How does a fact establish itself as knowledge?
When does a fact establish itself as knowledge?
More precisely, if knowledge is Justified-True-Belief, then how do facts fit into such a conceptual scheme for or of knowledge?
More precisely, if knowledge is Justified-True-Belief, then how do facts fit into such a conceptual scheme for or of knowledge?
Comments (132)
In what manner are facts true? As per the OP, if we assume that facts are subject to Gettier's justified true belief, then how are they justified, how are they true, and when are they subject to being 'beliefs'?
Is what is said above just as well the same as asking about when or how facts "truth-apt"?
I'd the above sounds flimsy then I might switch the question to asking how or when are facts truth apt?
How do you know that?
I don't understand. What makes the above true?
It's how the game is played.
Well, yes. That is a given. I was about to ask you something quizzical about fact-hood.
Do you care to talk about what makes a statement a "fact"?
But knowledge isn't justified true belief, it can't be defined by a strict set of criteria.
A fact is deemed to be a fact, when it is recognized by the relevant people to be so: those involved in the affair, experts in a specific field, etc.
You mention how the game is played...
Are there rules about when a statement can become a fact or attain the qualifier of "fact-hood"?
Nah. Gotta go build new beds for this year's spuds. They should already be in the ground.
Quoting Banno
On a similar vein, is this a synthetic a priori?
I'm glad for the good weather.
Yes it can. I see the cow on the field and assume it's a cow as long as I'm sane and sober.
NQuoting Manuel
Banno says that a fact is a true state of affairs if I'm inferring correctly. Do you agree?
Its definitionally true. A fact just is something that is true. Asking how we know facts are true is like asking how we know that bachelors are unmarried: its just what the term means.
And on the JTB story of knowledge, a fact becomes knowledge when A. it is believed B. it is true and C. justification is available (i.e. there are good and sufficient reasons for supposing it to be true).
Facts become knowledge when they are needed. When they are used. You can't know whether or not a piece of information has been adequately justified until you know what it will be used for. Until you know the consequences of being wrong. At that point - when you are making a decision about a future action, you have to determine whether or not you can use that information. When you decide you can, it is knowledge.
But surely facts aren't a priori true, but rather synthetically a priori true.
Quoting Seppo
What criteria does the justification adhere to for a fact to be "true"?
There's probably some terminological schemas where facts are defined as contingent, experiential (a posteriori) truths (and so, for instance, truths of mathematics and logic are not facts), but that's mostly semantics. But it is "a priori" or analytically true that facts are true, because again this is just truth by definition, a tautology.
Again, this isn't really a sensical question- a fact is true of necessity, else it isn't a fact. An untrue fact is like a married bachelor: a contradiction in terms. But what constitutes truth, or epistemic justification, is a separate (and rather big/complex) question.
You can be sane and sober and mistake a cow for another animal. Sane and sober people can hallucinate too and often do, such as seeing water down the road.
If you want to think about knowledge in terms of justified true belief, you can. But I don't see how it helps.
This is something I'm unsure of. Many users already stated that they consider facts to be true based out of necessity. You seem to be saying that facts are contingent on circumstances or situations that allow them to be true, am I reading you correctly?
I think that's the working question I have in regards to the truth of the matter, as to how facts are true based on the working criteria one has.
This is just another way of asking, "How or when are facts truth apt?"
But again this is just a matter of definition- facts are not only always truth-apt, they're always true. We might ask when or how, say, utterances are truth-apt (because utterances are not definitionally truth-apt whereas facts are), or we might ask when or how we know whether something is true or is a fact... but asking whether something is a fact is usually just to ask whether its true, and so we always know, trivially, that facts are true because that's just how the term "fact" is typically used.
Sorry to bother you; but, when does an utterance become a fact, then?
No bother. It would be a fact... when its true. So probably the more central question you're driving at is: what does it take for something to be true or be a fact, and how do we know when it is? And like I said, that's quite.. the... can... of... worms....
In either case, facts simply are and we assess in which circumstance we rightly say “are true.” Facts don’t establish themselves and have no agency to do so, nor are they evaluating truth. We establish something as a “fact” in our language and murmur “are true” in relation thereto, but the state-of-affairs that we may be (or may not be) making reference to when we discuss facts is entirely independent of our reference.
It is undeniable that there is uncertainty in everything we call a fact. No matter how well-established it is, it might turn out not to be true. I'm not talking about radical Cartesian uncertainty. I'm talking about common, regular old uncertainty. We always have to make our decisions based on imperfect knowledge. Which is the fundamental problem with JTB - justified true belief is talking about perfect knowledge, which doesn't exist. In every aspect of our lives we have to make decisions based on imperfect, uncertain knowledge.
Taking a somewhat different tack, here is one of my favorite quotes from Stephen Jay Gould:
In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.'
Knowledge can only ever be provisional.
I'm not sure if that answers your question.
Yes, I think it leads us to the assertion that it's a criterion consisting of being able to verify whether a statement is instantiated as being a truth or a fact. Im not sure how else to express this.
How would you characterize this relationship?
Unfortunately, I am a nihilist so….
On the upside, I like T Clark’s recent quote.
Quoting T Clark
So I’d say something is true when it would be counterproductive to say it is false, i.e. so contrary to the expected social/linguistic norm that denying the gold seal of my affirmation that a fact “is true” undermines my relationships. My problem is that I think my assent (provisional or otherwise) adds nothing to the conversation of “is true” because the state-of-affairs is what it is regardless. Do I believe “a fact is true”? Why invest so much emotion or mental energy? I’d go with, “Does acting as if appear to further my agenda more than acting as if not?” Indeed, I am known to say things like, “I know that Australia exists and it is true that Australia exists, but I don’t believe it.” (Sorry Banno). Like I get it, in our language game and bandying about of epistemic criteria, Australia makes the cut for all purposes but some perverse skeptical doubt. Never-the-less, I have no vested interest in the truth of Australia’s existence and until it matters, my actual assent is neither here nor there.
Or if we are to cut to the chase, I might very well end up saying that I subscribe to the deflationary theory of truth in so far as I am going to make sense of all of this truth talk. Appending “is true” to something is more like an amplifier/social cue than conveying any new semantic content. Simply asserting the proposition “X” is sufficient for my analysis.
So where are we left with your JTB on my view? Not in a very good place. Facts don’t matter, truth is meaningless, and belief is an aside. You may not wish to get me started on justification.
I don't hold the opinion that facts can be used pragmatically when needed, in case they are needed, and how they are needed. This simply seems to arrive at counterproductive opinions that there are things like alternate facts or meanings of dispositions towards facts.
Does that sound off to you, as it does to me?
So, what more can be said about facts wrt. to justification if you care to elaborate?
So, facts exist, as in, independently, out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered?
Frankly my views on it are anathema to a civilized audience.
Justification strikes me as an ethical evaluation, i.e. that given a particular set of circumstances (both with respect to X and the way in which we have decided X is acceptably established as true), one should believe X. So rather than doing the work of establishing knowledge from JTB by way of internal evaluation (“Do I have sufficient warrant to believe X” or “Do I have sufficient warrant to believe X is true?’), justification is actually the way in which we evaluate the claims of other people’s claims to knowledge. The reason that this distinction is important is because we simultaneously 1) recognize (at least currently) that belief formation is not necessarily (or perhaps even a little bit) the result of some higher order epistemic evaluation that compels belief and 2) demand that the only warrant for belief is higher order epistemic evaluation. This highlights a feature of justification - that it is a social phenomenon about mental coercion rather than an effort at accurate description about why an individual assents to a particular belief.
In essence, I am arguing that “knowledge” is about social conventions (yes, yet another entry in our language community) and the power to demand either that people accept or reject a particular belief. There is no content to discussions of knowledge aside from “you should agree with me” because I (or my reasoning) can compel you. Differently, arguments about epistemology are probably arguments about impotence of intellect.
T Clark’s contributions are (at least on first blush) a refreshing break from the tyranny of conventional JTB talk. Even if his ideas ultimately lead to a social construction of provisional knowledge which people should accept given the current warrant, it leaves room in the conversation for people to give warrant as needed to their particular circumstance where the consequences of being wrong become unacceptable for the individual. I get that the intellect (the power of the pen) is meant to be greater than the body (the power of the sword), and one can see the development of ideas about truth and knowledge independent of conventional power being worthy pursuits, but it is consequences outside of our individual control that end up playing the bigger role in our social expressions of belief, truth, justification, and knowledge.
Very very interesting. I would comment that epistemic evaluation is of import to the statement that facts are truth apt. Nobody but me is talking about the social ramifications of fact-hood by being truth-apt by for example political organizations or fact checkers.
And this happens in reality, boo-hoo! :nerd:
A statement will be a fact if and only if it is true.
Seems pretty straight forward.
Archaic language. Understanding that facts are true is part of learning the language game around facts and truth.
Well, no; it pays to be pedantic here. There are no untrue states of affairs; if it is the case, then it it true. So a fact is a state of affairs.
You say this as if it was a rule. A lot of talk over the past four years in my country of residence was the ambiguity between alternate-facts and actual facts. Searle talks about social institutions not stating facts but supporting how facts attain their status through the intersubjectivity of the individual interacting in society.
Would you agree with Searle?
Quoting Banno
But scope matters, doesn't it? As well as the epistemic content relevant to the breadth of the scope, no?
Does this change anything?
I'll deny that!
Which might say nothing more than that some fools will doubt anything just for kicks. It reamins to be shown that unreasonable scepticism has a purpose.
Do you doubt that you are reading this post? Evan as you read the post?
And do you doubt that there is a post to read? A forum for it to appear on?
But such things are odd bits of biography; stuff to tell your psychoanalyst. Those doubts will not prevent you from replying!
The price of doubting everything is incoherence.
But this is old stuff. Bread and butter philosophy.
More often than not.
SO, what do you make of the notion of an alternate fact?
Language games occur within a way of living; is that what you have in mind?
What would the alternative be? We make shit up? :chin:
Not entirely. When stating a fact, don't we have to consider the scope of the state of affairs?
Perhaps more to the point, are facts subject to sensibility?
No, I mean that if we assume that truth is something up for debate, then are there possibly differing senses of facts?
I assumed that was justification?
But, justification is truth-apt. Beliefs need not be.
Indeed, the word "fact" seems to be an endorsement of the correspondence theory of truth.
Might leave you to think on that. Did you mean "truth-apt" or "true"?
Truth-apt is capable of being either true or false.
Can one have beliefs that are not just not true, but not even able to be true or false?
I'm operating from the assumption that there isn't one theory of truth, be it (coherentist, correspondence, or pragmatic, neither deflationary) that encompasses the ability to determine the truth of a fact.
Quoting Banno
Yes, that is true. But, it seems to me that justification enables different theories of truth to determine whether an utterance is true or not. And, in my view to determine the fact-hood of an utterance.
Quoting Banno
I'm not quite sure what this means in total. Care to explain?
And seemingly, this is what Banno has been professing as the way to determine an utterance being a fact from a proposition...
Any theory/definition of truth in which the correspondence between what's truth-apt (propositions) and what we call reality is weakened or nonexistent is what some might call a make-believe world (the mind calling the shots instead of reality). Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
You said beliefs need not be truth-apt. That means there are beliefs that are not even able to be true or false.
That looks like nonsense.
Hence, beliefs are truth-apt.
Yes, like opinions, prejudices, bias... They all fall under the banner of 'beliefs', no?
Your opinion can't be true? Nor your beliefs?
So you count as true the Dreamtime of the "Aboriginals". For them its a fact.
Problem with facts are the fact that, all accounts and descriptions of occurrences is just interpretations, which call for verifications before qualifying as knowledge. (including this fact)
I'm ok with some of this, although I take a more pragmatic, less cynical, view. It's not that I want to "further my agenda." It's that I need to make decisions and to do that effectively, I need a good understanding of the uncertainty of the information I am using.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
This is not nihilism, it's solipsism. Not the same thing.
Ultimately, what value do facts and the truth have other than providing information to allow making effective decisions?
You're right. I overstated the case. In this case, that's a sin for someone who sometimes calls himself a pragmatist. I'll restate:
On a practical level, there is uncertainty in most of what we call facts. The important thing when making a decision is to understand the level of uncertainty and balance that with an understanding of the consequences of being wrong.
Facts are usually given to us as form of selective interpretations on the occurrences of the past in the world.
Not sure why you’d think that is solipsism and not nihilism. In this case, we are discussing epistemology and, so far as I know, epistemological nihilism makes the claim that no knowledge is possible while solipsism makes the claim that only one thing can be known. Where in my writing did I make the claim that something can be known, let alone the claim that only one thing can be known or that the only knowable thing is that my mind exists?
I long ago came to peace with the idea that non-referential indexicals and other tricks of language account for much of the problem of “my mind” and that my version of “mind” is both constructed and re-constructed so seamlessly that even if I conquered the idea that there was something to “I”, I’d hardly know what it is and would find that anything to be said about it is conjecture.
If knowledge is JTB, then facts carry the T bit of the matter. They are the 'it just is what it is" of this model.
In a pragmatic world facts are what we intend our conjectures to correspond to if indeed they are good approximations of truth.
I had never heard that term before. Thanks for the education.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Actually, for me, this is a more interesting entry into the subject of knowledge than the one in the OP. It highlights the issues I find most important. On the one hand, of course there is knowledge. Wait a second ..... See, I was just knowing that the capital of France is Paris. I guess your question is whether "valid knowledge" is a contradiction in terms. For me, that just brings us back to my contention that knowledge is inextricably tied up with decision making. Knowledge, truth, is a tool we use to make decisions and act. If I decide to go to the capital of France, I will definitely make my flight reservations to Paris and not Kabul.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I admit, when I first read your previous response to me, I thought your idea sounded like "I think therefore I am and that's all that is," which is pretty much solipsism. Your formulation sounds like solipsistic solipsism, or Solipsism^2. Nothing exists but me, and I don't exist either.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
And yet, you talk about yourself all the time. In my formulation, the fact that you act on the basis that "I" is a meaningful phenomenon means that it is.
That would be metaphysics (rather than epistemology) and I don’t talk about such things.
As for talking about myself, that is the way language works. It is simple enough to take for granted that “I” does some useful stuff when talking and that it makes for a convenient narrative device when trying to unify the noun that is telling then narrative, but we shouldn’t confuse acting as if for the sake of utility with either belief or argument.
Your point about Paris is pretty spot on. We fly to Paris when we want to see the Eiffel Tower and not to New York - not because we know that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris, but because our best information makes it far more likely to find it there (if at all) rather than New York. So “knowledge” in that sense is the sort of thing that assists us in increasing the likelihood of desired outcome. What is interesting about this is “knowing” where the Eifell tower is is a bit of intellectual slight of hand - what we know is that “acting as if” regarding certain pieces of information from certain sources increases our chances of desired outcome and that it is convenient to claim knowledge with respect to such pieces of information even if a particular piece of information is wholly unrelated to any outcome we may desire. In other words, knowledge is typically communal rather than personal and the most important a bits of information (especially these days) are necessarily communal and outside the ability of any single person to test and/or apply to their purpose.
Many, including me, include epistemology in metaphysics. It doesn't make sense for them to be separate. In my understanding, ontology and epistemology, what there is and how we know what there is, are inseparable.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
I'm not sure, but maybe you're making the same argument I am from the other side. I'm saying knowledge is information we use to make decisions and act. It seems like you're saying there is no knowledge, just the decisions and acts themselves. Or maybe not.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
Now you're just playing with language. Knowledge is provisionally verified information.
But I’ve never verified it, provisionally or otherwise. I’ve just accepted that the reports of others (in word or picture) have been helpful before.
As to metaphysics, I am dancing on the door step of the distinction between subjective knowledge and intersubjective knowledge (while totally avoiding objective knowledge). I am not, however, dealing with the issue. For what it is worth, I am a process epistemologist and unconcerned with the “what there is”, rather I am concerned with what is done. The object is never accessible or knowable regardless of your metaphysics and so it isn’t helpful as anything besides a linguistic convenience to even make reference to it.
This is a good description of my thoughts in regard to truth.
Quoting Ennui Elucidator
All language, thought, and conceptualization is "linguistic convenience to even make reference" to something.
In fact they are factually adequate perceptions of a metaphysical reality.
Why avoiding that? Do I perceive an unconscious fear towards objects?
Regarding my fear of objects, it is rarely the case that a thought will make my head explode, but a well swung hammer will. So if there is something for me to fear, I am confident that objects make the cut.
You perceive your opinions? So you perceive that the cat is on the mat, and subsequently you perceive that you are of the opinion that the cat is on the mat?
I perceive the cat in the outside world and the opinion on the inside world. Sometimes the coincide. Then its the truth.
All knowledge is the property of a conscious subject and nothing in the world has meaning in and of itself, but only in relation to a conscious subject or consciousness in general. A fact establishes itself as knowledge or meaning through the experience of ones biology, and experience is the effect of ultimate realities affect upon said biology. This is not infalliable, but, judgement is always true to its experience even when that experience is delusional or otherwise in disagreement with the physical world.
Why in the world not?
What are you asking:
Why isn't knowledge justified true belief or why can't it be defined by a strict set of criteria?
Both.
Mostly the latter, though.
This is a week old but:
Quoting Manuel
Quoting Artemis
Outside of mathematics, I don't know of a single word which has an easy definition. A dictionary will give you the most simple idea, but the concept is extremely expansive.
Is my favorite colour knowledge? Does the itch I feel in my arm knowledge? Is alchemy knowledge? Do I know that a comet won't hit me (or anyone) in the head today?
Etc. It soon becomes way too slippery for a strict definition, IMO.
I'm familiar with Gettier's work. But as far as I understand it, it really challenges more the concept of justification and notions of absolute and absolutely ascertainable truth.
Easy solution: you acknowledge fallibility when asserting knowledge claims. That doesn't mean you don't have strict criteria for "knowledge," but that you may or may not actual know what you think you know.
1. It is knowledge that you know what your favorite color is.
2. It is knowledge that you know your arm itches.
3. I'm not sure what you mean by alchemy.
4. I would say, you don't think it's impossible that a comet will hit someone in the head today, you just know the likelihood is so small that you may as well proceed as though it won't.
There's a few ways to interpret the paper and much subsequent literature on it. But the title is literally Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? He gives examples with coins and a friend in Barcelona, but I think it is correct in saying that JTB is not knowledge, it's not the rock solid definition as was assumed. Though Russell pointed this out in the 1920's, and was mostly ignored.
Quoting Artemis
That's good to me. It's a sound attitude to have.
It's not that we can't speak about knowledge or fallibility, it's just that these words don't have precise meanings. But we speak of things that lack precision very frequently. So it's not a problem for "knowledge" talk.
Quoting Artemis
The beliefs that came prior to modern chemistry. Turning lead into gold, life elixir etc. Now considered mostly pseudoscience, though maybe not all of it.
Gettier came up with an interesting challenge to naive interpretations of JTB, but the literal title of his paper still doesn't actually dismantle JTB. You'll need to give more arguments than just "well Russell said it too" I'm afraid.
Quoting Manuel
Which you still haven't thoroughly justified.
Quoting Manuel
Okay, I thought so. Simple: that which in Alchemy was justified and true belief is knowledge and that which was unjustified and/or untrue was not knowledge.
To phrase it another way: Gettier wasn't really showing that the formula doesn't work per se. He did the typical philosopher thing: "But what does it mean to be justified? And that's a sticky question indeed. But a wholly different question from the definition of knowledge itself.
Well, you've now introduced the idea of "naivety" to JTB's. Some some beliefs are naïve, hence not really JTB. What beliefs are naïve as opposed to non-naïve?
Quoting Artemis
I'm saying that knowledge does not have a strict definition, you say that it is JTB. I cannot give you a thorough justification of anything.
I can give you more examples: A person born 10,000 years ago has JTB that the Earth is the center of the Universe, that stars are diamonds and that when he dies he'll go back to a supreme being. That's surely JTB and knowledge for that time. We would not call it knowledge today.
What else? I mean, almost everything we thought of prior to enlightenment was false. Things don't go down because that's "the natural order", there are not corpuscles (miniscule concrete solid atoms), Kings do not have divine right, etc., etc.
Back then they were JTB, no question. Today we wouldn't say these things are knowledge. But what about our beliefs now? They could be rendered false in a few decades. So we would have no knowledge.
Quoting Artemis
It is.
Well, then I don't have much reason to believe your statement and neither do you.
Quoting Manuel
Why in the world would that be JTB? It's not true and it's not justified. Just because someone believes their beliefs to be true and justified doesn't make it so.
Quoting Manuel
Yep.
If something is fact, then there could be no alternative fact.
If there are multiple facts then which one is true?
Pragmatic use of a fact is therefore take it or leave it, use it or don't use it depending on whether that fact is useful or not rather true or false, because a fact already is true.
If that's how you take it, fine.
Quoting Artemis
Really?!?
You're born in the middle of a tribe, you see this vast ocean of things in the sky. You have no access to telescopes, books or anything else. It surely seems like the Earth is the center of the universe. It surely looks as if stars are diamonds in the sky. It's not unreasonable at all to believe this at that time. It would have been knowledge for them, I don't see why not.
If you don't have any recourse for better data, I don't see why you wouldn't have beliefs you take to be true. What's the alternative? Have no beliefs? That's just not possible.
Quoting Artemis
That makes no sense at all.
Because it isn't true. The earth is not actually the center of the universe and nothing they believe would make it so.
Not even Gettier challenged the idea that knowledge has to at least be objectively true!
Replying to both:
Quoting Manuel
and
Quoting Manuel
Sure it does. Once you realize that belief is not the same as knowledge. Belief is just one of the three components of knowledge. It is necessary but not sufficient.
Also, I find it interesting that you seem to be doing a 180 here from your statements in another thread:
Quoting Manuel
So which is it? Do you agree or disagree that truth is relative?
We can say that now. Back then they could not. It was the best theory they had for the time and not an unreasonable one at that, to me anyway. What would you expect them to say, "I believe the Earth is the center of the universe, but it is not true."
Quoting Artemis
I am saying that people who studied alchemy, for whatever purposes, do have knowledge. They are knowledgeable about alchemy. Sure, alchemy is not true of the of the mind-indpendent world, but I wouldn't say that someone who is knowledgeable of alchemy only has beliefs. That sounds too religious-y for me.
Likewise, a reader can know a lot about 1984 by Orwell. But this of course does not mean that 1984 happened mind-independelty.
Quoting Artemis
That's a tough one. Initially I'd say that science aims at mind-independent knowledge, not dependent on our opinions or tastes. At the same time, science is dependent on human beings, who discovered it. So an element of subjectivity remains.
If a person claims to use personal experience as an argument for a truth claim about the world, I wouldn't accept it. But I cannot deny to such people that the experience they had is not true, if they limit it to experience alone, I don't have a problem.
Truths about the world are relative in a very different sense than personal truths.
Their beliefs about the world back then may have been reasonable enough for the time, but since they weren't true, they weren't knowledge. A person can believe to know something and be wrong. Just because you believe one of your beliefs is knowledge doesn't mean it is knowledge.
THUS you embrace fallibalism: I believe that I know certain things, but I also acknowledge that I might be wrong. In fact, I don't know about which of my knowledge claims I am wrong, or to which degree, but I'm pretty certain lots of the things I believe to know are not true and therefore not knowledge.
You were right to suggest we must believe things to even function. And as such, I am stuck believing things that I can be reasonably certain will be disproven someway somehow someday. But it's still NOT knowledge.
Quoting Manuel
Well, we seem to agree mostly here.
Exactly: it IS true that a person has such and such experiences. But a person's experiences have no bearing on the reality of things. If someone took LSD and told you they saw a pink, invisible unicorn in your house, you can BOTH acknowledge that they TRULY had this mental experience AND that there is no actual pink, invisible unicorn. They do know that they had an experience of a pink, invisible unicorn. They do not know that there IS a pink, invisible unicorn.
In short: it's the literal difference between something just being a belief and knowledge. This is literally WHY the definition includes a) justified and b)true. Knowledge is a KIND of belief, but not all beliefs are knowledge.
I don't see what is gained by insisting that knowledge must be thought of as so and so. The way I see it if that if we continue insisting on these criteria, we face the prospects of saying "We never had any knowledge of anything ever", because the details will change.
If you want to think of knowledge in this way, because it's useful to you, then by all means keep using it.
I agree with you on fallibalism.
Quoting Artemis
As stated, no problems here, I agree. Well said. :up:
Quoting Artemis
I think it is more helpful to keep the distinction between mind-independent and mind-depedent reality instead of knowledge. The way you phrase it sounds weird to me.
Yeah, there is a difference between belief and knowledge. Belief is rather English specific, it has strong religious connotations.
Well, by being clear and precise we get closer to actual truth and actual knowledge, for starters. Why do we define anything? So that we can put together coherent thoughts, build upon those thoughts, and share them with others. If I say cat and I mean panda and we're trying to have a conversation about pet keeping, you're a)going to get pretty confused really fast and b) the conversation is not going to go anywhere useful... up until the point of course we recognize our verbal misunderstanding, chuckle a bit about how silly we sounded, and THEN continue talking with a shared vocabulary.
And yeah, lots of what we think we know is going to be proven outright wrong or tweaked along the way someday. You seem... more uncomfortable with that notion than you seem to have an actual reasons to dispute it? But discomfort isn't a good reason to discount something.
Quoting Manuel
Why? Seems to me those are merely adjectives to describe knowledge.
Quoting Manuel
In academic philosophy we don't use it with religious connotations.
As for other languages... well, I'm only bilingual and can't speak for the vast majority out there, but german shares the difference between "Glaube" and "Wissen." But more to the point, if other languages lack the specific ideas of "belief" versus "knowledge," then that alone doesn't change the validity of our definitions thereof. That is, after all, why languages borrow from another: to fill gaps and needs in their own language. English-speaking philosophy loves borrowing "Dasein" and "Weltanschauung" for example, and german philosophy likes "ecocriticism" and other english neologisms (german has a rich history in philosophy, so they didn't borrow much until more recently).
Quoting Manuel
Ah, the retreat back to relativism. "You do you" etc. But the slippery slope you mentioned earlier lies precisely IN relativism. Relativism inexorably leads down to nobody being able to make any truth claims or claims at all without getting themselves endlessly riddled in self-contradictions.
We can talk about cats and not pandas, no problem.
Quoting Artemis
I don't want to have a truth claim to what knowledge is such that if a person disagrees with my definition, I'll then say that they don't have any knowledge, when it is not clear what counts as knowledge or not. You seem to hold that knowledge is true by virtue of its relation to the world as well as it being JTB.
The first is what science seeks to do, always subject to revision, the second is more fruitfully thought of, for me, as claims about mind-dependce vs mind-independence.
I want to say that novelists, historians and philosophers can be very knowledgeable, as they are, without arbitrarily limiting the use of the word "knowledge" to mean, what exists absent us.
That does not mean that some people do not have more knowledge than others, they often do, or that what one counts as knowledge is on shaky grounds as truth claims, this happens frequently.
Quoting Artemis
Sure, quite true.
I only know Spanish, besides English, and belief in Spanish is "creencia", almost always used for religious arguments. As far as I'm aware, it's very similar in French too.
I take this to suggest that our use of the word "belief" is an English peculiarity, which might not be the best word to discuss this issues. We could use "ideas" or "thoughts" instead and avoid religious connotations.
Quoting Artemis
I very much dislike, and have said so numerous times here almost all French Postmodernists, I think calling Rorty a pragmatist is an insult to Peirce, James and Dewey.
I believe in science, though very much dislike scienticsm.
The "you do you" is meant as a suggestion of practicality, as we don't appear to be convincing each other, though we agree in some areas, such as in fallibalism and illusions.
Wittgenstein looks at belief in the Philosophical Investigations. He lands on the claim that belief operates like a hypothesis: "I believe it's going to rain". The other sense of belief is a strong feeling, like emphatic confidence: "I really believe in our chances for a win today." I think the way that belief is used in philosophy is like an opinion, which, structurally, appears to be individual: "In my opinion, ..." but also, restricted to certain topics: politics, moral moments, art. We do not have facts in these areas, nor is our opinion capable of being a fact, however justified. That does not mean that there aren't things like authority, expertise, norms, expectations, judgement, criticism, conceptual structure, etc. It's just that an opinion on these subjects will never become a fact.
Cavell says in The Claim of Reason that the thing that gives a fact its "factness", its certainty, its universality, its repeatability, its completeness of application, is not its justification nor its correspondence to the world, but the method of science. I'm not heavily-studied in philosophy of science, but there is science done well, and done poorly, as well as "soft" sciences (like economics) which, although they involve math, do not offer repeatable conclusions. This lack of reference is why we can be wrong about facts, why our world must only be a paradigm (Kuhn) though a fact is a fact nevertheless (until it is not).
First of all, philosophers spend a great deal of time trying to get their vocabulary right. I don't even understand how you (as someone who seems to have spent some time in academia) would come to dismiss the need for a clear and precise vocabulary in philosophy. Doesn't mean you can't revise the vocabulary, but you absolutely must be clear about what you're saying.
Additionally, an idea or a thought is not the same as a belief. You don't believe all the thoughts and ideas you have. Belief is a kind of thought or idea, namely one you think is true.
You can't both agree that we should be clear whether we are speaking of cats or pandas AND dismiss the need to be clear what we mean by "knowledge" or any other term in philosophy.
Second of all, JTB doesn't limit knowledge to mean what exists absent us. Knowledge is a particular kind of belief. Therefore it is very much something which can only exist in the mind. But it is a belief that is only then properly labeled as knowledge when and if it corresponds with the world "absent us" as you say.
I gotta admit, I'm becoming disappointed with this conversation. Based on the academic background you've suggested in your posts and profile, I'm not sure why there's this confusion about such really basic distinctions. I'd be curious to see a breakdown of your schooling, the courses you took, versus the kind of courses required in American and German colleges.
Minds route data from facts through the order of knowledge which leaves a perfect or imperfect signature of each fact.
What's your knowledge of ice? You would then say what signature you have for ice; concise or not.
The signatory is mind, who scribes data through in order around its presupposed knowledge-cast, different things produce different signatures by taking different routes.
I actually disagree with you, no surprise. If these terms are so well defined, why the heck do people argue about them all the time? Do you see physicists arguing about what energy means or what inertia means?
Quoting Artemis
I didn't say that an idea or though is the same as belief, I said it could be substituted for the term idea or thought. Then we can ask are all my thoughts justified? No. Are my ideas correctly representing the external world? Probably not.
If that's what you say belief is, fine.
I think it's pretty evident that there's a difference between cats, pandas and knowledge.
My thesis was on Galen Strawson and Noam Chomsky and to a lesser extent Tallis. Though I also know a bit about Haack and Schopenhauer.
By focusing on Strawson and Chomsky, I'm already disagreeing with a good portion of how philosophers use certain terms, "reference", "materialism", "representation", etc. That's part of what makes it interesting to me.
I don't have an obligation to entertain you, if you don't find my answers satisfying, that's your problem, not mine.
I don't find your arguments persuasive on this topic.
Go ahead and define these terms as you wish. I've had plenty of interesting conversations here with all kinds of people. But it's not going to please or be instructive to everybody, that's par for the course.
Quoting Manuel
First of all: yes, even physicists and other scientists argue about terminology.
Second of all: Why? because ideas are expressed through terms and most philosophers are aware that we must get the vocabulary right in order to get the ideas right... otherwise they wouldn't bother arguing about them.
Quoting Manuel
All you're saying here is that we can substitute the word panda for cat even though they're not the same.
Quoting Manuel
I'm not actually trying to be dismissive or negative, though of course criticism almost invariably comes across as such. Instead, I'm just stating a fact: if you don't understand the terms, then of course you can't be persuaded by the argument, because you can't understand the argument without understanding the terms. That's --oh the irony!-- both the impediment to you understanding me as well as the core issue I'm trying to explain. C'est la vie.
Oh well. You can lead a horse to water, as they say... someday, when you've wrapped your head around the basics, let me know! Then I'd be interested to see if you have some better arguments for your critiques of JTB.
The physicist is not interested in the definition, they are interested in the phenomena. Most physicists I know don't spend time worrying about the definition of energy or gravity.
Words give you an approximation on what experience informs you of, but it's not mathematics.
Quoting Artemis
You're insisting that the terms you use are the ones that are de facto true or should be evident. By that standard, using your own words I could say that: Quoting Artemis
So knowledge is whatever you say it is and since I don't agree that that's knowledge, then we can't have a conversation, therefore you are correct.
That's a tautology.
We won't profit anymore here. But thanks for the conversation.
I can't help myself: that's not an example of a tautology. It's an example of begging the question.
:up:
Rubbish. It is at present true that the cat is sitting on my guitar amp. It won't be in a minute or two.
There are no false facts. If you think there are, all you gotta do is show one.
Hence, all facts are true.
The spuds went in, but took a while to sprout. One last frost knocked 'em back a bit, but they are nearly ready for a bit of bandicooting.
It seems that the novel use you propose is on the rise.
Do you have some background that might support your view? Where did you derive it from? If it is becoming a common error I'd like to examine it in the Wiki article.
You are taking a use that is specific to certain methodologies of science and seeking to aplly it generally. The paragraph you cite says as much.
For the rest of us, that twice two is four is a fact.
But I'm concerned for you, if you think "That which is true, in respect of being true, is always universally and necessarily true".
You see, that just looks to be a perversely obtuse reply.
There are truths that are neither necessary nor universal. Like that the cat is now siting on the table next to the keyboard.
Truth is a simple thing. Stop overthinking it.
I'm hesitant to interject ( :wink: ), but it seems to me that you and Banno are talking about two different situations. If the cat is on the mat at some time it is true that he is on the mat at that time. Once he moves it is no longer true that he is on the mat, but it does remain true that he was on the mat at the time that he was on the mat. So, perhaps you are not really disagreeing?
Every fact is historical.
I've no way of making sense of that.
Is that all? So what does that have to do with TIm's very odd view about truths:
Quoting tim wood
Sure, truths are indexical. So are facts.
This is starting to look silly.
There's some ambivalence in philosophical use of the word "fact". I prefer to use the term primarily to mean something like an objective state of affairs, whether or not anyone has grasped that state of affairs. In keeping with such usage, "judgments of fact" may be distinguished from judgments of taste or value, for instance; though generally a judgment of taste or value may be repackaged as a judgment of fact about (minimally) the one who makes that judgment of taste or value. General statements ("Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level"; "Horses are warm-blooded") require a more sophisticated treatment, but ultimately must be understood as "covering" or otherwise related to a wide range of particular claims corresponding to particular states of affairs.
Our judgments of fact may be true or false. A false judgment of fact purports to assert or entail a fact, but is at least partially incorrect in what it proposes with respect to a (putative) objective state of affairs. A true judgment of fact correctly characterizes a corresponding state of affairs.
I wouldn't say that facts "establish themselves" as knowledge. Rather, things like us acquire knowledge of matters of fact; act on the basis of our knowledge of matters of fact; more or less aptly express and evaluate knowledge claims regarding matters of fact; and so on.
Simple cases of "noninferential knowledge acquisition" can be quite straightforward. Ordinarily I know there's an apple on the table when (or "because") I see an apple on the table. In ordinary circumstances, the experience of seeing an apple functions as a reliable justification for claims like "That is an apple" and for (implicit or explicit) knowledge claims like "I know that there is an apple on the table".
Quoting Shawn
Justified true belief is a most useful model for analyzing and articulating knowledge claims and for analyzing and describing the corresponding "states" of knowing.
In simple cases like that indicated above, "facts" fit into the model as the objective states of affairs that are grasped by the one who "knows them" -- i.e., the one who has a justified true belief about them.
Much professional criticism of justified true belief as a model for knowledge is directed at more complicated cases that lead us to refine our conception of adequate justification in knowledge claims; and these considerations may also suggest refinements in our views about careful articulation of reliable knowledge claims. I mean, for example, discussion of the notorious range of cases known as Gettier problems.
So far as I know, such criticism is relevant to a general account of our "grasp" of the facts in any given case, but gives no special reason to revise our general conception of "facts". In other words, these problems don't lead us to revise our account of what facts "are"; but only to revise our account of what it means to say that someone knows a fact.
The very fact that u recognize that SOME aspect of subjectivity MUST remain, is awesome! Reminds me very much of Mercury drowning in his own Reflection.... From there the connecting story is the Phoenix Rising, to be Scorched by the Sunne, die/Dissolve and be Reborn.
Truth, my friend, is a Sword.
But Truth is also the Experience of that Sword. That is why witness testimony is so strong. If ones see's it, it is counted as Fact. But facts change, due to our subjective experiences running OUR Show.
I have mentioned before that the very Experience of Solidity in any way whatsoever, attests to there being an underlying Vein of Truth, which the lying image uses to prop up it's lying kingdoms.
But I've said too much.
:up: :100:
Maybe independent of any specific knower, but not of being known or knowledge in general. I think that is how Peirce would describe the relation.
To me, they seem essentially synonymous or mutually dependent terms, maybe corresponding to the noesis-noema relationship.
I am unsure how to read your reply. Rhetoric can be problematic in philosophy.