sarcasm — NOS4A2

Irony.

Not even clever. — NOS4A2

It was definitely clever.

It’s up to you. That’s the point. You determine your actions, and therefor any penalties you dish out are the consequence of your principles and decisions, not of the words. Sorry, but speech does not have the consequences you claim it does. — NOS4A2

[irony]Yes, yes, I agree. You've won the argument. By redefining the meaning of "free speech," "consequences," "words," and "sorry." Clever rhetorical tactics. [/irony]

Evaluations of knowledge and truth fail when we apply absolute standards.
Science showed us that those standards are useless and disabling. "Beyond reasonable doubt" is a far better standard than "absolutes". Statistical Standards are far superior since a knowledge claim is not just a true one...it also carries an instrumental value and we NEED to act upon it.
So we need to take the risk...and this is what is rewarding. This is why Tautologies are valueless and Inductive reasoning is the main characteristic of scientific knowledge. — Nickolasgaspar

I agree with everything you've written.

This conflates two matters: expressing one's opinions and being generally disruptive. A nice bit of framing. — Tzeentch

I don't get that. The only thing they've done that's disruptive is expressing their opinion. Redefining free speech to support your argument is not a valid argument.

Intriguing to say the least, no (scientific) hypothesis can be justified as truth and yet we do believe them to be so. — Agent Smith

This is only true if "justification" means establishing the truth of an assertion without doubt, which can't be done.

Free speech does mean speech is free from consequences, and it ought to be treated that way. — NOS4A2

So a woman comes to a dinner party at my house and starts saying derogatory things about gay people, I can't ask her to leave? So I run a business and one of my employees spouts Nazi slogans in the lunch room, I can't fire him? So a member of the YMCA curses, swears, and uses inappropriate language, they can't revoke his membership? Of course speech has consequences.

Does anyone here know something that is not true? — Banno

Ooh, ooh, Mr. Banno. I do. I do. Mr. Banno. I do.

Regardless, if one thinks knowledge to be a relative condition of certainty, that is only possible by being justified by something. — Mww

I agree with this. Some people seem to think that just saying "a priori" is all the justification that's needed.

So check out the scheme first. Sure the city hall can provide... — Haglund

In many locations in the US, you can call Dig Safe at 811. They'll come out and mark out where the underground utilities are. If you call, don't tell them you're burying someone.

I don't understand this at all. You claim that there is an apple in the bag. We open the bag to find an orange. It didn't stop being an apple when we opened the bag; it just never was an apple. — Michael

You might have thought you knew, but you didn't, because they weren't (only) where you believed them to be. — Michael

I understand your argument, but I don't agree with your conclusions. I know you don't agree with mine. It's clear neither of us is going to change our minds.

The pure/impure is Kantian terminology specifically, meant to show the distinctions in what can be considered a priori. The thing with the keys shows there is a kind of a priori in common usage but hardly recognized as such, but it is the other kind of much more importance, that being, absent any element of experience whatsoever, that is, pure, which if not from experience, must the be from reason itself. Your list of a priori conditions on pg 1 are both kinds, but without the distinction of which is which. Conventionally speaking, that is sufficient, insofar as conventionally no one cares, but both scientifically and metaphysically speaking, it is very far from it. And, of course, you did ask a metaphysical question after all, so......just thought I’d weigh in. Or.....wade in, more like it. — Mww

As I noted, I found the discussions about pure vs. impure and analytic vs. synthetic, interesting and useful. I wasn't questioning their value, I was just expressing confusion. In my experience on the forum, many people use the term "a priori" to mean something that can be known without justification. Often, they aren't talking about tautologies or logical deductions, they are talking about metaphysical properties. My most recent example is causality - that all events are caused. I think there are good arguments for this positions, but there are also good arguments against it. To claim it is a priori knowledge is to shut down debate.

Do you think there has been a satisfactory answer to that? — Mww

This discussion has been really interesting and satisfying for me. I've gotten a lot to think about.

It doesn't stop being knowledge; it was never knowledge in the first place. Just because you claim to know the answer doesn't mean you do, regardless of how convinced and justified you are. — Michael

This is why people dismiss philosophy as useless. Silly arguments about abstract ideas that have nothing useful to say about how to get along.

If the first cell says that there is iron in the first sample of water but there isn't iron in the first sample of water then the data in the first cell is false, and if there is iron in the first sample of water then the data in the first cell is true. — Michael

Data validation doesn't determine whether or not a data point is true, it determines whether or not it meets data quality objectives, which is another way of saying that it is adequately justified. The only thing I can ever be certain of about with that data is that it is adequately justified or not.

Truth is also important. If John claims to know that the answer to the equation is 5 and Jane claims to know that the answer to the equation is 6 then at least one of them is wrong in their claim of knowledge. They can't both know the answer and have different answers. — Michael

Of course truth is important, but if it turns out later something I know is wrong, it doesn't stop being knowledge somehow retroactively. That's silly. It's the kind of thing only philosophers would care about.

By "correct" do you mean "true"? Because then this very sentence accepts that there is such a thing as truth which is independent of whatever we believe, so you appear to be contradicting yourself. — Michael

I specifically didn't use the word "true." Say I have data chemical laboratory analysis data measurements for 100 water samples for 10 chemical constituents. So I have a 10 x 100 table of data. Is it true? What does that even mean? What can possibly go wrong?

• It's the wrong data.
• The data was tabulated incorrectly.
• Samples were collected incorrectly in the field.
• Samples were not packaged correctly - refrigeration.
• The wrong analytical methods or detection limits were specified.
• Samples were not analyzed within holding times.
• The analysis was not performed in accordance with standard operating procedures.
• The appropriate quality assurance procedures were not followed.
• The analyses did not meet the laboratories quality assurance standards.
• And lots more.

In order to use the data effectively, it has to be validated before usage. That means it's quality has to be evaluated against standards - data quality objectives. If some samples don't meet standards, they may be rejected as unusable or, more likely, they will be qualified. That means they will be judged to be less than fully validated, but still usable.

So, where is truth in all this?

The problem is when you claim that because we use the phrase "I know where my keys are" when we have a strong belief then having a strong belief is all there is to knowledge, which is like saying that because we use the phrase "the grass is green" when we believe that the grass is green then believing that the grass is green is all there is to the grass being green, whereas most people understand that the grass being green has nothing to do with what we believe and that our beliefs can be mistaken. — Michael

You left out the most important part - justification. Knowledge is information adequately justified for it's intended use. Different uses required different levels of justification. No knowledge can be absolutely certain.

This is simply bad English — hypericin

Perfectly good English, just wrong.

JTB is not perfect (which I pointed out in my op). But it is a far better model of how we actually use the word than your mental state theory. — hypericin

I disagree. As Isaac and I noted, it's not how people use the word in the regular old world.

Did MOST of the ancient Greeks know the earth was the center of the universe? — hypericin

Most ancient Greeks didn't know anything about philosophy or science. They knew about raising goats, making shoes, fishing, killing other Greeks. I wonder if most people now know the earth isn't the center of the universe. I would say 100 years ago they probably didn't. Do most people know that nothing can exceed the speed of light? In the US, almost half the people don't believe in evolution as described by Darwin.

So a Justified True Belief model of knowledge would have no-one ever having knowledge, — Isaac

Yes. Which makes the whole thing ridiculous and, as I noted, it's not the way the word is used by regular people. You don't need philosophy to know things.

But then we go back to where I (and you) started. That's simply not how the word(s) is used. We don't use either 'know' or 'true' as if we were making claims to an asymptotical ideal which we will never reach (for a start, with the latter we already have such an option - we'd use 'truer', or 'more true'). If we don't use the words that way, then how can that be their meaning? Hence the need for a different understanding of them. — Isaac

Agreed.

As I said previously, I see knowledge as information ready to be used. Adequately justified for the purpose intended. We can never be absolutely certain the information we have is correct, but we usually can't wait around forever before acting. So we do our due diligence and get on with it. If it turns out later that our information was incorrect...oops. We'll just have to live with it.

But none of this is very far from saying that making a sandwich is a philosophical enterprise... — Tom Storm

A peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich made with Jiffy peanut butter and Helman's mayonnaise on white bread is the only truly philosophical sandwich.

I think there's been a major distraction here. Kant wasn't concerned with whether we had hard wired empirical data in our brains, like if we have an innate fear of falling and instinctively cover our heads when we fall, or if infants instinctively turn their head to locate the nipple when the cheek is stroked. — Hanover

This thread was never intended to be about Kant, although what he wrote is relevant to the discussion. As it says in the OP, the subject is "What do we know without knowing anything? Without justification... This type of knowledge is described many ways, among them a priori, self-evident, intuitive, obvious, and common sense." So a priori knowledge is part of it, but what babies know is also part. The discussion has focused on Kant quite a bit, and I'm fine with that. I've learned a lot, although I'm still confused by the terminology - synthetic vs. analytic; pure vs. impure.

As I said....for whatever that’s worth. — Mww

One more thing - the way you are defining "a priori" is not the way it is normally used here on the forum. Again - not your fault.

As I said....for whatever that’s worth. — Mww

I'm lost. Not your fault. I'll blame Kant.

Knowledge is adequately justified belief, whether or not it is true.
— T Clark

This is untrue (and therefore, not knowledge). — hypericin

Justified true belief is not a statement of fact, it is a definition of knowledge, and a non-standard one at that. Here is what I think of as a pretty good standard definition:

Knowledge is a familiarity or awareness, of someone or something, such as facts (descriptive knowledge), skills (procedural knowledge), or objects (acquaintance knowledge), often contributing to understanding. By most accounts, knowledge can be produced in many different ways and from many sources, including but not limited to perception, reason, memory, testimony, scientific inquiry, education, and practice. — Wikipedia

What good is a definition that does not represent what people normally mean when they say the word? Answer - not much.

Did the ancient Greeks know the earth was the center of the universe? — hypericin

There were Greeks as long ago as 500 bce who theorized that the earth revolves around the sun. Just type in ancient Greeks heliocentrism.

You’re going to go get your keys, you know beforehand and therefore a priori the keys are on the table because you put them there, but you have yet the experience of picking them up from the table, so you don’t yet have the knowledge a posteriori that in fact they are there. — Mww

You make it sound like everything I know is a priori. If I have to wait to know they are on the table till I pick them up, then they aren't even on the table anymore. Then they were on the table. Do I actually have to be standing there looking at something before it is a posteriori?

So I know the keys are on the table because I remember leaving them there. Or do I know they are there because that's where I always put them. Are either or both of those a priori?

In Kant but missing from Hume and Enlightenment empiricists in general, on the other hand....and for whatever it’s worth....is the notion of “pure” a priori knowledge, that in which there is no element of experience whatsoever, and these are principles, most obvious in geometry and propositional logic. The beginning of a very complex story indeed, and to some hardly worth the effort and consternation, considering the result. — Mww

I hadn't heard the term "pure" in this context before. How are pure and impure different from synthetic and analytic? What you are calling pure a priori sounds like analytic.

It seems to me that a better experiment could have been performed to show if babies are aware of quantities. It seems to me that we would need to know how the baby forms categories, as in there being a quantity of balls or a quantity of the color red or blue. — Harry Hindu

I was just reporting my understanding of how the tests were performed. If you'd like more detail, I'm sure it's published somewhere.

You seem to be implying that quantities of things is something that is mind-independent that minds are made aware of via the senses.

As I said, quantities of things are dependent upon there being mental categories that quantities of things would be a part of. — Harry Hindu

I'll let you decide for yourself. Here is my understanding of the test the psychologists use.

Babies have been shown to respond to novelty. Seeing something new interests them and they will look at it longer than something they've seen before. The baby sits in it's mothers lap and the psychologist puts a single item in front of it. The baby will look at it. Then it is repeated until the baby becomes less interested as measured by the amount of time it will look at the item. Then the baby is shown more than one of the same item and it again will show increased interest by looking longer. This is repeated more times with different numbers of items.

In ordinary life, epistemology is of little consequence - in picking a partner, choosing a home or selecting a car, working out what university degree to do, or which job to take, what shopping to buy - we do not worry about the problem of induction, or the correspondence theory of truth, or philosophy in general. — Tom Storm

There are lots of times in the regular old everyday world when it's important that I know how I know something and how certain I am. If I'm going to dig a hole in my yard, it's important that I know if there are buried gas pipes in that location. If I'm going to paint the wall, I should know if the new paint is compatible with what's there now. As an engineer, if I'm going to dig up the contaminated soil on a property, I need to understand the source and quality of the information I'm using to decide where to dig.

But this does not cut it, even by the standards of every day use. Sure, if you have a strong conviction, you might claim to know something. But if you had said, "I know my keys are around here somewhere", I can ask, "In retrospect, did you really know it?"

If in fact the keys were in the car, you did not know it.
If you knew it because you are a Pisces, you did not know it, even if they were around here somewhere, and you are in fact a Pisces.
If you knew it because you remember leaving them on a table, when in fact that memory was from yesterday, but they did fall out of your pocket here anyway, you did not know it. — hypericin

The only meaningful definition of "knowledge" is information adequate to support action. Knowledge doesn't just sit there doing nothing - that's information. Who cares if something is true until I have to make a decision? If I have information justified adequately to support action given the consequences of failure, then I have knowledge. If that's not true, then the word "knowledge" is useless.

In every day use, knowledge is most often simply a category of belief we have a high confidence in - "I know my keys are around here somewhere!" — Isaac

I agree with this. Even in more formal or consequential situations, such as engineering, it's true. One of the things we have to understand is the consequences of failure. Justification has to be good enough. Justification for knowing where my keys are is less stringent than that required to make sure the bridge doesn't fall down. The simplistic approach described in JTB doesn't reflect how people actually know things or how they should know things. Knowledge is adequately justified belief, whether or not it is true.

Capacity is not equivalent to achievement; so, no: the capacity to learn language is not knowledge. — Bitter Crank

Agreed, but maybe it's more complicated than that. Pinker and Chomsky think that grammar is inborn. If children learn a pidgin - a minimally grammatical mixture of several languages - they will turn it into a creole - a fully grammatical language. The example often used - in Nicaragua, they brought deaf children together into schools for the first time in the 1980s. Each child knew only informal signing they had figured out with their families. The second generation of students turned it into Nicaraguan Sign Language.

Even 1 year olds have accumulated too much to be called a blank slate. — Bitter Crank

The slate is not blank when we're born.

It's not entirely out of the question to say we have some instinctual knowledge, but because we are so knowledge acquisitive from the get go, it's hard to tell. — Bitter Crank

Which is one of the reasons I started this thread.

Monarch Butterflies aren't hatched out with on-board maps, but they apparently possess some sort of cueing system that tells them it's time to move south, and to maybe guide flight with an inborn pattern of light waves. A cueing system isn't knowledge. — Bitter Crank

Apparently monarchs use very specific routes to go from the northeastern US to south of Mexico City. There are specific locations with a particular type of tree where they go. It is my understanding that it is very hard to get a hotel room in those areas in the winter. Some groups of butterflies are forced to stay in Motel 6.

That is, your attempt to understand the synthetic a priori is being impacted by your evaluation of differing philosopher's views. — Hanover

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I'll try to make clear what makes sense to me. I'm with Hume, at least as I understand him based very limited experience. It doesn't make sense to call knowledge a priori if it's dependent on knowledge based on experience. I don't see how that is different from what is called a posteriori knowledge.

You might do well to include institutional facts in your list. — Banno

I looked at the first post in your new thread. I'm not sure exactly how to deal with things that should be true, that we are obligated to think of as true. When I first started this thread, I thought about how how rights and morals would fit into the discussion. In particular, the American Declaration of Independence - We hold these truths to be self-evident. I avoided bringing it up specifically because I thought it would complicate and confuse things.

I'll pay attention to your thread and respond if I think I have anything to contribute.

Some small birds know to take hide if the overlying shape is hawk-like but cry out for food if it's a friendly shape. The animal forms are already known by the brain at birth. Which seems logical as the brain developed in that particular body. — Haglund

I agree.

That's not correct. Empirical knowledge is known a posteriori, not a priori.. The roots of those words, prior and post, reference how the knowledge is obtained: before or after experience.

You're conflating synthetic with a posteriori. Synthetic references a truth about the world, analytic a definitional truth. — Hanover

I've looked at 23 definitions, examples, and descriptions of synthetic a priori knowledge. People seem to be really confused about what it means, even if you are not. Here's something I got from a really great discussion of synthetic a priori knowledge by a professor of philosophy at Western Michigan University:

Hume didn’t use Kant’s terminology, but he did effectively say that we can have a priori knowledge only of a limited class of statements--statements whose negations are contradictions. All other kinds of statements can be known only on the basis of sense experience. The problem is that sense experience is insufficient for justifying many of the claims that philosophers (among others) have been wont to make. Hume’s explicit target is traditional “metaphysics,” as practiced by (what we now call) rationalist philosophers. Metaphysics, as a discipline, seems to be defined as a set of substantive claims (i.e., synthetic statements) that are purportedly known by reason alone, and not on the basis of sense experience. Hume’s conclusion is that all such work is mere sophistry, and that it should be “committed to the flames.” — Kent Baldner

A problem with "intuition" is that our brains (apparently) perform many functions which our conscious attention cannot observe. So, when we "sleep on a problem" we sometimes wake up with the solution in hand. Intuition? Or should we call it background mental processing?

Sometimes our reasoning is conscious and quite deliberate. Much of the time, it seems, whatever we call thinking and reasoning goes on through extensive unconscious operations working with decades of stored information. — Bitter Crank

Is this background mental processing the same thing as intuition? It certainly isn't reason as that is usually described, although I think most of what we call reason does take place behind the curtain.

Do babies "know" anything?

The neonatal brain is set up to acquire information, which it does immediately to a very limited degree. So, babies do not "know" who mama is until they have some good experience with mama, which one hopes happens post haste. In the days, weeks, and months that follow more information is acquired. — Bitter Crank

Baby ≠  Neonate. I don't know if neonates know anything. They do stuff. Do you have to know stuff to do stuff? That question has come up a couple of times so far in this discussion. Does a capacity to learn language constitute knowledge? Does an instinct or reflex to suck constitute knowledge? How about a natural tendency to be in interested in human faces or voices? Older babies certainly do know things.

My guess is that newborn animals come loaded with the equivalent of "read-only memory" that enables them to start acquiring necessary information from the start. Some knowledge, but not very much, is built in. — Bitter Crank

Human babies are certainly different from other young animals. Do the physical capabilities animals are born with constitute knowledge? Do migrating monarch butterflies have justified true belief?

It's a scientific dogma. On which Darwinian/Dawkinskian evolution is based. There also is an organism based version of evolution. Not popular though. It's Lamarckian evolution. — Haglund

As I said, I'm not ready to have this argument.

It is not known if the mutations are random or steered by the organism. — Haglund

I believe what you've written is not true, but I don't know enough to make an effective argument..

but infinite universe and finite universe are not equal theories. — SpaceDweller

I didn't say anything about infinity. I said that, perhaps, the universe has always been here and always will be. I think that way of seeing things and it's opposite are equal in that they are unverifiable.