My Structure of Knowledge
Knowledge, as we know it, is made up of two related parts: pure knowledge and impure knowledge.
Pure knowledge is the core of your mind, the base of your impure knowledge. It's unchangeable. It's what you unconsciously acquired when you were still a baby.
Impure knowledge is everything else. It's consciously formed from pure knowledge. It's changeable, easily or not. Not only pure knowledge, but also impure knowledge can be made into impure knowledge.
Change my [s]mind[/s] knowledge.
Pure knowledge is the core of your mind, the base of your impure knowledge. It's unchangeable. It's what you unconsciously acquired when you were still a baby.
Impure knowledge is everything else. It's consciously formed from pure knowledge. It's changeable, easily or not. Not only pure knowledge, but also impure knowledge can be made into impure knowledge.
Change my [s]mind[/s] knowledge.
Comments (9)
And yet here you are separating them...
A bit of a disclaimer speech... the degree to which a belief is warranted is equivalent to the strength of the justification of the belief. Justifications could possibly be a bit difficult; one's not always aware of why they believe what they believe. But that should the focus. Do you agree?
Besides that, I have a few questions. You are using terms "unconsciously acquired" and "consciously made"... can you give me a slightly more formal definition of these terms... something to where if I were to point to a type of knowledge acquisition, we can categorize it as one or the other? Would it be fair to say that your proposal is wrong if I can point to knowledge acquisition that is unconscious? Also, it's a bit strange to me to talk just of acquisition, especially in terms of consciousness. How would your proposal relate to knowledge retrieval? For example (and to point to the oddity), suppose I acquired knowledge of X, but every time I retrieve that knowledge it looks like Y... is there a sense in which we can say the knowledge acquired really is X, not Y... even though every time I retrieve it, it's Y not X?
So, if a tree falls on me, and I think "I was just hit by a tree," how does my justification (that I was hit by a tree) require me to make an inference?
I don't.
"Belief" for the most part, is nothing more than a guess or an opinion. But it is never, ever, under any circumstances KNOWLEDGE. (This is not to say it is not correct. Some guesses and opinions are correct, but they are never knowledge.)
On issues of importance to most philosophical discussions, a "belief" is nothing more than an opinion. Anyone can justify an opinion...and the strength of the justification is almost always strong to the person doing the justification.
On issue of importance to most "religious" discussions, a "belief" is most often nothing more than a blind guess. Anyone attempting justification of a blind guess deserves a smile...unless they insist. At that point they deserve a loud laugh.
It is my OPINION that one way to improve philosophical discussions would be to insist that the words "believe" and "belief" not be used except to comment on the absurdity of using them.
But that's a false front... people with "opinions" like this don't generally hold the opinions because of the justifications they give; rather, they give justifications for the opinions because they hold the opinions. The primary error people commit here is the high burden they place on discarding their opinions and the low burden they place on keeping them. So they tip the scales of the strength of justification, generally, to the highest degree possible; they require no justification to keep the opinion; but they require the highest burden to discard it. That's what's conveyed with "change my mind"... it's the notion of "I don't need to justify my belief to keep it... rather, you need to make it impossible to believe it before I discard it". That is the opposite of belief warranted based on the strength of justification; it is, rather, belief warranted for its own sake.
Quoting Frank Apisa
Maybe there's something to this. But I'm not necessarily convinced this would thwart the problem I see above. I would like to see this principle applied in practice to see how effective it is in disarming people of belief for its own sake.
You sounded as though you were going to challenge the statement of mine that you quoted...
...but you didn't. Your commentary comes across like, "They don't do that...and the reason they do is..."
I am not aiming to "thwart" the problem...I am aiming to improve the discussion.
In any case, in your response you the expression "of belief for its own sake."
How does your thought sound expressed this way: I would like to see this principle applied in practice to see how effective it is in disarming people who make blind guesses about things just for the sake of making blind guesses about them.
It just sounds interesting. :smile: I think we wind up at the same spot. You're correct IMO... I don't think we disagree... I think we're seeing the same thing, just expressing two perspectives of it.