What do we really know?
I would like to suggest a group discussion about what a given individual can be said to know. A common definition of knowledge is "true belief based on sufficient evidence". This seems sufficient as a starting point to me. Bare minimum, to know something, you need to believe it. Then there must be some additional warrant for that belief. We could cavil about the details of sufficient evidence I suppose. So then you could say "True belief plus some additional warrant which raises the quality of belief to the standard of knowledge." Sufficient evidence seems to apply.
Right away, what seems evident to me is that a whole lot of what most people assume that they know is actually not knowledge, per se. People "know that" massive bodies mutually attract because they read it from some source which they believed was authoritative. People "know that" a feather and a rock would fall to earth at the same speed absent air pressure because they saw a video of that experiment conducted in a vacuum chamber.
So my first question is: Is an authoritative source sufficient evidence? Does the person who has experimentally verified an hypothesis have "more knowledge" than a person who has read about and understands those experimental results? Versus a person who does not understand the experimental results but obtains information from what he or she believes is a reliable source?
You could say that practical science confirms underlying hypotheses since the instantiation or application of these theories "works" and forms the framework of our day to day experience. But that seems a long stretch. Living in a world shaped by knowledge is not the same thing as having knowledge about the world in which you live.
Hopefully I have made clear where I am going. Thoughts?
Right away, what seems evident to me is that a whole lot of what most people assume that they know is actually not knowledge, per se. People "know that" massive bodies mutually attract because they read it from some source which they believed was authoritative. People "know that" a feather and a rock would fall to earth at the same speed absent air pressure because they saw a video of that experiment conducted in a vacuum chamber.
So my first question is: Is an authoritative source sufficient evidence? Does the person who has experimentally verified an hypothesis have "more knowledge" than a person who has read about and understands those experimental results? Versus a person who does not understand the experimental results but obtains information from what he or she believes is a reliable source?
You could say that practical science confirms underlying hypotheses since the instantiation or application of these theories "works" and forms the framework of our day to day experience. But that seems a long stretch. Living in a world shaped by knowledge is not the same thing as having knowledge about the world in which you live.
Hopefully I have made clear where I am going. Thoughts?
Comments (31)
Especially if we're talking about reliable sources corroborating each other, especially under something like peer review, where you have good reason to believe are using epistemic methods that you'd agree with, and the claims do not seem purely speculative, etc. then I don't see why that wouldn't be sufficient.
Ok, so there is a "reliability hierarchy".
Do you need to be aware of that hierarchy? Doesn't this lead to an infinite regress? Or a 'conspiracy of mutual endorsement'? And is knowledge based on accepted authority the same as authoritative knowledge?
For me, it's not a hierarchy, just a list of quality criteria for it.
I'm not sure why it would lead to an infinite regress.
Re conspiracy, aside from being someone who doesn't believe in any conspiracies*, it's important to understand that knowledge doesn't imply something that can't be wrong.
(re conspiracies, I'm referring to something where a lot of people are cooperating on something covertly, with a very different official story, where the conspirators are able to keep the conspiracy a secret indefinitely, so that the conspiracy isn't obvious with respect to evidence, so that it becomes the official story instead)
Well, if source A relies on corroboration from source B, which relies on corroboration from source C, etc.,
Unless you are explicitly saying that there is some 'foundational set' of authoritative sources which all mutually validate one another. Like a coherence theory. Even so, I would still ask, do the subject matter authorities then have a kind of knowledge (about their authoritative domain) that is superior to the knowledge that they have of other domains?
"True belief", "what do we really know?" and "beliefs about what one knows versus knowledge" are words that just muddy the water. I do think I understand what you are saying though. For me, I really know nothing when it comes to science, I cannot give proper explanations for many things, even basic things like gravity and electricity. It is a stretch to say that I "know" about these things, I have placed my faith in the consensus. It's closer to faith than knowledge.
My faith is not given thoughtlessly and I do not give all authoritative bodies my faith. Nor faith in whatever they say. Scepticism is maintained and I never really consider anything to be known, there are just degrees of certainty and degrees of confidence.
I would seek to understand the nature of the consensus, the ways in which it is successfully applied, the degrees to which I accept the logic behind it. I'm only forced to "know" when I need to evaluate an opinion that lacks consensus but if it lacks consensus then it's almost certainly lacking in the indisputable empirical proof as well.
There is always faith though, in at least, the senses and the way in which you experience the world at the most base level. If knowledge requires faith, true knowledge is just a distinction between what is being given faith like what you see versus what others saw. On a practical level, it's important but philosophically, I don't see where the line is drawn and I struggle to see any factor in where it would be drawn but personal opinion.
Pragmatism or the much dreaded 'common sense' do make sense here. Especially when we make the assumption that something presented to us as a fact wouldn't be either real or is a biased view/interpretation with some other agenda behind it. There too we should use pragmatism and common sense. How big should the conspiracy be that people have been tricked into believing?
And let's remember that modern knowledge is based on all before it creating a complex system. In a way all knowledge is "standing on the shoulders of giants" and the actual experiments done today can be in the end very simple, even if they used advanced mathematics and advanced machines to make an observation.
I remember the story of one Greek (who's name I've unfortunately forgotten) who showed by experiment that air exists, that it's not only a separate 'wind' that we feel. He took up a cup made from mud, turned it upside down, and submerged it into water. When he took the cup back up he showed that the bottom of the cup wasn't wet, hence there had to something in the way of the water. Idiotically simple, but many experiments typically are so even today.
The foundational set you use is the folks doing the observations, experiments, etc.--basically journal articles. Sources secondary to that should be citing the journal articles in a way that's easy to track down.
Yes, to embed knowledge into your own life would be one solution. Yet people take these things as, well, entertainment and simply don't make an effort to think themselves and/or study the issues to get a true understanding. Nope. Just to watch that tantalizing and entertaining pseudo-documentary that shows how "you have been fed lies" and how "it's all a huge conspiracy" with sinister plans for the small people like you. Entertaining especially when you feel marginalized not having that academic degree from an Ivy League university. For some this entertainment gives even a community, a home and a way rebel, to be different. Hence no wonder a few people think that the World is flat. It's far too difficult to go to the seashore and observe how large outgoing ships "sink" and incoming "emerge" from water. Or boring.
OK, never mind that one. When something keeps on working, then we gain knowledge and trust that it is something known and repeatable. I trust/know that a new morning will come on.
How could we ever know the composition of a star? It’s not like we could go there to collect a sample.
“Impossible,” it was thought.
Then starlight shadows were found that spelled out a complete list of the ingredients—a quantum mechanical bar code of its elements.
Yes, albeit contingent. Multiple sources can be authoritative differently, thus sufficient differently.
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Quoting Pantagruel
No. The former has knowledge of the experiment; the latter has knowledge of the report on the experiment. Even if the end knowledge is the same, more knowledge is involved in the experience of doing than the experience of reading about the doing.
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Quoting Pantagruel
The only knowledge sufficient to shape a world must be a common empirical knowledge. There is no such thing as common knowledge, meaning a thing or series of things every inhabitant of the world knows. If there is no common empirical knowledge, then the only knowledge that shapes a world is individual knowledge, or arbitrary collections thereof sufficient for distinguishable parts of the shape of the world, which then is no longer necessarily empirical knowledge. If individual knowledge shapes a world, then it is false that a world shaped by knowledge is not the same as having knowledge about the world in which you live. It is your knowledge that shapes the world in which you live, for you.
Or not.....
I know that my house is built of bricks. But I don't know how to build a house out of bricks.
Isn't that the refutation of your statement?
Yet all our colors are made from the three primaries, no less, if not color-blind. There are three types of proteins in the eye that rotate according to the amount of the respective primary color received.
Certainly, if the constituency and manufacture of your house represents the shape of the your world.
Shape stands for extension of objects in the world (your house), or, shape stands for the condition of a thing, in this case of the world in which the objects are extended. Because the shape of the world as an extended object is given, when you speak of the shape of the world you must be referring to the condition of it. In other words, what you or a consensus think of it. Knowledge of electricity may shape the general world but it is very far from shaping the world of an Inuit, whose knowledge of missing seals informs his world almost entirely, with no knowledge at all of global warming.
Right? If not, then sorry I misunderstood.
'Deception' is not bad when the result is a more useful face painted on reality than a truer one. My red truck is anything but true red, for nature paints with a reflective color scheme. We don't see more than the visible spectrum out of the whole and wider e/m spectrum perhaps because it would be clutter; however, our instruments 'see' it and tell us of it.
An example is the function of bows and arrows. Properly functioning bows if used properly will continue to shoot arrows away from the user. As long as this is the case it is knowledge given someone believes this. There can be knowledge of proper use of bows and arrows, the making of bows and arrows, and the repair of bows and arrows. As long as these things continue to work and someone believes they will continue to work, then they know about the use, construction, and repair of them.
Scientific knowledge is something else. It employs explanatory models. Once something doesn’t fit into that model, the model is modified or scrapped. Scientific knowledge is much more tenuous and less useful than the example I gave above, but this needs justification:
Technology precedes science in a lot of cases. Bows and arrows preceded F=MA, for example. However, E=MC^2 preceded the atom bomb. Bows and arrows will continue to work even without scientific knowledge. Atom bombs can be built by step-by-step instructions (simplistic, I know) without understanding E=MC^2 as North Korea probably did through the aid of Russia. Explanatory models are modified all the time. Sometimes they are even scrapped. However, the knowledge of the steps to build an atom bomb are true as long as atom bombs continue to work, regardless of whether E=MC^2 is modified or scrapped for something that works better as an explanatory model.
Thus, useful knowledge is more compelling than scientific knowledge.
Nice.
You may want to treat the test report as a witness deposition in the historical method, to be corroborated with other witness depositions.
I think that he has more knowledge because for him as an eyewitness the test results are more certain than for someone who was not present but only receives the test report. The eyewitness does not need to corroborate his own testimony, unlike the receiver of the testimony.
Quoting Pantagruel
Someone who does not understand the theory tested, still has a copy of the knowledge, which he could possibly transmit, but not possibly apply. So, yes, he could still be a teacher or so. It wouldn't be the first time.
To me, it seems that the distinction between "storing" the knowledge from an authoritative source and "knowing" must relate to the application of said knowledge in some way. Someone who knows, can do something with that knowledge.
Maybe there is a need here to distinguish between "to know" and "to understand".
Hmmm. Yes, I thought that is exactly what you were doing!
Understanding is open to criticism and modification (peer review and altering or scrapping theories to accommodate new data). Understanding is always changing.