that the concept of truth itself remains “inaccessible.”

In my model, this doesn’t mean we discard truth altogether. Rather, the discussion around Gettier cases (e.g., the stopped clock) highlights the need to distinguish between static and dynamic knowledge. We still need “truth” as a goal and standard for knowledge, but we must accept that in DK-domains, our beliefs are constantly subject to revision, and we can never claim absolute certainty in changing environments.

@flannel jesus
You find the “T” in JTB problematic because we can never know with final certainty whether something is truly true. Ultimately, we only rely on our justifications (J) and beliefs (B). That’s exactly what we see in everyday dynamic contexts: we live in a world where everything flows and changes, and we can only partially verify whether a belief is really true.

This is where the idea of Justified True Crisis (JTC) comes in. In dynamic contexts, we may hold an assumption about what is true, but it must always remain open to potential correction. You could say we operate in a constant crisis mode: we have to act, even though we don’t have ultimate certainty about the “T” in JTB. That’s precisely why justification (J) does most of the work in practice, while truth (T) in a dynamic setting is only attributed hypothetically.

@Philosophim
Thanks so much for the kind feedback. I’m looking forward to any further questions you might have as you dig deeper into the text. And yes, a lot of work went into it ;D… I really hope it reads well, makes sense, and is useful. It’s tough to get feedback when you’re no longer in university. I wrote the essay after finishing my Master’s because I wanted to explore this idea further. The essay is like a bottle thrown into the sea, hoping to be found.

@T Clark
Thanks, it’s a pleasure to be able to talk with you all. You mention that knowledge in everyday life isn’t really “stable and reliable” the way we often wish it were—or the way the JTB definition implies. The Gettier case is really just an elegant illustration of this. You suggest instead focusing on practical justification before taking action.

This aligns very well with my introduction of Dynamic Knowledge: we might try to treat knowledge as a solid foundation, but in reality, there are always gaps and uncertainties. That’s exactly why I propose that in dynamic contexts, we shouldn’t rely on the illusion of “eternal validity,” but rather see knowledge as an ongoing process that must handle uncertainty and revision (JTC).

@javra
You find the idea of distinguishing between “static” and “dynamic” knowledge interesting and connect it with Plato’s (or rather Socrates’) skepticism in the Theaetetus. I think this connection is spot on and can be deepened by taking a more nuanced look at Platonic epistemology:
• Static Knowledge can be understood as an aspirational ideal, most clearly expressed in Plato’s treatment of mathematics, logic, or the theory of Forms—domains in which knowledge appears “unchanging and timeless.” While these ideals may seem to offer infallibility, they remain, for Plato, somewhat out of reach in the sensible world.
• Dynamic Knowledge, by contrast, aligns more closely with the core of Ancient Skepticism, as voiced through Socrates in the Theaetetus: the view that no claim to infallible knowledge can ultimately hold. Even the assertion that “there is no infallible knowledge must itself be fallible—thus placing it within the realm of DK; It’s important to emphasize that knowledge here is usually understood monistically, not dually—and that’s precisely the problem. In areas like everyday experience, empirical science, or historical understanding, knowledge is inherently provisional and context-dependent. Here, skeptical questions like “Can I be sure I have hands?” (cf. JTC) remain meaningful, even as practical certainties like “I have hands” are asserted. But depending on the epistemic standards at play, such claims are always vulnerable to what I call a crisis: "To differentiate dynamic knowledge with its crisis-like nature at this point, the Platonic conviction, δόξα (doxa), can be substituted with the ancient Greek κρίσις (krisis). κρίσις also means an opinion but more importantly, it conveys assertion and judgment, implying a crossroads. Thus, the structure and effectiveness of the JTB definition are preserved, with the difference that it is adapted to the reality and limits of concept knowledge." (see JTC, p. 25)

In this light, Plato doesn’t simply reject knowledge, but dramatizes the limits and tensions between the ideal of certainty and the reality of fallibility—between SK and DK. The aporia in dialogues like the Theaetetus reveals not a collapse of knowledge, but a shift toward understanding it as dynamic, contextual, and always open to revision.

In other words: Plato’s JTB framework implicitly aims at fixing knowledge in timeless validity, yet remains in a paradoxical or aporetic state due to the underlying “either/or” between change/unchange and temporal/timeless (see the Ship of Theseus).
JTC, by contrast, makes visible that in many contexts, knowledge must be continually justified, challenged, or defended anew. The duality opens up a “both/and” perspective, depending on the nature of the object under investigation. The two perspectives don’t contradict each other—they complement one another. That, in my view, is what makes the distinction between SK and DK fruitful.