It may be just a linguistic issue, but I prefer to say, not that knowledge is uncertain, but that we know less than we think we do. — Ludwig V

As I noted previously, you and I seem to agree on most of the substantive issues, [joke]so I'm going to forgive your misconceptions about the language.[/joke]

A well thought out post. Looks like you've paid a lot of attention to this issue. Thanks.

You and I never seem to have productive discussions. Our posts don't seem to be very responsive to each other. I think we just think about things too differently. The things you think are important I don't and those I think are important you don't.

It's unclear how many couples take into account the financial impact of having a child on their retirement plans. If they were to do so, the calculations would be rather discouraging. In fact, it could be economically beneficial for a couple to not have children while others continue to do so. — maytham naei

I have three children, all adults. I can tell you that the concerns you express had no part in our decision to have them, and they shouldn't, and they don't in most people. People have children because they want them. People want children because it's something people do. We're built for it. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't choose not to have them.

Birth rates have been falling. In some countries they are already far below the replacement rate - China, Japan, Korea, Italy. The US is holding steady right about at the replacement rate - 2.1 children per woman. It is my understanding that lowering birthrates are a result of increased industrialization incomes. Demographers predict that the human population will stabilize at the end of this century at about 11 billion.

Engineers and scientists need to be careful and accurate. Lawyers, with their concept of "beyond reasonable doubt" are similar. I don't have a problem with philosophers adopting the same policy. Ordinary life will no doubt continue with its rather slapdash ways. — Ludwig V

It looks like you've missed the point. Slapdash ways are appropriate when the consequences of being wrong are minor. Engineers often work in situations where the consequences are significant, so more stringent justification is required. It's not the difference between engineering and everyday life, it's the difference between minor consequences and significant ones.

But if there is some poisonous chemical contaminating your site, do you say that maybe it isn't a poison after all? You would be asked for evidence. You don't have any. You know that compound XYZ is poisonous, and you would have a bad time in court if you messed about with the process of removing it. Of course, you wouldn't ever just say it is poisonous. You would say it is poisonous at such-and-such a concentration and you would have evidence what the concentration is. If there was doubt about it, that would have to be mentioned and rationally justified as well. All those things are things that you know. Perhaps the problem is not that knowledge is uncertain, but that it is complicated. — Ludwig V

This whole part of our conversation started because you said:

So when you create a site conceptual model, you must be certain that there is some contamination. Right? — Ludwig V

I just explained why it wasn't as simple as that. So, yes, it's complicated, but it's complicated because of the uncertainty in our knowledge.

In philosophy, "contingent" doesn't mean "open to rational doubt". It means it is not self-contradictory to assert the opposite. — Ludwig V

Yes, my use of the word "contingent" was based on everyday usage. Here are some definitions from the web:

• Possible but not certain to occur; possible.
• Dependent on other conditions or circumstances; conditional: synonym: dependent.
• Happening by or subject to chance or accident; unpredictable: synonym: accidental.

The bolded one is closest to what I was trying to convey.

There is a category of doubt that Hume calls "excessive"; for Hume it was invented by Pyrrho, the ancient Greek. It's very liek Cartesian doubt. He recommends ordinary life and concerns as the best cure for it. He also identifies "moderate" doubt, which I would call a healthy scepticism. Hume thinks it is an excellent policy in general life. — Ludwig V

I guess it comes back to this - doubt isn't the question. Calling it "moderate doubt" doesn't always work in real life. When possible consequences are significant, you need more. You need knowledge of the likely facts and understanding of the level of uncertainty. There, there's your definition of "knowledge" - Understanding of the likely facts and their level of uncertainty. Here's one of my favorite quotes. I use it all the time. It's from Stephen Jay Gould and I've already used it once in this thread - "In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.'"

Descartes' arguments for scepticism consist of an invalid argument and a paranoid fantasy. That's about it. It's not enough to establish what he wants to establish. — Ludwig V

As I noted, he was a bit over-excited, but not wrong.

So when you create a site conceptual model, you must be certain that there is some contamination. Right? — Ludwig V

Certain? Sure, I guess. I generally worked on sites that had been investigated before, so there was existing data. But when I'm looking through the data I'm given for a site, I definitely look at all the data to verify that levels of contamination in soil and groundwater actually exceed regulatory levels.

Many real estate transactions require what is called a preliminary site assessment at properties where no previous environmental investigations have taken place. For investigators who are first on the site, they have to identify locations where there might be contamination, but they don't assume there has been any.

Then you will also also know that your justification was insufficient and will stop having faith in it. At that point, you will want to say that you did not know, after all. — Ludwig V

You say the justification was insufficient. I don't say "sufficient," I say "adequate." "Adequate" means known at an appropriate level of uncertainty. I'll say again - knowledge can never be 100% certain. From an engineering perspective, we never just know something, we know it with a given level of uncertainty. Maybe that's the solution.

All that anyone can ask of you is that you do your bit, and you clearly do that. But I don't think it follows that the outcome (success/failure) is always defined by that. Sometimes success or failure is assessed by other people. You can try your best to win the race. Whether you do win or not is not in your control. For me, knowledge is a success and other people are entitled to assess that for themselves. — Ludwig V

If I'm taken to court as an engineer, I'll have to show what I did was in accord with appropriate engineering practice, including the quality of the data I used. I don't have to show I was absolutely certain. That's the best that it's reasonable to expect.

You speak as if you had been practicing and become a champion doubter! Or is it that you can ask yourself of any empirical proposition whether it could possibly be wrong and answer "Yes" just because it is not self-contradictory to do so. — Ludwig V

Look, @Banno is right that there are lots of things out there we take for granted, and with good reason. But that doesn't mean they are absolutely certain. I gave a couple of examples where that might be the case. You can't use any real world event or phenomenon as an example of something that is absolutely true. This is not a new idea. Maybe Descartes took it a little too far, but he wasn't wrong, just a bit overexcited.

I don't doubt that we are all writing in English and I don't think about it except when prompted by philosophical questions, but I know all truth, all knowledge, is contingent.

I wanted to distinguish clearly between knowledge and fallible knowledge, which, as you may have noticed, I do not consider to be knowledge. — Ludwig V

You and I seem to agree on most everything except this one linguistic issue. I don't think our differences are substantive except in one sense - My way of seeing things focuses on the most important thing - the adequacy of justification.

Well, we're agreed on that, then. However, I'm not sure I would consider JTB a definition in the strict sense. — Ludwig V

I guess I was unclear. I do not consider JTB as useful definition of knowledge. I do not think knowledge has to be true, only that I believe it is true and am justified in that belief. Those are the only things I have control of.

And there are innumerable things that we take as undoubtable. I've already given the example of this post's being in English; to bring that into doubt is to bring into doubt the very basis on which one can doubt. There are simpler examples - One can't play nought and crosses if one doubts that three in a row is a win; One can't doubt that the brakes will work on one's car if one doubts that it has wheels. — Banno

Your three examples are trivial. Of course I can doubt if my post is in English. Of course I can doubt that three in a row wins in tic tac toe. Of course I can doubt if my car has wheels. I can doubt anything. I'm not going to waste my time doubting them because my level of certainty is adequate for the purposes at hand. When she was taking French in school, my daughter sometimes spoke French in her sleep. When I try to talk French, sometimes German words end up in the mix. If I didn't know that naughts and crosses is the same as tic tac toe, I would doubt that three in a row wins.

So, in constructing a site conceptual model one does not doubt that there is a site... — Banno

It is quite common when we start a new project to have a new survey prepared. When we do that, it is not uncommon for us to find that the limits of the property are not where we thought they were. Sometimes when we investigate a property, we find there is no contamination. A property with no contamination is not considered a site under site cleanup regulations.

Nothing is absolute. There can always be doubt. It only matters how uncertain things are.

I'm always envious of people who have models or texts they admire and are guided by. I've never really had that. I enjoy essay writers, but mainly because of their capacity to use language, not so much as a guide or inspiration. — Tom Storm

You've written about how much some music means to you. I don't have that. I do like music, but not to the same degree.

Interesting observations about the engineering process. — Tom Storm

Is the process I described all that different from how you decide things in your life and work? In engineering we tend to be more formal, with required documentation, but for me, the overall process of knowing and deciding is the same one I use in my life outside work.

Can you outline what you have in mind here? Do you mean using experience to make assessments and decisions? — Tom Storm

Much of what I write here on the forum comes from personal experience, introspection, rather than reading philosophers. The philosophers I like are those who's general understanding is consistent with my own, but who can help me to expand my understanding and figure out which way to go next. That's why Lao Tzu means so much to me. A lot of people come to the Tao Te Ching with an understanding based on a formalistic, logical reading. For me, Lao Tzu is pointing us toward an experience, trying to show it to us. The words are just the tools he has to work with and he acknowledges upfront that they are inadequate.

Also, for 30 years as an engineer, I used information from many different sources to help decide what needed to be done and the best way of going about doing it. One of the first jobs on any project was to put all the information from all the sources together into what we called a site conceptual model (SCM). Nowhere in that process or in the results were there any propositions that were true or false. A SCM is not true or false, it is valid or it's not. And it's validity doesn't depend on one piece of information, rather on all of it together. I think that's the way humans deal with knowledge on a real day-to-day basis.

Surely certainty is important to logic, math and in your game - engineering? — Tom Storm

I guess in math and logic, as long as you leave out any contact with the real world, you can get certainty. As for engineering, as I described above, we have to work with limited amounts of expensive information. We have to do the best we can with what we have. Civil and environmental engineering always involves data with lots of uncertainty. That generally gets handled by putting big fudge factors, called factors of safety, on all our calculations. There may be other branches where that is less so.

Can libertarian free will (the idea that it's possible to have done something else in the past) exist in any universe whatsoever? My gut answer is no because it seems illogical to justify its existence. How can an exactly identical situation have multiple possible outcomes? If you try to explain what would make an agent choose one action over another, you seem to be reinforcing the idea that actions have a cause. — Cidat

My position on determinism is that, if we can't, in any feasible way, use current knowledge about the world to predict future human behavior, then a claim that there is no free will is meaningless. So, some human behavior is predictable to a certain extent. People who grow up in Japan will almost certainly learn Japanese. People who were abused as children are more likely to abuse others. People's behavior might be predictable to some degree from the results of Myers-Briggs or other similar testing. But those predictions of human behavior will work in only a very general and probabilistic way.

So, we have free will by default.

I agree that pragmatically we tend to strike a balance between the level of certainty we can achieve for an appropriate cost of achieving it - mostly with a strong inclination to put in as little effort as possible. That's a good strategy in most situations.

I agree that we often call the result knowledge. Knowledge has much more prestige than belief and consequently a claim to knowledge has considerable persuasive power among those disinclined to skepticism.

I agree moreover that such "knowledge" is often good enough in practice. — Ludwig V

I agree with all this, although I wouldn't put quotation marks around knowledge.

Could you explain to me exactly how "knowledge" of this kind differs from justified belief?

Do you have any idea why knowledge carries more prestige and persuasive power than belief? — Ludwig V

The first time I heard about JTB I thought it was wrongheaded. It doesn't reflect how people use knowledge to make decisions. I've thought about that a lot and come to the conclusion that knowledge is adequately justified belief for the specific purpose needed and the consequences of being wrong. So, yes - knowledge is justified belief with the condition that the justification is adequate.

It's funny. I strongly disagree with this:

I'd just say that if we counted something as knowledge and later it turned out to be false, then we were wrong, that it wasn't knowledge, and we have now corrected ourselves.
— Banno

That's perfectly true — Ludwig V

And strongly agree with this:

"God" (or even "gods") is not simply a fact, It is a way of looking at, or thinking about, or approaching the world. It's not in the realm of ordinary truths and falsities. — Ludwig V

Would it not be the case that as we go about our business we generally do struggle to achieve knowledge of the sort you describe — Tom Storm

I don't think we ever really try to achieve certainty in our knowledge. I don't even think it's a valuable goal. Most uses for knowledge don't require certainty—only a balance between level of certainty and cost of justification.

We find people who say they have knowledge of god though direct experience - how would you describe this type of claim? A belief? To call it a false belief would imply that we already have decided that knowledge of god is not legitimate. Or it begs the question that we can tell if someone has knowledge of god. — Tom Storm

I use personal introspection as one of the sources of my knowledge. I think that's legitimate. When I present that as evidence or think about someone else's experience, there are three approaches that make sense to me before rejecting it outright 1) Compare it to my own experience 2) Pay attention to who has had similar experiences and who hasn't 3) Take it as an interesting fact about different ways people experience the world.

Are you familiar with Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation by Roger Ames & David Hall? If so, what do you think of it? I've found it a much more insightful reading (between the lines) than any other version of Laozi's text. I've been meaning to reread it for quite some time ... — 180 Proof

Thanks for the reference. I hadn't heard of it. Went on Amazon. Bought it in Kindle.

I'm reading a new translation of the Tao Te Ching by Lin Yutang. Written in 1948, but new to me. I'm going to recommend this version to anyone who asks for my favorite translation. For each verse, it includes Yutang's translation, but also excerpts from the Chuang Tzu which are relevant. Chuang Tzu is the second founder of Taoism after Lao Tzu. He wrote a couple of hundred years after Lao Tzu. You should be able to find a free PDF version online.

Damn, ↪T Clark is on to me, despite my cunningly hiding my passive aggressive snot in an account of justified true belief. — Banno

This is fun, but we're unnecessarily cluttering up this thread. I'll let you have one last at bat if you'd like. That's baseball terminology. You can ask @Noble Dust for an explanation.

Damn, ↪T Clark is on to me, despite my cunningly hiding my passive aggressive snot in an account of justified true belief. — Banno

As I wrote previously, I think JTB is silly, but I do believe my judgement of your post is true and that I'm justified in believing it.

I was simply seeking a more forthcoming response to my post. Oh, well. — Banno

Your post was your usual passive-aggressive snot, as is this one.

I think it's coherent that we experience thoughts exactly how we experience trees, rocks, and people. In both cases, we experience pre-existent entities. Of course, this doesn't prove the mindscape is true. But it seems coherent. — Art48

I certainly am not an qualified to have a definitive opinion, but it is my understanding that this is not consistent with current results from cognitive scientists and cognitive and language psychologists.

But there could exist a universal mind that contains all possible thoughts but is not all-good, all-powerful, etc., as so is not God as usually conceived. — Art48

I agree. It is my understanding that it's not consistent with the beliefs of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic doctrine, but that's not what I'm arguing. I'll change the relevant text in my post.

It has always seemed to me that this "universal mind" is just another name for God a god. — T Clark

So ↪T Clark's amusement is to some extent misplaced. — Banno

As is your wontmodus operandi, when I contradicted your statement and provided evidence, you changed the subject.

[Edit] Note change in text.

So ↪T Clark's amusement is to some extent misplaced. — Banno

I didn't say it is amusing, I said it is silly. Not the same thing at all.

Good stuff. — Banno

Although I disagree with some of what you've written, I agree with Banno that you have provided a good view of how thought works—clear and consistent.

The concept of mindscape suggests universal mind, an idealist concept. — Art48

It has always seemed to me that this "universal mind" is just another name for God.

We first learn of ideas and how to think not by introspection, but by our fellow human beings, learning a rich intellectual tradition handed down from generation to generation. This picture of "Mindscape" would make you think we could isolate ourselves from others, and tap into the "Mindscape" to learn our ideas, and that there is no need to interact with another human being. It starts first by learning of ideas from other humans, not by private introspection into alternate realities. Do we introspect? Of course, with ideas that are learned in a public world taught by our fellow humans. — Richard B

Learning through interaction with others is certainly an important source of "how we think" although I wouldn't put it in those terms. There is also an important source from a generalized cognitive function; direct observation, and inborn capacity and instinct. I recognize that the contribution of inborn factors is somewhat controversial, but it is not my intention to argue that here.

As to what this "how we think" is, I experience it as a mostly non-verbal conceptual model of the world whose basis is primarily based on empirical factors, both social and non-social, and probably temperament. My brother and I have very different understandings of how the world works, although we were raised in the same manner by the same people. I call this intuition, but others here on the forum disagree with that and think intuition is something else.

Can metaphysical questions, in particular, the mindscape hypothesis, give us useful guidance into how to study and make sense of the world? — Art48

My answer to that is "yes." For me, the value in metaphysics is that it provides a framework, a foundation, on which to build our factual structures. As an example, a materialist, physicalist metaphysics could provide a good basis for science. Another - an idealist metaphysics may be a good approach for mathematics. The mindscape is an idealist approach. I've heard of sculptors who think what they carve from a block of stone is already in there, they just have to find it. It's a poetic way of seeing things. A recognition that many of our ideas seem to come from nowhere.

I have a couple of questions about the mindscape hypothesis.

First, is there any way to test this empirically? Another way to say that is to ask if there are any consequences if the hypothesis is correct? If the answer is "no," as I suspect, then this is a metaphysical question and not a matter of fact.

Second, if this is a metaphysical question, does it give us useful guidance into how to study and make sense of the world. Again, I think the answer is probably "no."

[Edit] In a later post I changed my mind on this last sentence. I think there the mindscape metaphysical position my be useful in some situations.

When someone asked about creationism, he started yelling at them (as if they were perverse). — Antony Nickles

I am a big fan of Gould's, but I understand he was something of a jerk sometimes. Being something of a jerk myself, I don't hold that against him.

The point about science is that it does not need assent. — Antony Nickles

That's the thing about knowledge—if you can't use it, it ain't really knowledge. In order to use it, you have to assent with it, accept it.

So, again, to say my belief (opinion, theory, etc.) is justified (say by the facts of science) does not make it a higher order of belief, now deemed "knowledge". It's just a statement of fact; the only relationship to belief which it has is the kind of belief that is a guess, to which the fact is an answer with certainty--"I believe it's raining out" "Well, let's go and look and we will know". — Antony Nickles

I'm taking a pragmatic approach to this, while you seem to be taking formalistic, linguistic approach. Information has to be known, factual, justified, understood, believed, assented to before it can be used. The only interesting thing about knowledge is that we can use it to make decisions.

I'm above average at chess, and I don't think we're saying anything too silly. — Judaka

Sure. Different people experience their mental processes differently. I can only speak for myself.

sometimes I have to change some beliefs — ToothyMaw

On a regular basis, it's not so much that I change my beliefs as that I refine them and become more aware of them. But then there are a few issues where I have come to question my basic understanding in a more fundamental way. That feels unsettling, but that's how it's supposed to work. That's what philosophy is for.

It seems like your view explained here might fall under the "God of the gaps" fallacy. If you don't mind sharing, I'm curious how someone could hold that stance. — Thund3r

Long story - short version. Many philosophers, including Kant and Lao Tzu, have recognized that the reality we live in is a function, not only of some so-called "objective reality," but also of aspects that are uniquely human, e.g. Kant wrote that concepts of time and space are not inherent in reality, but are an overlay created by the human mind. I think religions recognize that fundamental humanity of reality in a way that rationality and science don't and can't.

To be clear, this is a metaphysical position, not a factual one, but I think it is more useful, less misleading, than rationalists standard metaphysical views.

I admit I'm not qualified to make serious claims about how people actually think, but I think I can make claims about how the relationship between the evaluation of the worth of goals and their relationship to logic works, which is hypothetical and not grounded in any real understanding of the human mind. — ToothyMaw

I wasn't questioning your qualifications on this subject. I consider introspection a valid source of psychological knowledge.

In chess, a strategy can be logical, but that doesn't mean it will produce good results. To do that, one must carefully select the factors they are to emphasise. If one has a strategy that involves a heavy focus on aggressive attacking, reasoning that it will pressure the opponent to make mistakes, that makes sense, it's a valid line of thought, but that doesn't mean it will succeed. — Judaka

Do you really think this is how people who play chess think and behave? I haven't played chess since I was a kid and I was never very good at it, but the process you guys are describing seems artificial. There are billions of possible moves and chains of moves. It makes sense to me that reason would come into play to help evaluate a move once one has been identified, but I don't see how it could possibly be useful in identifying moves in the first place.

goals must possess some logic to be of value in a world that largely acts sensibly on a human scale. — ToothyMaw

I think this is really wrong in that it doesn't reflect how real people determine value in the real world. It seems like you are trying to stuff how people really behave into your mold of logic and reason where it doesn't fit.

Calling all knowledge belief justified to be true is an imposed (made up) criteria, desiring certainty before looking at how various kinds of knowledge actually work. Science is not justifying beliefs; it is a method. — Antony Nickles

This made me think of one of my favorite quotes from Stephen Jay Gould, a great science writer—In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.'

@Jamal—I am so f...ing tired of this em dash, but I don't seem to be able to stop using it.

The value of Truth is not absolute because new facts can and have changed the truth value of previous claims. So a true belief can be prove not true...while an instrumentally valuable statement can always be used as knowledge. — Nickolasgaspar

A good post. Like you, I take a pragmatic view of knowledge.

That my five senses are all I directly experience of the world is a fact, not a metaphysical statement. If you disagree, if you believe we have some other way of perceiving the world, then what is that way? — Art48

I think I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that what we perceive with our senses is not the real world. That reality is inaccessible to us. I agree, our senses plus any technological extensions to our senses we devise are how we sense the world.