You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Andrew M

Comments

I agree. But which are the right words also depends on context (which seems apropos a thread on truth). All good. But I don't think we can successfull...
October 12, 2022 at 03:59
Nice post! A good survey of the options in there. As I see it, in the end we're doing things with words. The relevant context reveals what we're doing...
October 12, 2022 at 01:03
No to the experiments. But it's worth noting that Bohmian Mechanics and objective collapse theories aren't interpretations, they are distinct theories...
October 08, 2022 at 02:45
Yes. Entangled particles are correlated, but that doesn't imply a non-local influence (i.e., action at a distance). Physicist Asher Peres, who held th...
October 07, 2022 at 13:02
Not quite. Bell's Theorem showed that QM is incompatible with local realism, i.e., either QM or local realism is false. By experimentally establishing...
October 07, 2022 at 09:42
Not that I'm aware of.
October 07, 2022 at 01:28
Probably the idea of a physical collapse is on the way out, though I'm not sure it was ever in in the first place. Whereas the idea of a formal collap...
October 07, 2022 at 00:42
:up: I see that Wilson combines Many Worlds and David Lewis' modal realism. Lewis gave a lecture on quantum mechanics in 2001 titled, "How Many Lives ...
October 06, 2022 at 11:43
Factive, fractive, fictive ... ;-) factive /?fakt?v/ adjective LINGUISTICS denoting a verb that assigns the status of an established fact to its objec...
September 29, 2022 at 23:59
Yes, that's right. @"Mww"'s comment reminded me of your earlier comment on a priori and a posteriori. That is, we already know what it is to be rainin...
September 29, 2022 at 23:42
Not deductive certainty, certainly. In the window hosing scenario, Alice would need to look again, or more carefully. But that doesn't preclude her fr...
September 29, 2022 at 23:07
:100: We don't know with deductive certainty. But that's not the relevant or appropriate standard. The relevant standard is to look out the window and...
September 29, 2022 at 00:20
In my searching around, I found this helpful: In my view, it has a very Rylean feel to it (e.g., "success" and "try" verbs). It would be interesting t...
September 28, 2022 at 01:07
Obviously it is an assumption of the hypothetical that it is raining. But Alice makes no such assumption. She instead forms the justified belief that ...
September 28, 2022 at 00:07
OK. I see that there's a lot of literature on the subject. At first glance, a knowledge-first view looks OK to me, but I'm not really clear how it dif...
September 27, 2022 at 04:59
I'm curious about the distinction you're making here. Isn't the above just saying that knowledge entails those conditions (i.e., JTB)?
September 27, 2022 at 03:04
See Bulverism. No, the hypothetical shows the logical consequences which follow from the condition that it is actually raining in the real world. Peop...
September 27, 2022 at 02:33
:up: As is the option that they are false alternatives, thus giving rise to the strange attractor. I'm reminded of the Greg Egan short story "Unstable...
September 26, 2022 at 01:13
The hypothetical shows the logical consequences that follow when it is actually raining in the real world. :up: Also :up:. In which case she mistakenl...
September 26, 2022 at 01:08
Yes, exactly. Yes. Yes, and this is a reason why some physicists and philosophers are not so happy with the term "measurement" here, because it seems ...
September 25, 2022 at 04:40
When I point out that a premise of the hypothetical is that it is raining, I'm not claiming that it's actually raining outside, here in the real world...
September 25, 2022 at 04:22
:up: I agree with all you said there. Yes. Correct (given plausible assumptions, namely locality and no-conspiracy). Not quite. What is defined is wha...
September 25, 2022 at 02:13
No, not infallibly. One can possibly be mistaken about what the premises of the hypotheticals are. But since they are clearly stated, there's no good ...
September 25, 2022 at 01:51
Looks good to me! Assuming the coin always has a definite heads or tails state, even when not measured, what definite state could it have had when it ...
September 24, 2022 at 05:42
It doesn't. The example shows that human fallibility doesn't preclude Alice from knowing that it is raining.
September 24, 2022 at 02:35
A hypothetical (or thought experiment) shows the consequences of particular premises. No. But the hypothetical shows the consequences that follow when...
September 24, 2022 at 01:39
Cool! Yes, I think that crystallizes the discussion. Perhaps this also says something about how the word "count" is used. For example, if Bob was rand...
September 24, 2022 at 01:27
You and I know up front because I created the hypotheticals that way. The question is not about what you and I know, which is a given, but about what ...
September 23, 2022 at 01:54
That's almost exactly the point. Suppose that you live in a grid world where you can only move and measure things along the North-South or West-East a...
September 23, 2022 at 01:43
They are hypothetical scenarios, and you know up front whether or not it is raining in each scenario. In the first scenario, it is raining (that's a g...
September 22, 2022 at 11:37
Yes, but it still assumes counterfactual definiteness. Which makes total sense for coins in jars (I'm not disagreeing with your argument with MU). I t...
September 22, 2022 at 11:32
Physicist Asher Peres once said, "unperformed experiments have no results". Which is to say, he rejected counterfactual definiteness. Consider also Ar...
September 21, 2022 at 05:05
In the first scenario it is raining, in the second scenario it is not. According to knowledge as justified, true belief, do you judge that Alice has k...
September 21, 2022 at 02:08
Just trying to capture the essential idea here! Apparently not successfully... Indeed. Yes, I think it's a bit abstract otherwise. I think the other i...
September 21, 2022 at 01:36
That's correct. As a result of looking out the window, Alice justifiably believes that it is raining outside. For Alice to know that it is raining out...
September 21, 2022 at 01:24
Let's return to the beginning of this exchange: That we "exclude the possibility of mistake" is not a condition of knowledge, as ordinarily defined an...
September 20, 2022 at 02:38
Yes, agreed. Yes, or an open question (which we can investigate the truth of). ;-)
September 20, 2022 at 01:13
The flat-earther is not claiming it is. He will point to what he regards as evidence for a flat earth. Is his claim thereby justified? Let me put it d...
September 20, 2022 at 01:12
Nor I. But I agree with Lewis that the standards of knowledge depend on the context:
September 20, 2022 at 01:10
I was referring specifically to human fallibility. I prefer to say that a true statement cannot be false, just as it cannot be raining outside and not...
September 19, 2022 at 03:02
Yes, knowledge cannot be false. But human beings, being fallible, are always capable of making mistakes or being wrong. For example, Alice claims it's...
September 19, 2022 at 01:59
I don't think so. Suppose Alice says that it is raining outside. There is no general criterion that we can use to determine the truth of her statement...
September 19, 2022 at 01:36
That's kicking the can down the road. The flat earther will say he is justified in making his claim, you say he is not justified. It's your word again...
September 19, 2022 at 01:29
I take nominal to mean that the definition can't be employed to establish which statements are true (see Kant's comments here). That's the case with A...
September 18, 2022 at 02:25
That's an artificial distinction. Knowledge, and thus epistemology, is grounded in ordinary life and we use ordinary (and, if need be, specialized) la...
September 18, 2022 at 02:20
First, Aristotle says that he is defining truth and falsehood. Second, the word is not defined within its own definition. Truth is defined as "to say ...
September 16, 2022 at 01:22
That is how knowledge is ordinarily defined. As the following sources show: 1. Socrates: knowledge as true opinion that stays with us (Plato, Meno 97)...
September 16, 2022 at 00:52
As @"Srap Tasmaner" has pointed out, know is a factive term while imagine is not. One can imagine that Trump is still the president of the US but one ...
September 15, 2022 at 07:36