Knowledge is JTB right (for you)? You agreed that T could be that a community of epistemic peers have exhaustively tested the hypothesis and found it sound, right? Now you're saying we can have knowledge outside of needing that latter condition. So how? — Isaac

I’m saying that a belief being true isn’t sufficient for it to count as knowledge. A lucky guess isn’t knowledge. A true belief brought about by a Tarot card reading isn’t knowledge. Knowledge requires that one’s actual reason for holding the belief is sufficiently good (whether you want to understand “sufficiently good” as a scale or not).

That when forming our belief we theoretically might consider the beliefs of a community of epistemic peers that has comprehensively tested the hypothesis doesn’t change this fact, especially given that we almost never have access to the beliefs of a community of epistemic peers that has comprehensively tested the hypothesis: nobody has a time machine and so I can only accept your word, and if available something like a driving license that I assume isn’t a forgery, that your name is Isaac. That’s the actual reason I believe what I do and is important when considering if I know your name.

If your name isn’t Isaac then obviously I don’t know that your name is Isaac, even if my belief is sufficiently reasonable given the actual evidence I have. If your name is Isaac then we can argue over whether or not my belief is sufficiently reasonable given the actual evidence I have and if not then I don’t know your name and if so then I do.

I only know that your name is Isaac if I believe that your name is Isaac, if my belief is sufficiently reasonable given the actual evidence I consider when forming my belief, and if your name actually is Isaac.

No. If a belief is false then it clearly was not well-justified. The justification must, logically, have been insufficient, since whatever test our epistemic peers used to determine it's falsity was clearly necessary but lacking, hence an insufficient justification. — Isaac

Justification doesn’t require certainty. Justifications can be fallible. I’m pretty sure you’ve accepted this before, although I can’t be bothered to check for more inconsistencies with your past posts.

If you tell me that your name is Isaac and show me a driving license that shows your name to be Isaac then my belief that your name is Isaac is well justified, even if in fact your name is John and you lied to me with a forged ID.

I don’t need to work with a community of epistemic peers with a time machine to go back and watch your parents first name you and sign your birth certificate to be well justified in believing something about your name.

You're just repeating the same error without addressing what I've said about it. Do we routinely define reasons as only either 'good' or 'not good', or do we, rather, grade reasons being able to see that some are better than others whilst others are even better still? If yes, then why insist on this odd language where everything scalar is treated binomially? — Isaac

You did this before when specifying that a belief be well justified. What’s the difference between saying that a belief be well justified and saying that one has good reasons for a belief? Splitting hairs on this wording is missing the point. The point is that it’s about the reasons one holds a belief, and not about whether or not the belief is true. It’s two separate conditions.

Yes. I'm saying there exist a high quality justification (hence we can say it's true), of which the believer is unaware (hence unjustified). In this instance, you could indeed say the belief was unjustified but true, but this doesn't get around the fact that if the believer became aware of the high quality justification they would have a belief which counted as knowledge on the basis of justification alone (just now justification of a sufficient quality), so JTB fails. — Isaac

JTB doesn’t fail on this account. It is still the case that if my actual reason for believing that is raining is sufficient then I don’t have knowledge if it isn’t raining and that if my actual reason for believing that is raining is insufficient then I don’t have knowledge even if it is raining.

Knowledge isn’t just hypothetical. We have it in real situations where we don’t have access to the beliefs of some community of epistemic peers who have comprehensively tested a belief.

(2), if S were to be aware of it, would be a justification. Hence it's possible for S to merely hold (1), and still have knowledge where his (1) is "that a community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe that p were they to throw every conceivable test at the hypothesis that p." — Isaac

I explained the mistake you are making here. That we can sometimes use the truth to justify a belief isn’t that a belief being true is the same as a belief being justified. If when getting married you have a single thing that is old, borrowed, and blue then being old, being borrowed, and being blue are still three different conditions.

Beliefs which are well-justified can be treated as knowledge. — Isaac

They’re only knowledge if they’re also true (if a community of epistemic peers would also believe it were they to throw every conceivable test at it). It is entirely possible that my belief is well justified but also false. This is why it must be specified that a belief is both true and (well) justified.

What you're calling a justified false belief is just a belief whose justification isn't good enough. — Isaac

No, it’s a belief that isn’t true but that I have a good reason to hold.

What you're calling an unjustified true belief is a belief whose (high quality) justification is not known to the person holding it. — Isaac

As I have repeatedly said and that you’re either wilfully ignoring or incapable of understanding, the justification condition is referring to the reasons the person believes what he does.

I’ll try to make this even simpler for you:

S knows that p if S believes that p, S has one or more good reasons for believing that p, and a community of epistemic peers with access to every conceivable technology would believe that p were they to throw every conceivable test at the hypothesis that p.

So, in checking if some belief is 'knowledge', we're just looking for some specific justification, not something else in addition to justifications. "My tarot cards say it's raining" is not good enough for 'knowledge', but "My epistemic peers haven’t exhausted all the predictions they can make and every single one has worked out as expected", may well be. — Isaac

That the truth can be used as a justification isn’t that a belief being true is the same thing as a belief being justified.

If you want to argue that a belief being true is the same thing as a belief being justified then you have to argue that the below are both false:

1. Justified false beliefs are possible
2. Unjustified true beliefs are possible

You must argue that all true beliefs are necessarily justified and vice versa.

If you don’t accept that all true beliefs are necessarily justified and vice versa - if you accept that justified false beliefs and unjustified true beliefs are possible - then you must accept that a belief being true isn’t the same thing as a belief being justified and so that it isn’t redundant to talk about beliefs that are both true and justified, as the JTB definition of knowledge does.

And aside from the sense of such a distinction, if you want to argue that the distinction is irrelevant with respect to knowledge then you must argue that both justified false beliefs and unjustified true beliefs count as knowledge.

In my previous post I gave clear examples of a justified true belief, an unjustified true belief, and a justified false belief, and explained that the first can count as knowledge but that the second and third can’t. Do you disagree with that analysis? If not then you must accept that relevance of the distinction between truth and justification in the JTB definition of knowledge.

If you think something I've said is inconsistent, you could just ask, rather than playing this childish game of trying to catch me in a contradiction. As I said, one day you will win that game, I don't proof read my comments that accurately. I don't see what you think you're going to gain by it though. — Isaac

If you can’t maintain a consistent argument - if you continually say contradictory things - then your argument has failed.

Your proposition refers to "the actual justifications we have", mine refers to "justifications" sensu lato. — Isaac

The “actual justifications we have” is what the JTB definition of knowledge is referring to.

I believe that it rained last night because the cars and road are wet. I have a good reason to believe what I do. My belief is justified.

This isn’t the same thing as the fact that a community of epistemic peers with access to a time machine would believe that it rained last night were they to throw every conceivable test at the hypothesis.

Therefore my belief being true isn’t the same thing as my belief being justified.

This is why the JTB definition has separate conditions for truth and justification. If in another scenario I believe what I do because it’s my interpretation of a Tarot card reading then my belief would be true but unjustified, and so not knowledge. If in another scenario the community of epistemic peers would believe that it didn’t rain but that a fire truck passed by with its hose on then my belief would be justified but false, and so not knowledge.

Knowledge requires both that my belief is true and that I have a good reason for having it, and as neither entails the other there is in fact a distinction.

Yes, I agree. One such reason might be "my epistemic peers have thrown every conceivable test at it and they all believe it's the case" a justification. — Isaac

It’s not the only justification (in fact I would say it’s rarely the justification as we rarely throw every conceivable test at our beliefs and certainly not as a coordinated group which shares its findings) and not all true beliefs are justified (in this way or in any other).

It is entirely possible that we have good reasons to believe something but that one’s epistemic peers wouldn’t believe it were they to test it (justified but not true so not knowledge).

It is entirely possible that we don’t have good reasons to believe something but that one’s epistemic peers would believe it were they to test it (true but not justified so not knowledge).

It is entirely possible that we have good reasons to believe something and that one’s epistemic peers would believe it were they to test it (justified and true so knowledge) but that our reason for believing it isn’t that we are aware that one’s epistemic peers have tested it and believe it.

So, no, we cannot simply treat truth and justification as the same.

Hence, the 'truth' part of JTB is not distinct from the justification part. — Isaac

And now you’re contradicting yourself yet again:

At the very least you finally understand that truth is distinct from the actual justifications we have. — Michael

I've never said anything to the contrary. If I have, I'd rather you quote me than attribute positions to me I've never held. — Isaac

You were accepting that truth can be inaccessible and that’s how we can be wrong. Presumably you wouldn’t say that justification is inaccessible?

Why is condition (iii) necessary? Why not say that knowledge is true belief? The standard answer is that to identify knowledge with true belief would be implausible because a belief might be true even though it is formed improperly. Suppose that William flips a coin, and confidently believes—on no particular basis—that it will land tails. If by chance the coin does land tails, then William’s belief was true; but a lucky guess such as this one is no knowledge. For William to know, his belief must in some epistemic sense be proper or appropriate: it must be justified.

Socrates articulates the need for something like a justification condition in Plato’s Theaetetus, when he points out that “true opinion” is in general insufficient for knowledge. For example, if a lawyer employs sophistry to induce a jury into a belief that happens to be true, this belief is insufficiently well-grounded to constitute knowledge. — SEP on justifications in JTB

It may be that a community of epistemic peers would come to believe that it is raining once they've exhaustively tested the hypothesis but if I believe that it is raining because it says so in the horoscopes section of a magazine then my belief isn’t justified.

The justification condition is quite clearly understood as being about the reason(s) the individual believes what he does. Your quote doesn’t say otherwise (in fact it explicitly mentions justified false beliefs). The debate between internalists and externalists is over what constitutes good reasons. Regardless of which side is correct, it is nonetheless about the reasons the individual believes what he does.

In the context of the JTB definition of knowledge, the J refers to the individual having good reasons to believe what they do. Even if you want to understand the T as being “what a community of epistemic peers would come to believe once they've exhaustively tested the hypothesis” it is still distinct from the J. It may be that I am justified in believing that it is raining but that a community of epistemic peers would believe that it isn’t raining were they to exhaustively test the hypothesis. As such my belief is false and I don’t know that it is raining (because it isn’t raining). And this is the case even if in practice everyone agrees with me.

Truth is distinct from what anyone actually believes and is a requirement for knowledge.

Not necessarily inaccessible. We might well feel we have, in fact, fully exhausted all tests, but yes, mostly truth is inaccessible, if it weren't we would be unable to believe we could be wrong (what would it mean to be wrong about something which is true?).

I don't think being inaccessible is a distinction between correspondence accounts and deflationary or pragmatic accounts. Both have to have 'truth' as inaccessible otherwise there become situations where we cannot possibly be wrong (those in which we have direct access to the truth). As has been discussed here, such situations may occur within abstract schemes such as mathematics, but again, these are the same between accounts.

What's different is the matter of whether truth is a specifically justified belief, or some other property. — Isaac

If we’re wrong then we don’t have knowledge. That’s why knowledge is said to be JTB, not just JB.

I've never said anything to the contrary. If I have, I'd rather you quote me than attribute positions to me I've never held. — Isaac

Here:

My claim, in the above sense, is simply that 'truth' (the word) has the same meaning in speech acts as 'justified' (the word)* — Isaac

It's what my epistemic peers would see if they invented a time machine, or deep space telescope, faster-than-light travel...all hypothetical tests I can think of. — Isaac

So truth is a counterfactual? Something that is inaccessible?

At the very least you finally understand that truth is distinct from the actual justifications we have.

What sense could we possibly make of something being the case that we can't even hypothetically detect? What would it mean for it to 'be the case'? — Isaac

I have a computer print a random word (using radioactive decay measurements) on a piece of paper but have the paper and computer burned before it can be read. There is a fact as to what was printed on the paper even though we have no way of knowing what it was.

Alien life might exist outside our light cone.

That difference could just as easily be explained by the difference between beliefs we actually have and beliefs we might hypothetically come to have after we thoroughly tested our hypotheses. — Isaac

It's possible that something has happened that we can never discover. This could either be a practical matter – someone was murdered and there's no evidence to show who is the killer, or all evidence shows it to be someone who didn't do it – or this could be impossible in principle – stuff happens outside our light cone.

How do we know that a given proposition is true? It can't be justification of course; why mention truth separately? I'm probably holding the wrong end of the stick here. — Agent Smith

According to the JTB definition, we know that a given proposition is true if it is true, if we believe that it is true, and if we are justified in believing that it is true.

The upshot of it is that justification doesn't establish veracity. The natural question is what does? — Agent Smith

What do you mean here by "establish"? In one sense it means "discover" and in another it means "make happen".

If we take it raining for example, physical events in the atmosphere is what makes it happen, and us having a veridical experience is how we discover it.

What is the criterion for truth, if not justification? — Agent Smith

Justification is how we judge truth, but truth itself is the facts obtaining, regardless of justification.

If we imagine a court of law, someone is guilty of murder if they murdered the victim, but someone is judged to be guilty of murder if the evidence suggests beyond reasonable doubt that they murdered the victim. Obviously these are not the same thing; people can be wrongly convicted or wrongly exonerated. In practice we might not always know if the judgement was wrong, but we understand that in principle they could be wrong, and the fact that we understand this shows that there is a conceptual difference between truth and justification.

What makes you think that's what I'm talking about (especially given my quite explicit definition)? — Isaac

Because that's how any reasonable English speaker would interpret it. What else could you mean by drawing a distinction between John's belief about the weather and an inaccessible "actual" weather?

It seems quite a stretch for you to take a fairly ambiguous piece of writing and use it to prove I don't really mean what I've just said that I mean. I can't think what could be gained from such an exercise. — Isaac

You won't accept it when I or @InPitzotl explain to you that when we say "it is raining" we are referring to a belief-independent fact. You won't accept it when we explain to you that we don't mean "I believe that it is raining". If you won't do us the courtesy of accepting what we say about what we mean then why should I accept what you say about what you mean?

I'm not sure what you think the word 'infallible' is doing there if I had (as you claim) s correspondence view of truth. — Isaac

You quite clearly say that there is a "truth about the weather" and that it is inaccessible. Therefore you are quite clearly saying that truth is belief-independent and distinct from justification (which very much is accessible). And given that you say that infallible direct access is required for us to be incapable of being wrong it follows that being wrong has something to do with the relationship between one's belief and this belief-independent truth, with the most rational interpretation being that our beliefs are wrong if the belief-independent truth is other than we believe it to be.

Again, I don't know what you think the word 'if' means here if you take it as a statement about what is actually the case. — Isaac

You accepted that a veridical experience is access to a belief-independent fact. You also accepted that veridical experiences are possible. If a veridical experience is access to a belief-independent fact and if veridical experiences are possible then we can have access to belief-independent facts, like the actual weather, contrary to your claim that "no-one has direct access to [the actual weather]".

I must admit to being slightly baffled by the line of argument you're taking here. Where's it going? Let's say you're completely right, all those previous quotes did, in fact, show that I had a more correspondence view of truth. Let's say I've changed my mind and now believe whatever view was presented in my latest post. Does that change anything about the veracity of that latest post. How would the fact that I used to believe otherwise have any impact on it? — Isaac

This exchange is following on from this:

Yes it does, and any reasonable person understands this. Frankly, your position is untenable and you're just being stubborn. I'm tired of it.

I honestly don't think you believe what you're saying anymore. — Michael

The point I'm highlighting is not that you think I'm wrong, it's that you seem to think I must be lying or stubborn... that you can't just think I've reached a different conclusion to you because we're different people. — Isaac

The above is why I don't believe that you believe what you're trying to argue; you're inconsistent. — Michael

I think you're just grasping at straws, twisting yourself in knots, contradicting yourself, trying to defend a theory that doesn't work.

What do you mean by “whether it actually is raining”? Are you referring to your beliefs? — Michael

No, as I've said quite a few times now, in expressions like this I'm referring to the notion of the beliefs a community of my epistemic peers would have once they've thrown all the tests they can think of at it...which is clearly not the same notion (though might have the same content) as the belief I currently hold. — Isaac

This is what you've said before:

Does John or Jack have infallible direct access to the truth about the weather in Barbados? (ie can't be wrong)

I presume the answers are 'No' and 'No'. So the expression "John knows..." is being used on the grounds that John's evidence, his justification for his belief, is very good (he's actually there, looking at the sky, getting wet...). It's not being used by comparing John's belief to the actual weather - no-one has direct access to that, they only have access to their various beliefs about the weather. It's their beliefs about the weather they're using to decide whether to use the term "John knows..." or reach instead for something like "John believes..." or "John thinks..."

You could do a Banno and say that John does have direct access to the actual weather, that looking at it is as good as direct access to it. That's fine, it's a model I've some sympathy with, but then we'd have to clarify why Jim's access isn't direct. What is it about John's access that's categorically better than Jim's? Once we have that criteria, we have a definition of 'direct', but it's still essentially the same as I've been arguing - namely that at some level of justification we can say "John knows...", the only difference being that we also label this level of justification 'direct' to distinguish it from other levels which we call 'indirect' — Isaac

Here you admit to there being an "actual weather", but claim that we don't have direct access to it. Here you aren't talking about your beliefs or the language community's beliefs or a battery of tests or anything like that. You're just talking about the common sense realist notion of there being belief-independent facts that may or may not be as we believe them to be.

If you can refer to this actual weather when you claim that we don't have direct access to the actual weather then I can refer to this actual weather when I claim that it is raining.

Does John or Jack have infallible direct access to the truth about the weather in Barbados? (ie can't be wrong) — Isaac

And specifically here you connect the notions of truth and being wrong to whether or not the actual weather (which is belief-independent, and according to you cannot be directly accessed) is as we believe it to be.

We were talking about access to facts. If my experience is veridical then ipso fact I have access to a fact. — Michael

I agree. — Isaac

And then later you admit that we do (sometimes) have direct access to the facts.

So all-in-all, you admit that we can refer to belief-independent facts, that our beliefs are true if the belief-independent facts are as we believe them to be, and that we can access these belief-independent facts.

You’re wrong — Michael

Oh. You could have saved us a lot of time by just telling me that in the first place. I bet you let people leave the restaurant with spinach still stuck in their teeth too. — Isaac

People use the phrase “you’re wrong” when they disagree with the other person. Given that I disagree with you my use was felicitous, and as there’s nothing more to truth than felicitous use, I was right to say that you’re wrong.

That is why I don’t understand your response. I’ve been expressing my disagreement for several pages, and your joke about letting people leave the restaurant with spinach still stuck in their teeth seems entirely out of place, even nonsensical in context. It’s almost as if you understood something else by my claim that you’re wrong. I wonder what that could possibly be. Perhaps you understood me as saying that the facts aren’t as you claim them to be, as any reasonable English speaker would?

It seems perfectly possible that someone saying "It's raining" tells us about their beliefs, and there still be a fact about whether it actually is raining, — Isaac

What do you mean by “whether it actually is raining”? Are you referring to your beliefs?

I don’t understand your response.

You’re wrong.

Then consider what you meant by the cat being on the mat being belief-independent in that context. That is how a true belief is distinguished from a false belief in the context of the JTB definition of knowledge. According to the JTB definition of knowledge, one knows that the cat is on the mat iff one believes that the cat is on the mat, one is justified in believing that the cat is on the mat, and the cat is on the mat (as a belief-independent fact).

Can you finally accept that, in the context of the JTB definition of knowledge, this third condition has nothing to do with what any particular person or language community believes or with justification? It's a reference to a belief-independent fact that must obtain for the belief to be true and the person to have knowledge.

Let's say the cat either is or is not on the mat. It's on-the-matness is belief independent. That has nothing to do with my claim that we can't talk about the cat's on-the-matness without someone holding a belief about it. — Isaac

The above is why I don't believe that you believe what you're trying to argue; you're inconsistent. How am I to interpret the above if we follow your logic that "the cat is on the mat" means "I believe that the cat is on the mat", that the "the cat is on the mat" part of this has no meaning on its own, and that the statement is about your belief rather than an actual cat on a mat?

Do you really struggle that much with the idea of things seeming to other people to be different to the way they seem to you? — Isaac

How the world seems and how the world is aren't the same. I've spent weeks trying to explain this to you. There is a fact of the matter, independent of what you or I believe, such that one of us is right and one of us is wrong. And as I'm the one arguing this and you're the one arguing against this, I'm right and you're wrong.

And "it's raining" has a meaning too, but not within "I believe it's raining". — Isaac

Yes it does, and any reasonable person understands this. Frankly, your position is untenable and you're just being stubborn. I'm tired of it.

I honestly don't think you believe what you're saying anymore.

Or he's guessing, or he's lying. You don't know what's going on inside his head, only what he says. Yet you understand the meaning of his assertion, which refers to the belief-independent weather, and the alleged fact that water is falling from the clouds – which is why you look out the window to verify his claim, not interrogate him to confirm what he believes.

Nothing at all. — Isaac

Beliefs have propositional content. I understand what the "it's raining" part of "I believe that it's raining" means and I understand what the "it's sunny" part of "I believe that it's sunny" means, and I understand the difference between them.

What does 'for a quick' mean in "I'm going to go for a quick walk now"?

What does 'for a nice' mean in "It's about time for a nice cup of tea"? — Isaac

Nothing. But "a quick walk" and "a nice cup of tea" have a meaning.

Then you tell me. What does the "it's raining" part of "I believe that it's raining" mean?

When people say things like "it's raining", they mean that they have a belief that it's raining (in this case, one they're very confident in ,one with good justifications. — Isaac

No, when people say things like "it's raining" they mean that it's raining. We've gone over this so many times.

I can say "it's raining" even if I believe that it's not raining. I can say "it's raining" as a guess. I can say "it's raining" as a response to someone asking me what John believes. In each and every case, "it's raining" means the same thing; that it's raining. These aren't three different expressions that mean three different things.

And if you want to know what they mean by "whether or not it's raining..."? — Isaac

Again, ask them. They'll say it's when water falls from the clouds.

I'm not going to continue this game forever.

You ask them, and they tell you that they're referring to whether or not it's raining, or is sunny, or is cloudy, or is snowing, and so on.

If you ask English-speakers which of these count as knowledge, almost all will say only the first.

1. John knows that it is raining if the weather is as he justifiably believes it to be
2. John knows that it is raining if the weather isn't as he justifiably believes it to be

If you want to know what words mean, it's best to ask the people who use them.

My beliefs about the weather have no impact on the weather, it is what it is despite any belief I might have about it. — Isaac

And the T in JTB is saying that the weather must be as you believe it to be. If it isn't as you believe it to be then your belief is false and you don't have knowledge.

The understanding I'm looking for is the common sense realist understanding. There is more to the world than our beliefs. The facts do not depend on us being able to justify them. Gravity affected us before we understood it, and not just retroactively after Newton published his theory.

When I asked this:

Do you understand what it means for the belief-independent facts to be as we believe them to be? Do you understand what it means for the belief-independent facts to not be as we believe them to be? Do you understand the difference between them? — Michael

You responded with:

I'm not sure how to judge whether I 'understand' I think I do (obviously). — Isaac

So you do understand what it means for the belief-independent facts to be as we believe them to be? So how is it “incoherent” to argue that this is a requirement for knowedge?

My claim, in the above sense, is simply that 'truth' (the word) has the same meaning in speech acts as 'justified' (the word)* — Isaac

It doesn't in the context of the JTB theory of knowledge. The "true" in "justified true belief" is to be understood as the facts being as they are believed to be.

So, again, forget the words "true" and "false". If the belief-independent facts are as we believe them to be then our beliefs are X, otherwise they're Y. Knowledge is JXB.

Or more simply, one has knowledge iff the facts are as one justifiably believes them to be.

Do you understand what it means for the belief-independent facts to be as we believe them to be? Do you understand what it means for the belief-independent facts to not be as we believe them to be? Do you understand the difference between them?

If it's simpler, forget the words "true" and "false". If the belief-independent facts are as we believe them to be then our beliefs are X, otherwise they're Y. Knowledge is JXB.

A more straightforward position is that there are facts - like the actual weather - that are independent of what we believe or claim or experience. When the facts are as we experience them to be then our experience is veridical. When the facts are as we believe or claim them to be then what we believe or claim is true. — Michael

I agree with that position. — Isaac

So you accept the following:

1. There are belief-independent facts
2. If these facts are as we believe them to be then our beliefs are true, otherwise they're false

If so then you should understand the T in JTB.

Yeah, our beliefs can be wrong, where 'wrong' here means l (the speaker) believe that acting as if it were the case will yield surprising results. — Isaac

We’ve talked before about access to facts. You’ve drawn a distinction between beliefs and the actual weather. And now you’re trying to say that truth and being wrong have nothing to do with the facts or the actual weather? Your position is incredibly confusing.

A more straightforward position is that there are facts - like the actual weather - that are independent of what we believe or claim or experience. When the facts are as we experience them to be then our experience is veridical. When the facts are as we believe or claim them to be then what we believe or claim is true.

This is the common sense realist position - the position that you agreed to argue from. And yet everything you’re saying contradicts this. I don’t even understand what you’re arguing. That our beliefs about the weather aren’t wrong even if the actual weather isn’t as we believe it to be?

It seems that in the very same sentence you argue that our words only refer to our beliefs, and that our beliefs have nothing to do with the facts, but also reference an “actual weather” that you accept is external to our beliefs (and sometimes inaccessible, but not always) that at least has something to do with what we believe and say (such that it is the actual weather, and not actual flowers, that are related to our beliefs and claims about the weather). Do you not see the incoherency here?

But this is just pie in the sky. It's not at all how we assess knowledge claims. We say someone has 'knowledge' when we believe that their claim is true. — Isaac

I'll add; the reason we say that someone has knowledge when we believe that their claim is true is because we understand that being true is a requirement for knowledge.

But this is just pie in the sky. It's not at all how we assess knowledge claims. We say someone has 'knowledge' when we believe that their claim is true. — Isaac

We also say that someone's claims are true when we believe that their claims are true. But as you (sometimes) admit, our beliefs can be wrong.

Believing or saying that something is true doesn't entail that it is true. Believing or saying that someone has knowledge doesn't entail that they have knowledge.