Is knowledge something you have...

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Doreen, Jan 4, 2010.

  1. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    I got that later in the post. I ususally don't go back and edit.

    That's not really why I raised the issue. Our experience visually is already an interpretation, even before we say green is jealousy or the heart chakra or cooler than blue or represents Ireland or whatever. The naked sensing is already an interpretation of only some of nature. As far as 'the cause' of that experience 'out there', this cause is not enough. To me, going strictly by science, as well as I understand it, I would have to say that color is mutually created by what gets broken into subject and object. And humans can have some consensus on this - without being sure of qualia, the issue you brought up - because they share similar bodies.

    Well, not directly, I would guess. But circumstantial evidence can be amassed. If we speak about something repeatedly using metaphors from one source area - say spatial relations for time - AND the portions of our brain that get engaged are our motor cortex and language cortex, this gives some weight to the theory. I believe this has happened. Some of this is coming from Philosophy in the Flesh, Lakoff, where he takes what he calls second generation cognitive science - recent stuff is what I would call it - and looks at philosophy, combining his own expertise in metaphors. It makes a strong case, I think anyway. It also makes sense. Metaphors give us a way about talking about something new - in terms of us conceiving of it - in terms of something we already talked about. We come to conceive of the new 'things' in terms of the old.

    But what is sensed is coming through particular hardware - to use your computer analogy - built with goals and preconceptions already in mind while we are floating in the womb. Also sensing is not passive, it is active. We think we see, for example, a field of vision, but actually our eyes are moving around all the time, sending pieces of data to the brain, including blank areas, the brain then automatically edits this and gives us the impression of a field of vision. It is much more like a blind man tapping his cane then we generally acknowledge. We are not like cameras sitting on a table. Even the best fixed gaze we can manage there are still microsaccades. We are probing and building up images.

    It is in-species 'objective' because we have similar brains and senses. Color blind people could confirm color patterns that the rest of us would disconfirm. But overall homo sapians have similar visual systems and brains so we can have something like objectivity. Much of our descriptions would not work for an alien fungi that senses by scattered magnetic sensing 'eye's.

    They might say our 'view' of reality is like the view of the citizens of Flatland.

    What, you think you have depth perception? Right now I am perceiving you from all sides at the same time and your internal organs glow like the crab nebulae. Your vision must be quite limited and so subjective, always coming form a point source. Our psychologist assure us you must be lonely solipsists.

    Let alone some creature that had a vastly extended now - whose flash - to use a camera analogy - lasted for minutes so it was always seeing us over a period of time, so it had a sense of trajectories in mood and patterns in movement we miss.

    Fine. So, anyway. Things, including processes, are doubled in the mind/brain. ?
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2010
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  3. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    My misreading.
    Apparently you're right:


    Well, again it comes down to qualifications: "justified belief" can allow too much. The truth condition criterion seriously slims down the class of things that we are willing to classify as "knowledge".
    Once upon a time, there was justifiable belief that the world was flat.....

    Depends on how you want to define "transcendence".
    The ability to imagine allows us to manipulate the existent, and consider something novel, something as of yet expereinced...

    All that's required is "can". That's why, the criterion for verification is always "in principle".
     
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  5. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    I don't need to. It's a matter of public record. Human error can be removed as it always is: as a matter of corroboration. The facticity of the date can be traced back reliably through records. You seem [again] to be looking for some sort of 'logical certainty', which doesn't apply here, nor could exist. In truths of fact, all that is required is verifiable inductive probability.


    Nor to me. Unless it's justified, and true.



    Well, that depends on what you're willing to call a 'thing'.
    If people want to run that fast and loose with definitions, then everything is a thing......


    I think you're right here. And that's fine. For the most part, such a dualist type of mental framework actually works.


    hmmmm.. tricky.

    OK: the entirety of the contents of experience are all things that appear via perception.
     
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  7. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    And it worked pretty well, also, for that time. If they had meant by that there were no valleys or mountains, that would have been a different story. Of course I am not defending flat earth theories as truth, but only in the sense that justification was OK in relation to need. And sure justified can be insufficient, since anything can count as justification. But what we will compare one justification with is 'our' justification - even if it is 'mere' experience. We will not judge their justification process by comparing their results with the truth - which is implied, I think, by LixeLuxes epistemology.

    In that sense I can accept it, though I might say it manifests as thought, first.
     
  8. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    4,101
    So you are certain it is probable?

    With my resistance to 'true' in mind, I am otherwise being stricter than it seems you are here. I think my post responding to LL here

    http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=2455102&highlight=categorical#post2455102

    gives a sense what I mean.

    I am not sure if this applies to all kinds of knowledge or not, but I will take that position for a moment. Justification is, theoretically only, I would say, about the process the person took to arriving at their belief. Application comes afterwards. I think application does not have to be physical - in the lay sense of the word - but at least conceptual.

    The issue is: do you think our knowledge reflects things 'out there' or does it reflect experience?

    As did the flat earth. But then, is it a 'religion'?

    LOL.
    Is there anything else the PR might say about reality in a general way? I found it funny because what you wrote could be a summary of a tiny subset of what PR entails or it could be a summation of the whole thing. IOW, nothing else is assumed to be real, for example.

    A question that might help clarity: what distinguishes a phenomenalist realist from a phenomenalist?
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2010
  9. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    See, this is incorrect.
    Justification must be rational.


    Again, it's not a question of comparative justification. That's why the "true" condition is required as well...

    Most certainly.
     
  10. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    4,101
    I would say it must seem rational, otherwise, again, you are assuming you have access to the truth.
    We have justifications about rationality, just as we have them about more specific beliefs.


    But you cannot produce truth. You can only say: this justification method indicated that this is the case, here is why we trust this justification method better than that one and hence reject your assertion. Your assertion is justified, but from our persective weakly. Further what we consider a stronger justification indicates something other than yours. Hence we reject your belief.
     
  11. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    Aaah,; no, not at all. To do that would be to assume that there is such a thing as an 'objective truth'...
    See below.


    Of course.



    Justifications can be compared, and there is a criterion for determining which is more fit. Thus, the truth condition.

    And for the record, we do indeed produce 'truth'. That's the only truth there is....
     
  12. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    5,502

    No. It's probabilistically certain.



    Alas, I don't follow.


    See, I don't see it that way at all.
    Justification comes after belief...




    Both [given that they're both the same thing].


    Argg.
    Let's not go off topic.
    But: no. There's no deity, there's no worship, there's no eschatology.... etc., etc.

    I like your final sentence just fine.

    So: irreal, unless experienced.
     
  13. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    4,101
    100%? Sorry, I obviously need help here. To me it clearly cannot be 100% certain that you were born on that date. I can see it being 100% certain that it is a fact. But not that that fact is 100% certain to be correct.

    I think one could have a fairly well justified belief. One read about some aspect of biology in a recent textbook as part of a college course. You know this is the standard text across the nation. You have checked recent journal entries on the subject - in this case that the bottle fish engages in swarm activity (I made the fish and the fact up) - and these support the text. Your marine biologist teacher has told you the evidence is overwhelming that this is the case. I think a lay person would be justified in thinking this was true and the student in question got the question right on a test.

    In his second year of studies he still remembers this fact. On a test by his new teacher he is asked to explain how swarm behavior might be advantageous for a given species. His short essay answer reveals that he has not the slightest idea what swarm behavior is.

    I am not sure he ever had knowledge on this issue. In fact I would say he did not. He had no more knowledge than a tape recorder.

    Again you are sliding into the minority. I think if pressed many would agree with you, but I think they tend to conceive of it as coming before. I did not believe it until it was justified.
    Those with concerns about justification, that is.
    Our experiences of things are the things?

    Which is why I put it in quotes. I meant, a believe in entities we cannot know anything about.

    EDIT: It is a useful fiction that many, no doubt most, consider true. This opens the door, then, it seems to me, to other fictions that seem useful. And some useful fictions lose efficacy if they are seen as false.
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2010
  14. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    4,101
    Which would include truths about justification.

    Ah, but then true refers to the justification not to the fact. If I go by your first two sentences above.

    justified true belief. Two adjectives modifying 'belief'. But I am arguing that that true is actually modifying the justification process. And given that justification processes are evaluated by justification processes I see no reason to use a charged word like true, even though I get the sense above you mean it in a less capital letter way than, say, Plato.

    To me it soundsl like justified true belief means - belief arrived at via an approved/justified (by us) justification process.
     
  15. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    5,502

    I don't see the difference.



    Ah. I see.
    Yes, I agree completely. He had not knowledge.


    Thanks for the compliment.

    I just don't see it working that way.
    Our beliefs are just that; merely an opinion.
    I think justification only comes into the picture when we are pressed into making that belief 'fit' in a coherent way into our overall system of thinking.
    An unjustified belief, can, and often does operate. But sooner or later it will come into conflict with other propositions...


    No. Our experiences are 'reflections' of all things.

    I don't follow the metaphor. To what are you referring that we cannot know?
     
  16. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    4,101
    One means it is a workable bit of information with others. The other means that it is impossible for information to come forward that contradicts this fact. And I want to stress, it would not require a paradigm shift for such information to be accepted. We already know of the kinds of errors that could lead to this fact not being true.

    But then the trick becomes in how we determine that., when we are satisfied. Certainly as a teacher I have had to deal with this issue, praxis again. And as a critical human looking at the bulk of education, it seems clear to me that knowledge is not a priority. I would say that the educational system, to a great degree - outside of math, though even there.... - follows Lixeluke's epistemology. True beliefs are important regardless of how they are arrived at and how well or even if they can be applied - the ghost of John Dewey is nodding over my fruit bowl at me.

    I am not quite sure what you meant here, though I feel I should. Just hope it was not sarcastic. I assume you mean that I include you in that group, but then, of course, by definition. You seem concerned.

    Which is a reason it is not looked at, to go off on a tangent. If you must justify it you will realize that you do not justify other beliefs in this way. Best to let the sleeping dog lie. Ooh, that ends up being a pun, too.

    Can you give me an example?

    Those in that side of the dualism you consider unreal. Or Ding an Sich
     
  17. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    5,502


    Sorry.. you've lost me.


    Well, whoever said education was concerned with knowledge??

    Seriously though, there's no difficulty in determining when someone does or does not 'have' knowledge. JTB says it all.


    I was referring to being in the minority..


    Right, but once you justify a belief, it's no longer merely a belief.


    Absolutely anything will do.

    Again, you've lost me...
     
  18. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    4,101
    OK. I'll try a different tack. Would you bet your life on it? You get 1000 bucks if you are right. I mean, 100%, you can't lose. Of course you ask who the better is and he works for the province of _______________, records department. He's an information auditor - he searches the various governmental bureaucracies looking for routines that cause errors or leave uncorrected ones. He is also standing next to an old friend of your parents and this friend looks nervous.

    EDIT: OK. Maybe you mean that you DOB is sort of like a social security number. It is what it is. Whether it refers to you actual date of birth is irrevelent. I could quibble with this one around the tiny chance you are insane and do not realize it, but if this is what you meant all along, then I understand better.

    SECOND EDIT: Nah, I take that back. My guess is that you have not actually checked your birth certificate. For all you know you could have suffered a mild stroke causing a mild dyslexia or some neurological disorder making you confuse dates. 100% rules out everything.

    School brochures, education department superintendents, teachers, administrators.......

    But I made a case earlier that his belief was justified. It turns out however that it was useless.

    Ah, OK.

    So knowledge can be wrong and yet we checked to see if it was true? See this is the problem I have with the JTB. We go back 15 years, find some belief scientists had. We look at their justifications. Nice work. Good empirical research. Recreated at many, many universities. Fit with other research in that area of knowledge. But, oops, wrong conclusion. Some technology came along, now we can investigate better. IOW we now have better justification processes for this area of knowledge. And.....they were wrong. They had, indeed, an excellently justified belief. But they were wrong. When they were peer reviewed no one went

    Hm. Ok. It looks justified, but let me compare their assertion WITH THE TRUTH.

    Because if they could have done this, they would have noticed it wasn't THE TRUTH.

    Humor me. Pick one.

    It started here...

    I am assuming you are not a dualist, since you're a phenomenalist. So you don't think there are two fundamental essences. One way to look at the minds we were talking about is to say they are referring to Ding an Sich. I assume you think that is a fiction. The other would be to say they believe in a substance - not quite sure that is the right word - that you consider fictional.
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2010
  19. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    Absolutely.


    There's a sufficient data pool to counter any 'nervousness'.




    Not at all. Education is concerned with instruction... not knowledge.



    Ah. I see now.
    OK, well, I didn't see that. There's apparent justification, and then there's correct justification.



    No. They weren't wrong.
    Their justification was.
    Nothing rules out the possibility of people mistakenly having knowledge. This is precisely why 'luke is wrong.



    Snow is water.


    I don't think there are 1), anything fundamental and 2), anything essential.


    Howso?? I don't see that at all.


    Indeed.

    ??

    Another fiction. In fact, the same one.


    Seriously, you've totally lost me here...
     
  20. swivel Sci-Fi Author Valued Senior Member

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    2,494
    It's something you have. Actions and work are things you do. Of course, your knowledge will be expressed in the things you do, but the knowledge itself is nothing more than pathways developed between neurons.

    Of course. Whatever it is we are living in, whether it's a single universe, just as we perceive it, or a multi-verse, or a hobbit's dream, or a computer simulation ... whatever construct lies on the furthest "shell" out from our experience, it is clearly imparting a reality (or at least a shared delusion with very concrete and consistent themes) which directly impacts what things we "know" and "don't know."

    All the mystical and parenthetical gobblygook is there to protect my generalize statement against extremely unlikely "what-ifs." I'm of the mind that reality is pretty much as we perceive it until we have reason to believe otherwise. Still, even if the pseudo-philosophers are correct, and we live in an artificial construct, I argue that such a claim assumes an outside reality in which the constructing thing operates. It's a silly argument that just moves reality out one shell, nothing more. Very similar to the attempt to escape ex nihilo creation by positing a god that must've been created ex nihilo.

    I have no idea what this means. It sounds like poetry has crept into an ontological argument.

    When they act purposefully toward some aim. For instance: when an infant waves its arms and cries, twitches and moans, it seems to do so from a place absent knowledge. All motion seems reflexive. Innate. There's no concept that "this is my hand" or "I want that and I know how to grasp it."

    Same goes for a bacterium that waves its flagellum until chemical receptors "tell" it to stop or change direction based on temperature, toxicity, etc...

    Same for a basic robot that navigates by bumping off objects and turning some random angle, then setting off again. None of these things seem to have memory, and therefore none seem to have knowledge (an argument could be made for the baby and bacterium on a genetic level, but I would disagree).

    Take the same three examples and modify them for knowledge: The baby gets older and "learns" from its environment. Crying results in resources. Before long, it's throwing a tantrum and getting a used Jeep for its 16th birthday. Now it knows what a Jeep is, that the Jeep will attract the opposite sex, that the parents will cave with sufficient pressure, etc...

    Give the robot some memory so it can map its environment. Now, when we watch it move around the room, we see it approach a wall, stop before hitting it, turn 90 degrees, then follow the entire edge of the wall, stopping before it hits the grandfather clock, arc out around the clock, go back to the wall, and continue on its way. We see it do this a dozen times. It's safe to assume the robot "has knowledge" of the obstruction's presences (as well as the wall, its own velocity, its range from objects, etc...)

    Give that bacterium a few million years until it become multi-cellular. Let it develop a nervous system, or any other method of storing short-term data into long-term memory. Have it able to access this memory in any way to modify its reaction to stimuli. Observe it as you might a robot or a teenager. If it seems to act on the world as if it had prior knowledge of those actions' consequences (even if the knowledge or assumptions were wrong), then you can bet it "knows" something.

    That can be your mantra if you wish. Mine is: "DEATH TO FANATICS!!"
     
  21. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    4,101
    So we 'have' pathways between neurons? Wouldn't this imply that we actually 'are' knowledge? You also say we have it, rather than do it. But pathways shift around all the time, depending on what the brain is doing. If I ask you a question, to test your knowledge, won't your brain do something to be able to respond?
    Do we look at the reflection or at reality when we access knowledge?

    If I ask you to explain how a bicycle works, your answer may not be anything you have ever thought out. That's one kind of unraveling.

    The mouth on nipple works pretty well and involves the outside world.
    Does one need knowledge to be able to learn? We seem to have built in stuff, we do not learn everything by trial and error.

    Sounds fanatical.
     
  22. Doreen Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,101
    Wow. we must be writing at cross purposes.

    Ibid.

    I am going to drop this line. I am completely confused by your 100% certainty here.
    So the former does not need to instill the latter?

    But for all we know, at least in most situations, we may have mere apparent justification. To me adding 'true' seems to ignore this.

    No, I mean that later it becomes clear that their conclusions were incorrect. They used a process of justification that was the best at that time, as judged by peer review. It turned out, however, that despite it being the best at that time, certain factors were not being eliminated from the testing. Later better tech comes along and we see that despite the justification getting the best marks from the best experts, the conclusions were wrong. Neverthess JTB would lead to their conclusions having been called both justified AND true. I think that is hubris.

    I also find your wording odd above. If they mistakenly have knowledge, wouldn't it be a belief. If I believe something, that happens to fit with current science, because the Bible told me, is this knowledge? Isn't it LL's opinion that it is knowledge and all his 'discussion partners' ' position that he should not leave out justification?

    This conversation makes me feel like when I am talking to someone who has a different native language so we are speaking a third language to each other and getting confused. I can't tell where the problems come from because to sort them out we both must use this language we are not strong in.

    I mean, while I am American - note the offensive claim to this term, showing where I come from - my mother is Canadian. We should be doing alright.

    So you are not a materialist or physicalist?

    Well, I think many scientists think they are discovering the way things are without observers. What things, out there, are like. Objective reality. Sure, they would admit, our senses and language distort to some degree, but that is precisely what they control and avoid via rigorous testing, the restrictions on the observer, careful use of literal language, etc.

    I do think your position is vastly more consistent. But I do find myself, repeatedly, thinking you have no idea how different your metaphysics (or lack thereof) is from most intellectuals, including, with emphasis, most scientists.

    This is the same as above where Ding an sich or some dualistic fiction - from your perspective - is involved.

    I have to say I have found our discussion here very odd. I expected disagreement, but not at such an early stage. I don't think I understand your epistemology at all.

    Perhaps Sarkus can help bridge the gap. He seemed to accept my issue with 'true'. Not that this was the only problem.

    I mean I believe in weird stuff - by most scientists standards. But I am far less certain of a number of everyday facts than you seem to be. And not because of the weird stuff. Just a caution around certainty.
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2010
  23. glaucon tending tangentially Registered Senior Member

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    Fair enough.

    I think you'll find that, as long as you have some sort of objectivist notion working, you'll be confused by the concept of certainty. [See my last comments below..]


    Not at all. It may, but it's not requisite.
    For example, not that I want to age myself or anything, but when I was in grade school I was taught the 'multiplication tables'. Never was I taught the particular algorithm involved in ascertaining the results. We were trained, by 'rote'. Instruction, not knowledge.



    You're right, with respect to justification.
    Adding on the truth condition, of course, takes time. Moreover [as we've been getting into here..] this is contingent upon a definition of truth that differs from the strictly logical one. Besides, as has been noted, a justified belief could hardly qualify as being knowledge.


    I agree that this is a distinct possibility. But to call it hubris is incorrect. Again, to judge in such a way, is to assume some sort of objectivist notion, which is erroneous..


    You're totally correct. I was trying to avoid awkward wording. So as to avoid things like 'apparent knowledge', etc...



    I think we're doing fine.

    I suspect that the problem isn't one of language so much, as it is our overall ontological-epistemological schema. Basically this is because we're discussing such a broad topic here, as it really encompasses all possible topics.
    The danger then is somewhat reflexive: we each have our own conceptions of 'how the world works' and are simultaneously attempting to deconstruct it, and then to explain it. The tricky thing is, in doing so, we have to examine the very structure of our schemas, and the presuppositions that support it...




    I am indeed a Materialist.
    Thus, the denial of any 'essence's.




    Perhaps in practice they take on such a state of mind, but when pressed on the issue, I imagine most would only be comfortable speaking in terms of probabilities [as all good scientists should...].




    See, as hinted at above, I really do think that most people, when 'extracted' from their practice, and pressed on the issue, would be in agreement with me.
    Conversely, I think it goes without saying that, in my daily life, I'm not this rigorous, or critical, in my thinking. If I were, I'd simply never get anything done...
    And again, we hit praxis vs gnosis.

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    My response to your materialist question above hinted at this.
    I think they're both forms of essentialism... which doesn't make sense..

    I think maybe you're right.
    And I don't necessarily disagree with you here on the problematic truth condition [within which the 'certainty' issue is wrapped..].
    Perhaps then we can isolate the truth condition as an element worth focusing on? I suspect there's more going on with the truth condition, than with any other. The problem being that this is a troublesome concept in and of itself.

    And to that I'll add, my conception most likely differs from the one being used here, for the most part.


    [I was going to hold off, but I'll explicate a bit on my conception of "truth".:


    There are two possible kinds of truth: a logical truth and a truth of fact.

    What the two share is that they are both judgments: assertive results of a process of reasoning.

    A logical truth is fairly evident: the result of a validly structured argument.

    A truth of fact is also the result of a validly structured argument, but in this case the argument is inductive, and its premisses are dynamic, and therefore probabilistically contingent.

    In both cases, truth is derived from experience, and is nothing beyond a judgment. There are no presumptions whatsoever concerning any objective notion, whether this refers to ontology or epistemology. Truth 'says' nothing whatsoever about our world, but 'speaks' only to our experiences of it.

    I hope this helps, at least in clarifying my position. Though, I suppose it could possibly further muddy things up...

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