What is knowledge?
The question "What is knowledge?" implies a being of knowledge; that is, an ideal form of knowledge, or perhaps 'The Truth Of Knowledge.'
If knowledge is, how can we know that it is, and furthermore how can we know that it is indeed something and not merely presupposed?
Is the conclusion "Knowledge is only as if it is knowledge"?
If I say, I am. How can I know that I am indeed and not presupposing that I am and that I do know that I am, when it cannot be shown for sure to myself that the 'I am' is the predicate of the thinking?
Is thus the truth of something, perhaps the fact of 'my existence' or 'my ego', only presupposed or assumed to be? Is it only as if it were?
Is this playing semantics?
In a nutshell, is knowledge superfluous and devoid of any specification?
If knowledge is, how can we know that it is, and furthermore how can we know that it is indeed something and not merely presupposed?
Is the conclusion "Knowledge is only as if it is knowledge"?
If I say, I am. How can I know that I am indeed and not presupposing that I am and that I do know that I am, when it cannot be shown for sure to myself that the 'I am' is the predicate of the thinking?
Is thus the truth of something, perhaps the fact of 'my existence' or 'my ego', only presupposed or assumed to be? Is it only as if it were?
Is this playing semantics?
In a nutshell, is knowledge superfluous and devoid of any specification?
Comments (53)
Yes.
Quoting Blue Lux
How could you presuppose if you were not.
What's often confused with that is simply awareness-of. (Russell's "knowledge by acquaintance.") That's the confusion you're making here, I think (a confusion that's been made by modern philosophy generally, from Descartes to the Idealists).
In a way, the larger, objective form of knowledge can be conceived of as a collective extension of awareness, and that would be the genetic/historical link between the two meanings. By being inducted into the larger body of knowledge, we avail ourselves of the experience (acquaintances with things) of others. But that's really just a metaphorical, sort of poetic way of looking at it. There is nothing like awareness, or a magnified or abstracted or rarified form of awareness, in the body of knowledge as such. Its representational quality is purely conventional.
It is so because it does not incorportate intentionality, and just dissolves knowledge into either idealism or realism, which I refuse to accept.
What constitutes a knowledge of something? What is that which is known The Most? It would be feelings, experiences, correct? And so if the superlative demonstration of a known consists in its complete inability of being represented by words... What is knowledge? A question of this knowledge could only relate to knowledge by description; however, knowledge by description relates fundamentally to knowledge by acquaintance.
JTB is not infallible.
Case I has Gettier changing Smith's belief in a way that changes it's truth conditions, and case two has Gettier misrepresenting what it takes to believe a disjunction. Neither is a problem for JTB.
If I know that I felt something. Is that knowledge so because I have a justified true belief of it or because I know that I experienced what it is I am referring to?
But do I know that I know what I am referring to?
If knowledge is based on a JTB then this would have to be true by virtue of a JTB... So the justified true belief is that knowledge is based on a justified true belief? This sounds circular.
Furthermore, The knowledge of the justified true belief that knowledge is by virtue of a justified true belief rests upon what? A justified true belief?
Not all belief is properly represented by P. That is one of the problems inherent in JTB that allows Case II to gain purchase.
"Never believe anything to be true unless it can be shown to be absolutely false." William Blake said something along the lines of this.
And so, related to knowledge, knowledge is 'asymptotic' to truth.
"Meaning is not ever found in the analysis of a predicate, the kind involving only meanings of the words themselves. A cat is not going to be found in the analysis of what a cat is. This is the case because the meaning of something seems to always relate to the whole of that something, specifically the 'appropriation' of that whole, not the understanding or 'knowledge' of the parts, or the constitution. The whole is so 'greater' than the sum of its parts, which are infinite, metaphorically 'asymptotic' to the whole (the totality, the meaning). Aetiology is thus incapable of founding meaning in any direct way. Meaning seems to be only indirectly disclosed by knowledge."
Rubbish.
Quoting Blue Lux
That is on point actually. It's called falsification. It's not about knowledge so much as it is about warrant. That too is what underwrites JTB.
Not a bad tact actually.
Separate the true claims. Gather them all in one place. See what can be made out of them all together.
A bit of knowledge, perhaps?
And these other things... How do they exist?
No, no, that's the confusion I think you're making: awareness is awareness, knowledge is a different thing, only very loosely connected with awareness.
Awareness is presence-with, an aspect of Being. Knowledge is more like a tool.
Are you disagreeing?
Quoting creativesoul
Consciousness is not a thing.
"Truth! Rapturous delusion of a god! What does truth matter to human beings!
And what was the Heraclitean "truth"!
And where has it gone? A vanished dream, wiped from the faces of men, along with other dreams!--It was not the first!
Of all that we with such proud metaphors call "world history" and "truth" and "fame," a heartless demon might have nothing to say but this:
"In some remote corner of the sprawling universe, twinkling among the countless solar systems, there was once a star on which some clever animals invented 'knowledge.' It was the most mendacious minute in world history, but it was only a minute. After nature caught it's breath a little, the star froze, and the clever animals had to die. And it was time, too: for although they boasted of how much they had come to know, in the end they realized they had gotten it all wrong. They died and in dying cursed truth. Such was the species of doubting animal that had invented knowledge."
This would be man's fate were he nothing more than a thinking animal; truth would drive him to despair and annihilation, truth eternally damned to be untruth. All that is proper to man, however, is faith in the attainable truth, in the ever approaching, confidence-inspiring illusion. Does he not in fact live BY constant deception? Doesn't nature conceal virtually everything from him, even what is nearest, for example, his own body, of which he has only a spurious "consciousness"? He is locked up in this consciousness, and nature has thrown away the key. O fateful curiosity of the philosopher, who longs to peer out just once through a crack in the chamber of consciousness--perhaps then he gains an intimation that man rests in the indifference of his ignorance on the greedy, the insatiable, the disgusting, the merciless, the murderous, suspended in dreams on the back of a tiger.
"Let him hang," cries ART. "Wake him up," cries the philosopher, in the pathos of truth. Yet, even as he believes himself to be shaking the sleeper, he himself sinks into a still deeper magical slumber--perhaps then he dreams of "ideas" or of immortality. Art is mightier than knowledge, for IT wants life, and knowledge attains as its ultimate end only--annihilation."
Nietzsche - On the Pathos of Truth
@gurugeorge
So who or what is presupposing?
Quoting Blue Lux
Does being need intentionality? Don't quote what someone else said, explain what you think.
Oh sorry I can't not quote someone. I can only regurgitate the thoughts of other people, because I have no thoughts of my own...
Being does not 'need' intentionality.
Consciousness is by virtue of intentionality. Consciousness is a sort of being, but is not a being-in-itself as might be an intentional object.
There is nothing that necessitates there being something that does the presupposing. All there is is a presupposing.
Take care to note what happened to the Great Moustache. Note the similar feeling of insanity here...
The most likely cause of Nietzsche's madness would seem to have been a brain disease, since there is apparently no documentary evidence to support the idea that he might have visited prostitutes, or indeed that he ever had sex at all. Also, I remember reading somewhere that his father also died of a brain disease.
This article posits frontotemporal dementia as the disease:
https://mindhacks.com/2006/12/01/what-caused-nietzsches-insanity-and-death/
Disease aside...
Better?
The Great Moustache's madness pervades his writing...
Now THAT is funny.
Syphilis attacks the brain in its final stage... And it will kill you.
I guess you have no notion of his solution to nihilism, or Ubermensch?
"God is dead" does not mean that.
God is dead means... That which unified people under a notion of a world-behind-the-scene or in something other than what would be returning to man and working toward what would be the ideal human being with only humanity as a reference, is no longer. The world of religion has turned man into a base man; a herd creature struggling for just a piece of satisfaction amongst one another in terms of absolutism. An absolute truth is no longer. A already set purpose for human life is no longer. The religious motivation views human life fundamentally corrupt... And this does not satisfy us... Religion is dead... It cannot give a meaningful, authentic life. It opposes human life. 'God' is dead in that it opposes human life.
Think what you want.
Still believe that language use doesn't affect/effect subsequent thought?
:wink:
Superfluous to what?
Knowledge is superfluous for a few reasons.
1. It presupposes the truth of that which delivers it.
2. It never reaches any truth.
3. It is recharacterization of what is already intuited to be.
4. It can be only as if it is.
There is supposedly an important distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance.
Knowledge by description involves ascertaining something... But in order to describe something one must have a knowledge by acquaintance. So knowledge by acquaintance is really the only type of knowledge. But this knowledge is incommunicable is it not? For this incommunicable knowledge, which would be the inspiration of a written knowledge of something, would be the truth of that something. And since words can never give the meaning of something alone, the truth is never disclosed in a descriptive knowledge... And therefore the only knowledge that is capable of being linguistically addressed is the one that is, ergo, superfluous.
Do you know how to ride a bicycle? :) Can you describe how to ride the bicycle? :) Is then riding of the bicycle a part of our knowledge? :)
Enjoy the day, :cool:
Again, no, I think this is the confusion, there's no relation other than the vague one I mentioned. Awareness isn't knowledge and knowledge isn't awareness.
The real analogue of big knowledge in the individual would be not awareness, being-present-with, etc. Rather, say to take any ordinary animal as an example, it would be in the way an organism is built, such that it behaves in a way that "expects" its environment to be such-and-such. (And just as those "expectations" can occasionally be baulked, so can our knowledge be wrong, false, etc.)
Again, knowledge is a kind of structure, or tool, or programming. When we learn something about the world, that sets our expectations to be a certain way. If a thing is called "x" then we expect it will behave thus-and-so. If it doesn't, then either it's not an "x" or we need to revise our definition of "x." If it does behave that way, then it's an x.
This does relate somewhat to your "as if" point, but it's not problematic and doesn't make knowledge superfluous. It's all we've got to navigate our way through the world.
Going to an example like Mary the colour scientist, what Mary has before getting sight is knowledge, when she gets her sight, she doesn't learn anything new, she just becomes acquainted with colour, becomes aware of it. But that isn't knowing it any better; her becoming acquainted with colour, becoming present to/with colour, is a change in the present state of her conscious being, not a change in the structure of her expectations.
Can you reiterate this for me?
My biggest problem with knowledge is the point I found in Sartre, which I found to be pretty obvious (as what usually happens in philosophy... You find something and realize it is so obvious it was overlooked): A metaphysics presupposes an epistemology and an epistemology presupposes a metaphysics.
My own conclusion, and I hope nobody steals this idea (not that it is... probably... very significant), is that Knowledge is as if it is knowledge, and is only as if it is knowledge.
Have you heard of Hans Vaihinger? He's one of those philosophers who was popular for a time but now forgotten, he wrote a book actually called The Philosophy of As If. You might be interested in it (although it's not quite as good as one thinks it might be from the title).
To reiterate: awareness is presence-with, actually just being (just being is always causally-concatenated with other being). One way of looking at it is that perceptions are perturbations of one's being - poetically speaking, one's very body and brain shimmer and thrill with the impact of rills of sound and light. What we experience when we see something is first of all that very perturbation of our being, and then partly consciously, partly unconsciously, the brain, our mind, however you want to think of it, tries to model what reality must be like for that perturbation to have occurred then and there, in that way, and then that sets our expectations for further experience. When symbolized in objective, public form, and ordered and structured into logical patterns, in language, in texts, on computers, those expectations become what we call "knowledge."
A lot of our knowledge was "worked out" by our animal/animalcule ancestors - we inherit their rough and ready sense of what the world is (which gave them at least a "pass" in their own lives, even if it may not have been wholly accurate), and then we refine it (cf. Schopenhauer for a marvelously concise distinction between "understanding," which we share with most of the higher animals at least, and "reason," the first being an instinctive, shared understanding, long worked-out, of the world as 3-dimensional, comprised of solids in motion, etc., etc., the second being more concerned with overt symbolization of the same). Some of this is partly what Plato was getting at with the idea of "Recollection." And in that sense you are right that we "already know" quite a bit about the world.
Now the perturbation of our being (what we call awareness or consciousness), in and of itself, is not yet knowledge. Knowledge is the projections (about reality) and expectations that perturbation elicits - whether from the instinctive level (again, what we share with animals) or from the level of our trained, learned and symbolized expectations about the world around us.
And knowledge always goes beyond, outside, refers outside of, the present perturbation (perception, awareness), to a larger world that's "outside" it (actually just not-it, but causally connected to it).
I do not know if it is epistemologically accurate, but I will try to remember what I thought...
There was once a state of perfect homeostatic balance. The infant does not hunger until a lack (the cutting of the umbilical cord). Desire is based on lack. For instance, the safety of the mother (reference Freud). The homeostatic imbalance creates a psychic state of... Once a sensation impacts the smooth, sandy slate of consciousness, it necessitates an 'ontological permute' that changes consciousness to be in accordance with the shape of it, after that sensation is gone. And so sensations necessitate consciousness to comport itself toward all the experiences which added to the totality of it, but disappeared... Consciousness consists of being ahead of itself (heidegger) because it is always a lack of totality... Though Heidegger insists that Dasein is a totality... Which perhaps is due to my misunderstanding. But anyway... Perhaps you can see that line of thinking.
Yes, it's roughly in line.
A more modern way of looking at it is in terms of Bayesianism, and an idea proposed by neuroscientist Karl Friston, called the Free Energy principle (note: the term is used in a narrow technical sense).
An actual, full-on Bayesian machine would be too computationally expensive to house in our brains, but we have a sort of quick and dirty imitation of one, in that action and cognition at all levels basically seek to reduce expected surprise, or (much the same thing) minimize uncertainty. Of course something like this idea has been suggested by many people in many different terms, but the neat thing about the Free Energy idea (which is exceptionally difficult to understand, it's real big-brained stuff, requiring math) is that it links the "lower level" neuroscience with higher level cognitive functioning terms (e.g. Bayesian reasoning).
At any rate, the key take-home message is, I think, to conceive of knowledge more as a stock of expectations, rather than a logical deduction or some other kind of extrapolation from perception or awareness. Cognition explains perception by leaping beyond it and containing it as the explanandum, it isn't derived from it.
This ties in with Popper again: knowledge never leaves the status of conjecture, although we can be certain about our deductions, and somewhat confident in the corroborative eliminative tests we make based on modus tollens, we can never be absolutely 100% certain that we are modelling the world correctly, there's always some fallibility built in, or at least we have to make room, in our thought, for the possibility that we might be wrong (and this ties knowledge to ethics and politics, actually - think of Cromwell's plea: "I beseech thee, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you might be mistaken!" This was the beginning of democracy, in a Europe riven by vicious and violent civil strife between various religious certainties.)
That is what we call quoting. Regurgitate the thoughts of other people.
Quoting Blue Lux
Who or what is the consciousness part of?
Quoting Blue Lux
That is contradictory. If consciousness is by virtue of intentionality, then it is an intentional object.
Quoting Blue Lux
But there must be a presupposee, or is it a being-in-itself?
Quoting Blue Lux
'Intentionality' is a philosophical term that describes the elements of mental states that are 'directed' at things or ideas—the fact that thinking, feeling, hoping, believing, desiring are 'about' things. How can physical brain processes—electric currents and chemical concentrations—be 'about' things? Intentionality, some claim, is a problem for physicalists.
Intentionality is a phenomenological term. It says that consciousness is always consciousness of something, which in terms of Sartre provides a reconciliation of dualisms such as being and appearance and subject and object--providing an epistemology 'beyond' idealism or realism.
Quoting Sir2u
What I was saying is that consciousness is Intentionality... Intentionality is the characterization of consciousness. Consciousness is not an intentional object, due to the pre reflective cogito.
I am not sure there must be a presuposee...
I think therefore I am...
"I think where I am not therefore I am where I do not think. I am not whenever I am a plaything of my thought. I am where I do not think to think." Jacques Lacan