All the same, why justify any belief whatsoever if not to best evidence that the belief is in fact true (i.e., that the belief in fact does conform to that which is real)?

If no cogent answer can be here given, then, while in no way being infallible, declarative knowledge can only be "a belief which one can justify as being in fact true". Hence, JTB in the sense just mentioned. — javra

it's funny that we both took that quote to be supporting our respective sides.

My side is saying, "belief" already means "I think it's true", and justified means "justified in thinking it's true", so to me, knowledge is just a belief that we're sufficiently justified in - that's what the quote is saying to me. So we don't call a belief knowledge when it's JTB, we call a belief knowledge when it's JB and the J is strong enough. T is the aim of the justification, we and the aim of knowledge, rather than an element inside of it. — flannel jesus

A good quote! And unless we're giving credence to religious revelation, I can't see another avenue for use of Truth. — AmadeusD

Justification is the reason for believing. Not it's veridicality. Also, that is jettisoning Truth from the concept. Not sure what was missed there, tbh. Truth has no use if your takes are to be the way of things. It's a pointless, senseless concept with no referent. — AmadeusD

We know a belief when it's reached a particular threshold of justification. — flannel jesus

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent. — Stephen J Gould

“Our great Verulam attempted with more skill and industry (and not without some indignation) to restore the more modest and useful way practised by the ancients, of inquiry into particular bodies without hastening to make systems, into the request it formerly had; wherein the admirable industry of two of our London physicians, Gilbert and Harvey, had not a little assisted him. And I need not tell you that since him Descartes, Gassendi, and others, having taken in the application of geometrical theorems for the explanation of physical problems; he and they, and other restorers of natural philosophy, have brought the experimental and mathematical way of inquiry into nature, into at least as high and growing an esteem, as it ever possessed when it was most in vogue among the naturalists that preceded Aristotle.” — Robert Boyle

If your ultimate aim is to know, deductions from the atomical or Cartesian principles are likely to give you most satisfaction; if your aim is control of nature in the interest of particular ends, you can often discover the necessary relations between qualities immediately experienced, without ascending to the top in the series of causes. — E.A. Burtt

Cheers! I guess I am a bit like Charlie Brown to Meta's Lucy... — Banno

I can't. All I can do is lead the donkey to the water. I can't make him drink.

Can you show me a physics text that does not use time?

'cause, you see, as has been mentioned before, your grasp of physics is, shall we say, eccentric?

So better to pay it no attention. — Banno

Or accurately? Precisely? — Moliere

Ah look, I found the perfect location in Egypt to set up shop. It looks vacant. Maybe in rough shape, but nothing some fresh paint and some elbow grease can't cure (although I can't vouch for how centuries of desertification might have impacted the availability of drinking water...) — Count Timothy von Icarus

For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.
As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish
I could be monarch of a desert land
I could devote and dedicate forever
To the truths we keep coming back and back to.
So desert it would have to be, so walled
By mountain ranges half in summer snow,
No one would covet it or think it worth
The pains of conquering to force change on.
Scattered oases where men dwelt, but mostly
Sand dunes held loosely in tamarisk
Blown over and over themselves in idleness.
Sand grains should sugar in the natal dew
The babe born to the desert, the sand storm
Retard mid-waste my cowering caravans — Robert Frost

The conditions for an "open, inclusive, and rational society" are not, past a certain reasonable point, a matter of opinion. — J

tyranny of tolerance — frank

Of course they have. But they lie and distort what is going on under their tyrannies, so that criticisms of the regime are vilified as "dehumanizing" and "bad-faith noise" that criticizes a "rational and open" government. That doesn't make it true. Let's not get distracted by "false equivalence" strategies, which will always be yapping at us. — J

Imo the one where he hoped every woman would die
— fdrake

I don't think that's what he actually said, though. — Tzeentch

He hoped for a future without women. It is not the exact same thing. The difference doesn't matter much. — fdrake

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. — DasGegenmittel

As it says in the guidelines, this kind of thing is not tolerated. — Jamal

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. — DasGegenmittel

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...

...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. — DasGegenmittel

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. — DasGegenmittel

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). — DasGegenmittel

Hey T Clark, thanks for the welcome. I did read your posts, and found myself in agreement with your components of 'human nature', although I was wondering how you would define 'mental'? — Jeremy Murray

To say that we can define human nature seems impossible to me, given that our understanding of what that means is inevitably evolving. — Jeremy Murray

I think of this sort of knowledge as an 'act of faith', ultimately...

But just because you have to 'choose' to believe, the act of faith itself being a choice, does not mean you are wrong. Your concept of this might be perfect, somehow, or it could be the best possible given what we know, in this moment, etc. There are many ways this could be the best way to think without it being objectively true...

...To me, we can't 'know' what human nature is, what the right thing to do is, but we can conclude that we are made better by having these 'ideals' to aspire towards, and then acting. — Jeremy Murray

Your Chuang Tzu quote expresses a very similar premise, — Jeremy Murray

I struggle with deontological or utilitarian ethics simply due to the impossibility of objectivity, and my being an atheist. There is no 'leap of faith' for me to take. Only philosophically-informed choices to make. (or so I hope!) — Jeremy Murray

But I am all for people, such as yourself, making a thoughtful decision to be relativistic, for a variety of possible reasons. — Jeremy Murray

Hi everyone, I just joined up — Jeremy Murray

sharper minds than mine — Jeremy Murray

As for the topic, it seems to me like the concept of 'human nature' is in the same category as 'objective morality', in that both are aspirational and unknowable, but worthwhile pursuits nonetheless. It is in pursuing these ideals that we can honor our human nature / act 'morally'. — Jeremy Murray

a bunch of inborn genetic, biological, neurological, mental, and psychological processes, structures, capacities, drives, and instincts which are modified during development and by experience and socialization. — T Clark

...I do believe religion, (human traditions of morality, as they were developed and situated in time, ever-evolving) and even spiritual traditions such as meditation, that can be practiced in secular fashion, all bring value to the pursuit of an 'objective' morality.

I'm an atheist, but am not hostile to religion itself. Like any ideology or belief system, flawed and imperfect, to my mind, but I respect the 'goodness' of some of the religious people I've known far too much to discount that this is a moral practice with tangible positive outcomes. — Jeremy Murray

Since then, I've been somewhat repelled by the premise, not as a considered stance by those who have done the work to decide on relativism, but rather as a default premise amongst people who might not think much about anything philosophical. A 'lazy relativism' if you will. — Jeremy Murray

Goodness, as I understand it, certainly does not mean humankindness and responsible conduct! It is just fully allowing the uncontrived condition of the inborn nature and allotment of life to play itself out. What I call sharp hearing is not hearkening to others, but rather hearkening to oneself, nothing more. — Chuang Tzu

No. Being a consciousness of human intelligence (more or less) is the most extraordinary thing in the universe. In 13,500,000,000 years, in the universe of indescribable size, there have been an estimated 108,000,000,000 of us, and possibly nothing similar anywhere else. Being able to think and feel as we do is a rare thing, and a joyous thing. — Patterner

Interesting that 45% also say they with they never existed. Surely this is an argument for antinatalism. — Down The Rabbit Hole

Why do you post on this forum at all if we could all have magical powers in the mind you don't have? — Gregory

Zeno's dichotomy paradox corresponds to the mathematical fact that every pair of rational numbers is separated by a countably infinite number of other rational numbers. Because of this, a limit in mathematics stating that f(x) tends to L as x tends to p, cannot be interpreted in terms of the variable x assuming the value of each and every point in turn between its current position and p. Hence calculus does not say that f(x) moves towards L as x moves towards p. — sime

Like you I love Altman's The Long Goodbye. MASH never did it for me but I appreciate its influence. — Tom Storm

Suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please

Original lyrics to the MASH theme (removed by network TV) — Tom Storm

When you "imagine" infinite points on a segment you are not really imagining an infinity. — Gregory

I realize that the infinity gets smaller and smaller, but it still never ends and hence should have no finite boundary. Each digit of pi corresponds to a slice of space, so infinite space makes finite object, a contradiction, so says the Eleatics. What is intuitive for me is to say there are discrete steps, but it's impossible to explain that geometrically. Infinity seems necessary as a tool, not as a truth — Gregory

Could you elaborate on this, I'm curious what you mean with it. Is it something along the lines of the Chuang Tzu quote? — ChatteringMonkey

Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there is ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion. — Tao Te Ching - Verse 38

However, we typically regard knowledge as stable and reliable, a foundation we can trust. Gettier problems like this challenge the traditional JTB definition by revealing cases of accidental knowledge, suggesting that justification, truth, and belief alone are insufficient for genuine knowledge. — DasGegenmittel

Yes, we have innate moral feelings, maybe even something like a directional moral sense, but I don't think its enough on its own to get fully functional morality. We have a long education period for a reason it would think, unlike other animals.

If there's a cultural component to how we get our values, if that is part of human nature, then it seem like pointing to human nature as an explanation misses something, or doesn't really answer the question, as there is a yet to be defined component to human nature. — ChatteringMonkey

So what is our human nature? I'll go out on a limb here. It is a bunch of inborn genetic, biological, neurological, mental, and psychological processes, structures, capacities, drives, and instincts which are modified during development and by experience and socialization. — T Clark

I do think education, or moral systems, can go to far or go wrong if they veer to far from the basic moral feelings. This is how I see Taoism — ChatteringMonkey

I think part of moralities function is social control. Murder derails societies as it tended to lead to bloodfeuds and the like... it was bad for social order. It seems weird to me that you would want to excluded that from morality, as a functioning society is a prerequisite for any kind of human flourishing it seems to me. — ChatteringMonkey

Maybe this is mostly just a definitional semantic thing. — ChatteringMonkey

Let's see if that works.. — AmadeusD

It doesn't seem intuitive to me at all that space divides to infinity and yet has a finite limit. To my mind that is a direct contradiction, like a round triangle — Gregory

T Clark (who I cannot tag?) — AmadeusD

What about culture? Could it also be human nature to devise myths and tables of values to pass onto the next generation? — ChatteringMonkey

I'm not aware of a mathematical definition of an alternative continuum that resolves all of the logical puzzles posed by Zeno. — sime

Zeno's paradoxes when interpreted mathematically, pose fundamental questions concerning the relationship between mathematics and logic, and in particular the question as to the logical foundation of calculus. The existence and utility of the classical continuum is also called into question. — sime

The apparent paradox is no more than a failure to apply the relevant maths appropriately. It is not a "difference in reality" between physics and mathematics. — Banno

An example there might be conservative Alice, who would never trust the scientific use of partially uninterpretable AI in scientific publications - and thus be agnostic about the conclusions of any paper using them. And cowboy Bob, who believes in the potential of AI and does not withhold belief on that basis. Alice and Bob would react differently to the relatively recent {almost total} solving of protein geometry given their base pair sequence by an AI, Alice would withhold belief, Bob would not.

Then, the applications of that technology happen, and new effective antibiotics are developed with these quick to press designer proteins. If everyone ought act in accordance with Alice's prohibition on trusting any fruits of AI, no one would have jumped ahead to produce the antibiotics, and we would live in a world with more death and pain as well as less scientific discovery. Alice's beliefs would have hampered the discovery of more truths, and that would be one fact among others. — fdrake