Knowledge and Belief

[Sonofason]

So you have no opinion as to whether there are or aren't unicorns.

But you claim we can know whether or not there are unicorns?

Sorry. Sometimes I get completely lost.

It wasn't very long ago that electrons were discovered and the word for electrons was developed. Before that time, do you think there were opinions as to whether or not electrons exist?

Do you believe that, since people had no direct evidence of the existence of electrons, that opinions could have existed suggesting that electrons exist? If not, why were they searched for? And how were such non-existing things discovered?

Do you not think that, prior to the discovery of the existence of electrons, that a claim of being able to know whether or not electrons exist would be unjustified? If such a claim is unjustifiable, then why do we now know that electrons exist?

 

[Falvlun]

To add "belief of" to "truth" does affect things. It's the third example, indicating the case where truth is undetermined (in this case, the truth of truth).

But truth isn't undetermined.

That didn't compute.

All I was saying that even if somebody, like me for instance, claims that knowledge is ultimately defined by our personal certainty regarding the truth of a particular claim, rather than the actual truth of a particular claim (since such truth is unknowable), then that does not mean that it is impossible for the claims we call knowledge to match up with the actual truth.

But "Unicorns do not exist" is only a statement of knowledge if it's actually true that unicorns do not exist. Your decision to consider it knowledge or declare it knowledge isn't what makes it knowledge, and your certainty of belief isn't what makes it knowledge.

I'm just re-iterating a position, unwilling to make my arguments again from the start.

Understood. I just cannot see how such a position, attractive though it may be, can be put to practical use.

 

[Falvlun]

Here we have the same problem you eluded to in your next statement. How do we "know" they were correct? Can we know anything for certain? If I think I left my wallet on the table, and I go to the table and find the wallet on the table, did I truly find my wallet on the table? Is it an exact replica of the wallet I thought was my wallet? Am I delusional? Perhaps I'm dreaming.

It is for this reason that I believe we should be as honest and clear as we possibly can. I believe that the atheist who says gnostically there is no God is lying to himself and to everyone else. He doesn't have any knowledge at all to say emphatically that he "knows" there is no God. If I see my wallet on the table, at least, I can say, that I can see it there. I have some evidence of it. The atheist has no evidence that there is no God. There is no evidence to support a belief, especially a belief based on knowledge that no God exists. It is dishonest at best. That is my opinion. The atheist not only has no evidence to show others, he has no personal evidence that there is no God.

The theist can claim to have an experience of God. He may not be able to show others any evidence of his experience, but the experience is at least evidence for himself to support his belief that God exists.

Your first paragraph is in stark contrast to the following two. You start out making a case for why it is difficult to ever know that we truly know.

You then ignore that, and claim that as long as you have some evidence, that's good enough for a claim of knowledge.

Is that your position? That some evidence in support of a claim is how we determine whether we know something?

We must employ honesty. If you know, say you know. If you don't know, don't say you know.

Of course. But how do I know if I know?

Or, what if we both claim to know opposite things? How do we figure out who truly knows?

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

It wasn't very long ago that electrons were discovered and the word for electrons was developed. Before that time, do you think there were opinions as to whether or not electrons exist?

I doubt it. Certainly not among regular folk.

Do you believe that, since people had no direct evidence of the existence of electrons, that opinions could have existed suggesting that electrons exist?

Sure. Someone was probably theorizing about them.

If not, why were they searched for? And how were such non-existing things discovered?

I dont' know anything about the history of electron discovery. Sorry. You'll have to read up on it.

Do you not think that, prior to the discovery of the existence of electrons, that a claim of being able to know whether or not electrons exist would be unjustified?

Probably. Unless it was Einstein doing the claiming. So far as I know, electon weren't really 'discovered' to exist so much as inferred to exist. It's not like they could be seen back then or maybe even now. But their existence can be inferred. At least, that would be my guess about it. I am not an actual electrician.

If such a claim is unjustifiable, then why do we now know that electrons exist?

I don't know that electrons exist. You'll have to choose some other example.

(And maybe try to let me in on what you're trying to demonstrate or prove with your line of questioning? It might save us some time.)

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Or, what if we both claim to know opposite things? How do we figure out who truly knows?

Whichever one of you is right... that's the one who truly knows.

(Seriously. I've had people give me that answer to your question again and again.)

 

[Sonofason]

I doubt it. Certainly not among regular folk.



Sure. Someone was probably theorizing about them.



I dont' know anything about the history of electron discovery. Sorry. You'll have to read up on it.



Probably. Unless it was Einstein doing the claiming. So far as I know, electon weren't really 'discovered' to exist so much as inferred to exist. It's not like they could be seen back then or maybe even now. But their existence can be inferred. At least, that would be my guess about it. I am not an actual electrician.



I don't know that electrons exist. You'll have to choose some other example.

(And maybe try to let me in on what you're trying to demonstrate or prove with your line of questioning? It might save us some time.)

Willamena had written:

I don't have an opinion one way or the other on things about which I'm not informed.

To which you responded:

So you have no opinion as to whether there are or aren't unicorns.

But you claim we can know whether or not there are unicorns?

Sorry. Sometimes I get completely lost.

I suppose I failed in my attempt to show you that if you have no evidence that something exists, it is not sufficient reason to believe that it doesn't exist.

I suppose I also failed in my attempt to show you that if there is even the slightest possibility that something does exist, it is quite reasonable to believe that if they do, we can know it.

If something does not in fact exist, there is no reason to think it never will exist. Even if something doesn't exist today, it might exist tomorrow. And that which you cannot show to exist today, one may be able to show existent tomorrow. And if there is something that does not exist today, it is quite possible that it has existed in the past. The fact that one cannot presently show that something has existed in the past is not sufficient reason to suggest that we cannot one day show that it has indeed existed in the past.

 

[Falvlun]

That conventional usage assumes that "I know X" entails "X is true".

Ah. I get what you're saying. I think this may be an interesting breakdown of communication.

Yes. Knowledge is a word for true claims. When I say "I know X" I am intending my listener to interpret that as "X is true."

I think perhaps I am making a "meta" argument, when I said that "Your position constrains knowledge to actual truth, which defies usage".

I am going a level deeper and asking "Are the things we are claiming to be true actually true? And if so, how do we know that they are?"

It turns out that we really can't know whether something is true with absolute certainty. Facts get overturned by future information, evidence, and public opinion. People will claim to know mutually exclusive things, such as "god exists" and "god does not exist". These are the issues I am pointing out when I say that your position requires us to defy usage.

So, when we say that something is true, what do we really mean?

We mean something more like "I am very certain that this claim correlates with reality." Or else "I have this, and this, and this reason to support that this claim correlates with reality", which of course, just boils down to "I have been convinced..." which boils down to "I am certain..."

So, if "I know X" is saying "X is true" and "true" is saying "something I am very certain about...", then that means that knowledge is saying "X is something I am very certain about."

And there you have it.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I suppose I failed in my attempt to show you that if you have no evidence that something exists, it is not sufficient reason to believe that it doesn't exist.

Is that what you were trying to do? Yeah, I didn't get that from what you wrote.

I don't even think of 'belief' as a Yes/No thing... as you and most other seem to do. My thought is a bit more complex.

I suppose I also failed in my attempt to show you that if there is even the slightest possibility that something does exist, it is quite reasonable to believe that if they do, we can know it.

I guess so. I don't even know what you are trying to say right now. If there is the slightest possibility that unicorns exist, then we can know that unicorns exist??

People can know anything they like. Some know that aliens live on the far side of the moon. I can't stop people from knowing stuff.

If something does not in fact exist, there is no reason to think it never will exist. Even if something doesn't exist today, it might exist tomorrow.

You mean that if I mill some flour and bake a cake, the cake might exist tomorrow even though it doesn't exist today?

I have to say that I find your teachings to be somewhat elementary. Don't mean to offend or anything.

And if there is something that does not exist today, it is quite possible that it has existed in the past.

So I should believe in dinosaurs, even though they don't exist today? That's what you're telling me?

But why are you telling me such a thing? It seems very curious.

The fact that one cannot presently show that something has existed in the past is not sufficient reason to suggest that we cannot one day show that it has indeed existed in the past.

Yikes. You mean that if we discover a new dinosaur fossil, that shows that a dinosaur probably once existed to match that fossil? And so we can now show that that dinosaur indeed existed in the past... whereas before we found the fossil we could NOT show that that dinosaur once existed in the past?

What on earth could you be trying to actually say to me. That's the question of the hour, I think.

 

[Falvlun]

No, given the information you had available at the time- your usage was genuine and honest, if incorrect. It simply turns out that you did not know that after all.

This is very problematic to me. Don't you see how this makes any claim of knowledge completely untrustworthy? It completely defeats the purpose of the word.

I'm saying that, e.g. the existence of Bigfoot is not contingent upon anyone recognizing or acknowledging the existence of Bigfoot, that the distance of Mars from the Sun is not contingent upon anyone recognizing or acknowledging it being such-and-such a distance, and so on. I would have hoped this was an entirely uncontroversial distinction. I am simply saying that the existence of knowledge is not contingent upon any ability to infallibly recognize it as such.

I agree with you that actual states of being exist whether we know them or not. I think you mis-speak when you call that the "existence of knowledge". An actual Bigfoot walking through a forest isn't knowledge. Knowledge is something that happens in the minds of Homo sapiens. If knowledge doesn't exist in a mind, then it doesn't exist.

As I argued either here or the other related thread regarding truth, all we really need here is a certain model with some fairly uncontroversial premises; that the world is a certain way/that things are the case, and that we can talk about or refer to the world via language. The conjunction of these two premises give us truth- the correspondence of language to the world. Add epistemic justification and you have knowledge. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it strikes me as the best model for our epistemic practices regarding the world and our linguistic representations thereof.

Just gonna point out that I'm not really a solipsist. I do believe that the world exists as we experience it.

But I still think it's for the best if we all realize that when we use words like "fact", "knowledge" and the holy "truth", that what we really mean is "I am very certain about this claim".

No, I stated that such a case would NOT be knowledge.

From your post:

If I believe that my wallet is on the table, because I remember putting it there or saw it sitting there and have no reason to think its been moved (i.e. arguably adequate warrant for this case), but suppose I've been reading too much philosophy and am concerned whether it wasn't a dream or a hallucination- but I am right and it is on the table, it would seem like I knew it was there after all.

From what I'm reading, you're saying that, despite your philosophical misgivings, as long as you are right, then you could claim to have known it.

Really? Based on some extremely nebulous and poorly-founded (and ultimately incoherent and self-defeating, if we believe Wittgenstein's private language argument) doubts?

If I were someone who ascribed to such beliefs, then yes, I think that "I was unsure" would have been more truthful than "I knew", despite the fact that I turned out to be right.

 

[Sonofason]

enaidealukal had written:

No, given the information you had available at the time- your usage was genuine and honest, if incorrect. It simply turns out that you did not know that after all.

This is very problematic to me. Don't you see how this makes any claim of knowledge completely untrustworthy? It completely defeats the purpose of the word.

Falvlun wrote:

I agree with you that actual states of being exist whether we know them or not. I think you mis-speak when you call that the "existence of knowledge". An actual Bigfoot walking through a forest isn't knowledge. Knowledge is something that happens in the minds of Homo sapiens. If knowledge doesn't exist in a mind, then it doesn't exist.

I agree that knowledge is something which exists in the mind. I would not say however that it only exists in human minds. Animals have knowledge as well, in my opinion. Do you not think that a bird that has become aware of a stalking cat has knowledge of a threat, the threat being the cat? Of course it has knowledge of the threat and the cat.

Falvlun wrote:

Just gonna point out that I'm not really a solipsist. I do believe that the world exists as we experience it.

Thank goodness for that.

Falvlun wrote:

But I still think it's for the best if we all realize that when we use words like "fact", "knowledge" and the holy "truth", that what we really mean is "I am very certain about this claim".

So then how do you discern that which is actual truth from that which is a perceived truth? How do you distinguish between that which is true knowledge and that which is false knowledge? I believe that we are trying to draw a distinction between knowledge that is not based on truth, and knowledge that is based on truth. If I claim to have knowledge that something is true, and it turns out that I was in fact wrong, then I certainly could not have had any sort of knowledge in truth. If I say I have a potato, and it turns out I have a tomato, then I never had a potato in the first place. The knowledge I though I had was not true knowledge. What is the benefit of false knowledge, so we can blabber it about just to hear ourselves blabber? What good is knowledge if it is not true knowledge?

Falvlun wrote:

From what I'm reading, you're saying that, despite your philosophical misgivings, as long as you are right, then you could claim to have known it.

It is possible that when some one puts forth a claim of knowledge that turns out to be true that the person actual knew for a fact that the claim is true. It could also be that the person was lucky in that his claim was true, for it is quite possible that he did not have any such knowledge to know for a fact that his claim was true. Some claims are a result of belief. Some claims are a result of true knowledge.

Falvlun wrote:

If I were someone who ascribed to such beliefs, then yes, I think that "I was unsure" would have been more truthful than "I knew", despite the fact that I turned out to be right.

I agree, honesty is a virtue.

 

[Willamena]

But you claim we can know whether or not there are unicorns?

I didn't claim that. I claimed we can know some things, not anything.

 

[Willamena]

Understood. I just cannot see how such a position, attractive though it may be, can be put to practical use.

It's put to practical use every moment of everyday. Even you use it, whether wittingly or not. We cannot help but use it. JTB isn't a theory that proposes a definition for knowledge, it's a description of what actually occurs when we identify something as knowledge, based on a particular framework for understanding how belief and knowledge relate.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

I didn't claim that. I claimed we can know some things, not anything.

OK, what kind of things can we know? Can you list some examples?

 

[Willamena]

I am going a level deeper and asking "Are the things we are claiming to be true actually true? And if so, how do we know that they are?"

"Actual," "fact" and "truth," and any other terms we can come up with, we came up with--we did, here, in our minds, sitting and thinking about the world. And it's from here that we housed these terms to be meaningful to us.

If by "actual truth" you imply something beyond what the mind can grasp and understand, you defy what these terms actually were made to mean.

It turns out that we really can't know whether something is true with absolute certainty. Facts get overturned by future information, evidence, and public opinion. People will claim to know mutually exclusive things, such as "god exists" and "god does not exist". These are the issues I am pointing out when I say that your position requires us to defy usage.

So, when we say that something is true, what do we really mean?

We mean something more like "I am very certain that this claim correlates with reality." Or else "I have this, and this, and this reason to support that this claim correlates with reality", which of course, just boils down to "I have been convinced..." which boils down to "I am certain..."

So, if "I know X" is saying "X is true" and "true" is saying "something I am very certain about...", then that means that knowledge is saying "X is something I am very certain about."

And there you have it.

When we say something is certain it means something different than that it is true, "certain" has a built-in dubiousness. Even if we claim 100% certainty, it hasn't lost that ability to be doubted. Truth means that but without the doubt. So two words are useful.

"Certainty" means conviction (convinced) that something is the case. "Truth" means we are stating that it is the case. That's the difference.

 

[Willamena]

OK, what kind of things can we know? Can you list some examples?

My eye glasses are a bit dirty, I need to find my cleaning cloth so that I can see the monitor.

I have a 46" TV acting as my monitor. My nephew set it up for me, as a second monitor beside my computer's.

It's time to feed the cat. I'd better do that before supper, because I'll be busy with laundry after.

Is that enough examples?

 

[adi2d]

My eye glasses are a bit dirty, I need to find my cleaning cloth so that I can see the monitor.

I have a 46" TV acting as my monitor. My nephew set it up for me, as a second monitor beside my computer's.

It's time to feed the cat. I'd better do that before supper, because I'll be busy with laundry after.

Is that enough examples?

Now I feel guilty. I'm just watching football.







Not guilty enogh to do anything. But a little guilty

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

My eye glasses are a bit dirty, I need to find my cleaning cloth so that I can see the monitor.

I have a 46" TV acting as my monitor. My nephew set it up for me, as a second monitor beside my computer's.

It's time to feed the cat. I'd better do that before supper, because I'll be busy with laundry after.

Is that enough examples?

But you see the monitor fine. You are writing me a message after all.

In fact your monitor is 48 inches. And the cat is not hungry.

So what is true and knowable?

 

[Willamena]

So what is true and knowable?

Everything.

Even lies. If they weren't truthfully lies, we couldn't know them.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

But you see the monitor fine.

This is the RF equivalent of "I know you are but what am I". If she can't see the monitor because her glasses are dirty, something hardly unfamiliar to anyone who wears glasses, simply replying "yeah-huh, you can so" isn't a very convincing reply. Sometimes your glasses get dirty and it makes it hard to see the monitor. Hard to be mistaken about this when they sit all of an inch in front of your face.

In fact your monitor is 48 inches.

Once again, "I know you are but what am I". Even if the monitor is 48 inches and not 46 (and clearly we're bound to take her word for it over yours- she is sitting in front of it, after all), this is hardly anything beyond our perceptual or cognitive powers. If we don't know how big it is, we grab a tape measure. You're trying to raise doubts where doubts cannot coherently be raised. Even here, you're undermining yourself insofar as language, the means you're trying to communicate your doubts and your criticisms (insofar as you even try to do this at all, rather than sort of hint and allude to them), presupposes publicity- that there is a shared and public world of life in which language is situated.

And the cat is not hungry.

Whether we can ever truly know the "inner life" of non-linguistic humans and animals is arguable, but she didn't say that the cat was hungry. She said it was time to feed the cat- most pet owners feed their pets on a set schedule. At 5 o'clock, its time for me to feed my dog. I know this, I can hardly be mistaken about it since I'm the one who decided when "the time to feed the dog" is- 5 o'clock. Or are you suggesting we can never know what time it is? I guess its positively a miracle that we ever manage to catch the evening news or get to work on time since we can only ever guess what time it is?

So what is true and knowable?

A better question is what isn't true and knowable. We can all rattle off a pretty long list of things that are true and knowable, and most of them quite trivial.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

This is the RF equivalent of "I know you are but what am I". If she can't see the monitor because her glasses are dirty, something hardly unfamiliar to anyone who wears glasses, simply replying "yeah-huh, you can so" isn't a very convincing reply.

I see you miss the whole point of my message. I'm not entirely surprised. Those who crave to know the truth will rarely acknowledge variance of opinions.