the execrable must be summoned. — Ciceronianus


And here you are! — frank

Makes sense...Ciceroni-anus the execrable...or excremental... :joke:

To be sure, blind folk are able to talk of the warmth of red and the chill of blue. — Banno

Blind from birth? Reference?

Whose mountain was It?

No, you need to think a bit harder and less rigidly than that; Hillary's climbing was a set of subjective experiences.

'Mountain' has no determinate reference, hence it can indeed be for RussellA a label to a set of subjective experiences. "Meaning is public" is not right; it should have been "meanings are public", since " a set of subjective experiences" is indeed one possible meaning of 'mountain'.

But this just puts the burden on the term "objectify". I prefer to say one faces something, and this something is more or less closed or open as to what it is. — Constance

I think this is right; the objectification consists just in the word-object; a generalized, formal abstraction.

I have always viewed the term "qualia" as meaning "the stuff of experience", rather than a description of a subjective experience. Do you think we're both talking about the same thing? — Bret Bernhoft

OK, so if the stuff of experience is sense impressions would you class those as qualia? I would have said qualia are the qualities of sense impressions.

So, say I have sense impressions of an apple; they might be colour, smell, taste, hardness, texture, and so on.

Those would be the different qualities of the apple as experienced; so qualia, as I intended it, would refer to those qualities. Not to suggest they are stand alone or separable from the perception of the apple. Do you mean something different by "stuff of experience"?

Don't know about "2." but the rest sound about right. Of course Dennett does not champion qualia. I think the term is OK as long as it remains as a mere synonym for "quality of experience".

:up:

I allow myself to be terrible in public. — ucarr

:up:
“Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

There are some here among us whose main concern seems to be maintaining correctness at all costs as if that were the way out of the bottle. They seem to think the main aim of philosophy is to cure us of any propensity to speak nonsense. Just imagination the stagnation if this aim were to become universal law!

I can only hope we are not witnessing the invincible rise of the "machine men" to whom rigid normativity and correctness are the new gods.

I can put the form of something into words even though I may not be able to put its content into words — RussellA

Right! Collectively, the 'identity' world of entities, things or objects, has been abstracted and formalized; abstracted from the determinably in-common human perceptual experiences. These identities are empty, changeless, in contrast to the individual experiences they are abstracted from, which are loaded with content, dynamic and ever-changing. Our language can only discursively reference the abstracted forms of human experience; the content is best dealt with allusively, via metaphor and poetic language. Heraclitus versus Parmenides is the seminal philosophical misunderstanding, if they are taken to be speaking about the same "worlds".

:lol: that's cool...

I like Jeff Buckley's 'Hallelujah', but comparing to Leonrad's version seems to me like comparing apples and oranges.

:cool:

As we both appear to agree, there can be no data in the absence of observation, which in turn does not occur in the absence of awareness. So the notion of visual data occurring prior to it being seen is misplaced. — javra

It really depends on what you mean by "data". Is there data in a computer when it is not being used? Are the effects of light in the eye and the subsequent neural processes in the optic nerve and cortex,that gives rise to seeing, to be counted as data?

The alternative is to affirm that - as evidenced by blindsight and other examples - there occurs in us an "unconscious seeing of visual data" from which our functional conscious seeing of visual data is constituted. — javra

I don't know whether I would refer to it as "visual" data, at least not in the sense that there is no conscious experience of seeing. I referred to it earlier as a kind of "moving image" there to be processed as a conscious experience of seeing. I would not say we see "visual data" but that we see images, which are constituted from neural data. Of course we can analyze what we see in terms of visual data, light and dark tones, different hues and intensities of colour, parallax and so on.

Recall that "an image" is commonly defined as a visual re-presentation of an actual object: in the sense of a picture, a painting, or a drawing; wheres seeing - be it conscious or unconscious - is understood to be a direct presentation of actual objects. — javra

I don't think of it that way. I don't believe there is an "actual object"; what we see are always partial views from different perspectives out of which the idea of an "actual object" is abstracted. We don't see the actual object in any wholistic sense. So I think, phenomenologically speaking, we do see in images; the whole visual field at any moment is a more or less changing or moving image.

These are difficult things to discuss without talking past one another, as we all have our own preferred ways of conceiving things, so i am not convinced that we are even disagreeing.

To me, he's like Bob Dylan, good lyrics, awful voice. — universeness

I look for character and resonance in singing voices, not purity of tone and pitch (although I'm not against that either, if character and resonance are there as well), so I don't have a problem with the likes of Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan.

To some, yes. Yet to others the working of the brain can be interpreted to suggest the presence of unconscious awareness of the external world which works (in obviously very complex ways) more or less in concurrence to conscious awareness – this in a parts-to-whole relation. Such that there arguably is no “moving image” (else, freestanding visual data that occurs independently of being witnessed) anywhere to be found, but only visual awareness at different levels of mind.

Can there be data ("facts know from direct observation" else "recorded observations") in the absence of awareness which observes? To me the answer is so far "no". — javra

Perhaps the "unconscious non-visual awareness" in people with blindsight is the counterpart to the pre-conscious visual awareness in sighted people. Is the 'visuality" of awareness, or the consciousness of seeing, a step in the process of seeing that comes after the unconscious non-visual awareness? In other words do sighted people share this step with blindsight people, and blind sight people lack the next step of visual awareness? I don't know, but it seems possible.

I don't know what you mean by "no moving image", because it seems obvious to me that we do see moving images, or if you want to phrase it differently, that our seeing consists in moving images. I also don't know what you mean by "freestanding visual data" since it seems obvious to me that there is nothing at all "freestanding" ( if I've understood what you meant with this term).

And again I'm not sure what you mean by "facts known from direct observation in the absence of awareness which observes". I do know we can drive on "autopilot"; that is, we seem to be able to process and respond to visual data without conscious awareness of doing so.

That's right, I think if someone can imagine an infinite, eternal being who is capable of creating the Earth, everything on it and everything else that exists, then they would be capable of imagining that time might have a different meaning for such a being than it does for us.

Abortrix seems to have aborted the mission, hard to figure out what motivates that boy...

As Tom Waits sings in "God's Away On Business":

I'd sell your heart to the junkman baby
For a buck, for a buck
If you're looking for someone to pull you out of that ditch
You're out of luck, you're out of luck

The ship is sinking
The ship is sinking
The ship is sinking

There's a leak, there's a leak, in the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers

God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business. Business.
God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business. Business.

Digging up the dead with a shovel and a pick
It's a job, it's a job.
Bloody moon rising with a plague and a flood
Join the mob, join the mob

It's all over
It's all over
It's all over

There's a leak, there's a leak in the boiler room
The poor, the lame, the blind
Who are the ones that we kept in charge?
Killers, thieves, and lawyers

God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business. Business.
God's away,
God's away on Business. Business.

[Instrumental Break]

God damn there's always such a big temptation
To be good, To be good
There's always free cheddar in a mousetrap, baby
It's a deal, it's a deal

God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business. Business.
God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business. Business.

I narrow my eyes like a coin slot baby,
Let her ring, let her ring.

God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business.
God's away, God's away,
God's away on Business. Business.

Remove a human’s eyes or brain and the human’s capacity to see ceases to occur. With functional eyes and brain in place, the human’s capacity to see occurs. Here, there is no homunculus that sees the outcomes of what the body does. Instead, here physiological sight and body are concurrent and interdependent – in at least one sense, such that physiological sight as process is the whole that is being addressed and the body’s functional eyes and brain are themselves complex process that serve as parts from which the whole is constituted. — javra

I wasn't seeking to introduce a dualism of consciousness and body. the physiological study of vision tells us that there processes involving the eye the optic nerve and the visual cortex, and that like a camera the image formed is upside-down (which is "corrected" by the brain. This suggests that there is a "moving image" or visual data there prior to what we call conscious seeing.

Have you heard of blindsight? It seems that some people whose visual cortex has been damaged in some way cannot consciously see what is happening in what would normally be their visual field, but if asked to guess, get it right at rates that are much higher than chance.

It seems that via the eyes and brain an ever-moving image of the "external" is formed. — Janus


This in itself is a conceptual inference given a) the occurrence of our awareness in general and b) our empirically gained awareness regarding the mechanisms via which our visual awareness is formed, and I disagree with its wording. Hence, with what the inference is saying.

Better: "It seems that via the eyes and brain an ever-moving sight (else seeing) of the "external" is formed." — javra

I'm not seeing any significant difference in the way you've formulated it. I don't see it as an inference, but as an experience. In our visual field we find parts of our body situated in relation to an environment we experience as being external to it.

For my part, I'm not getting into preferred ontological worldviews here, although physicalism isn't it. I'm only disagreeing with the inference that a seeing agent/consciousness entails the occurrence of a homunculus. Here concluding that the first in no way entails the second ... and that the notion of homunculi is a fallacy.

But maybe that's part of the issue: homunculi are conceptually palpable ideas that one can with some ease mentally manipulate; whereas consciousness is not. — javra

Right physicalism is a worldview too and I understand it is not your preferred worldview. I wasn't serious about the "homunculus"; I realize it involves a reductio ad absurdum. As I said we can't get our head around the fact that we can see an image of the environment and parts of our body situated within it. We can observe and analyze the mechanics of vision, which are analogous to a camera, but we cannot understand how the experience of seeing is possible.

Thanks for that explanation Constance; I can relate to what you're saying there, but I have nothing to add.

It seems that via the eyes and brain an ever-moving image of the "external" is formed. Who is it that sees this image? Is the image already there "in the dark of the body" so to speak, just prior to seeing, as the image is encoded in the camera, on sensor or film, waiting to be seen? It is the seeing which seems mysterious; can we ever get our heads around it?

If we cannot get our heads around the act of seeing, then how could we feel justified in purporting to use the fact of the act to support some preferred worldview or other?

I agree; although I would argue about the egoic delusions. I mean, that gets complicated as to the self being so disposable. — Constance

I'm not clear where you are going with this: can you elaborate.

The complaint of this rests solely with the epistemic deficits of physicalism. I do prefer the simple way of putting this: there is my uncle there, and here am I: how is it that HE gets IN HERE? — Constance

You could ask the same question about a camera. Of course there is no "homunculus' inside the camera to view the image.

That's a great question and I know it's directed at T Clark. If rationality is using knowledge to achieve goals, then probably. But there is always a foundational set of values by which a culture measures itself. Many people believe that reason is synonymous with The Age of Reason - what we call knowledge and the practices this engenders must be arrived at without superstition and with no logical fallacies. At one end of the continuum this is probably scientism. — Tom Storm

"If rationality is using knowledge to achieve goals"; that sounds right, and I would include reasoning from existing knowledge/ understanding to enable the drawing of novel conclusions in that.

I agree there are always basic sets of values that cultures understand themselves in terms of. I am not so fond of a narrow conception of reason that understands it as being only that which accords with our Enlightenment and subsequent conceptions of rationality. I think "no logical fallacies" is right, although I think it pays to remember that inductive and abductive ways of reasoning are not bound by deductive criteria of validity. Previous cultures may have held what we would call superstitions as foundational premises upon which to reason and arrive at the "inferences to the best explanations" they were able to derive.

:up: That makes sense; a different usage. I was thinking of understanding as being the same as realization, as it might be said that you don't really understand Buddhism until you have become enlightened.

Is there a distinction between "understanding" and "realization" and "non-selfness" and "emptiness" that you would like to elaborate upon?

Seems like you are changing the meaning of the word "logic" in mid-discussion. — T Clark

Just a final question to consider. In cultures existing prior to, or unaffected by, our current conception of empiric and propositional logic-based reasoning, would you say there was no distinction between rational and irrational thinking, or reasonableness and unreasonableness?

Answer if you wish, or not. In any case I agree it's been a very good discussion. :smile:

You start out associating intuition with discredited ways of knowing - alchemy, astrology, etc. I don't understand that. Intuition is not something esoteric or mysterious. It's an everyday process our minds use all the time. Then you describe those intuitive processes as a kind of rationality. It seems like you are identifying rationality as anything the mind does to collect information or solve problems. — T Clark

I'm not trying to diminish intuition. I think it is an imaginative faculty. Those "discredited" (by some) ways of understanding I believe are based on imaginative associations that are intuitively thought to "make sense" or "feel right". I also think there is always an implicit logic in what ties the associations that are made together. For example Mars is the planet associates with the God of war, (and hence we get the word 'martial') because it appears red and red is the colour of blood, which it seems obvious to associate with war.

So I am not claiming that these processes of reasoning are deductively valid or empirically based, but they are different ways of balancing, measuring and associating things which have their own kinds of logic.

The medieval and ancients minds reasoned in these kinds of different ways than modern empirical and deductive minds do. That said, there are still plenty, perhaps even a good majority, of people alive today who think in those 'old' ways.

The other point is that whatever kinds of reasoning a human being consciously deploys to deliberate and arrive at reasoned conclusions, whether they be ancient or modern, in cases where a conclusion is reached "instantly", as we understand it, "via intuition", I still see no reason to deny that these processes of reasoning might go on without conscious awareness. I am not affirming that such reasoning does or can go on unconsciously either; I don't actually have an opinion on the matter.

In any case Gettier’s examples do not seem to relate to deductions nor induction. They concern particular perceptual beliefs. — neomac

If I see a cloth and I think it is a cow, is that not based on induction? I've seen cows before and that looks like a cow so I conclude that it is a cow.

And if deduction is a form of justification, then we can easily see how our acceptance of knowledge=JTB or its rejection can be rendered in terms of valid/sound deductions. In other cases of knowledge, it’s less clear, how to distinguish valid from sound information processing. — neomac

Right, I understand valid and sound to be two quite different criteria applied to different aspects of deductive reasoning. If my premises are sound (which means true) then my conclusion will be true provided my reasoning is valid.

It's easy enough to tell, if my reasoning is valid, not always so easy to tell is my premises are sound.

I agree that justification is a normative concept, and can be descriptive only with the context of the norms (if there be such) which are used to establish its provenance.

The physicalist model is the "clarity" of science's most basic assumptions, which is physicalism (not to argue distinctions here in what this could mean), and its broad acceptance has entirely eclipsed the true epistemic and ontological foundation of the world, which is indeterminacy. We don't know what it is to stand in the openness of our existence "free" of vast body of knowledge claims that are always already there "making the world" as Rorty put it, which is one way say why Kierkegaard thought the medieval mind was closer to God. — Constance

Right, in Buddhist terms the modern scientific physicalist worldview is clinging to "nihilism" (the idea that all is meaningless substance) and the medieval (European) mind was clinging to eternalism (the idea that there is an eternal realm of God or gods) that, if we are virtuous, we can escape to after the death of the body.

The essence of Buddhism seems to be that the kind of knowledge which can be acquired via study and reading can never constitute liberation because all it is doing is reinforcing the discursive, dualistic mind and egoic delusions.

Perhaps unlearning and learning are one and the same? In that maybe if there is a fundamental truth it is both that which we depart from (unlearn) as well as that which we return to (learn).

Such is the magic of constancy - the permanence of truth. — Benj96

Sure, that's another way to put it. Buddhists believe that we all have inherent wisdom (prana) which becomes obscured by the kleshas (defilements) brought about by attachment to ideas of substance.

So, the original prana wisdom would be the understanding of annatta or the non-selfness of all things. If there is no abiding identity in self or world, then there is no one to be attached and no-thing to be attached to.

Unlearning our attachment is infinitely easier said than done.

This all seems to resonate.

Forgotten inherent wisdom of the body? — Constance

I should have written "body/mind" to make it clear that I'm neither proposing any kind of physicalism nor idealism.

Let’s distinguish two intellectual tasks: the first one is to assess whether JTB is an acceptable definition for the notion of “knowledge”. I think that deductive reasoning offers a study case to clarify the alternatives wrt the notion of “justification”: if “justification” amounts to “sound deduction” then knowledge=JTB is still plausible (this view is in line with the NFL assumption). If “justification” amounts to “valid deduction” then knowledge=JTB is not plausible (this view is not in line with the NFL assumption). — neomac

Most knowledge claims it seems, apart from purely logical or mathematical results, are based on observation and inductive reasoning, so I am not sure where you see deduction fitting in the picture. I was trying to use exhaustive investigation as a more solid criterion to establish justification. So in the cloth/ sheep example,

I suggested that one would only be justified in believing that one had seen a sheep rather than a cloth if one got close enough to be absolutely sure ( leaving aside absurd scenarios like ' a man disguised so convincingly as sheep that it would be impossible to tell the difference' or 'brain in a vat" or 'I'm actually not awake, but dreaming' and so on.

Of course, this bracketing of radical skepticism shows that the notion of justification cannot be definitively and absolutely pinned down; there is always going to be acceptance and putting aside of some possibility of doubt and adoption of some arbitrary standard of what should be thought to constitute evidence and hence justification for empirical claiims.

I would be quite happy to dispense with all talk of knowledge whatsoever and speak instead of more or less justified belief. That would defuse all the absurd angst and wrangling over Gettier cases.

There's no alternative to gathering as much information as you can and then deciding whether the failures were few enough to count as exceptions. There could not be a determinate answer to this, so the justification would be partial. So you could get it wrong and still be justified. That makes Gettier cases possible. (Actually, the doctor is almost certainly in the same situation, that the tests and evidence will only give their answer on the balance of probability.) — Ludwig V

Yes, that's what I've been saying. I have no problem with degrees of justification, but since the conceptual distinction between knowledge and belief is very clear, and the degree of justification, except in cases where close enough observation and exhaustive enough investigation to eliminate the possibility of error is possible, is not clear, I think it would be better to speak of more or less justified belief, rather than knowledge, except in those cases which are clearly involving sufficiently close observation and exhaustive investigation..

You are proposing that intuition includes some sort of secret logic we are not aware of. — T Clark

Not exactly, I am just saying that rational thought processes may be going on that we are not aware of. There doesn't seem to be any logical contradiction or impossibility in that conjecture.

I see two possibilities. 1) There is no secret rational component to intuition. And 2) It doesn't matter one way or the other. Let's start with 1. In my experience, intuition works by making non-rational connections between unlike ideas. That's consistent with reading I've done that claims that fundamental mental processes work by making analogical, metaphorical connections rather than linear ones. I'm not capable of taking that argument any further at this point, so we'll leave it at that. — T Clark

I agree that intuition probably works by associating images, impressions and concepts. Alchemy, astrology, acupuncture, hermeticism and homeopathy are some examples of ways of intuitively associating qualities of elements, things and processes via perceived similarities or affinities. There is a logic to this, which is not empirically based in our modern scientific understanding, but I would call it rational nonetheless,

On to 2. It seems clear to me that rational processes are ones we have to be conscious, aware, of. They have to be put into a language, possibly mathematics or logic. It is the essence of reason that it has to be transparent. — T Clark

I see no reason to believe that rational thought processes must be executed consciously. If the brain/mind can do strict logic or any other form of associating ideas consciously,why could it not carry on with such processes in the absence of conscious awareness. I mean, maybe it can't do that; but if that were so we would need evidence and an argument to establish it.

but because on the physical model, the world itself, the totality of all that can possibly exist, is reduced to the behavior of a hundred billion neurons or so; and these neurons are reducible to an impossibility, because the only way to affirm that they exist is through neuronal events themselves. Pure question begging. — Constance

The world itself, if we are speaking in the Kantian mode, is far more than merely the behavior of neurons. Our knowing of the world, our model of the world, maybe be generated by the behavior of neurons but in its conventionality it becomes a publicly available abstraction insofar as it is recorded, let's say, in many publicly accessible places and media.

Also, my thinking about, my experience of, the model is not itself the behavior of neurons, even if it supervenes on the behavior of neurons,

But then, one has to ask the astoundingly easy question: how is a light wave in space anything like a chemical event in the brain? Or for that matter, how are words and meanings that are brain events, anything at all like the world "out there"? And this kind of explanatory breakdown applies across the board to every possible faculty of access. And it is so obvious one has to wonder how the assumption that science is about some world out there has any regard at all. — Constance

A light wave in space, as idea or model, would be commonly thought to be underpinned by a chemical event in the brain. An actual light wave in space, it would commonly be thought, might trigger a chemical event in the brain if it were to enter the eye. In one sense the world "out there" is known and thought about only "in here", but it is assumed that it must be "out there" in order to provide the content to be thought about.

Of course we don't know that, and the fact that we cannot explain our situation in absolute terms, leads to the possibility of skepticism, idealism and anti-realism. I'd say we just don't know/ That said, I'd also say that the plausibility of the idea that science is about "some world out there" is bolstered by the observed technological success of science. But there's no denying that it is possible that it is all going on in consciousness, and that without consciousness nothing at all would exist.

I'm not sure what you mean by approaching the question "from a physicalist model pov".

Not the most important philosophical issue. The second most. the most important is, by far, ethics and metaethics. — Constance

I agree that the ethical question "how to live the best life" is the most important, but I'm not sure it is susceptible of philosophical treatment; at least not under the rigorous analytic model of what constitutes "doing philosophy". Wittgenstein thought ethics and aesthetics are beyond the purview of philosophy if I am not mistaken.

P1: If doctor X diagnoses a cancer, then there is a cancer
P2: doctor X diagnoses a cancer
C: there is a cancer
One could believe P1 to be true (P1 being the case) and yet not know it to be true.
But in this case again, the term justification wouldn't apply to just valid deductions, they would still need to be sound deductions. — neomac

If you were justified in believing P1 and P2 obtains then the conclusion would be justified, but P1 might be false if unbeknownst to you there were, along with the many cases where Doctor X correctly diagnosed cancer and on the basis of which you took yourself to be justified in believing P1, there were a few cases where she incorrectly diagnosed cancer. How to determine whether you were or were not "really" justified in believing P1 then?

OK, I've read them and haven't found what I've asked for, but if you don't want to continue discussing it that's fine with me.

I'll have a read. I am familiar with the concept of abduction from reading of and about Peirce. I think of it as the imaginative generation of hypotheses. I think there must be a rational element in there, though, since I imagine the abductive inferences to best explanation must possess some plausible causal relationship with what is purporting to be explained.

I wasn't so much concerned about intuition missing anything, but more about the implicit rational thinking that might have been going on sub-consciously when we find that an intuitive response has suddenly appeared in our consciousness.

Of course, as I already said, he mistook a piece of cloth for a cow. That's obvious, but so what? Of course he didn't think "that piece of cloth is a cow", but again, it's obvious and so what? Finally, of course someone cannot consciously believe something they believe to be true to be false, but again, so what? All these are uncontroversially, and hence trivially, true; they don't need to be pointed out, and I don't know what you are aiming to demonstrate by highlighting them.

:cool:

I have always thought of 'rational' as related to 'ratio', which suggests comparison, measurement, determination and balance.

A rational or reasonable conclusion is a balanced conclusion. The tricky thing about intuition is that we don't know whether these processes of comparison, measurement etc.,have gone on subconsciously.

That particular farmer sees that particular piece of cloth in that particular field at that particular time, and mistakenly believes at that particular moment in time that that particular piece of cloth in that particular field is a cow or a sheep(which one does not matter).

Are you denying this? — creativesoul

Read what has already been written and ye shall be enlightened:

He believed (erroneously) that he was looking at a cow, when he was actually looking at a piece of cloth. — Janus

OK. But more thorough investigations can involve mistakes. For example, suppose the farmer thought he saw a sheep moving and grazing, but it was a goat (or a robot). — Andrew M

It's true that further investigations can involve mistakes. But if we are being strict about what we will accept as believable then we should investigate as far as, and in every more thorough way imaginable, and only commit to believing when all those possibilities are exhausted. It's also true that even then we can be mistaken, but at least our beliefs would then be properly justified.

We can always resort to entertaining something for pragmatic reasons without committing to belief if we realize that our investigations have not been or cannot be, for practical reasons, adequate. So, for example, I see something moving which I think is a sheep, but there is a boundary fence that prevents me from getting close enough to definitely confirm it.

I would just add, though, that the causal connection may not always be sufficient for knowledge. Consider the fake barn scenario. In that case, the traveler in fake barn country does see an actual barn, so the appropriate causal connection is present. But he doesn't know it because he was lucky. The false lemma in this case is that he implicitly assumes that this region is like any other where fake barns are a rarity. — Andrew M

There are two issues that bother me about how seriously Gettier cases are treated. Firstly there is the very slippery notion of justification. I'll use the 'sheep in the field' example to illustrate my concerns.

If I see something in field that I think is a sheep, am I justified in believing it is a sheep if I don't take the trouble to move closer and examine it to see if it really is a sheep, or shout to make it move or whatever? It might not be what people ordinarily do, but is that any justification for failing to investigate, and for forming an insipid conception of justification itself?

Secondly, assuming that I am justified in believing there is a sheep in the field based on seeing the cloth, the claim is that that belief could be true or false, depending on whether there is or is not at least one unseen sheep in the field. If there is one unseen sheep, then my belief that there is a sheep in the field turns out to be true, and since it is justified (in this case by stipulation) the JTB model would have it that I therefore possess knowledge, which of course doesn't seem right at all.

However it seems to me that even if seeing the cloth is accepted as justification for believing there is a sheep in the field, it could only be justification for believing that the apparent "sheep" (the cloth) was in the field, not some other unseen sheep that just happened to be there unbeknownst to me. In other words my belief would not be a general 'there is a sheep somewhere in the field' but rather 'that is a sheep there in the field' and because "that" is a cloth, not a sheep, it is not a weird or troubling case of JTB, but rather a justified false belief. As I say above I would go further and say it is an unjustified false belief due to lack of proper investigation, because I have no business believing a cloth is a sheep, if I'm not close enough to it to be sure, or if I haven't seen it moving around and grazing like a sheep.

I've always been puzzled by how seriously the Gettier cases have been taken; I think they don't amount to jack shit.

I'm arguing against using words that the farmer would have used at the time, for he did not know that he believed a piece of cloth was a cow... pace Moore's paradox. Nevertheless, the farmer most certainly believed that a piece of cloth was a cow. — creativesoul

The farmer certainly did not believe that a piece of cloth was a cow; how could he, since he didn't know it was a piece of cloth, and if he had known it was a piece of cloth, then how could he believe it to be a cow? He believed (erroneously) that he was looking at a cow, when he was actually looking at a piece of cloth.

There is no puzzle there of the kind that you seem to be attempting to nurture by virtue (or vice) of ambiguous usage of language (that is by substituting what we might say about the farmer's belief for how he would put his belief into words, to arrive at an absurd paradox, "believing that a piece of cloth is a cow", that might engender the illusion that it is of some significance, when it really is not).