And ↪fdrake laid out an excellent argument against the statement "Knowledge is merely belief" -- sometimes, to expand on fdrake, knowledge is action, and has nothing to do with what people say! A totally orthogonal category to yourthe notion that knowledge is merely belief. — Moliere

I agree with his argument although as I already said in reply to @fdrake I don't think the discussion is really concerned with anything other than propositional knowing and its relation to belief.

All knowledge requires belief. — ENOAH

All propositional knowledge requires belief in one sense, because when knowledge is put into propositional form it is thereby asserted as belief. On the other hand, I know I am sitting here typing this, and I know this pre-propositionally simply because I am aware that I am sitting here typing. Perhaps the word 'know' is inappropriate here because to say you know something implies the possibility of doubt. So perhaps I should just say " I am aware that I am sitting here". Would that then be case of "the knowing of familiarity" as distinct from "propositional knowing"?

Paraphrased to illustrate:

Jesus: nothing beats belief. Belief will move mountains. If you have belief the size of a mustard seed you will say to that mountain move, and it will move.

Hui neng: came across two of his disciples debating over whether the wind was moving the flag or the flag was moving. "It is neither wind nor flag," said the 6th patriarch of Cha'an. "It is your mind moving."
6 hours ago — ENOAH

These are poetic expressions and I don't see any relevance to what we are considering here.

:up:

I think there is a valid distinction between knowledge and belief, although I also think that much of what is generally considered to be knowledge might be more accurately classed as belief.
— Janus

As do I, but if there is a distinction, putting belief and knowledge in the same class kinda invalidates it. — Mww

Right, but I wasn't putting all knowledge and belief in the same class but merely observing that what some might count as knowledge is actually merely belief.

Still, regarding the question in general, this….

What distinguishes a 'fact' from a belief is that THAT PERSON ONLY (…) has decided….
— Chet Hawkins

….would be the focal point of the issue, insofar as whether opinion, belief or knowledge, any relative judgement of truth is a purely subjective effort. And even if that is the case, brain states aside, still leaves the method by which it happens. — Mww

Okay but is a judgement of truth the same as truth? I don't think that is how the two are commonly conceived. It seems that we can know the truth without knowing we know it, and that we can think we know the truth, but be mistaken.

↪Chet Hawkins - So are you saying that a fact which claims to be nothing more than a belief is better than a fact which claims to be something more than a belief? — Leontiskos

I don't see how something which is acknowledged to be nothing more than a belief can be counted as a fact in the first place.

I think it is good to realize that knowledge is form of belief. I think that adds a note of humility. What we are sure is true today may be overturned. — Bylaw

The JTB definition of knowledge involves belief, and we might say that it frames knowledge as a "form of belief": namely justified true belief, but it does not follow that it is nothing more than belief, because the 'justified' and the 'true', as conceived, have nothing to do with belief.

If you take JTB (above) into the picture then that's an argument against it because belief only is insufficient. — SpaceDweller

Yes, you make the same point as I did above.

Belief is assent (true if warranted, opinion if unwarranted, delusion if its negation is warranted).

Knowledge consists of truths or not-yet-falsified claims the statuses of which are independent of dis/belief. — 180 Proof

I agree with what you say about belief, but what you say about knowledge seems somehow strange. Say we have accepted some not-yet-falsified claim and count it as knowledge, and then it becomes falsified. Was it ever knowledge in that case?

I think there is a valid distinction between knowledge and belief,
— Janus
The former is a subset of the latter. Different people/groups have different reasons for saying this batch of beliefs over here, they've got promise or they sure seem to be working so far or they fit X and Y really well and those over there don't fit it so well and those over there we can't make sense of to even tell. — Bylaw

Yes, but if the best conception of knowledge is that it can only apply to what is true or factual then there is a valid distinction between mere belief and knowledge. It might be said that we can know things without knowing that we know them, and not know things that we think we know. This does seem to separate knowledge and belief.



Yes, there are different kinds of knowing. There is 'knowing how', there is the knowing of familiarity and there is 'knowing that'. I think the salient question in this thread concerns only 'knowing that' or propositional knowing, because the other two categories do not necessarily involve belief.

Well, you kind of backed off on your position I think.

When you dither, I cannot tell what you mean to say or write or believe. — Chet Hawkins

I haven't "backed off" at all. I've said there is a valid distinction between knowledge and belief. And I've allowed that some of what is generally considered to be knowledge may be better classed as belief.

All facts are a subset of all beliefs.
Knowledge is not knowing and the word 'to know' is stupid therefore. It implies a failure in understanding. — Chet Hawkins

So, here you assert that all facts are a subset of beliefs. This does not accord with the common concepts of 'fact' and 'belief'. 'Fact' signifies what is the case regardless of what anyone believes.

Knowing (in the propositional sense of 'knowing that', which is the only sense we are concerned with here) is generally understood to be believing that what is the case is the case and believing it for the right reasons.

"Doubt may be an unpleasant condition, but certainty is absurd" - Voltaire was right. — Chet Hawkins

Knowing is sometimes conflated with certainty. Do you claim that knowing would only be knowing if the knower knows with absolute certainty that they know?

Are there not things we do know in this way. like I know I am sitting at my computer typing this? How could I doubt that?

We all operate in life only from a well of beliefs. — Chet Hawkins

We operate more from what we see, hear, smell, touch and taste I would say. We know those things most intimately, and I question whether they have anything to do with belief. Though if this is knowing, as distinct from seeing, hearing, touching etc., then we could say it is not propositional knowing primarily but may be subsequently framed as such.

The fact that many people share the same facts has not so much bearing on the factuality of any fact. As a matter of fact, 'facts' are always wrong in some way. That is TRUE and more factual than most facts, because as a part of that fact we ALREADY INCLUDE the flexibility that fact is only belief. — Chet Hawkins

We all see the same things and will mostly agree down to the smallest details about what we see right in front of us. In fact, this is the principal criterion of reality. If the others do not see what you see right in front of you then you must be hallucinating.

I'm seeing a lot of assertion from you but little argument to convince me that I should change my understanding of fact and belief to be in line with yours.

So, if you start a new thread, I'll jump in and we can go go go! — Chet Hawkins

Done (Click on 'Done').

I have to go outside to do some work before the rain comes, but by all means get started on presenting your argument.

Knowledge is only belief. — Chet Hawkins

So you say. Is that something you know or something you merely believe? If the latter is the case, do you have a reasoned argument for your belief that knowledge is only belief?

You seem very defensive. Capitalizations and implied insults so quickly delivered! An observation is not a claim, unless there is a reason to question what has been observed. I see you making claims like 'free will is fundamental to the universe' and 'philosophy is generally based on fear', and I see no reason to question the fact that I have observed you making these claims.

Are these merely your beliefs or do you have some knowledge to support them? If they are merely your personal beliefs, they may or may not be interesting, but the fact alone that you believe them does not constitute a reason why anyone else should share your belief as far as I can see.

I haven't made a claim, I've made an observation.

For someone who claims not to know anything, you certainly make a lot of very definite claims. Does performative contradiction not bother you?

:up:

I haven't seen anyone struggling to get out nor being pushed back in; I think you are confabulating.

A very poorly considered diagnosis; some were never in the mire, and others never left it.

One problem I note is that "I" is not well defined. Does "I" refer to some immaterial thing which interacts with the pineal gland?

Of course we all have some conception(s) associated with "I", but how accurate is that conception? — wonderer1

I don't think it matters how we conceive "i". We could say "if something thinks it must exist", and as I already said, "if something does anything at all it must exist". The idea of existence seems to be implicit and ineliminable in thinking of any activity at all.

But this is not the argument Corvus presented in the quote. — Banno

What do you think his argument is? Couched in plain English would be good.

no, he would get caught up on the word "then" as a time signifier. — flannel jesus

Okay, I hadn't thought of that.

I can't follow it set out formally like that. I think an equivalent of 'I think therefore I am' is 'If I am thinking, then I must exist". 'If I am not thinking then I must not exist' does not follow, but 'if I don't exist, then I must not be thinking' does follow, as far as I can tell.

As I read it @Corvus purports to prove that 'I think therefore I am/ is false, but I think his purported proof is invalid. It doesn't seem appropriate to talk about 'I think therefore I exist' as being valid or invalid, because it is not really an argument, but a premise.

You could put it as

P 1: If I am thinking then I must exist
P2: I am thinking
C: Therefore I exist.

That seems valid but it may not be sound I suppose, although it is hard to see what is wrong with it. Perhaps Corvus misinterprets the argument as claiming that thinking is not only sufficient, but necessary for existence. I think that is a different argument. That would be 'If I am existing, then I must be thinking'.

Do you think he can understand 'if a is the case then b must be the case'?

I don't know...his writing in English seems good enough for poor comprehension not to be a plausible explanation for his confusion. He doesn't seem to want to even consider the good explanations for why he is mistaken he has elicited.

It seems he will try anything to avoid facing the fact he is mistaken. He is either not acting in good faith or he is more obtuse than I can imagine

No I wasn't citing anything, just applying ordinary logic.
IF I must exist in order to think (or do anything else for that matter) then it follows that there can be no thinking or anything else done by me if I don't exist.
It doesn't follow that if am not thinking or doing any other particular thing, that I don't exist.

Whether or not 'I think therefore I am' can be logically proven is irrelevant. It cannot be disproven by the spurious entailment you adduced.

I guess that's a possible explanation. But the meaning seems clear. To put it another way:

'If I am thinking I must exist'
It follows that
'If I don't exist I am not thinking'.
It doesn't follow that
'If I not thiing I don't exist'

P = I think, therefore I exist.
Q = I don't think, therefore I don't exist.

P - > Q
Not Q (Q is FALSE)
therefore Not P (P is FALSE) — Corvus

You have this wrong. The logically entailed negation of 'I think, therefore I exist' is 'I don't exist, therefore I don't think' not 'I don't think therefore I don't exist'.

It's a rookie mistake you're making.

IIRC Maimonides puts forth a sort of radical negation of this sort, in that things simply cannot be predicated of God. However, Maimonides still allows that God can be known as cause, and of course God can be known via revelation. So, it's a somewhat similar idea, but I think it hangs together better because people experiencing miracles have warrant for their beliefs, it's just that their finite predicates have no grip on the infinite. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say that all warrants for propositional beliefs (beliefs based on observation or reason) consist in "finite predicates". As I already said, I think individuals' faith-based beliefs, beliefs based on some feelings or experiences, are not rationally justifiable, if 'rationality' here is understood as being in a kind of Kantian sense, "pure reason". On the other hand, in Kantian, and other senses, people may well have practical reasons to hold faith-based beliefs, so I'm not arguing against that.

Don't worry about it, have it you own way...I think you are simply wrong and I've given reasons why I think so...but I have no confidence that you will admit it, so I don't want to expend any more time and effort.

We've already been over this. Parents are observable entities, god is not. It's a weak analogy.

Yes, I was aware of that Pierre. Thanks for the Searle reference; I wasn't aware of his take on perception.

You could say that knowing God is unknowable is knowing something about God. But for all we know God is merely an idea, the idea of an infinite, unknowable being. So, of course we know what our idea is, but that is all we could be said to know, something about the nature of our idea of God.

We have no way of knowing whether revelation comes from God or merely from the imaginations of people.

AmadeusD and Janus debate the coherence and implications of claiming that objects "present themselves" to us in perception. They discuss whether this implies a form of animism or agency on the part of objects. — Pierre-Normand

I think it comes down to different ways of speaking about it. Taking vision as paradigmatic, we can say that objects are presented, made present, to us via reflected light and no sense of agency need be invoked.

I made the point early on that the 'indirect' parlance is one way of looking at it and the 'direct' is another, and that there is no fact of the matter. It is a false dichotomy. It is remarkable how many pages of argument can be generated by people imagining that there is an actual fact of the matter regarding whether perception is direct or indirect,

Your discussion of objects "presenting themselves" in perception is intriguing. I think Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, which was a major influence on Merleau-Ponty, could be relevant here. Husserl argued that perception involves a direct intuition of essences or "eidetic seeing." This view seems to support a form of direct realism, albeit one that is very different from naive realism. — Pierre-Normand

To Janus: Husserl's notion of eidetic intuition is intriguing, but we might worry that it reintroduces a form of Platonism or essentialism that many find problematic. A more deflationary account of essences as abstractions from experience could be preferable. — Pierre-Normand

This might be an interesting avenue to explore, but I didn't have anything to do with Husserl or essences in mind.

If God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity, then how is it that billions and billions of people across the world think they know things about God? The things you are claiming are rather remarkable, and clearly false. — Leontiskos

That people might say they know something about God does not entail that they actually know anything about God. They would need to be able to explain how they came to know things about a purportedly immaterial, infinite entity.

What you are doing is trying to minimize a counterargument by rewriting it as a strawman. For example, you might think of a 17 year old "child" rather than a 4 year-old child. This methodology is bad philosophy. You ought to consider the robust counterargument rather than the emaciated counterargument. — Leontiskos

Even to a very young pre-rational child the parents are entities the child can see doing things, so the analogy fails, since God cannot be thought but as a wholly unknowable entity.

I'd say that's a pretty reasonable doubt. — wonderer1

:up:

Right, same difference. And by the same sort of reasoning, the child cannot say that their parent fixed their bike. — Leontiskos

The child might have seen the parents fix the bike. Or has been told by the parents that they fixed the bike, this time and every other time that it needed repair. There is no problem with understanding how a material entity (a parent) can do things to another material entity (a bike) so the analogy is not a good one.

Or to provides a way to avoid facing, what it is to be human. — wonderer1

Yes, it could be that too. Although we might doubt that we exhaustively know what it is to be human. Fantasy and confabulation may be ineliminably central to humanity, We, or at least some of us, may need to fantasize and confabulate transcendent things in order to make life bearable.

I don't see how we really have any alternative. — Tom Storm

No do I.

Which is why I often think that we approach so many of our values and beliefs aesthetically. We recognise a kind of aesthetic, poetic truth and, perhaps, mistake it for something more. — Tom Storm

Totally agree. I think there are many things all of us take on faith because it seems more beautiful to do so. It makes life seem more human.

If feels a little like a stalemate. I wonder if there will ever be a breakthrough, some new science, some new philosophy? — Tom Storm

It's hard (for me at least) to see how such a thing would ever be possible.

The logical conclusion of these two sentences is, "Therefore, we cannot say that there is a God who does things." — Leontiskos

No, the logical conclusion is that we cannot, with rational justification, say that there is a God who does things. I have no problem with anyone saying that they believe there is a God who does things, provided they acknowledge that their belief is based purely on faith (as it must be since we know nothing of immaterial entities doing things).

"God did it" is a bad explanation, therefore God cannot be said to do things.
Or more simply:
"God did it" is a bad explanation, therefore God does not do things. — Leontiskos

The last part is what I was disagreeing with, which I would have thought was clear. If there were a God that did things, whether or not we can explain how he did them is irrelevant. If we want to say that there is a God who does things, on the other hand, believing we have rational justification for such a claim then a cogent explanation would be required. But such an explanation is impossible since we have no idea how an immaterial entity could do things.

And so from theological thinker and philosopher David Bentley Hart we get this: — Tom Storm

That passage reads to me like reificatory 'theo-babble'. I can relate to the feelings some of the words evoke: devotion, passion, love, a sense of divinity, fullness of being, the truth of being, consummation in boundless delight—William Blake wrote about these feelings, and also many another mystic.

These are evocations of very human, very poetic, feelings. But there is no rational warrant to draw any metaphysical or ontological conclusions therefrom as far as I am concerned.

So, I agree they don't explain anything, and they don't point to anything beyond the human potential to feel such things. But that just aint enough for some people.

The very notion of nature as a closed system entirely sufficient to itself is plainly one that cannot be verified, deductively or empirically, from within the system of nature. It is a metaphysical (which is to say “extra-natural”) conclusion regarding the whole of reality, which neither reason nor experience legitimately warrants.” — Tom Storm

Of course, the closedness of natural systems cannot be proven, but I can't see that we have any reason to think otherwise. Not only can we not prove such a thing to be wrong, we cannot find a shred of evidence that it might be wrong. We cannot but treat nature as a closed system because that system is all we can know. How could science incorporate something unknowable into its methodology? Methodological naturalism is not merely the only game in town, it is the only possible game in town.

Has any more sophisticated writing about god like this ever resonated with you. — Tom Storm

Some mystical writings have resonated powerfully with me, but I understand such resonance to be a matter of feeling, not of rationality. It is perilously easy to fall into wishful thinking. All that said, I see nothing wrong with people having their own personal faiths, but I think it's important in respect of intellectual honesty, to call a spade a spade. These faiths cannot be rationally argued for, but there are many who don't want to admit that.

But what is the argument, here? Is it, <If we cannot say how X has done Y, then we cannot say that X has done Y>? — Leontiskos

I haven't made that argument. That said, if we cannot say how X has done Y, and there is no empirical evidence that X has done Y, what possible justification could we have for claiming that X has done Y? And note I haven't said we should not believe X has done Y if we feel somehow convinced of it despite lack of evidence or modus operandi, but that would be a belief supported by faith, not by reason.

What I believe on the basis of faith or feeling can never provide justification for you to believe it. Your own feelings or faith are the only non-rational justification for your own beliefs. So, one should never make argumentative claims based on feelings and faith alone lest one embarrass oneself.

I would not go that far. Reason can easily overstep its bounds, while still maintaining its principles, and this is why some supernaturalist accounts are logically consistent but still should be rejected. — Bob Ross

I haven't criticized supernaturalist accounts on the basis of failures of "pure reason'. To say the accounts are logically consistent is only to say that they do not contradict themselves. You can say all kinds of nonsense without contradicting yourself.

My criticism was made on the grounds that supernaturalist accounts that claim to be explanatory are really not so, because they present no clearly understandable causal series of events and conditions. No mechanism of action in other words.

I agree that it can often be very nebulous, but this is a straw man. Sophisticated theists have very detailed metaphysical accounts of God. — Bob Ross

I don't think this is true at all. Can you cite an example? How could theists have a "sophisticated metaphysical account of God" when God is generally considered to be unknowable?

Recall Neils Bohr’s often-quoted aphorism, ‘physics concerns what we can say about nature’. — Wayfarer

Everything we can say about nature is just what we can say about nature, so I don't see why physics should be any different.

Physics concerns what appears to us as most fundamental, so to speculate that there might be something more fundamental is not really saying anything substantive at all. There is perhaps no limit to the non-substantive things we could say or at least the limit would only be the imagination, but are such non-substantive imaginings really of any importance for our understanding of the world and our place in it?

I don't think that one needs to limit themselves to what is scientifically peered reviewed or easily replicable. However, every example I have heard seems, to me, to be better explained naturalistically — Bob Ross

I would go further and say that all explanations based on reason are naturalistic. "God did it" is not really a cogent explanation. Even if it were accepted as an explanation, there is no detail, no step-by-step explication of just how God could have done it. None that can really make any rational or experiential sense at all to us in any case.

Of course, a theist can say they believe God did it regardless, and that's OK provided it is acknowledged to be a matter of faith. Even the Catholic Church accept the evolutionary account for example, and it's not at all clear what part they think God played. When it comes to the Big Bang, there is no explanation for any prior to the very beginning. Theists can say God did it, but that doesn't add anything to the actual explanations of how the process from BB to now unfolded.

Thanks, that much I could see. The part I couldn't get was how that ties in with a purportedly frequent complaint that QM is not complete. Are any theories complete (and consistent)? Anyway, I just don't see what matter has to do with the question of completeness. That said, I'm very open to being schooled on this.

Good point. — jgill

Can you explain why? I'm not seeing it.

Of all those choices, this is provably closest to the case, but you know….that leaves us with phosphate and calcium ions, nanovolts and picometers that think. Or, a brain full of nothing but extended substances that don’t think.

We are well and truly screwed, ain’t we? (Grin) — Mww

We are screwed in the sense that we don't know much. We have a conception (rightly or wrongly) of brute, dead, insentient matter, and we have a conception (rightly or wrongly) of godly, living, sentient mind. And we wonder how the former could produce the latter, we just can't imagine how it could be.

I tend to favour the idea that mater is not as brute, dead and insentient as we might think (although I certainly don't mean to suggest pantheism), and that in favorable energetic configurations it can become living and sentient (I'll leave the "godly" for the botherers). :grin:

Note: the 'mater' was a typo, but I left it in as it and matter ("material") apparently share a common root, along with 'matrix'. It's the mother of all ideas, or a "mother" of an idea. :wink: