A philosophical quagmire about what I know
I have a problem.
I want to to tell people what I know. I want to proclaim a sentence starting with "I know ... ." As I am of good faith, I only want that sentence to contain knowledge that I have.
I have a think about knowledge, and accept that in order for something to be knowledge, it must satisfy JTB (Justified True Belief). Great, let me see if I can claim "I know the Earth is not flat"
1) I believe the Earth is not flat
2) I have justification that the Earth is not flat
3) It is tru.. . Wait a minute, I do not have direct access to the truth. I am stumped.
What about some other claim? No matter how hard I try I keep getting stumped at 3).
1) I believe many things
2) I have justification for most of my beliefs
3) I have no direct access to the truth so fail on this every time.
I look around me - plenty of people use the sentence "I know...." What are they doing? Are they not talking about knowledge? Or are they acting in bad faith - claiming knowledge while happily expressing knowledge and not knowledge? Or are they using a different rubic for knowledge something other than JTB?
It seems to me that no one who has ever said "I know... ." has ever checked that their claim meets the criteria of JTB. If this is indeed the case, may JTB be useless?
I want to to tell people what I know. I want to proclaim a sentence starting with "I know ... ." As I am of good faith, I only want that sentence to contain knowledge that I have.
I have a think about knowledge, and accept that in order for something to be knowledge, it must satisfy JTB (Justified True Belief). Great, let me see if I can claim "I know the Earth is not flat"
1) I believe the Earth is not flat
2) I have justification that the Earth is not flat
3) It is tru.. . Wait a minute, I do not have direct access to the truth. I am stumped.
What about some other claim? No matter how hard I try I keep getting stumped at 3).
1) I believe many things
2) I have justification for most of my beliefs
3) I have no direct access to the truth so fail on this every time.
I look around me - plenty of people use the sentence "I know...." What are they doing? Are they not talking about knowledge? Or are they acting in bad faith - claiming knowledge while happily expressing knowledge and not knowledge? Or are they using a different rubic for knowledge something other than JTB?
It seems to me that no one who has ever said "I know... ." has ever checked that their claim meets the criteria of JTB. If this is indeed the case, may JTB be useless?
Comments (84)
I ask one of them to explain themselves. Overwhelmingly they say:
1) I believe the earth is flat
2) I have justification for that belief
3) I have so much justification for that belief that I can now claim knowledge.
In practical use, everyone substitutes the T (truth) for MAOJ (Massive Amounts Of Justification).
And so in practice, everyone uses JMAOJB (Justified Massive Amounts Of Justification Belief) when using "I know..."
If everybody uses JMAOJB when invoking knowledge, then is it not the case that knowledge is actually JMAOJB and not JTB in any practical use. A meaning of a word is what is in common usage, after all.
(1) says you believe the earth is not flat. If that is the case, then you also believe that the sentence "the Earth is not flat" is true.
But (3) is "the Earth is not flat" is true
Hence, if you believe the Earth is not flat, you cannot consistently deny (3).
Your belief that (1) commits you to (3).
Else, you are saying that you believe that the Earth is not flat, and yet that it is not true that the Earth is not flat.
Moore's paradox.
But I understand that I can have incorrect beliefs. I understand that just because I believe something, that does not make it true. Does that answer your objection?
And specifically, I believe that I cannot directly access truth. Yet I use "I know.." plenty of times.
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
I think you are exactly correct. That's why I think JTB is useless. I propose different factors for identifying knowledge. Rather than belief, justification, and truth; I think belief and adequate justification are the right factors and are all that's required. I'll bring out one of my favorite quotes, from Stephen J. Gould - "In science, fact can only mean confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent."
All truth is provisional. We just have to be certain enough that we minimize the consequences of being wrong within acceptable limits. Not everything can be justified by personal experience, so it is perfectly reasonable to accept justification from sources you have confidence in. As for flat earth - If you are at sea and another boat with masts is coming toward you, you first will see just the tops of it's sails. As it get's closer, more of the boat will be visible. People knew that long before Columbus. Of course, now we also have pictures of the Earth from space.
So, if you want to say you know something and you're worried people will doubt your knowledge, just add a statement about how you know it and how certain you are.
And to put my views more succinctly, in JBT knowledge (epistemology) is being defined in terms of metaphysics (absolute objective truth). But since we can never actually access this, instead I propose to define knowledge in epistemological terms - provisional truth that can be justified using the best current justification methodology. That to me is what most are referring to when they say "I know"
Sure, you have false beliefs. But if you believe that the Earth is not flat, then you are committed to the truth of the sentence "the Earth is not flat". Step (3) is already done for you.
Part of the problem is that JTB is a definition of knowledge, rather than a method for finding it. It doesn't tell you what is true and what isn't. You will have to work that out some other way.
Quoting T Clark
Is that true?
Quoting T Clark
So how do you know that all truth is provisional and how certain are you?
You and I are in agreement. As an engineer and a pragmatist, I think an emphasis on the adequacy of the justification, uncertainties in that judgement, and the consequences of being wrong are primary.
I believe, based on experience and reason, that the attitude I expressed is a useful, pragmatic way of seeing things which is most likely to lead to effective actions. That's what knowledge is about - it is a tool to help decide what action to take.
Moore's paradox, as far as I understand, is that I can't simultaneously hold the following sentences:
-"I believe the Earth is not flat"
-"The Earth is flat"
However I can hold the following sentences
-"I believe the Earth is flat"
-"I am unsure if my beliefs are an accurate reflection of reality - they could be wrong"
Quoting Banno
Yes you are right that is a large part of it. But I want to go further and say no one pays any heed to this definition of knowledge when uttering "I know ..." Hence I am suggesting there exists another definition for knowledge that explains what people mean when they say "I know ..."
:up:
Is that true? How do you know? How certain are you?
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
How do you know they could be wrong?
You both appear to be sitting over a regress. I suspect you had best hold onto some certainty in order to avoid the fall. To even phrase the supposition that JTB is useless requires suppositions and phrases.
And again, note that JTB is a definition, not a method.
Because I believe I have justification that beliefs can be wrong. I believe this belief can also be wrong. I believe this belief....
To snap out of this regression, I accept anything that has a lot of justification as true. A conditional truth. I use JMAOJB to consider what I know, not JTB.
Anyway what you seem to be suggesting is that T is redundant and not used. In which case that is close to the point I am making. It is belief and justification that is needed for knowledge. The metaphysical truth is of no help whatsoever.
Sophistry, intentional, as are many of your comments.
But no one pays any heed to this definition of knowledge when uttering "I know ..." Hence I am suggesting there exists another definition for knowledge that explains what people mean when they say "I know ..."
I don't need a massive amount of justification, only enough so that any uncertainty is acceptable given the consequences of being wrong. The same belief might require different justification in different situations.
As to pragmatism, should we choose to dispense with what actually is as the meaning of truth, but to instead suggest we choose our beliefs based upon what best resolves our problems, then placement of the earth in the center of the universe works better for those here on earth who need that fact for the added significance of humanity. That is, they would know the earth to be in the center of the universe, even though it's not. Those interested in space travel can think of the earth and sun however they may need to, and they'll know otherwise.
The point here is that dispensing with the T element dispenses with a meaningful K. That truth is evasive is just the truth about truth, and ignoring it doesn't resolve any issue.
All of them?
I think the standard view being espoused here, the scientific/pragmatic stuff, takes purchase when one considers too few examples and makes too broad a conclusion.
So let's take a look at some different examples. Pick a significant other - your lover, your mum, or the bottle of whiskey you perhaps cradled as you fell asleep last night. Do you doubt your commitment to them? Or that pain in your neck from sleeping crooked - you can doubt the cause, but can you doubt the pain? Or this sentence you are reading - can you doubt that it is In English?
So sure, some beliefs can be wrong. But there are others that it seems odd to doubt.
And further, doubting only takes place against a background of things held certain. You can only doubt that the world is flat if there is a world, and flatness, and non-flatness.
Quoting T Clark
Whatever gets you through the night. I can show you the bigger picture but I can't make you see it.
That allows us to ignore any inconvenient truth. If the election were not stolen, then I must accept rule by my opponents, and I'd prefer not to, so I arrive at my knowledge, with all my justifications, without regard for truth.
Yep.
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
It's redundant in that "the earth is flat" will be true exactly if the Earth is flat; no extra meaning is added to the sentence by saying it is true. But it can change what we might do with the sentence. :wink:
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
Well, yes - there's knowing how to do things as well as knowing what is the case. But the two are not entirely unrelated.
The answer tells us a lot about you.
However you want, you can not directly access metaphysical truth, whatever method you use. So when you say you "arrive at the truth," you arrive at enough justification that you think it valid to claim it as truth. This is my point - the metaphysical truth is not something any of us have direct access to - we only have justifications (like evidence) to come up with a provisional (or conditional if you like) truth.
The situational aspect I suggest is this - the more consequential the knowledge is, the greater is the burden for justification that should be applied.
Your example is very consequential, thus a higher burden of justification is needed to claim something as knowledge.
Surely you also recognize that something you completely and utterly believe today may turn out to be wrong?
Yes that is right. but I'm not referring to those cases.
There are people who have said "The Earth orbits around the sun." They said that because they believe it, and because they have good justification to believe it. That is all I am saying - that metaphysical truth does not come into it.
In these cases JTB does not adequately define what they mean when they say "I know..."
Notice that it doesn't follow that everything you completely and utterly believe today may turn out to be wrong.
Can you be wrong about your commitment? A pain you feel? That this thread is in English?
There remain things that it makes no sense to doubt. Things that have to be taken as indubitable in order to participate in the world.
They are not due to that person having direct access to objective metaphysical truth.
Things I have little doubt about are because I have strong beliefs or very good justifications for that. Not because I am some kind of oracle that directly connects with absolute truth. So why include absolute truth in the definition of knowledge? It serves no practical use.
Yeah, sure, we don't have access to "objective metaphysical truth", whatever that might be. But that does not mean that you do not have access to truth.
Some things, such as that Banno can be bloody annoying, are true.
I think my statement is a justified true belief.
The T in JTB, as far as I understand (please correct me if I am wrong), is objective absolute truth. It is what is true regardless of what I think about the matter. It is what is true regardless of what anyone thinks of the matter.
So if we don't have access to that, then what is it doing in a definition of knowledge?
Ah but see I am not yet sure that is true. Though I reserve the right to invoke that at a later point in the discussion if need be!
It allows us to make decisions in the face of uncertainty. That includes most decisions. In a related fashion, it allows us some control over the risks of decisions we make.
This is not a question of fact, i.e knowledge, it is a question of values, which you know. More sophistry.
The account in the Theaetetus is about truth.
How does adding "objective" and "absolute" help?
I agree.
I've not suggested you must possess the truth to make decisions. I'm saying that Ptolmey didn't know the earth was in the center of the universe, regardless of how helpful that belief might have been to him.
I disagree.
It says it is independent on your view on the matter, my view on the matter, anybodies' view on the matter.
This truth plays no part in my use of "I know ..."
That's exactly why I must insist upon at arriving at further justifications to substantiate my knowledge the election was stolen, else I'll have to submit to the authority of my nemesis.
This seems to celebrate confirmation bias as opposed to starting from the notion that there is a truth.
So said the Vienna Circle, and some of their followers. I'm not so sure the distinction can be maintained. One might even claim that their pushing such a break between fact and value was intentional sophistry. That's the contention of much of the biographical stuff to come out recently concerning the women of Oxford in the forties and fifties - that they were reacting against such rejection of the application of rationality to ethics.
Are you really wanting to maintain that values do not have a truth value? SO it's not true that I like vanilla, that Putin is a bit of a dick, that Hendrix was better than Hilton Valentine? Who shouldn't such sentence have truth values - apart from special pleading by sophists in defence of their pet theory of knowledge?
Then we need a new term.
I say Ptolmey didn't know the earth to be in the center of the universe.
You say he knew it.
We both agree he was wrong.
What is the term you'd prefer to designate JTB if not "knowledge"? Let us use the word "tnow" for that.
Ptolmey didn't tnow the earth to be the center of the universe, although he thought it. We in agreement now?
Does this resolve the issue, or is there something bigger at play?
Particularly lame sophistry.
Quoting Banno
Yes.
Quoting Banno
That you like vanilla is a statement of fact. Your liking of vanilla is a statement of value.
Quoting Banno
It's not that it shouldn't. It's that it doesn't.
And are you able to get this justification? If you are not able to, you do not know the election is stolen. So go away, look at the evidence and try to find justification. If you can find substantial evidence the election was stolen, then you can validly say "I know the election was stolen".
The same would happen under JBT. If you went away and found enough evidence to provide sufficient justification the election was stolen, then you would say "I know the election was stolen". You would say "It is true the election is stolen." The additional T makes no difference to what you say.
I, on the other hand, have looked at the evidence and consider it enough justification to consider the election was not stolen. So I say "I know the election was not stolen." Do I say this because I have direct access to truth? Absolutely not. Rather I am inferring truth using evidence (which is a form of justification). Because there is good justification I have great confidence in this, but it is not direct access to metaphysical truth.
As I stated previously, knowledge is adequately justified belief. As to what JTB is...I guess I think it's meaningless, or at least useless. That's a position I've been pretty consistent about throughout my brilliant philosophical career here on the forum.
Agreed, but there were statements of opinion.
Quoting T Clark
Your argument here is that you can't "know" truth because you lack a justification you've arrived at truth, which is to acknowledge the significance of truth and JTB.
If, however, you claim there is no truth, that is a different matter.
Which, on your account, have no truth value...?
Instead the best I can do if follow the path of best justifications in order to infer this metaphysical truth. I am simply using justifications and more justifications until I am happy to call the result "the truth." But that is not the metaphysical truth the JTB refers to.
I didn't say anything about the truth value of opinions. Let me think about them now... I think you're probably right that opinions are not either true or false. That doesn't mean they aren't useful. I've been consistent here on the forum that I believe usefulness is more important than truth.
How do you know this?
Hmm. A veritable definition of sophistry: what counts is what serves my purpose.
Which is all anybody needs in order to say "I know..."
That's not what sophistry means. You should look it up.
I'd be happy to discuss opinion sometime, but it's outside the scope of this discussion, which is about knowledge.
No, but it is what sophists do.
Thanks for the chat.
What is your justification that there is a truth independent of personal justification? Why do you believe there is an ultimately correct view of the world? What leads you to think that if you've led a life only experiencing best guesses?
This truth is what T in JTB refers to (as far as I understand - I am not an expert on the matter). So really you should be asking proponents of JTB that question.
From the SEP section on JTB:
This is the truth being referenced in JTB. I am not arguing for that worldview - JTB implicitly accepts that worldview. I am arguing against JTB.
Knowledge is epistemology, yet JTB attempts to define it in terms of metaphysics.
However, when anyone says "I know ..." they are using epistemology not metaphysics. So they ignore the metaphysical T and just use epistemology to formulate the "I know ..." sentence.
What you said earlier was:
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
That is to say, you previously asserted your justification for your belief in what "True" means.
Now you relent, and say you don't know what truth means, and by this, you mean you haven't an adequate justification to assert a belief in what it means and so I should ask someone who might know better.
That's why I asked how you knew there was a truth, to which you said:
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
But now you don't.
If you don't know whether there is a truth, then, as I said, that's a different matter.
That's metaphysical subjectivism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivism#:~:text=Metaphysical%20subjectivism%20is%20the%20theory,that%20is%20reality%20(idealism).
Knowledge is knowledge of something, and it necessarily implicates the metaphysical. As noted above, if your position disregards an independent anchor of reality for knowledge, that doesn't disregard metaphysics. It just substitutes one metaphysical position for the other.
I am arguing against the T in JBT. That is the T that we have been referring to here.
If the T in JBT is a wrong, then I am correct in saying that JBT is wrong, and nothing further needs to be said. In order for a discussion to happen, it is required that the T in JTB is a valid worldview.
Initially, you were arguing against the necessity of the T for a belief to be referred to as knowledge,. You didn't explicitly say there was no truth.
Is that what you're saying? We should dispense with the T because there is no T?
JTB asserts that the T is objective, absolute truth.
If there is no absolute objective truth, we dispense with the T because there is no T. This is the trivial solution, end of discussion!
If there is a T, then, the discussion we were having ensures. So we can have this discussion. In this case I am also arguing that we should dispense with the T in JTB as it is useless.
So in either worldview, I assert that the T in JTB should be dispensed with, and replaced with more justification. The dispersal of the T is not dependent on worldview - it should be got rid of either way!
You've got to pick a position and you can't toggle back and forth between them because the conversation won't be coherent.
Either you believe there is a truth or you don't.
If you do, you must, per your own stated method, offer your justification for it. Once you do, your problem will be in ignoring it.
If you don't, you must explain how subjectivism offers a meaningful view of the world.
I disagree. I can structure an argument such as as follows:
I will show X
1) If Y is not true ... Then X
2) If Y is true ... Then X
Therefore X
If I do the above, I do not need to show Y is true.
Knowledge for me is just that which is under scrutiny. Pure Knowledge is that which I pay no heed to, such as the fact that I breath but once it is brought under scrutiny (into conscious attention) it is necessarily questioned as an item rather than blindly happening whilst my focus is elsewhere.
It boils down to how you wish to use the term knowledge and how, if you so desire, you wish to communicate this idea rather than just using it in a colloquial sense.
The truth of lived life is often something I ignore entirely. I am very much in favour of the Husserlian attitude being that the existence of something is irrelevant and only experience of matters. So in terms of consciousness truth is neither here nor there, it is just a term smuggled in from strictly delineated areas where it is of use. In life truth is not clear because the rules and boundaries of life are indeterminate/undetermined all we have is the experience of and it can be too easy to extrapolate some rigid claim of truth from that.
No, you're arguing contradictory claims in the alternative simultaneously, and it's incoherent.
Consider:
(1) I am not guilty of murder because I did not shoot the gun.
(2) I am not guilty of murder because I shot the victim in self defense.
That is, whether I shot him or not, I am not guilty of murder.
Under #1, I should be expected to give all sorts of details about what I was doing other than shooting the victim.
Under #2, I should be expected to describe in detail how I shot the victim
What you can't do, which you do in fact do, is refuse to provide the details under #2 by telling me you don't know how you shot him in self-defense because under #1 you already indicated you didn't shoot the him. You can't jump back and forth in your competing arguments.
This is to say, if (1) you're going to argue there is no truth, you have to describe what that universe looks like.
If (2) you're going to argue there is truth, but it doesn't matter, you have to explain what it is and why it doesn't matter, but you can't just refer to your contradictory argument in the alternative (in #1) where you made an entirely different claim that truth doesn't exist.
So, do you argue #2, and if you do, what is your justification that there is truth? And you cannot refer to argument #1 to deny you assert the existence of truth because in #2 (that is now being discussed) you assert truth does exist.
I am going to argue that I am not guilty of murder.
(1) CASE 1 - IF I did not shoot the gun
I did not shot the gun, therefore I am not guilty of murder. trivial argument.
(2) CASE 2 - IF I did shoot the gun
I shot the gun but it was in self defense because of....
Therefore I am not guilty of murder.
Taken together, CASE 1 and CASE 2 have covered every possibility and show that I am not guilty of murder.
And yet you'd be found guilty because to argue that you didn't shoot the gun but if you did it was in self defense assumes both X and not X and that impossibility would result in the rejection of everything you say.
Each case is separate, there is no incoherence.
Proof by case analysis is not something I just invented, it is widely used.
1. You stated you can't know T because it doesn't exist.
2. You stated you can't know T and it does exist.
I asked under #2 how you knew T existed.
You said you had a justified belief T existed under #2.
I asked what that justification was under #2.
You said you didn't know because under #1 you already told me T didn't exist.
You used 1 to support 2, yet they're contradictory.
If my rendition of this is incorrect, then tell me specifically what your justified belief is in knowing truth independent of your justifications exists as assumed in #2.
If you don't have one, then we can move beyond this and discuss the ramifications of metaphysical subjectivism, namely how it slips into idealism and solipsism. It's the position that Descartes started with.
If, however, you do believe truth does exist independent of justification, then you'll have to explain why it is irrelevant when we execute the wrong person.
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
How come, especially when he ends with ...
Quoting PhilosophyRunner
?
Quoting Hanover
Do you believe that radically relativistic perspectives of truth within philosophy, such as we see with postmodernist and post-structuralist writers, are examples of metaphysical subjectivism?
The answer is simple - I use a different system as described in my second post - What I called JMAOJB (the acronym is whimsical I know, but the point I describe is not).
No.
1)In the case that T exists, then X
2)In the case that T does not exist, then X
As long as I cover every case for T, then I do not need to justify T in order to justify X.
I also explained it using IFs. All your replies ignore the case statements (or if statements). Argument (and proofs) by case analysis is both formally accepted, but also very intuitive. Take the following simplistic, intuitive example.
John is meant to be executed at dawn tomorrow. However I have intel that John may have built a plane to escape before that. Question: Will john die tomorrow?
If John has built the plane, then our air defense will shoot it down and he will die
If John has not built the plane, then he will be executed and he will die
Either way he will die by tomorrow.
You objection is - "You are incoherent. How can you say John built a plane and then say John did not build a plane. You must pick one." But surely you can see that is not what the if statements are saying. That is not how "if" works, either in formal logic or colloquial English.
You also protest "What justification do you have to for your intel about him building a plane?" But I do not need to justify my intel about his plane in order to answer the question "will john die tomorrow," as I have demonstrated either way he will die tomorrow.
Because I do not have direct access to Truth (as in objective truth independent of what I think, what you think, what anyone else thinks). I can only justify my beliefs, and after some point I start saying "I know..."
I put forward everyone does this - regardless of their worldview.
Before the Copernican revolution, it was justified and believed that the earth was the center of the solar system, then it was taken as mere fact. Until Copernicus demontrated a better more explanatory (less subject to empirical contradiction) set of reasoning as to why the earth actually revolves around the sun.
This led to a huge revolution in our understanding of the earth's place in the solar system and advanced astronomy a great deal. Now it is taken as fact.
In truth, nothing is 100% certain, only confident. We can never exclude the possibilities that future theories may roive our current ones obsolete. Facts do not always remain facts, at best they are "almost certain beliefs".
If we had the full, total, unanimous truth, there'd be little reason to question or investigate anything as we would already have a definitive answer.
You can believe something, you can justify it, but it doesn't mean it's always true.
Absolutely, that is exactly my point.
So when anyone says "I know..." this indicates they have a justified belief.
The T in JTB is objective truth, and that truth plays no part when you or I say "I know..."
Yes the justification does a lot of heavy lifting. I need to give it more thought, but there are two ways in which I see this justification happening when someone says "I know..."
First is internal justification - they subjectively find the evidence they have gives a sufficient probability that their belief is knowledge. I have seen pictures of the Earth as a sphere so I am justified in believing the Earth is not flat.
Secondly is a societal justification - the society in which they exists has a consensus that the evidence they have gives their belief is knowledge. Scientists have a consensus that the Earth is a sphere, so I am justified in believing the Earth is not flat. I defer the justification to an external body that I trust, and accept their recommendation as justification.
Wonderful! What I find interesting is you removed truth from the equation. That's a grandmaster move in me book mon ami. What is the criterion for truth?