Is omniscience coherent?
If you're omniscient, then you must also know that you are. Kind of comes with the territory.
By contraposition, if you don't know that you're omniscient, then you're not. Makes sense.
I, for one, can safely say that I don't know if I'm omniscient or not, as a matter of certainty I mean.
So, I guess I'm not, I can't be, as per above.
But then I actually know that I'm not, with certainty, since I just found that out deductively.
I know there are things unknown to me.
Which is contrary to me safely not knowing in the first place.
Contradiction, it seems? What went wrong?
As an aside, of course I'm not omniscient, that would be a rather bold assertion.
Also, there are a few ways in which omniscience leads to an infinite regress.
(Also check Fitch's knowability paradox.)
By contraposition, if you don't know that you're omniscient, then you're not. Makes sense.
I, for one, can safely say that I don't know if I'm omniscient or not, as a matter of certainty I mean.
So, I guess I'm not, I can't be, as per above.
But then I actually know that I'm not, with certainty, since I just found that out deductively.
I know there are things unknown to me.
Which is contrary to me safely not knowing in the first place.
Contradiction, it seems? What went wrong?
As an aside, of course I'm not omniscient, that would be a rather bold assertion.
Also, there are a few ways in which omniscience leads to an infinite regress.
(Also check Fitch's knowability paradox.)
Comments (52)
Kp = I know that p (is true)
And let's define the following proposition
? = I'm omniscient
Then, by definition of omniscience, we must have that
? ? K?
and by contraposition
¬K? ? ¬?
I can safely say that I don't know if I'm omniscient or not, I don't know either way
¬K? ? ¬K¬?
so, both of these hold
¬K?
¬K¬?
From not knowing, i.e.
¬K?
I find that I'm not omniscient
¬?
which I then know, since I deduced it, i.e.
K¬?
but this is contrary to ¬K¬? above, thus a contradiction
I did know, but I also knew that posting anyways and asking for it to be deleted was better than not posting it in the first place in order to elicit your insightful response. :)
Quoting jorndoe
Quoting Cavacava
This seems to be a well formed proposition, yes?
Quoting jorndoe
That issue is avoided by the condition of omniscience. If I know everything, then I would know I was omniscient. Assuming I'm interested in being truthful, then I would identify myself as omniscient.
A possible issue for omniscience, in practice, is limited window of any instance of knowledge. Since each instance of understanding is a specific instance, which can be found nowhere else, the experience of knowledge is always limited. If I'm thinking about a tree, then I'm not thinking about yesterday's game of cricket. One cannot think of everything all at once, even if they were to have a consciousness which held all the ideas "at once (each idea is still a separate moment of their existence)."
Though, it's fair to say that our notion of knowledge probably accounts for this issue anyway. When we think of knowledge as a sum, we aren't talking about what someone knows in an immediate moment, but rather to information they have stored, which they can recall when prompted. In this sense, there is no logical barrier to omniscience. For someone to be able to recall any information is logically coherent.
Per the link provided:
Quoting Wikipedia entry for Fitch's paradox of knowability
A limiting condition of omniscience is knowing all that is knowable. If one's own state of omniscience is unknowable, then one can be omniscient and not know one is by virtue of the unknown truth of one's own omniscience being unknowable.
I'm curious: if omniscience is knowing all the members in the set of knowable propositions, can the set of knowable propositions be an empty set? Can a being be omniscient by virtue of not knowing anything? It seems that the set of knowable propositions must at least contain tautologies. Is there anything we can put in the set, or remove from the set?
Why aren't you certain that you're not omniscient? You could claim that this is because you, as a human, can't be certain of anything... But where do you derive that? Because, if you derive the premise that you can't be certain of anything from your own non-omniscience, then the argument is circular.
Additionally, I think there may be a problem with the certitude of the conclusion. The fact that something was arrived at deductively isn't a guarantor of certainty. The conclusion of a deductive argument is only as certain as the premise. If my car is red, then "My car is in the parking lot outside" implies "There is a red car in the parking lot outside," and this is deductively valid. But my premise - that my car is in the parking lot outside - is not certain, since someone may have stolen my car before I wrote that sentence. Thus, my conclusion is not certain either, even though the argument is deductively valid, because deductive validity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for certainty of a conclusion. The other necessary condition is the certainty of the premise.
Knowing everything would include everything that is not worth knowing. There must be a value assumption built in to the concept omniscience, that assumes only useful knowledge but that isn't all knowledge and is relative to a kind of temporal/spatial identity. But maybe I don't even know what it means to know something.
If you want to know everything about a part of the world you have to isolate it and impose precise initial conditions. You will know how the process develops. Any further interaction will arrest the development and invalidates the knowledge. If God knew our moves in detail, and he chooses to intervene, the knowledg he had before that moment is invalidated. If God takes His intervention into consideration, then the knowledge of the new situation contradicts his former knowledge. Intervening will result in a continuously changing omniscience, meaning He's not omniscient at all.
I would say the argument establishes only that the assertion "p is an unknown truth" results in a contradiction. To assert the truth of p is to claim knowledge that p. To assert that the truth of p is unknown is to disavow knowledge that p. So "p is an unknown truth" is simultaneously to claim and to disavow knowledge.
I cannot think of an example of anyone claiming "p is an unknown truth". There are many claims of the form "If p is true, it is not known that p; and if p is false, it is not known that not-p". Or "The truth of the supposition that p is not known." That is why a more usual form of words would be: "We don't know whether p or not."
Example. We don't know whether there is a highest pair of twin primes. It would be odd to claim that there is a highest pair of twin primes (i.e. it is true that there is) and also to claim that we don't know that there is a highest pair (i.e. it is an unknown truth). That latter claim would be of the form "p is an unknown truth" but it is not a claim that anyone makes.
I think the paradox shows that a kind of claim that nobody ever makes would result in a contradiction. Not a great discovery but worth something.
Then you can't be omniscient. :chin:
Can you show us how?
If I say that I know everything, i.e., there are no facts hidden from me, is this incoherent? I don't see how it's incoherent. So, it depends on how you are using the concept. You might argue that no one has access to all the facts. Okay, if no one has access to all the facts, then no one is omniscient, which would make my claim to be omniscient, false. But, again, I don't see where the conversation about omniscience is incoherent.
I find the phrase "unknown truth" to be problematic, to say the least. If X is known to be true, which is what this statement seems to imply, then how can it be unknown? It's like saying, "I both know, and don't know, that X is true, which is contradictory. If truth in this statement is just a claim without justification, then you can't say it's true, you can believe it's true, but that's not the same as being true. Claims don't equate to truth, so I'm not sure the statement "P is an unknown truth" even makes sense. This reminds me of the Gettier problems, they say things that seem to make sense, but in reality don't make sense. People tie themselves up in linguistic nonsense.
Also, we apply the word truth to actual claims, not some invisible claim existing in the ether.
We can say "I don't know algebra," or "I don't know if I remembered his name correctly." But do we ever say, "I don't know that it's true (i.e., I'm affirming the truth, not doubting the truth), that Paris is the capital of France." So, it's true, but I don't know it. What!?This is essentially what you're doing by affirming an unknown truth. I can say, "I don't know if Paris is the capital of France," which expresses a doubt about one's knowledge.
Again, linguistic knots.
Words, that includes "omniscience" and "coherence"
1. Can have meaning in the usual sense (as referents). Which meanings of this strain makes omniscience coherent?
2. Can have meaning in a Wittgensteinian sense (use). How could we use these words (unlimited options) to make omniscience coherent?
To tell you the truth, I haven't a good grasp of Wittgenstein.
Quoting Cuthbert
Quoting Banno
Quoting Sam26
Agreement seems to be breaking out wildly on this thread. So how did it get to be a paradox? It's actually pretty clever and not so simple to pinpoint the exact place where the problem or fallacy occurs. I think it might be the premiss p -> LKp. That is because Kp -> ~ ( ~ Kp). So K(p & ~Kp) entails a contradiction. But can we buy the proposition that there are true propositions that cannot be known? And can we know that proposition to be true?
In my humble opinion, in order to be omniscient one not only must know about everything but even more importantly they most also know about all events that have taken place and the consequences of every action take either by humans or nature. In other words they are kind of a "super computer" that can perfectly predict any data science question or problem that is thrown their way. Also it is pretty much a given that they can read every person's thoughts since they are completely aware of the circumstances that led them to be they are at any given moment and can predict every action whether it be a physical one or merely a mental one.
Of course it would be a non-trivial problem to both build or even to correctly hypothesize how to create such a machine (or how a sentient being could process such information). All that we can do is create some semblance of a system that can handle it by either a machine or be calculate through some analytical means by a person. How a real computer system could cope with real omniscient like problems or how a sentient being could deal with such issues (other than through committees or groups of scientist, politicians, etc. which we do in real life) is a bit beyond the scope of either today's science or technology is capable of. In fact we are hardly aware of what it would be like to be omniscient of any given circumstances. The only two academic fields that deal with problems relating to such issues are critical thinking (which philosophy is merely an discipline of) and perhaps critical thinking. There is also data science but that is a field that deals with how to make machines solve such issues.
I believe the only hint at what it might feel like to be omniscient is that it would be like being a character in a movie yet they would already know what was going to happen in the coming hours or days in the movie so they could change their actions based on what they already know what was going to happen. Perhaps if taken a step even further, such a character would know not only every action that was most likely going to happen (ie how the events would normally play out), but also what would happen if other actions were taken instead, such as with Bill Murray in the movie ground hog day. Of course real omniscience would take knowledge of what would happen in close to an infinite number of possible situations and would also require knowledge of again close to an infinite number of subjects as well as all the details contained in such subjects, but the ability to have the power to nearly perfectly predict what would happen in any given circumstances is as close as to what we can understand what it would be like to be omniscient.
My view, is that it's largely a misunderstanding of the concepts involved. You also see this in the Gettier problem. But to answer your question, and I think you're leaning this way too, is that there is a serious problem with the phrase, "unknown truths." One can say "unknown facts," facts being states of affairs, but "unknown truths" is a misunderstanding. Again, it seems this phrase, as has been pointed out, is saying "unknown knowns." If we have an X that is true, then how can we say it's true, if it's not known to be true? Otherwise you just have a proposition that's either true or false, a claim that's not known to be true, an opinion.
As to your second question, what proposition? There is no proposition that corresponds to this supposed "true proposition." It's an illusion. Language again confounds us. Can we call an imaginary claim true or false?
The idea that meaning is generally derived from referents has been debunked. There are exceptions, but meaning should be seen, primarily, as a function of use. There are no referents for words like, time, nothing, the, free will, etc. Freeing yourself from this idea is very helpful in philosophy.
I gave you an example of a coherent use of omniscience. Read my other post to you above. Remember you can always create examples where a particular concept doesn't make sense, or is incoherent. The problem is that people want to give some precise definition to the word, and there may not be one. I like the general definition of omniscience as, knowing all that's possible to be known. There maybe things that are impossible to know, for anyone, including a god. And, because people don't like the concept, because it has religious overtones, they go a bit overboard in their analysis.
Only the evolution of neatly isolated material arrangements, given well defined initial conditions, can be related to omniscience. The science being about the material insofar it satisfies the criterion of being valid knowledge. If the arrangement is started and we let it evolve freely, without us intervening, the evolution can be known completely. The moment we intervene, the knowledge is frustrated. If the molded matter behaves not as expected the knowledge has to be adjusted. Which potentially involves changing the theory, or changing the mold and conditions.
Quoting Sam26
Why shouldn't there be referents for these? Time refers to a clock, free will refers to the will, the refers to nouns, etc refers to a not mentioned part. Only nothing refers to nothing. All words have referents or meaning. Unless you use the words like words only, like can be done in poetry.
This is just too convoluted Raymond.
Quoting Raymond
There are plenty of threads in this forum that discuss this, so I'm not going to explain it again. I find it funny that you think 'time' refers to a clock. So, if we didn't have clocks there would be no time? What if there was nothing used to measure time, would there be no time, and what would be its referent then?
Yes, I completely agree. The point that kept me awake was the specific challenge - "OK, it's an illusion - now at which step exactly is the fallacy in the argument outlined in the wikipedia article - what premiss(es) do we have to deny and at what apparent cost?" As you say, there's a problem with 'unknown truths'. But coming into the room afresh, I ask myself - are there unknown truths? - well, yes, sure, everything that is the case that we don't know is an unknown truth... But as you point out, that is where we can be confounded.
Basically, yes! It is us who have constructed clocks, and the periodic processes accompanying them, like pendulums and metronomes, atomic vibrations, or orbital motions of celestial objects (showing not the amount of time passed but only the periodic motion we measure it by). Time as a periodic motion, put in relation to process that are going on in the world is not a property that existed before we mentally and practically constructed it. You can make a clock tick aside a physical process, reversible or irreversible, and say that the periodic motion has occured 536.78 times, but this will be the case only after the introduction of the clock. The clock has to be a reversible process, which is why it's so difficult to make one, as almost, if not all, processes are irreversible (which means it isn't possible to simply reverse all motion, which can only be done for the perfect, ideal clock).
So, quantified time is a human invention. You can mentally place a clock near all events, like is done in relativity or Newtonian mechanics. The processes you put the clocks next to take a number of periods. The number of periods is our invention, the processes are real. It turns out that some processes, when compared with reversible process of the clock, take more periods than others. If there would only be reversible processes there wouldn't be processes, there would be no irreversible processes next to which the clock could be positioned, and it are exactly these processes which can be meaningfully be quantized by time, as they evolve in one direction.
You can mentally reverse all motion in the universe, reverse time, but then the problem becomes that the end conditions become begin conditions, and the much bigger problem that you simply can't reverse momenta universally. You can do it mentally, or introduce a god, but reversing the process introduces initial conditions (the reversed end conditions) which are determined by the initial conditions when the process was still going in forward direction. Which means that you have to impose initial conditions which are reversed end conditions of the process you reverse. So the reversed end conditions become dependent on the initial conditions of the forward process, which is different from a forward process emerging from initial conditions only.
So while the quantified time, the number on the time axis, is a human construct, the processes it refers to are real, and if you compare them with a clock, different events will read different times, and in relativity this proceeding of the clock, the quantity of time, will depend even on space and motion. The irreversible processes that are quantified contain amounts of time, and we also notice time without quantifying it. So time is not only the clock. It's not only the amount of periods, the number of seconds, clicks, or vibrations, that constitutes time. For time to have a meaningful existence, irreversible processes are needed. One can say that a reversible process has taken 10 seconds but then it's not clear if time ran forward or backward.
Something can take long, when it's boring, like what I write right now. People watch on their watch. Another 5 minutes... When having fun, the clock isn't looked on. Time over, when the end is there.
Something like that.
:cool:
As I told you, Wittgenstein never made any sense to me. I don't know why. I can't seem to fathom how words could mean anything if not that they refer to something.
G'day.
:ok: I'll have to read his books! Damn it! I thought I'd leave the heavy lifting to others.
:ok: I was hoping to read his original works.
:ok: K. T. Fann it is then.
You can be omniscient and not know that you are omniscient.
To be omniscient is to be in possession of all knowledge. This is typically confused with being in possession of all true beliefs. But the two are not synonymous. A belief, to qualify as an item of knowledge, must not just be true, but also justified. It is entirely possible for there to be truths that are not justified. And thus one can be omniscient, yet be ignorant of some truths.
I think God does not know he is omniscient, for God is all good and thus is humble. And a humble person does not believe they possess all knowledge. Thus God does not believe he possesses all knowledge, despite the fact he does. And that is entirely consistent, so far as I can see.
God is the arbiter of justifications, and so as God does not approve of anyone - including himself - believing that they are in possession of all knowledge, then the belief that one is omniscient is one that, even when true, will not be justified. Thus, the belief in one's own omniscience is a belief that is inevitably unjustified. But that is entirely consistent with it being true.
Do you mind elaborating a bit on this?
A: Has sufficient epistemic warrant to know X.
B: Was told by A that X is true, but lacks sufficient epistemic warrant to know X because "B said so" is inadequate. Has never had cause to doubt A's claims of truth and believes that if A says it is true, it is true. If "X" was "It is true that this bridge is safe for you to walk across" and B said it to A, B would unhaltingly walk across the bridge.
B says, "I don't know that X is true."
This gets back to the statement, "X is an unknown truth." First, I hold to the view that generally speaking, the definition of knowledge is justified true belief, i.e., for many of our uses of the concept know, this definition works perfectly well.
Second, if someone makes a claim that X is true, it's just a claim, not known to be true. For a claim to be true, it needs a justification, otherwise it's just a claim and nothing more. What's being stated here, is that we have a truth, categorically, not a claim that maybe true, but a truth. But, how can we make such a claim, unless that truth is known to be true, and if it's known, then it's by definition, knowledge. It follows necessarily then, that the statement, "X is an unknown truth," is contradictory. There are unknown claims (beliefs or opinions), that is, we don't know if their true or false. There are unknown facts, yet to be discovered, but there is no such thing as an unknown truth. It's like saying there are unknown knowns. Keep in mind, again, to say that something is definitively true, then supposedly you have good reasons or good evidence to support the truth of the claim. Otherwise, again, to repeat myself for clarity, you don't have a truth, you have a proposition that maybe true, or maybe false.
Your example seems to make a similar mistake. Let's say, for example, "Joe tells me that the bridge is safe to cross," and let's suppose that I know Joe, and have interacted with Joe on innumerable occasions, and moreover, I know Joe is honest and levelheaded. Would I have sufficient warrant to believe Joe? Yes. We justify many of our beliefs in this way. In fact, most of our beliefs are justified based on the testimony of others, unless there are mitigating circumstances that give us reason to suppose otherwise. So, you do have sufficient warrant to believe Joe. And, if you don't believe what Joe said is true, then supposedly you have reason to doubt what Joe said. In this case you don't have a justification for the truth of what Joe said, so it's not a truth, it's simply a claim, a simple proposition.
This is the part that needs some firmer footing. Can A know X and B not know X? Does B not knowing X change X's truth? How does A's epistemic warrant about X relate to B's epistemic warrant about X?
Knowledge happens to individual agents, no? Or do systems have knowledge?
Notice the change from "is B justified in B's belief that X is true based on 1, 2, and 3?" (call it "B-Just") as compared to "Does B believe X is true?" (call it "B-Unjust"). Is the assertion of truth ("(i.e., I'm affirming the truth, not doubting the truth)") dependent on the answer to B-Just or B-Unjust?
Or on the triune analysis of JTB, can't you have TB without the J such that you can say, "X is true and I believe X is true, but I lack justification such that I don't know X is true?" Consider the old "Child believes his father has his wallet because he gave it to him moments before, but as it turns out, the Child is wrong about who his father is because he was kidnapped at birth by FakeFather, FakeFather doesn't have his wallet because someone just pickpocketed him, and the pickpocket is Realfather!"
P.S. Maybe we should use a simpler example of, "X believes in tossing bones and that information gleaned from tossing those bones is true. X tosses some bones and is told that Z is X's father. X thereafter believes that Z is X's father and tells everyone that is the case. X has never met Z and has no other information about Z other than the bone toss. As it turns out, Z is X's father." Does X know that Z is his father? (It is true, it is believed, but there is inadequate warrant for the belief.)
I thought my explanation was very clear, but apparently not. I'll just respond to this. Can you have a true belief, without the justification? Obviously you can, in at least three ways. First, I can have a belief that's true, i.e., I don't know it's true, I just believe it's true without the justification. In this case, it's akin to a lucky guess, since there is no justification. Second, I can hold to a belief that's based on some or little evidence, but it's not enough to, again, justify believing it's true. You still don't know if it's true. So, still, in these two cases, you can't make a definitive claim that it's true. A claim to truth doesn't equate to truth. Third, and finally, you can have a truth claim that's justified, you have good reasons or good evidence to back up the claim, if this is the case, then you not only have a truth claim, but a truth claim that's amounts to knowledge.
In your example, which seems to allude to the Gettier examples, is that the child believes something that's not true, so what's the point? Presumable the point is that the child thinks their justified, when their not, so their belief is false. Again, the difference between believing a claim is true, and it actually being true. These are totally different things. All of the Gettier examples fall short of actually being justified, or actually being true, as opposed to thinking or believing one is justified. The same with your example.
Same slip again. What is true is independent of what is believed. One can assert the truth of a statement that is true. It doesn't matter if that person knows it is true. The way that we (the outside evaluators) know that it is true is based upon our own justifications, not the person that merely believes something is true by luck (or other insufficient warrant). We know it is true, they don't know it, we both assert that it is true. Why is that a problem?
You seem to be confusing certain concepts. A truth is simply what is asserted, what is independent is the fact that the truth claim is about. If I say, "The Earth has one moon," it's true, why? Because it tells us something that mirrors or reflects reality, generally speaking. Truths are just claims that are expressed as propositions, they don't exist somewhere in the ether. The only things that have this ontology, that you seem to be referring to, are the facts, the states-of-affairs in reality.
That's it for me, I'm in the middle of writing a book. Good Luck.
No one said that they do. It is just that different people can utter the same proposition. To the extent that proposition is true when uttered, it doesn't become not true because someone with different epistemic warrant utters it. The criteria for "is true" are not the criteria for "is believed" or "is justified". Are you claiming that when I say, "Ennui is wearing a wedding ring" it is true given my warrant and that when you say "Ennui is wearing a wedding ring" it is false because you lack sufficient warrant?
P.S. Good luck with your book.