Is Knowledge Merely Belief?
The creation of this thread is motivated by a claim made by Chet Hawkins:
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Chet elaborates:
Quoting Chet Hawkins
I think there is a valid distinction between knowledge and belief, although I also think that much of what is generally considered to be knowledge might be more accurately classed as belief. It may well turn out that I am sympathetic to Chet's belief. Let's see...
Chet says that statement is incontrovertible. I would like to see an argument to support that contention.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Knowledge is only belief.
Chet elaborates:
Quoting Chet Hawkins
So I could/should rest on that statement alone as it is incontrovertible.
But the quislings out there will want to retreat behind 'facts' and 'knowledge' delusions. So, it's best I turn my hat around and address the concepts more thoroughly.
But let's take this outside.
I think there is a valid distinction between knowledge and belief, although I also think that much of what is generally considered to be knowledge might be more accurately classed as belief. It may well turn out that I am sympathetic to Chet's belief. Let's see...
Chet says that statement is incontrovertible. I would like to see an argument to support that contention.
Comments (535)
When you dither, I cannot tell what you mean to say or write or believe.
Quoting Janus
So, perhaps we are more kindred spirits waiting to fight and then we end up drinking a beer together talking about ex girlfriends.
OK, so
All facts are a subset of all beliefs.
Knowledge is not knowing and the word 'to know' is stupid therefore. It implies a failure in understanding.
"Doubt may be an unpleasant condition, but certainty is absurd" - Voltaire was right.
Perfection is knowing. Is ANYONE perfect? (Yes I caps YELL in text to show emphasis. It's more natural to me and appealing to my anger nature than is doing ctrl-I for Italics emphasis. )
Most people describe me as offensive, not defensive. They are neither one correct. But everyone is free to use their set of beliefs.
We all operate in life only from a well of beliefs.
What distinguishes a 'fact' from a belief is that THAT PERSON ONLY (<--- yup) has decided that enough evidence exists to make that fact iota something that is fairly far along the match curve towards infinity, e.g. perfection. For them its a fact.
The fact that many people share the same facts has not so much bearing on the factuality of any fact. As a matter of fact, 'facts' are always wrong in some way. That is TRUE and more factual than most facts, because as a part of that fact we ALREADY INCLUDE the flexibility that fact is only belief.
That leads to an interesting quandary whereby you can claim that most facts are only beliefs, but THAT fact is made more factual, if you follow, which might lead one to say that such a fact was incontrovertible.
The latter type of 'fact' is BETTER in some way than other 'facts' are.
So that is the basis of this argument and in brief, obviously.
An important but vague claim.
Well you walked into this one:
Someone who 'knows' (ha ha), observes, claims, that this is vague SHOULD be able to say how so.
Ah but of course it does. You have to do some of the work!
And the REAL bite here is I DID already do that work.
The flexibility of belief being included in the concept definition of fact SOFTENS the fact to make it incontrovertible. Were facts 'knowing', they would partake of the nature of perfection. But they are not.
So if we properly state that facts are only a subset of beliefs we are on safer ground. Doubt is properly maintained.
(And I assume you meant "controvertible" rather than "incontrovertible")
That is the single statement (among others) most able to show that I already did that work.
Quoting Leontiskos
No I meant what I said. Don't put words in my mouth. My feets is already there.
What makes the softer claim incontrovertible is that it effectively says very little upon which we can certainly depend. It is similar to saying, 'The only thing we can know is that we don't know anything!' THAT we can know which is ... not really so comforting, but, it is in a way.
Juxtaposition IS NOT contradiction. Muddle that one through.
(I'm going to turn this over to @Janus now...)
No, not quite.
There are three levels in there.
Knowing
Fact
Belief
At least the 'fact' part is SUPPOSED to have due diligence. But so often it does not, in terms of validation. Further, knowing is elusive, distant, impossible most likely. So fact is closer to 'just' belief than it is to 'knowing'. We just don't even really know how hard knowing is.
You can believe whatever you like, true or not.
Ergo, knowledge is at the least restricted to those beliefs which are true.
Knowledge consists of truths or not-yet-falsified claims the statuses of which are independent of dis/belief.
You cant know what a belief is or what the difference between beliefs and knowledge are if knowledge is only belief.
You cant say knowledge is only belief unless the two words are synonymous. And in that case nothing has been added to the notion of belief or of knowledge.
In order to wonder if knowledge is or is not belief, mustnt you look at two different things and see where they are the same?
So what is the difference between knowledge and belief? We still have this question. Youd have to define that difference first before you might relate them as in knowledge is only belief.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Then so does belief imply the same failure. So I can still wonder about knowledge versus belief, just from a position of failure in understanding.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
A fact distinguished from a belief - based on a decision. Ok. I see the moving parts a bit here. A fact on the one hand, a belief in that fact on the other based on a decision. But you need two things to make a decision. So there must be a difference, say between knowledge on the one hand and what we believe is a fact on the other.
To take the position that knowledge is only belief, it is better put that knowledge is knowledge and belief is belief, and we each of us have very little knowledge, although we are full of beliefs.
But you cant have belief without a separate sense of knowledge.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Right here you assert you have knowledge (where you say as a matter of fact) separately from belief (where you say facts are always wrong). And you negate your own point since what you end up saying is As a matter of fact ( which is wrong), And in order to understand how a fact is a wrong fact, there must be something else that is understood, like a belief in the ability to know facts and to know theyre wrong.
I believe if you have a belief, you have knowledge separately, unavoidably, incontrovertibly resting on the horizon, the context with that belief, but not only that belief.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
You cant make different levels out of knowledge and belief if knowledge is only belief.
I fairly well agree. When I spoke of knowledge in that sense I erred. That is to say, colloquial knowledge, what most people call knowledge is only a well of beliefs, a set of beliefs.
But you are CORRECT that if I say we can't know, that such a thing is impossible, then indeed (i am saying) there is only belief. There is no knowledge! Acknowledged!
I think it is good to realize that knowledge is form of belief. I think that adds a note of humility. What we are sure is true today may be overturned.
But the word 'only' can be misleading. All beliefs are the same and what people call knowledge is no better than any other belief, might be the conclusion/implication.
Some methodologies are better than others.
You acknowledged the central point, though. And I am down with your qualifications, as well, not therefore.
It can't go unnoticed how various people "know" things that contradict what other people "know" as well. Some people know that Jesus is King, other people know Muhammad was the last prophet, other people know Krishna is the eighth avatar of Vishnu.
So if we just look at how the word "know" is used, it's used to refer to extreme confidence (or even extreme faith). It's just a privileged type of belief, privileged specifically by the person with that belief such that they place it above beliefs they have that they don't call "knowledge".
Perhaps outside the concept of justified true belief:
"The general idea behind the belief condition is that you can only know what you believe."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#KnowJustTrueBeli
Quoting Janus
If you take JTB (above) into the picture then that's an argument against it because belief only is insufficient.
If the T in JTB is *required* before something can be knowledge, then we're left in this kind of weird limbo where we can say we "know" things, but if we're not 100% certain, we can't KNOW we know them -- and even if we ARE 100% certain, people can presumably be wrong about things they feel 100% certain about, so even with 100% certainty, you don't always "know" the things you say you know. Sometimes you say you know something, and you're wrong. You don't know it.
People don't communicate -truth itself-, they communicate their beliefs about the things they think are true.
"belief"
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-foundational/
"knowledge"
https://iep.utm.edu/karl-popper-critical-ratiotionalism/
The former is a subset of the latter. Different people/groups have different reasons for saying this batch of beliefs over here, they've got promise or they sure seem to be working so far or they fit X and Y really well and those over there don't fit it so well and those over there we can't make sense of to even tell.
Then can one know whether one knows things, given potential revision.
We have our rigorous criteria, decide we know X. But later we may realize errors or get new data and then we know X is false. Did we falsely think we knew before?
And if we didn't know before, then our knowledge now might not be knowledge. So, is it ok to say we know, knowing we may in fact not know?
this is poetic
May we say we know, knowing we may not know?
I'm down with the first part, but I'm not sure what you mean by the second part.
And, of course, things that get falsified might end up later being resurrected.
People say "I know" to signal agreement. To know is to agree.
People say "I know" to signal acceptance" To know is to accept.
People say "I know" to express conviction. To know is to devote yourself to an idea.
People say "I know" to rebuke falsehoods. To know is to undermine what is seen as untrue.
People say "I know I should..." to signal acceptance of a necessity while suspending acting upon it. To know is to entertain as an abstraction.
People say "I know" to signal that an adequate justification is believed to exist for a belief or practice. To say one knows is to say one is justified.
Knowledge, then, is multifaceted. Since to agree, to accept and to devote have different truth conditions - or none at all, like a devotion. One can say one knows in different senses. Knowledge isn't one kind of thing, and an item of knowledge need not be a statement. And knowing as conviction may not be itemizable at all.
:up:
My first thoughts as well. "I know no one can know," seems to fall into the same bucket as "it is absolutely true that there are no absolutes," etc.
In particular, there is the problem that, if there is no access to "reality," then presumably there is no reason to set up a knowledge/belief, reality/appearance distinction in the first place. But claims that beliefs are "merely appearance," presuppose such a distinction.
As do I, but if there is a distinction, putting belief and knowledge in the same class kinda invalidates it.
But I get what youre saying, I think, in that it is often the case one validly disputes anothers knowledge claim, while he can never dispute anothers mere belief with equal validity. By the same token, I can never dispute with myself the persuasion of belief with the conviction of knowledge, at any one time with respect to the judgement of one thing.
Still, regarding the question in general, this .
Quoting Chet Hawkins
.would be the focal point of the issue, insofar as whether opinion, belief or knowledge, any relative judgement of truth is a purely subjective effort. And even if that is the case, brain states aside, still leaves the method by which it happens.
At any rate, I agree there is a valid distinction.
I'm not an expert so please correct me if you think otherwise, but I think you got it wrong, if you read the linked JTB article you should notice right at the beginning the "The Tripartite Analysis of Knowledge" which states that for something which is "true" you also have to believe it it's true.
Otherwise for ex. if you're presented a proof of something and then claim you don't believe it that's equivalent of making truth not truth (subjectively I suppose).
And the "J", justification condition makes only sense if both belief and truth are fulfilled, that is, you believe true is indeed true, which justifies your belief that something is true.
On another side if you believe something that's not true then your belief is not justified (ex. it's false belief or belief in false statement), that's the fundamental point!
Quoting 180 Proof
Thank you, I might read about it some time, didn't know it's antiquated, but is that your personal opinion or is it established that JTB is out of date?
If that were how people were using the word 'justified', then either the T or the J would be superfluous in JTB. I don't think many people think that way.
I certainly don't think that way. Someone could have a justified belief that's false.
Sorry but this makes no sense to me, how could "true" statement be superfluous?
To my understanding of the article, "true" statement (condition) is that which is proven to be true or truth.
Quoting flannel jesus
No because believing something which is false is not justified belief, because precondition for justification is that true is not false.
I suggest you refer to "The Tripartite Analysis of Knowledge" which shows the relationship between JTB condition, (because you broke the chain of proposition) P1, P2 and P3 (JTB) which is the following:
Wl, yes. Sometimes folk get things wrong. They think they know stuff when they don't. And the only way this can happen is if they believe something that is not true.
So there is a difference between believing and knowing: If something is known, it is true.
Folk think it cleaver to say that we don't know anything. The implication is that there are no facts. That leads to all sorts of inconsistencies.
Quoting Bylaw
You can't "realise your error" unless there is error. Error occurs when you believe something that is not true. For you to occasionally be wrong, you must also sometimes be right.
, Pretty much. There being a difference between belief and knowledge is what allows us to correct our mistakes - we realise we only believed, but didn't know, because what we believed was not true.
Some folk (@Chet Hawkins?) will say that there are no true statements. But it is true that you are reading this.
If what you say is right, that Justified <-> True, then it's pointless to say both. One or the other will suffice, because it implies the other. That's what I mean by "superfluous". Redundant.
I did not say that because "justified belief" is justified only if you believe in what's true, otherwise it's not justified and neither it's justified if you believe in false propositions.
Quoting flannel jesus
Justified on it's own makes no sense without also believing in what's true only (but not false)
Again belief is justified only if you believe in true proposition, in al other case it's not justified.
I should correct my self and say that it's be more correct to says TBJ rather than JTB, that is, it first must be true, and then you have to believe it's true to finally justify your belief, I hope this makes more sense?
Sure, we disagree on some things. And these tend to be the things we talk about, leading us to think we disagree more than we agree.
But think about all the stuff on which we have to agree for you to be reading this post - that there is a thread, in a forum, on philosophy, in English, about truth and knowledge and belief, that there are other folk participating in this thread, that your device links somehow to my device in such a way that we can have this discussion, that there are devices and networks and so on...
Overwhelmingly, we agree about more than we disagree.
What beliefs don't fit into one of those two boxes?
Quoting flannel jesus
Yes.
Quoting flannel jesus
Yes.
Quoting flannel jesus
No.
Not for "any belief" but only those beliefs that are true first are then justified, while beliefs that are false first are then unjustified.
You reduced this to simply "Justified <-> True" which is false because belief condition was omitted from equation. in other words you excluded P2 (belief condition) from "The Tripartite Analysis of Knowledge" to simplify it to just:
Which is incorrect because P2 (S believes that p;) was removed but is required for belief to be justified.
It's not ommitted, it's a given. We're talking about a belief.
Nuh. It's not hard to think of examples in which you believe something that is true, but your belief is unjustified, or you believe something with a justification, but it's not true. Gettier-style problems, or Russell's clock.
You might be getting confused by who you're disagreeing with here. Those aren't my thoughts, those are the paraphrased thoughts of the person I'm speaking to.
It has been long time since I last time read the JTB article, I don't find it hard to understand but I find it difficult to explain to someone who didn't read it obviously, I warmly suggest you read it, I'm sure if you study it you'll get better understanding that me trying to explain it.
Perhaps someone here can help as well, but I'm not in that position.
I'm disagreeing with you, because you're saying that.
Justified refers to "belief" not "truth", it's belief that's is either justified or not, not the "true" statement.
I said: The article doesn't say "you're justified when it's true, and youre unjusitified when it's false".
Reword it to, "You have a justified belief when it's true, and an unjustified belief when it's false".
I keep on not saying the word "belief" explictly in my post because it seems like it's contextually unecessary - we're talking about beliefs, so everything I'm saying has "belief" as a contextual basis. Would you prefer it if I used the word 'belief' explicitly every time? I can do that if that's what you like.
I think you are correct, because both terms are subject to varying definitions, depending on the context. Philosophically, knowledge is "justified true belief"*1, which is the basis of the scientific method : verification of hypotheses. But William James*2 noted that "many people" seem to assume their beliefs are facts. Physicist David Bohm*3 echoed that insight, along with David Hume's quip about Reason being the slave of the passions.
Yet, Socrates*4, acclaimed for his wisdom, must have had that human propensity --- for equating Feelings & Beliefs with reliable Knowledge --- in mind when he said, with a touch of irony, "I know that I know nothing". Allowing for such rare exceptions to James' rule, perhaps you could tweak Hawkins' truism that "knowledge is only belief", by adding that Wisdom is tried & true Belief. :smile:
*1. The Analysis of Knowledge :
According to this analysis, justified, true belief is necessary and sufficient for knowledge.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/
*2. A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. ___ William James
*3. A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices, ___David Bohm,
"In this light, what many consider thought is a superficial play of ideas, a mere shuffling of the mental deck chairs, while the ship of understanding remains firmly anchored in the harbor of prejudice."
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/great-many-people-think-thinking-when-merely-murat-durmus-s6ffe/
*4. Socrates . . . . . doubted his omniscience and famously stated all I know is that I know nothing. {for sure} https://www.thecollector.com/all-i-know-is-that-i-know-nothing-socrates/
So are you saying that belief in false can be justified belief?
I believe or disbelieve statements. Those statements can be true or false. But if I believe in a statement, and that statement is also false, I would never word that as "I believe in false". I would word that as "I believe in that statement, and
or
"Can you ever be unjustified in beleiving in a statement that's true?"
Banno and I both say, YES, both of those things are possible.
They're equally as justified as I am, and they're nevertheless incorrect.
ofc. not, it should be worded as unjustified belief because it's not true.
Quoting flannel jesus
But epistemology makes no room for speculations like "maybe later I'll see if it's false but for now I'll believe it without justification", rather either something is outright knowledge (JTB) or it is not.
Quoting flannel jesus
No you can't.
Quoting flannel jesus
No as well.
Quoting flannel jesus
To my understanding Banno does not agree with you.
Quoting flannel jesus
But problem is that you do not KNOW that thus your belief is unjustified, there is no proof (true proposition) your house will be there.
He said the following words:
Ah indeed! yeah, there are always arguments against, not just JTB but anything else.
Does not all knowledge require a final movement to ordain it? And isn't that step belief? I would define knowledge as that "information," input into Mind(s) which, following a dialectical process, ends at a settlement which is believed by said Mind(s).
Now we must be careful not to miss a step. One might say, I know some say the earth is flat but I don't believe it. My knowledge did not require belief. But actually you must believe that some say the earth is flat. If you don't, your statement is that you don't have knowledge that some say the earth is flat. Rumors? I [believe] there are rumblings about the earth being flat. And I don't believe them. But I do believe there are mumblings. Or, I hear there are rumors and [I believe that] I don't believe them.
All knowledge requires belief.
Here's a summary of my knowledge theory I've worked on for years. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14044/knowledge-and-induction-within-your-self-context/p1
Feel free to scroll down to the first follow up post by Cerulia Lawrence for a fantastic summary.
Totally. There is only belief, ultimately. Knowledge is the sneaky tool we've evolved to hide that fact. Or...so I believe.
But there is a reason. That is how IT functions, this anomalous human existence. We built sky scrapers and rockets out of belief.
But in reality, in the Timeless Reality before/beyond/outside of our constructions, we have only constructed belief to stand in for Truth (knowledge), having no access therefrom to Real Truth
Paraphrased to illustrate:
Jesus: nothing beats belief. Belief will move mountains. If you have belief the size of a mustard seed you will say to that mountain move, and it will move.
Hui neng: came across two of his disciples debating over whether the wind was moving the flag or the flag was moving. "It is neither wind nor flag," said the 6th patriarch of Cha'an. "It is your mind moving."
Yes, I understand that. But I am talking about our in situ situation. Perhaps what we consider we know now may turn out not to be the case.
My suggestion is not that we can't know anything, but rather that adding that it is true, creates a problem. We work with it as if it is true. We have rigor in what we decide to consider knowledge. We don't add on to it being well justified and not (yet) falsified that it is also true.
Quoting BannoWas this directed at me? Is that what you think I am saying and also are you saying I think I am clever?
I distinguish between knowing and believing. I distinguish between belief and knowledge. I use know and knowledge and mean something different than (to merely) believe and (mere)
belief, considering the former terms rigorously arrived
Quoting BannoRight, but I am looking at the now situation. The now situation means that where there does not seem to be an error, there may be an error. We don't know, if we are adding true to the criteria, if it will remain true. Now. Saying something is well justified and not falsified I get. And I think calling those things knowledge is useful. But then to add that it is also true I think is hubris. I treat those things as true. I work with them as true or working, but I have no extra step where I justify X according to a rigorous methodolgy and/or note that others have, check to see if somewhere it has been falsified, and then I make the check to see it is true step. So far it is not false. So far it is working better than anything else.Quoting BannoSure.
How do you know it's unjustified? You said beliefs are justified if they're true and unjustified if they're false. You can't know I'm unjustified unless you also know my house isn't there.
Seems like you're intuitively separating justification and truth too, just like me and Banno
I'm afraid I'm more inclined to these approaches:
And laid out an excellent argument against the statement "Knowledge is merely belief" -- sometimes, to expand on @fdrake, knowledge is action, and has nothing to do with what people say! A totally orthogonal category to [s]your[/s]the notion that knowledge is merely belief.
It's not rare for me to accept that I know things, based on my intuition having been highly trained and tested in some fairly specific areas. Is there some reason I should accept your definition?
If we trace your logic back to its roots, we are going to find intuitions anyway, don't you think?
Feel free to read my link and work. If its a little intimidating, read the summary from Cerulea Lawrence as the next post after mine.
I've read it. I guess I was wondering if you were interested in considering a different perspective.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
Salient here is that falsification relies on the indubitability of basic observations: Here is a black swan. In order for "All swans are white", to be shown false, it must be true that there are non-white swans. In order to know that "All swans are white" is false, one must know that there are non-white swans.
I think beliefs are justified if they are--after a complex but often lightning speed process of dialectic--most fitting for survival. I.e., including but not limited to, does the belief allow for a functional outcome? But also, does it correspond with a fantasy already believed? And, do logic and reason justify the surfacing of the belief into the world or Narrative, and so on. But ultimately beliefs, like all knowable truths, are settled upon when it is most functional to so settle.
Foremost, you can't know something if it is not true. This is how the grammar of "know" works. If you hold it to be true, but it isn't, then you only believe it, you don't know it.
Secondly, it is plain that there are true statements. This statement is true. So are the theorems of arithmetic and logic. That you are reading this is also true.
Engineers and scientists are quite rightly taught scepticism towards some statements, but not others. If they question the conservation of energy, they will not get far in the profession. While they might give lip service to fablsificationism or to hyperbolic notions of truth, there remain some things that are indubitable.
Quoting Bylaw
This works only in limited cases. Some counterexamples have already been given. Here's another: Supose you are playing Checkers and your opponent reaches over and moves one of your pieces - yo say "You can't move my pieces!" Would you accept their reply if it were "HA, but there you have it - I have falsified that rule: I can move your pieces!"
This by way of showing that the situation around truth is quite complicated, and depends on what one is doing - ont he game being played.
I haven't "backed off" at all. I've said there is a valid distinction between knowledge and belief. And I've allowed that some of what is generally considered to be knowledge may be better classed as belief.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
So, here you assert that all facts are a subset of beliefs. This does not accord with the common concepts of 'fact' and 'belief'. 'Fact' signifies what is the case regardless of what anyone believes.
Knowing (in the propositional sense of 'knowing that', which is the only sense we are concerned with here) is generally understood to be believing that what is the case is the case and believing it for the right reasons.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Knowing is sometimes conflated with certainty. Do you claim that knowing would only be knowing if the knower knows with absolute certainty that they know?
Are there not things we do know in this way. like I know I am sitting at my computer typing this? How could I doubt that?
Quoting Chet Hawkins
We operate more from what we see, hear, smell, touch and taste I would say. We know those things most intimately, and I question whether they have anything to do with belief. Though if this is knowing, as distinct from seeing, hearing, touching etc., then we could say it is not propositional knowing primarily but may be subsequently framed as such.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
We all see the same things and will mostly agree down to the smallest details about what we see right in front of us. In fact, this is the principal criterion of reality. If the others do not see what you see right in front of you then you must be hallucinating.
I'm seeing a lot of assertion from you but little argument to convince me that I should change my understanding of fact and belief to be in line with yours.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't see how something which is acknowledged to be nothing more than a belief can be counted as a fact in the first place.
Quoting Bylaw
The JTB definition of knowledge involves belief, and we might say that it frames knowledge as a "form of belief": namely justified true belief, but it does not follow that it is nothing more than belief, because the 'justified' and the 'true', as conceived, have nothing to do with belief.
Quoting SpaceDweller
Yes, you make the same point as I did above.
Quoting 180 Proof
I agree with what you say about belief, but what you say about knowledge seems somehow strange. Say we have accepted some not-yet-falsified claim and count it as knowledge, and then it becomes falsified. Was it ever knowledge in that case?
Quoting Bylaw
Yes, but if the best conception of knowledge is that it can only apply to what is true or factual then there is a valid distinction between mere belief and knowledge. It might be said that we can know things without knowing that we know them, and not know things that we think we know. This does seem to separate knowledge and belief.
Yes, there are different kinds of knowing. There is 'knowing how', there is the knowing of familiarity and there is 'knowing that'. I think the salient question in this thread concerns only 'knowing that' or propositional knowing, because the other two categories do not necessarily involve belief.
Twaddle.
Facts don't care what you believe.
Trump can believe that he had the largest inauguration crowd ever, but it wasn't, regardless of what Trump chooses to believe.
Mike Hughes can believe that the Earth is flat, but he is still dead.
Reverend Jim Jones believed he would start a paradise on Earth. It didn't work out.
Not all beliefs are true. If you lose the capacity to be able to differentiate between true and false belief, you are headed for a confrontation with reality.
You get to decide what you believe, but you do not usually get to decide what is fact.
Right, but I wasn't putting all knowledge and belief in the same class but merely observing that what some might count as knowledge is actually merely belief.
Quoting Mww
Okay but is a judgement of truth the same as truth? I don't think that is how the two are commonly conceived. It seems that we can know the truth without knowing we know it, and that we can think we know the truth, but be mistaken.
If he'd said knowledge was a subset of belief, that what we know is a subset of what we believe, that might have made sense.
Quoting Janus
Clearly not.
All propositional knowledge requires belief in one sense, because when knowledge is put into propositional form it is thereby asserted as belief. On the other hand, I know I am sitting here typing this, and I know this pre-propositionally simply because I am aware that I am sitting here typing. Perhaps the word 'know' is inappropriate here because to say you know something implies the possibility of doubt. So perhaps I should just say " I am aware that I am sitting here". Would that then be case of "the knowing of familiarity" as distinct from "propositional knowing"?
Quoting ENOAH
These are poetic expressions and I don't see any relevance to what we are considering here.
Always! I was just giving my answer in the most accurate way I could. Since you've already read it, I will answer your question with that in mind.
Quoting wonderer1
Yes, because my definition allows an objective statement of knowledge. This further allows an evaluation of inductions, which we can place into a hierarchy of cogency. Probability, possibility, plausibility, and irrational. Thus we can be more confident even in the inductions we make by evaluating them against other competing inductions in that hierarchy.
Quoting wonderer1
No. At its root, "I discretely experience." is proven and not an intuition.
I agree with his argument although as I already said in reply to @fdrake I don't think the discussion is really concerned with anything other than propositional knowing and its relation to belief.
Yes, 's is a neat bit of linguistic philosophy... :wink:
Philosophical discussion tends to focus on the JTB account, with good reason, but even Socrates and Plato knew it was limited.
Quoting Janus
I'll argue that knowing-that reduces to knowing-how; so by way of an example knowing that water boils at 100? is knowing how to boil the kettle and how to use a thermometre and how to answer basic physics questions and so on. I take this as a corollary of meanign as use. The meaning of "water boils at 100?" is what we are able to do with it.
Notice also that this approach makes knowedge more social or communal. It is part of our langauge use.
Fair enough.
Also, I agreed with your differentiation between know and aware that.
Quoting Janus
No, but actual knowledge is fallibilistic.
On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense - F. Nietzsche[/b]
How do you not love Nietzsche. Great starting point for these questions.
I see there are at least four things we must just put on the table and address before we can have any account of any one of them. This conversation about knowledge versus belief must address the following distinct things:
- knowing (the act or operation)
- the known (not an act or operation, but merely the of in knowledge of, or merely the other, or facts, or objects, or things, as in things known while in the act of knowing)
- truth relationship (the relationship between the act of knowing on the one hand and the thing now known, the object of knowledge on the other. This relationship, as truth or lies or reality or appearance, is most simply represented as truth) (have to address it, as Nietzsche did and we all are doing.)
- believing (called belief, but this is another act, of judging or deciding that the knowledge one is in the act of knowing is true. Belief ties them together.)
Nietzsche believed his words above to be true. He would admit the absurdity of calling this picture of man in the universe something he knew. He just also believed nothing important happened just because he so believed, he so knew, and the act of reifying truth or knowledge was as arbitrary as reifying believing or willing, AND in his belief system, wiling was more worthy of reification than any true knowledge anyway, but I digress.
So I agree with Nietzsche that you cant discuss one of these without the others. And I agree you can conclude many different things about knowledge and belief and truth and knowing, such as nothing happening here in this out of the way corner of the universe.
Or you might conclude knowledge is merely belief, which I disagree with.
But I agree we shouldnt reify knowledge above the willing belief, or truth above the simple act of knowing anything be it false or lies. I dont reify any of it, and try to take it as it comes which is all all together. Nietzsche had to go too far to make us see truth and knowledge dont deserve primacy over the act of willing, but he went too far and reified willing (but I digress again).
I see I am capable of knowing, and this operation has furnished me with facts or objects of knowledge, for me to then judge and decide for myself which of these things that I am knowing are truly relating my knowing with the things known. I also see it is possible that I never know truth, but then there would not be different puzzle pieces, just me never getting to move them along the game board. The pieces themselves are already there for me to puzzle about.
So, to me, belief is as essential in this discussion as is the operation of knowing, as is the operation of believing the knowing relates to the now known objects as truth or otherwise. Knowing, knowledge, believed to be true these all happen together.
There is something to what you say, but I think you may be working with too broad a brush. Know-how involves skills that may not be dependent on knowing anything in a propositional sense.
The various ways "know" is used can perhaps all be related by changing locutions, but I don't think it's a matter of one concept being reducible to another.
So, I may know things in a propositional sense that have no effect on what I do, or how I do things. For example, I may know that my friend regularly arrives late to appointments, but I need not necessarily do anything with that knowledge. Or I may know that many religious people think Jesus died for our sins but find that knowledge quite irrelevant to how I live my own life.
Another point is that, for example, I may know how to ride a bicycle and that knowledge seems to have nothing necessarily to do with belief. I think that's a salient difference. This is a complex subject not readily amenable to reductive thinking.
So, I agree with you that knowledge is, to a fair extent, social and communal, and is related to our language use, but that is not the end of the story. Animals, even solitary animals, know how to do things without knowing anything propositional
Right. Notice you wrote this all in the present tense. I know you have a more nuanced understanding of this. But I just want to immediately mention that I am looking at what happens through time and what we know/think/have access to at any given moment.
It might be best to look at what I say in an overview...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/893764
Quoting Bannoyes, I think you are still assuming that I think we can't know anything.Quoting BannoOf course not. But I think my response to you makes it clear that there are things we can know. You seem to be arguing that extreme skepticism is problematic. I agree, that's not my point at all. Of course, I could be wrong about what just happened, what my opponent just did, in the checkers game, but that's not what I'm arguing.
You seem to be taking what I said as saying that we cannot know anything and we should doubt everything, in practice. Yeah, that's not what I'm saying at all.
I am focus on having True as something in addition to justification. Like I check off the justification. I check to make sure it hasn't been falsified (so far). Then I check to see if it is true. Well, not. That's an non-real step and a non-real criterion. Which doesn't mean nothing is true. Nor does it mean I take a similar skeptical attitude to everything nor am I suggesting we throw up our hands and say we can't know anything. But this is in my previous posts.
If it still seems to you that I am saying these things, then we are talking past eachother.
Sure, knowledge is a rigorously arrived at belief in JTB theories of truth.
Equally rigourously if you drop the T though. The rigor is all in the J - the J is where all our confidence in the T comes from.
If it's rigor we're looking for, then we should place a threshold on the minimum amount of J before we call it "knowledge". Which is probably what we do anyway, given we don't have access to a universal dictionary of objective truths.
And then we just have beliefs with varying levels of justification, and the ones with the most justification we call "knowledge" - and some of that knowledge is probably wrong.
Quoting flannel jesus
To me it works to add in 4 further letters and take out the T. (this is partly ironic since it's too many letters to be useful, but it reflects my thinking.
1) NF - not falsified
2) BE - best explanation (so far)
Giving us JNFBEB :grin:
Justified not falsified best explanation belief.
By best explanation I am leaving room for parsimony - there's no equally predictive explanation that has less newly posited entities. Possibly things like clarity, lack of ambiguity, fits with current models.
I think it is fine to refer to such things as knowledge and that we know it. Even though it may turn out later that we were incorrect. We can be fussy later and say we thought we knew, but we didn't, but really I think there's no need to do this. Knowledge changed.
We have no separate access to truth. Oh, that's well justified, not falsified, and.....testing......and it's true. I understand that the T is generally not looked at a step in the methodology of determining if something is knowledge. Like first we justify then we check the truth of X. But I think the label is misleading in that direction and in any case redundant in the present. If it is well justfied (and meets my other criteria) then there we don't need to somehow also thin of truth or true as an adjective. I think it's confusing to add the T.
Quoting flannel jesus
Agreed.
Perhaps not commonly conceived, but common is so boring, innit? At the end of the day, each comes by and thereby possesses his own anyway, so .
A judgement of truth just indicates the condition of the object of the judgement. To judge a thing as the case, then to think or be led to think the negation of it, leads to self-contradiction, and conversely, to judge a thing as not the case, while equally a lawful truth, still leads to self-contradiction upon thinking or being led to think its affirmation.
I don't think I've seen a propositional knowledge out in the wild though. I have seen the others I referenced. I can perhaps see a propositional knowledge out in the wild if I put a particular kind of retrospective goggles on. But if you insist...
Someone says "I believe" to register something they accept but are not certain of, or to express conviction in the face of reality, or faith. "I believe in you", "I believe things will turn out alright". That expresses a conviction, but in a declarative fashion, expressing the conviction is more important than the justification for it. Much more affective than deliberative.
A belief is something you can feel when you put your mind to it. By that I mean there's a sensation and inner perceptual profile to an intense conviction. You need not establish your beliefs, other than that you can state what they are upon an appropriate act of recall (or self creation).That is, to count as a belief, it needs not be established in principle, it just needs to be expressed sincerely. Often that belief corresponds to an articulable fact.
You can ask someone how they know something, you can't ask someone how they believe something and expect to receive the same flavour of answer. For knowledge, someone tends to be able to give you an answer - "I've seen it", "here's my reasoning", "I was taught it in school", "I saw it on the news". The kind of answer someone gives for belief (yes I have tried) is about the sensation profile - how you believe something? Intensely, casually, fundamentally... "I just do", "It's part of who I am".
In that regard statements of knowledge reference a tacit, communal consensus in reference to which - and idiosyncratically - your claim to knowledge can be assessed as knowledge. However most of the time people just trust or are indifferent to "I know" statements. Your claim to belief cannot be assessed in the same way - what you express with "I believe" counts as a belief, all that can be doubted is your sincerity plus your degree and quality of conviction.
One cannot know intensely, but one can believe intensely. That you believe can be examined as whether you are telling the truth about yourself, that you know can be examined as whether you are telling the truth about the world.
I think you are creating too strong a separation between knowledge and belief. Beliefs are very often taken to be propositional, cognitional, intellectual, truth apt, etc. For example, the second two definitions that Merriam-Webster gives:
2) something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion : something believed
3) conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence
For example, in practice belief is often used as qualitatively identical to knowledge, just less certain. Your understanding seems to exclude this common meaning of belief.
Throw it in! That's absolutely part of knowledge and belief's relationship. The things I've said are also part of it.
I will point out that in 2) and 3)... 2) doesn't reference a statement, it instead references "something" and in 3) it references the conviction and "the reality" as well as a statement. The "especially" qualifier in 3) is an admission that there's a way of using the word belief in a context regarding the examination of evidence - in that regard someone's statement of belief is treated as a claim to knowledge, or the kind of thing which could be suspect tested for knowledge. Contrast that to declarative knowledge - which only references a statement, and is thus more related to 3 than 2!
Tellingly, knowledge is not a listed synonym of belief. If the dictionary sufficed, you can end the thread here.
:up: Sounds good. I just wanted to highlight an aspect of belief that I often see overlooked on this forum.
Quoting fdrake
I don't find the OP question very interesting at all. I think most everyone knows that belief and knowledge are not the same thing. So good on you for raising more interesting subjects. :wink:
You said:
Quoting flannel jesus
That's not what "justification" condition is about in JTB!
you don't know your house will be there when you return, you do know it's there now but you can't know if it will still be there later (ex. it could caught fire).
Thus your belief is not justified because what you believe is not true for certain. (you only assume it will be there)
Quoting Janus
Exactly, some folks seem to have problem with "belief" in JTB because they're trying to separate belief from knowledge but are not able.
The whole point however with "J" condition is that you have to believe proof is true to justify your belief, rather than blindly believing (in some not-a-truth)
P1: This is philosophy forum (certain truth)
P2: You believe it's philosophy forum (belief)
P3: Your belief is justified (justified true belief)
On another side if you believe in not-a-truth then it's as follows:
P1: This is NOT philosophy forum (false)
P2: You believe it's NOT philosophy forum (belief)
P3: Your belief is unjustified (false belief)
What opponents of JTB are trying to do is to simplify this to:
P1: This is philosophy forum (certain truth)
C: Therefore we know this is philosophy forum
But then the question is, do you believe it? and what if you don't believe it?
But that's not what you said before. You said before that a belief is justified if it's true. If I believe it, and it's true, then it's justified, regardless of if I'm certain - that's the implication of your wording.
You said it yourself here. If it's true, then I'm justified.
You replied so fast I'm certain you didn't read carefully what I said.
In the quote above you said it's true because you believe it, do you see?
Anyway "certain" or "proof" is same thing here. you have no proof that your house will be there in the future. which is required to know for truth condition to be true.
But if it's true, then it's justified, right? That's what you were saying yesterday.
If you believe something that's true, then it's justified.
flannel jesus
Yes.
SpaceDweller
Perhaps if you're visionary or prophet then you can know what will happen with your house days or weeks later, that's not proof and so not "T" true condition
Do you think JTB stands for "Justified Proved Belief"?
Here is a quote from the JTB article:
I respect you and your view on JTB but again I highly suggest you read the article:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#TrutCond
Another quote:
I hope this helps you to understand my stance?
No, unfortunately it doesn't. Your use of various terms in this conversation has seemed wildly and irreconcilably inconsitsent to me. First you say, if a belief is true then it's justified. Then you say my belief in something was not justified - even though it was true.
Yesterday, before I went home, I believed my house was still there and was still going to be there when I got home - you said this was unjustified, but I went home and it turned out to be true! So if it was true, how could it be unjustified, if you think all true beliefs are justified?
The terms I used are based on JTB article according to my understanding, (ex. I didn't made it up only to debate you). and yes there is mention of proof in the article but you're reluctant to study it so it's difficult for me to explain it to you.
Quoting flannel jesus
We have already been over this before and I replied to you that this is not how epistemology works :(
In epistemology to my humble understanding you need a priori knowledge which you do not have with your house example.
Quoting sime
That's very interesting statement and fits well into JTB, @flannel jesus saw his house a day later but we did not, but we were talking about yesterday, problem is that truth can not be one days yes and another day not, it's either true every day or it's otherwise not epistemology, that's my assertion.
Does the article say "proof" and "truth" are synonyms? Because that's what you're saying.
Quoting SpaceDweller
I COMPLETELY AGREE that it's not how epistemology works. That's why I don't say things like "beliefs are justified iff they're true".
It does not explicitly say they're a synonyms (obviously they're not) but the context is that for something to be true you need proof. otherwise how do you tell it's true?
Your truth condition with the house provides no proof other than you saw your house next day which implies lack of proof yesterday.
And regarding your house example here is an argument against you:
See, it's not about what you see today but what you claimed yesterday, you claimed not-a-truth.
If you still don't understand this concept then I can't help sorry.
How in the world do you figure that?
You don't think there are any unproven truths?
Either by scientific method or argumentative philosophy.
Quoting flannel jesus
No, I don't think there are unprooven truths.
Can you prove it? Can you prove there aren't any?
Yes, name one truth that has no proof and that will be my proof.
We've got two claims here: GC is true, or GC is false.
One of those two claims is an unproven truth. The other one is unproven and false.
I'm not familiar with these math problems but here is what I found:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/#MathSignPlat
Although this discussion seems to go off-topic, I hold my stance that truths require proofs at least in philosophical sense.
Let G be the claim that Goldbachs Conjecture is true.
Furthermore, we add as a premise that G is not proven, and also ~G is not proven.
Let P be the claim that an unproven truth is true.
G is true or it's not true
G v ~G (law of excluded middle)
G -> P (because G is unproven, if it's true, P must be true)
~G -> P (because ~G is unproven, if it's true, P must be true)
assume ~P
....... ~P implies ~G (by applying contraposition to G -> P)
....... ~G
....... ~P implies G (by applying contraposition to ~G -> P)
....... G
....... G ^ ~G is a contradiction, so we can conclude that
P
There's my proof that there's an unproven truth.
OK you win! :up:
Now if only you could apply this formula to your house example within the limits on epistemology...
I don't know but I admit that philosophy is such an interesting field of study.
I learned from other members here that philosophical discussions should be a "fodder" for everyone to take a little and make up for something rather than just proving our own points.
Brilliant.
Quoting Fire Ologist
May I ask what you think:
1. How do you suppose Nietzsche "defines" knowing (besides the quote provided)? That is what (ontology(?) if I am using the word properly) does he "ascribe" to human knowledge? It is clearly not a thing inherent in the universe which our superior brains can uncover? Is it, to N, a fiction, an illusion?
2. How would N. characterize the conclusions about Being (as ontology(?)) made by Heidegger and Sartre, for e.g.? As "arrogant and mendacious"? Or meaningfully nonetheless, and if meaningful, then how?
Quoting Bylaw
Yes, that's the way JTB is conceived. The problem is that we may not always know that what we (think we) know is true or be that clear about just how what we consider to be justification really is justification.
Right, in practice what is judged to be knowledge counts as knowledge, and what is judged to be true counts as truth. Objectivity is a chimera or is reducible to intersubjective agreement.
Quoting fdrake
I haven't seen any kind of knowledge out in the wild, except know-how. I have seen all kinds of claims to knowledge, including claims to know that this or that proposition is true, claims to know this or that person or place, claims to know God or the Absolute Truth, and so on. I agree with you that the idea of knowledge and its modes of expression are many-faceted. I also agree that JTB is a limited conception.
As I said in the OP, my motivation for this thread was a response to a request by @Chet Hawkins to create a thread if I wanted him to explain his reasons for claiming that there is no knowledge, but only belief. So far, he has not come to the party and seems to have dipped out.
That's true, but the OP asks if knowledge is merely belief. Apparently, it's implying that the difference between knowing and believing is empirical verification or rational justification. And so, we argue about shades of truth. :smile:
Knowing Facts :
knowledge requires belief
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/
I question whether all knowledge does require belief. I know how to ride a bike, plane a board, paint a picture, write a poem, play the piano and so on, and I don't see how any of that requires belief.
These threads often get interesting.
We're fallible creatures. It doesn't follow from that that we're always mistaken.
Objectivity is fraught with archaic baggage. A muddler's pig pen. The muddlers are not fans.
When a belief statement is true, it is so independently of the user's certainty. That is an objective truth if there ever was one.
Where does that leave us?
How does one learn to ride a bike without believing that they're doing something while they're learning? Learning involves all sorts of belief. Removing the belief removes the capability.
Avoiding danger requires belief. Learning how to ride a bike involves avoiding danger.
In both agreement and good standing. Glad to join you, if that's okay?
What particular belief that would be necessary in order to learn to ride a bike did you have in mind.
Quoting creativesoul
I think we do generally agree and are in good standing too. I always welcome your input.
I think your general approach is correct here, but it would seem that you need to speak to the question of riding, not the question of learning. This is because it would be perfectly possible that one needs to believe while learning, but once they are an adept practitioner that belief ceases. In other words, your argument applies to learning, but there is no reason to believe that your argument will also apply to riding simpliciter.
(Not everything we do when learning to ride a bike is necessarily something that we do when riding a bike.)
Sweet. Good to know.
Quoting Janus
Impossible to learn how to ride a bike that one does not believe is there. Isn't it?
I cannot make much sense of the idea that learned bike riders no longer believe that they're riding bikes.
The original argument you gave had to do with avoiding danger, and because of this it was a good example of the invalidity of the inference from learning to riding. There are a variety of ways in which the experienced rider is not avoiding danger in the way that someone who is learning is avoiding danger.
Yep. That was the plan.
Quoting Janus
Yep. And if know-how were a subset of know-that, that might be a problem. But if knowing-that is a subset of knowing-how, that is not a problem - is it?
Quoting Janus
Interesting. A good reply. Could you be said to know this if no action at all followed from it - including saying "You are always late!"? I think one could. So know-that extends past know-how, if only marginally.
Quoting Janus
Well, it implies belief in Bicycles and riding.
Animals know how to do things, and we commonly attribute knowing-that to them. The cat knows that the bowl is empty, and so on.
The temptation is there to draw a hard line between knowing-how and knowing-that. But they are not as distinct as folk might presume.
Sure. It becomes a series of autonomously enacted unconscious behaviours.
How does that avoid the existential dependency that all experienced riders have upon learning how to ride?
Becoming experienced requires learning how to ride. Learning how to ride requires belief.
Claiming there is no belief necessary for doing things that require belief makes no sense to me.
Do (5) and (6) hold?
(It depends only on our definition of belief, but the definition of belief that supports (5) and (6) is not uncommon or illegitimate.)
Yep, understood. You are interested in the dynamics of belief.
Quoting Bylaw
Not an assumption. You did say, in italics, Quoting Bylawwhich presumably means that there is no knowledge, just belief.
I find your post confusing. You say we know things, yet the difference between knowledge and belief is at least that the things we know are true; and yet you say " take out the T".
There are true statements.
And your tacit conclusion is, Therefore, riding a bike requires belief. The question and ambiguity is this: did it merely require belief at some point in the past, or does it require ongoing belief?
Yes.
I think he claim only extends to instances in the past. Any application to future appointments would be speculation, and couldn't amount to knowledge, I don't think.
You can only know that your friend, has previously consistently arrived late to appointments. You may know that it is likely he/she will do so again.
Quoting Banno
:ok: Agree. I think this is being ignored in many comments here. The belief is actually required for the 'know' part to exist, I think. It's implied, very strongly, that you must hold the belief to know.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't think so. It just becomes a less conscious belief. I don't suddenly not believe the ILAC method of legal writing, simply because I now use it as a pre-recorded framework for writing certain types of advice. I still believe ILAC is credible, that I know how to use it, and that it will fulfill the instruction I've been given (if applicable). Trust might be a better word, as it's been relegated to thre pre-or-sub-conscious at that time (and similarly with the Bike examplar viz. you must still believe that the rotational pressure of your peddling will move the bike forward, to bother with the act).
One can be certain of what's going to happen. Those things can happen as expected. After they happen, one knows.
That doesn't seem right.
One can have certainty, as an attitude. I don't think it's right to say one can be certain, without a Crystal ball. I don't think it's right to say that the occurrence being in-line with the expectation amounts to knowledge. That couldn't be true for someone convinced they've got the Lottery numbers right, and wins. They didn't know. But they were certain, and right, in the event.
Being right without knowing.
Are you implying that certitude is never warranted?
Agree.
For future events? Depends. In a practical sense, sure it's warranted in that not assuming (to the degree needed) would prevent action.
But I do not think it right that past events can warrant certainty about future events, in the strict sense. Constant conjunction and all..
It seems to me that is saying about the same thing.
It's definitely been awhile, but I would think that before I ever rode a bike I had a conscious model of how bike riding worked. The model was rather wrong, but thinking I knew how it worked gave me the courage to try riding a bike. It was in the process of trying to ride, falling and scraping things, and trying again, that competence at riding a bike was automatized, in a subconscious 'muscle memory' sense. At some point I was just riding a bike with no mental modeling of what it is to ride a bike, or even conscious thoughts about a bike, being involved.
Quoting AmadeusD
;) I agree with what you're saying, but maintain this indicates you have retained the beliefs required to ride a bike.
Yes. you're right.
Quoting Banno
I don't frame it that way, but that is a possible way of framing it. I tend to think that with things we can see, like bicycles and do, like riding, there is no need for belief.
I also agree that there is no hard line between knowing how and knowing that, and I think even knowing that (given that we apply the idea of knowing in relation to things we can simply be aware of such as having hands and countless other things) does not necessarily involve believing.
To include believing in those kinds of instances would be to capitulate to what I consider to be pointless skepticism. For example, I see the bike, and belief in its existence would only come into play if I could doubt its existence. I don't know if I've explained where I'm coming from with that adequately, but I hope so.
Its easy to misrepresent Nietzsche, and when you try to briefly summarize what he says you are in danger of leaving so much out. A lot of philosophic writers are like that. But Ill attempt.
What then is truth? truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions.. - FN
I see this as with so much of what he says as an exaggeration to make a complex point. He wrote with passion, but the point is that we humans make way too much of this truth we have invented. Its not that truth is not something. Its not that we can avoid knowing and seeking the truth. Its that we have over valued so many truths and then built obscene facades of dogma and institution out of these over-valuations.
So if we could get to the core essence of what it is to know, what knowledge is to Nietzsche, in the end we are more likely to have built another illusion than to have stumbled upon the truth. And instead of being a truth seeker, of following the drive and will to truth, instead he was willing to live without it.
He devalued truth for all of the misconceptions it has been used to prop up. That is what truth is - based on convention so that when I say poison and then say mashed potatoes we all dont get confused about what to eat - truth is less important than poison or potatoes or the will to eat both.
Unfortunately, he did such a good job correcting us from our over-valuing of our science and truth (and yes all science is only practical convention and can be over-valued as well), hammering everything down to where, as he says above, where nothing happened, philosophy hasnt recovered. And worse, instead of over-valuing truth, we now over-value the disintegration, the act of disintegrating, and we now reify only the illusion, only the will without any content whatsoever. So because of Nietzsche we again stray from Nietzsche in the other direction.
He ruined all good discussions of what is knowledge. Damn Nietzsche.
And I just disagree with him. I agree that truth has emerged on the scene because of we humans being human, all too-human. And I agree that willing a truth or believing our own knowledge is fraught with peril and likely to lead where nothing happened, a house of cards with the knowing self standing on top smiling like an idiot. But then, once in a while, in those moments where science might be mixed with gaity, where the tuning fork makes use of the hammers rubble, we skip right past truth and knowledge straight to wisdom. Some things are just there, and by humans, once in a twinkling of a star in a remote corner of the universe, wisdom shines (for an instant for sure, but now forever if you will, because that is what wisdom knows).
Quoting ENOAH
Hard to predict who Nietzsche would agree with and distance himself from. I get lumping Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre (along with Camus, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Goethe, and others. They all use such different vocabularies (absurd, dread, anxiety, nausea) to point at the same deeply intrinsic places and moments. If you want to talk about Nietzsches ontology, I think you start with the birth of tragedy - the Dionysian, the murky unformed passion out of which instinct is first born. You have to look there, using his words.
But as soon as we fix things with too much Apollonian appearance, it gets ugly again (to Nietzsche) and loses its art.
But he was a true artist of a writer. He said many wise things. These refute his exaggerations, to me, and allow me to still cherish what he did for these discussions.
This is a incredibly lucid take on Nietzsche to my mind. Nice.
Acknowledged.
Quoting Fire Ologist
You gave an excellent explanation given space/time, and the aforementioned caveat. I would assume, an "orthodox" one as well (recognizing there's no such thing, all the more so for one like Nietzsche).
Obviously, like everyone else, my explorations have a "why" of their own. So I'm not pursuing this argumentatively, but also not entirely openmindedly, but rather, with an openly confessed personal path in mind. I've learned it's fair and functional sometimes to unshroud where you're coming from.
Having said all that, there seemed to me in your explanation, a reluctance to go a certain distance as far as truth being an illusion/invention. It is as if you have found there is a lingering of truth for Nietzsche in his assessment in this regard.
Is that because for certain N. hung on to a level of truth even in how we experience, for lack of better terms, our phenomenal or existential?
Or are you reluctant to ascribe to N. a more absolute abandonment of truth in human existential/phenomenal experience because, for e.g. he's so ambiguous and that would be pinpointing him to an extreme; or, it sounds like nihilism, etc.?
Quoting Fire Ologist
Is that for certain? Or, though he wrote with passion, was he, nonetheless, dead serious that all [human] existential truths, I.e. the way we see and interpret the world, is illusion? He wouldn't have been the first, nor the only. But perhaps he was dead serious and any subtle hints to the contrary are there because, 1) his age did not equip him yet with the Narratives to boldly make that claim (he lacked post modernism for e.g., exposed to Buddhism, but not really). 2) we read those subtleties into N to mean he clung to a more traditional metaphysics when really he didn't. ?
Quoting Fire Ologist
Ok, and here, I accept, without need for further query. Because, to clarify, I'm not wondering if N. rejected Truth per se. I know he didn't. He Isn't a nihilist. But I'm seeing a reluctance to say he rejected truth in all things human. And sure, there are truths in the sense of we believe, and truths in the sense of it is functional to believe, but for N. in human existence, these too are ultimately illusions. No?
Quoting Fire Ologist
Damn right. So if even science is not shielded from illusion...
Quoting Fire Ologist
Fair enough. But I think you agree (are there people who don't?) we don't really judge these types of theories for there impact on history. . . wait, or is that exactly what we do but don't like to admit it, so when someone says, "I disagree with N because he ruined discourse," we call them out and remind them to judge the theory on the merits, as in, does it stand to reason?
Hmm.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Agreed. Unlike truth and knowledge. A hazy thing. Im not as comfortable with its ontology (?) true nature (?). It involves some of N's illusion, but also brings in organic feelings and drives in a way which bypasses emotions and sometimes logic and reason. A bit like Kants sublime.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I'm interested in seeing if people who are comfortable with N. would be comfortable saying that from a Nietzschean perspective Heidegger's Dasein, throwness, ready at hand, etc. etc. etc., though brilliant and functional, is also, in the end, illusion, and has not described Truth, but has only described the illusion, because Truth is inscrutable and ineffable and, actually inaccessible by means of the illusion, .
Quoting Fire Ologist
I'm good with respecting ideas even if the dominant thinking in my locus of history has found reason to refute it. Ideas build ideas, and so on. We don't even always know how and which ones. For sure N has influenced my thinking even though I have read admittedly little N., and, even though my locus might have removed him from the current circle of influence.
As for "exaggerations," I'm not sure I see them that way, which is the "why" of my queries here.
Thanks for the time and edifying discourse.
I
I think this is true for most of the shallower readers (the teenagers I've discussed at times, for instance) so they're just as easily able to discard N as not 'worth reading' rather than 'Not a philosopher' which i think is probably the most scathing (reasonable) criticism of N.
But Philosophers (broadly speaking) who read N seem to read into his work philosophy even he didn't necessarily understand or think of while writing (also true for a lot of lyricists!!) He was writing for other reasons.
Quoting Janus
If such were the case, it reduces to belief being a necessary condition for knowledge. If it is true the only source for knowledge is experience, and there is no possibility of experiencing that which one merely believes, wouldnt it follow that one cannot condition the other?
Pretty dumb, methinks, to merely believe I know how to ride a bike while Im actually doing it, and conversely, even dumber to claim to know I can ride a bike by merely believing Ive been on one and in control of it.
Maybe I believe I cant know how to ride a bike cuz Im a hopeless klutz who believes he shouldnt use a hammer given the historical precedent of experiencing serious bodily injury. But then, out of sheer well-being necessity, I find myself riding a bike in order to escape the neighbors mutt. If knowledge requires belief, and the belief is negative the knowledge must also be negative thereby how to ride a bike should not have been known to me, and under sufficiently strong negative belief that I cant know how, I shouldnt have even bothered to try. Yet given that riding a bike .which Im now doing .presupposes at least the awareness of the mechanics and principles by which bike riding is accomplished, re: Im peddling upright in a progressive series of times, it is the case what I believe about bike riding (I cant know how) has nothing whatsoever to do with my coming to know how to do it (YEA!! Look it me, here I am bike riding).
So did I switch beliefs and come to believe I can know how to ride a bike? Like that little engine that could? Seems kinds silly to me, to take the time to believe something at the same time Im discovering it for myself in conjunction with the extant experience that bikes are inherently ride-able. Even if IthinkIcanIthinkIcanIthinkIcan is running through my brain, am I navigating positively because of that alone, or am I concentrating on the objects of certain mechanics and principles necessary for transportation via bicycle? Do I really need to believe in the authority of those principles in order to use them, especially considering the fact Im only interested in their objects I use and not the principles themselves I merely think as given?
Wonder why Nike, instead taglining with Just do it, didnt instead go with Believe you can know how to do it then just do it?
Interesting. I had that hunch but didn't know it was commonly regarded.
When "knowledge is defined as: "justified true belief", the "belief" aspect means truths that one is aware of, not expressions of language that are tentatively held as true. We can easily overcome the {Gettier problem} by adding that "Knowledge is justified true belief such that the justification guarantees the truth of the belief.
Because of the brain in a bottle thought experiment we cannot be logically certain of any empirical truth. Instead of saying {there is} a dog in my living room right now we must qualify this {there appears to be} a dog in my living room right now. It is not 100% logically impossible that all of reality is not a mere figment of the imagination. We can be logically certain that 2 + 3 = 5;
:lol:
I think this bears reiterating. There is no point in trying to nail down the one correct definition of knowledge, because, like many words in the ordinary language, "knowledge" is used in different ways. And since meaning is use, the meaning of "knowledge" is not univocal.
Those who insist that when we say "I know" we mean nothing other than "I am convinced" (or some such) have a point, because that is one of the common uses of the word. But that doesn't exhaust all uses. For example, when we deny someone's claim of knowledge, most of the time, what we deny is the truth of what they claim to know, not the truth of their conviction.
Of course, all of the above considerations apply only if all we care about is the ordinary language meaning, which is best left to semantics scholars, anyway. But then - and I realize that this flies in the face of the long and rich history of philosophical debates on the subject of knowledge - I am not sure what value philosophers could contribute to this discussion. (That was realization was kind of a dead end for "ordinary language philosophy".)
Quoting Janus
Even if you want to bracket out 'knowing how' (and I agree with @Moliere and @Banno that knowing is entangled with doing), there is still more than one way in which 'knowing that' is used propositionally.
The distinction between belief and knowledge may involve the epistemological basis of ideas. It may embrace the evidence of the senses, cultural ideas and evidence. All of these may be important in philosophy understanding Each person may incorporate aspects of this in thinking and the interplay may lead to the differences between subjective and objective knowledge. Knowledge is bound to objective criteria for understanding whereas belief may involve subjectivity. However, the interplay between the objective and subjective may mean that the nature of belief and knowledge remains fluid in human understanding.
Please set this purported argument out.
Huh. Self defeat much?
Irrelevant to the point being made.
Where there has never been bikes and people there could have never been people riding bikes. The first creator must have believed it were possible to make a bike, otherwise they would not have tried.
It points at a problem with claiming that belief is not necessary for bike riding.
It's a matter of existential dependency.
That's one way to talk about it.
Yup.
Who's made those claims anyway?
Do you think someone has made the argument that all belief is necessary for bike riding?
Fill in the blanks. Find an exception.
Bike riding - as we know it - is existentially dependent on the belief of the original bike makers.
"Belief is not necessary for bike riding" is proven false.
The bike emerged onto the world stage through the belief of the original bike makers. Impossible to ride a bike that you do not believe is there.
Five activities with five different sets of existential conditions. Is expectation nowhere to be found?
Does not matter to me how many conjunctions are necessary.
I'm certain that my fridge will be there when I go grab a yogurt.
Unshakably. Absolutely. Certitude is worth keeping. It's temperance and judgment that need honed. In other words, sometimes it is wise to not expect a pattern to continue. Not all.
If "knowing that" includes my cat knowing that I was about to put food in her bowl as I began the ritual, despite her clear inability to form/possess and/or otherwise have/display a propositional attitude, then it only follows that not all belief is equivalent to propositional attitude. Some. Not all
Are you and I still at odds on that? Searle shares my loathing towards the notion of belief as propositional attitude.
:wink:
I'm thinking deterministic causal chain of events. Bike riding definitely arose via belief. It makes no sense to say that belief is not necessary for bike riding.
I share your well respected trepidation of religious remnants of language regarding the key terms here.
Devotion is of the believer. Truth conditions are not always.
You are about to put food in the bowl. The cat knows that. That is a proposition. Searle rightly makes the point that the proposition is the content, not the object, of the belief:
The object of your cat's belief is presumably the imminent full bowl.
Somebody was talking to. You should know; you commented right after, a day ago.
Quoting creativesoul
Nope. I know the thread topic major premise has the form, Knowledge is only belief. I know from reading the discourse, that someone said all knowledge requires belief, both of which I for sure, and apparently, reject.
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Quoting creativesoul
Categorical error: one subjects beliefs are irrelevant with respect to another subjects skill acquisition. Whatever the dude believed about the possibility of a bike disappears upon its successful manufacture.
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Quoting creativesoul
True enough, but irrelevant. Post hoc ergo propter hoc informal fallacy, when attached to my knowledge of bike riding.
Quoting creativesoul
Whatever bike I consider riding must be right there in front of me. Otherwise all Im doing is considering the possibility of what a bike ride would be like. I grant it is impossible to ride a bike that isnt right in front of me, but in such case there is no need to believe it isnt there if I already know theres nothing there to ride.
Any sympathy forthcoming here? Maybe a slight tip of the pointy hat?
I agree that it comes down to which should be thought the best way of talking about it, since there is no empirical fact of the matter to be found. I personally prefer to think in terms of direct awareness, knowledge and belief all being quite distinct and independent of one another. So, we can simply be aware of things and entities. We can know how to do things and recognize things, entities, events, characteristics, relations and regularities which can feed into propositional knowledge about things which goes beyond simple awareness. And we can believe things we cannot be certain about. This is a simple picture, and no doubt there are crossover cases, but it seems to me worthwhile to start simple before working our way into understanding the subtleties.
Quoting PL Olcott
Such skepticism based on mere imaginable possibilities seem toothless and irrelevant to me. I see a dog in the room, I have no cogent reason to doubt its existence. And that is exactly why I say that where there is no possibility of genuine, as opposed to merely feigned, doubt, then speaking in terms of belief is inapt.
I'm reminded of something that came up on a thread about, I think, Wittgenstein's On Certainty: I think it was regarding Moore's statement he knew he had hands, and the point was that to speak in terms of knowing such things is inapt, because in those kinds of cases there is no possibility of doubt. @Banno may remember this point better than I. My point here is that I think the same inaptitude applies, perhaps even more so, to speaking in terms of belief in those kinds of cases.
Quoting SophistiCat
Totally agree, and i haven't wanted to say otherwise.
Quoting Jack Cummins
As above, I agree. That said, I see the whole theoretical side of science as being, in the propositional sense, a matter of belief. I think the way in which it can be understood to be knowledge turns on a different way in which it can be thought of: not as propositional belief, but as know-how which consists in all the ways scientific theories enable us to do new things and investigate in novel ways. For example, I think we all agree that in the propositional sense the ancient belief that the Earth is flat was not knowledge but could be counted as such in the 'know-how' sense, insofar as it enabled new activities and approaches.
The key thing about this limit to logically justified certainty is that it opens the mind sufficiently for things as a Buddhist enlightenment to occur. If not for this the true nature of reality would always be dismissed out-of-hand as ridiculously implausible and never even cross the mind as a remote possibility.
I don't believe anything in the propositional sense is known in the kinds of altered states of consciousness people refer to as "enlightenment". But such altered states are a kind of knowledge: a kind of familiarity or know-how.
And if you can learn to alter your state of consciousness without drugs that would be a case of know-how even more so. That said, even doing it with drugs should count as know-how.
Your rejection is based upon a conception of experience that cannot include language acquisition. Your responses thus far have been full of strawmen and red herring. Funny ones, but horribly inaccurate if aimed towards what I've said here.
Good stuff. You said it all there.
direct awareness - the present becoming of experience.. Thrown there, in motion, with it. It immediately presents an object to a subject; but it can also just be seen as just the subjective experiencing , becoming in the moment - direct awareness.
distinct from knowledge - the what, the content, the qualia of this experiencing. If the act of experiencing is direct awareness, the noun of experience is what is made distinct as knowledge.
distinct from belief - this is an act like direct awareness, but it is the act of willing, of consenting, of choosing to relate the what of your knowledge, related to the act of experiencing (aware), and claim or judge both believed in as related.
All three are instantly present if you try talk about any one of them alone. Experiene, knowledge, belief.
Knowing itself is the act of distinguishing (even if just distinguishing what you presently see from what you presently hear) but distinguishing the whatness as now objects of knowledge, distinguishing knowledge itself from what it is knowledge of, while simultaneously believing your knowledge is either true or not true, judging, understanding, in the direct awareness of these distinctions of knowledge.
You dont need the word true to show all the parts. Truth is covered by belief.
We can say there are things in themselves and there is knowledge of things, and when what one believes reflects well enough what there is, this belief is equivalent to knowledge. There, I married all three without saying truth. Or we can say we will only base our beliefs on the following: knowing the thing in itself and, now possessing this knowledge, now knowing the knowledge itself of the thing in itself, only when these are each knowledge of the same thing. Or you can just use the word true.
When what we believe reflects what truly is, we can say we know; we know the truth.
There is one question in this mix - what is there to believe? But this question includes within it - what is there? And is there begs we start all over again.
In order for you to read this very sentence, you have fix whatever I mean by fix, right here in this sentence, (you just did it twice!) and then, and only then, can you move on to the next word, the next sentence
We fix experience with knowledge we can believe in so we can stand on it and move on to the next sentence.
We judge (belief) what we know (knowledge) we are experiencing (awareness). We judge what we experience. We know.
All inseparable in the end.
It never was any altered state of consciousness. It is actually noticing a very well hidden aspect to cause-and-effect that is impossible to see until after one fully appreciates the actual limit to logically justified certainty.
I can see reading me that way. Basically agree with you. Youre seeing me from a perspective, but youre seeing me. But Id frame the reluctance (which is a sort of negation), in a positive way. I admit the illusion, without a reluctance to also see truth there with the illusion. So I get seeing a reluctance to admit the depth of the illusion, since I temper illusion with truth.
But I see this same spot as: I only know the illusion is illusion as I see truth dashed to pieces over and over again. I mean, how could something present itself as an illusion to me, if I couldnt see that it was not real, not truth? So I just see both. I think Nietzsche did too.
If you have illusion, you have truth obscured.
If you have truth, you have illusion clarified.
So if you have one, you have them both, because each defines the other. But at the same time, you need them both before either one might come to be distinct.
These conversations open huge rabbit holes of paradoxes, dashing logic, identity, metaphysics, this sentence But knowing anything, be it illusion or not, seems both impossible and already accomplished at the same time. We are dealing in living paradoxes so it is hard to speak. Like where does Nietzsche lie on the scales of it is true that there is no truth and If there is one thing I know, it is that I know nothing?
We are bound to find he agrees with and must disagree with, both and neither of these quotes.
Quoting ENOAH
Nietzsche can be very dogmatic. Hes clear that some things are vacuous and empty and other things are full and overcoming. He describes both, and tells us what is true and what is not true about them both.
So he bears witness to truth, he just tells us we are fools to make so much of this creation; or more positively, when we do science, we must practice it gaily, with a spirit that would toss it all away to maybe start over or move on, at any instant.
We should not seek the truth as if to follow a shepherd, we must make it.
That is his method, like anyone else who tries to communicate. He deals in setting out what is, what is true. He just sets out to destroy the vacuous. His content, what he really thinks is, truth is just one small way of being about it. There are other things we can seek and we can see besides the truth; and this truth can itself be illusion and create lies; and it is easier for truth to be a lie than the thing that eluded you in the first place, so maybe we should avoid the concept, we are smarter to jettison it from discourse
But still, in order to say all that or to tear down any dogma, as I said, Nietzsche had to be as dogmatic about these things as anyone else. He dealt in truths as much as anything else, just more carefully, using a hammer as quickly as the tuner.
Quoting ENOAH
I think Heidegger put things in a more classically logical, more metaphysical way, and all of this might be dismissible as facade to Nietzsche. Heidegger had to invent a whole bunch of words just to say what he saw there being. Heideggers world is more becoming, being, but being in time, and Nietzsche would see no fault in that, but Heideggers world is rigorous in its own way, and so subject to utter destruction like all the rest.
Throwness is a great idea and adds to the conversation. I think Nietzsche would have made good use of that concept.
And they both loved the Greeks. Heidegger thought we lost a connection to what the Greek roots of our words meant, so we needed to relearn and so reuse original uses of those words to better capture our ideas. Nietzsche thought the Greek tragedy was a pinnacle moment in human expression, the human willing into existence Oedipus Rex.
But in the end, Nietzsche would have probably said Heidegger was as full of crap as most everyone else.
Quoting ENOAH
Truth is an illusion that we have forgotten was an illusion becomes an exaggeration when you realize there is some truth in it. Nietzsche knew it, so he was exaggerating.
I cant say Nietzsche was only saying there is no truth (which I dont think he ever plainly says); this exaggerates his point. He wasnt a relativist either (though some of the things he says logically lead to relativism). I, instead, would say he thought truth comes to be like many other things come to be, and so it passes away, and changes, and is forgotten, and so shouldnt be honored above, (and because it was so honored for so long needs now to be held below) all of the other things that come to be and pass away. And because truth needed to be taken down a leg, he knocked it down three pegs, exaggerating to lead the masses with him. But we cant really escape the invention of truth.
He saw that since Plato and Socrates, we had exaggerated the Truth, so he exaggerated No truth, taking God down with it.
Though we all may have forgotten, for Nietzsche to remember that truth was an illusion, he also remembered what truth truly was. He used truth to build the hammer to destroy anything that would not stand if its own will.
Which is why I agree with you, he wasnt a nihilist either.
This could go on
I wonder what you think of where I see the the truth of it all, how illusion is only illusion in the eyes of something who knows truth, or simultaneously, truth is only truth in the eyes of something seeing illusion; how the presence of either one, brings the presence of both together. Basically, how we cant escape the many paradoxes that it is to have any opinion about these things at all.
So lemme get this straight. Were talking belief/knowledge, you bring in experience/language .yet Im the one committing strawman/red herring dialectical inconsistencies?
It must be that your position is more complex and penetrating than I realized.
So be it.
I think a simpler term is to use "thoughts" instead, which does not carry such associations. So, are thoughts knowledge? I do not know, because I can't say what knowledge is, or is not.
The term is too vague, imprecise and nebulous, that it's very hard to pin down what it is. Though to be fair, this is not limited to "knowledge" but applies to almost all words of which philosophers are interested in.
So, if I say "I know the alphabet, I know that the FTP site exists, ...", all that is only a belief, that is, it's only my opinion, something I'm simply convicted about. Well, it's a fact and I can prove it anytime.
Facts are not beliefs.
This kind of subjects make someone think that philosophy is out of subjects. Because we keep coming back to subjects --like belief vs knowledge-- that have been discussed a million times, so people should have already formed a firmed view about them. And every once in a while someone tries to relive a fire using a plastic stick.
Ok. And I get that.
Is the truth
1. The now buried source of the illusion, displaced by the illusion but lingering?
2. Is it dissolved in the illusion such that they are indistinguishable?
3. Or, is it literally obliterated by the illusion as implied below?
4. Something else?
Quoting Fire Ologist
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes. And i understand the logic. But if we stay with N for a minute here, logic (specifically, the requirement of a not that, to reflect a this), is the illusion. So, I submit that our (yours, mine, N.'s and many others) "intuition" about the illusion, though eventually worked out in logic/reason, has its source outside of the illusion, and I submit, that source is in Being (Not enough time/space to elaborate presently). Point being, it is not in logic (in my humble...etc).
Quoting Fire Ologist
Agreed. I wonder if the paradox doesn't come from trying to fit Truth within the illusion, i.e. by attempting to access it by logic/reason, and if "emancipation" doesn't come from accessing them separately. The illusion in becoming (our mundane or conventional existence--the existential world N. "chastises" and attempts to remedy via authenticity etc); and the Truth in being (not existentially (narratively involving the constructions of difference and time), but organically (always presently)--again too much to elaborate here and now).
Quoting Fire Ologist
Ok. Did not know. Methodically? Or do we read between the lines?
Quoting Fire Ologist
Ok, I agree with the first part. But second part suggests we are constructing small t truths in our becoming, in the illusion. Fine. Functional. Necessary. This is his authentic self stuff which I respect, but qualified. It is our truth, and not The Truth, even our authentic-ized self. This is not an attack on N. Just what I think he "really" meant. But I confess I do not know what he meant. I am strictly one who does not think it necessary to abide by authorial intent, but rather, to use History to build History (in the "realm" of becoming). Then why query N's intent? I care about it, just willing to use it creatively. (There's a Daoist parable in the Zhuangzi where the Dao is compared to an old deformed Tree which was deemed useless for lumber and thus allowed to grow. Zhuangzi highlights the folly of restricting its use for lumber, noting how its longevity allowed it to provide optimal shade)
Quoting Fire Ologist
Totally, Real Truth. Avoid it in all philosophical discourse (hypocrisy acknowledged). Not just should we jettison; but, unknown to those of us stuck only in becoming, The Truth isn't even on board the discourse to jettison it from. Only constructed truths, which, because of their becoming, are fleeting and empty, vacuous as you suggest. Even The Truth I am querying about is already only truth.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Like all philosophers, I suspect, ineluctably trapped between I've said too much/I haven't said enough. Like, you I imagine, after you read my follow ups, knowing you could have addressed these in one swoop, maybe even figure you have, but the questions, in a dimension empty of being, can never settle. So we believe until the new one comes along. Dogma thinks it can circumvent belief by dictating. But even Dogma is in constant motion, only vacuous becoming and only temporarily settled upon. That's how I read N (in my repeatedly confessed modest reading. That is, I am ready to accept that my reading is "heretical" to those who have read N.)
Quoting Fire Ologist
My read? Finally one came along and resurrected that first and only philosophical Truth after Plato buried it in the cave. (PS I love Plato. Just saying).
Quoting Fire Ologist
Ok, yes. From Nietzsche's lens, H was working with the vacuous constructing brilliant, but nonetheless, vacuous things. I fully acknowledge you said "might" and also that you have never purported to pinpoint N. but have been gracious enough to share your findings, and within a Ltd space/time.
Quoting Fire Ologist
In fairness to you, I didn't give you much of a chance to express your own views. You were being courteous in addressing my queries on N., for which I am compelled to repeat my gratitude. It has been enriching. But given what I could read between the lines, and the quotation directly above, I would be interested. I do not think we are crossing the boundaries of "Is knowledge belief."
On the face of it. I think the dichotomy is only relevant In illusion . I think opposites, paradoxes, contradiction, difference, are also constructed fictions existing, bearing meaning, and qualifying as truths, only in becoming. In Reality, Being, there is not only no dichotomy, there is no inquiry, no focus, no concern whatsoever about Truth/No Truth. There is no logos. There is only presence being [that Truth...added here only for our benefit]
I apologize if I am overbearing. I have found you have insight into matters important to me.
The above quotation is a good place to clarify where we differ slightly. That is, if you think we haven't reached the beating a dead horse phase.
Direct awareness is significant to isolate. And I totally share your apparent enthusiasm about that. But is direct awareness taking place in becoming? Does it involve subject/object? There might be a more direct awareness in becoming. But the one which excites me, and which paradoxically is pointless to discuss, as you suggested earlier, is a "return" to the aware-ing Being, finally just being, liberated from becoming. (Won't elaborate here/now).
I think I need to step back. Nietzsche was aware of Kant, and though he picked on Kant, he saw that knowledge was cut off from the objects it sought to know. Nietzsche saw that the way we carved up reality was at the outset tainted by the shape of the carving knife, so that any knowledge we constructed reflected as much of the mind carving it as it did anything else. So the first illusion was the act of claiming words that functioned among people replaced the particular realities that actually existed, and then mendaciously presuming those words, those constructed carvings, reflected and corresponded to things as they are, in themselves.
Then we called this correspondence truth. Now we see that truth is an illusion that we long forgot was an illusion. The first illusion, where our man-made conventions called knowing (which knows nothing of the thing in itself) is now called truth - an illusion built on a forgotten illusion, all because people like Aristotle and Descartes thought that we were so smart we could carve lines at real joints, at true distinctions in a real mind independent world, like we could know anything or know our knowledge reflected the truth of the thing in itself.
I think that is 4. something else.
Quoting ENOAH
My resurrection of truth with illusion is not Nietzsche (although I see the alignment). N. would agree that logic and reason are not close to the top of the hierarchy, and they are more mixed with illusion making if they are used to make truth.
But I also think Nietzsche was a scientist, a truth seeker himself. Its just that he admitted the truth was less valuable then the knowledge of it as illusion. He never gave a theory of truth. When he talked about truth he could logically call it lies. But truth remains in the picture here. It just has to die like all of the other beasts and shouldnt be reified as if it could possibly be a truth of the eternal forms of perfection, or the essence of certain knowledge.
Quoting ENOAH
I agree with your point here, I dont think you have to use a capital t Truth. Just the word truth is enough reification. I your small t is the illusion that when we know phenomena, we start forgetting that we are knowing phenomena and call it reality whether I know it or not; but because we only know what we invest our knowing carving mind in, we do not know reality; when we forget this first, we start to use words like truth where I think you put the capital T.
Quoting ENOAH
Nietzsche railed against dogma. It was an Apollonian appearance, the facade of weak minded hubris. When I say he was dogmatic, I am exaggerating and misusing the word dogma. Everything is in motion. Willing becoming was the rawest thing in itself worth knowing to Nietzsche. But that is where truth sneaks back into the picture, to me. He still claimed his content.
We dont lose the ability to know Truth when we learn all of the truths weve known so far are lies. Nietzsche still called himself a seeker of truth. He never said there is no truth. He was not a nihilist or a relativist. It is clear he saw distinctions that require things at least be temporarily settled upon like truth.
And I am fine with temporarily settled upon as a framework for truth. Its why I think I can say there is truth for us to believe is true and stay aligned with Nietzsche. As long as you recognize the temporality, you gain back the full meaning of truth. Its still there, in all its capital T fullness, during that temporary settlement. Otherwise settle has no content.
Quoting ENOAH
Ahh. A true skeptic perhaps? Nothing wrong with that (literally).
Knowing itself is a paradox, seeking truth, meeting only illusion, and we know it. This is a knot.
There is no dichotomy in reality? I disagree. I am the dichotomy in reality. When you say one thing, it immediately holds everything else in the balance, paradoxically saying more than one thing. Like a rose might beget red in an eyeball, we might beget dichotomy and paradox, and there they are, together with the other flowers, swaying in the same field the same breeze.
There is no inquiry, no logos, no concern? Harsh.
I get it. Nietzsche might have said such things.
But I think he was taking truth off its pedestal. I dont think he was throwing it away. There certainly is presence being presence, becoming present, presenting . But with the becoming, things come to be in the becoming. I dont think truth, belief in knowledge, and the logos that shares it between you and me here, can be thrown away. The act of throwing all truth away has truth in it! It just takes boldness and trepidation to say things like the eternal recurrence of the same and to see the Truth that we can only approach truth and maybe never have it. I personally am fine to just call this picture - this minding that fixes things permanently for fleeting moments for itself and other minds - mixed in truth.
In the end, we mostly fail. What we believe is true, usually is not. Just not always. Or else we wouldnt know what we cant know.
Great conversation by the way. Cheers!
Yes, direct awareness is becoming. I called it awareness because Janus did, to keep in line with that. But I would rather call it being aware. You have to get an ing word in there, breathing life into the more stagnant sounding direct awareness. But direct awareness works. The immediate now. The present. These are fixed sounding terms. But they are all in the becoming of being.
I dont think of being as so distinct from becoming. If becoming is like a landslide falling to the valley, being is like vibrating in place like a mountain in an earthquake. Its all becoming. Like its all being.
The fixed part is only sensed in minds. I think these minds sense something being something, or something becoming something, but it is all of these somethings where minds can fix things for itself. The becoming in between these things rolls on through them all.
And if anything can be liberated from the becoming of being, it is the mind that liberates itself alone that might become fixed as a free agent.
Yes, arguably necessary for there to have been a Nietzsche, or at least, the N. being discussed.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Quoting Fire Ologist
Quoting Fire Ologist
Nice
Quoting Fire Ologist
This one, I stubbornly grapple with. I cannot let go of my admittedly radical view that "when you say," period, you are already in that which displaces reality, what we've loosely desginated as N. illusion. In reality, not only no dichotomy, but no say.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Yes, when you put it that way. I need to at least temporarily release my puritanical hold on Realty is only being (?)
But there was this,
Quoting Fire Ologist
And, I think that's our folly, or even fall. Maybe N. didn't go this far, and I accept that. But then, I would humbly assert he stopped short. I assure you I am not religious in any conventional sense, but I wonder if humans did "fall from grace," the grace of nature when we also "forgot" that nature "creates" being, and our becoming never arrives at being, but only at more becoming in its vacuous construction of vacuous time.
And yet,
Quoting Fire Ologist
where I've settled is ultimately absurd, trapped by a paradox of its own creation.
...or is the absurdity just more support?
Are we all just reaching into a dark cave and by some crazy coincidence, one of us winds up holding truth? I don't think so. I rather think none of us are. I think the truth is in the arm reaching. I don't mean, as per Lessing, glorifying the pursuit. That's just philosophy justifying verbal masturbation. I mean the actual organism acting. That's the real truth, the one N. illusions have displaced, or caused itself to have forgotten.
Uncanny similarities and yet some differences. I always call my version, aware-ing. Which compliments my last point about the arm reaching. I think truth is in the present is-ing/do-ing.
It is likely I an too heretical. Maybe I have over romanticized the romanticizations of N et al. I'll have to think more.
But there is the saying. We say. The becoming that is us, make saying come to be. Once saying is, things are said. Once things are said, dichotomy blossoms.
I still see your point. You dont have to further than than the present. Any move around becoming is walking on quicksand. Saying is saying about. Saying about begs saying about what, and now we meet illusion again. BUT, not when we are saying we know that saying about meets illusion. This is truth, in my view.
I agree 100%.
Ok yes. That might be a subtlty I'm missing. That's where I'm going to direct my thinking!
I'll tell you, from this discussion, I can say you are intellectually very open and giving, a great quality in a forum like this. It's not universal!
Do you mean Chet has managed to escape before being burnt by the fire, together with the stick?
What does the proposition consist of, here, on this account? If the content of the cat's belief is the proposition, and the content of the proposition is me, the food, the bowl, my actions - as compared/contrasted with words/meaningful marks - then it may be the case that we're calling the same thing by two different names.
Quoting Banno
I've not worked out what the object of the cat's belief would be according to Searle, but that seems in line with what he set out.
I agree that propositions are not always what he calls 'the object' of belief but can be.
His account still is in agreement with the idea that all belief content is propositional, as he draws a distinction between propositional attitudes and propositional 'content'.
But I think that there are empirical facts of the matter.
Direct awareness, knowledge, and belief are distinct, but given the need for evolutionary progression, I cannot agree with claiming that they are independent.
Indeed. You and I agree on the OP question. Knowledge is not merely belief. My claim was that knowledge is existentially dependent on belief(knowledge requires belief). The candidate in question was knowing how to ride a bike. I claimed, would argue and defend - if given a chance - the claim that all bike riding is existentially dependent upon all sorts of different beliefs. Some belonging to the rider, and some not.
Just because you claim that knowing how to ride a bike is not existentially dependent upon all sorts of prior beliefs, does not make it so.
And yes, you've been arguing against your own imaginary opponents. I've never claimed that belief was enough for knowledge. I've never argued that bike riding was existentially dependent upon any of the beliefs you've been reducing to ad absurdum.
I do like how that accounting practice covers other mental states aside from belief, in terms of sharing the same content.
Very true. I did take liberty in my read. And you are correct. Thank you
I understand your claim, but disagree that knowledge requires belief.
The examples you give are not abstract True/False beliefs, but internal mental states (memories ; representations) that we rely on to make our way in the real world. Do those representations depend on a reliable understanding (belief) of how the world works? I suppose that depends on how broadly you define "knowledge" and "belief". As I said, we philosophers argue about nit-picky shades of meaning. :smile:
To Know : to understand what something or someone truly is.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/know%20something
Examples that I disagree with the claim that knowledge requires belief? How would I illustrate, given something I know, that there necessarily exists in conjunction with and antecedent to it, something I believe?
I cant think of an example of knowledge of a statement requiring belief of a statement, no.
Obviously I experienced, hence now possess the knowledge, that to me a query has been presented. What can you tell me about what I had to believe in order for me to know about that experience?
Oh. Well, damn. So if you have the power to tell me what I must have believed, does that mean you know what it is that I must have believed? What do you believe in order to know what to tell me I must believe? Please dont tell me you must believe the same things I must; that just aint gonna fly.
If you just mean it only makes sense to you that in order for me to know something I must first believe something but youre not sure what it is I have to believe, or it really doesnt matter what it is I have to believe, then you have no warrant whatsoever to claim I need to believe anything.
I suppose its only fitting, given those conditions, that because I know my mother raised me I have no choice but to believe I had a mother that I know raised me.
I believe Im not imagining .. Why not just, you know not imagine? If I believe Im not imagining, what tells me I am or I am not? That I believe Im not imagining does not in itself negate the possibility that I am. Quite the Keystone Cops drill you got goin on there, bud. Thankfully, Mother Nature saw fit to make human cognition rather more efficient than that.
Or .I believe She did, I mean.
I said I know a thing. Why would you ask if I believe the very same thing I said I know?
The only way to answer you question is if Id said I believe a statement had been presented, which I could than have answered in the affirmative.
Do you still beat your wife-type entrapment is beneath the dignity of philosophy
It's not an insult. I'm not insulting you. Are you perceiving it like an insult?
Again, "knowledge requires belief", as a statement, literally means if you know x, you must believe x. There's nothing insulting about me asking you that, it's entirely pertinent to the question and I would really like it if you could talk to me without getting heated about this entirely inoffensive question.
I judge it to be an insult to proper philosophy.
Quoting flannel jesus
Its exactly like that, insofar as if I say yes, I believe a query has been made, than my knowledge of it appears predetermined and Ive contradicted myself, and if I say no I dont believe the query has been made leaves open the catastrophic descension into that pitiful sophism, you cant know what you dont believe.
Are we done here?
First of all, do you beat your wife questions have the SAME implication if the answer is yes or no, not different implications. "Yes" means I do now and I used to. "No" means I don't now but I used to. Both answers imply "I used to beat my wife."
But my question I asked you doesn't have that. There's not any implication that remains constant with both answers.
And it's not an insult to philosophy, that's ridiculously melodramatic. It's the natural next question. You said you think knowledge doesn't require belief. I asked you for an example of knowledge without belief. You gave me the example of you knowing this, OF COURSE I'm going to ask you if you believe it. That's what happens next. That's just the script.
Instead of worrying about how much you dislike the consequences of the answer yes, or the answer no, why don't you just answer honestly? Avoiding asking an entirely philosophically pertinent question because you don't like the consequences of your answer is more of an insult to philosophy than anything else going on here. I don't want to insult you, I didn't intend for the conversation to be this hostile and I'm honestly quite flabbergasted that a completely innocuous question led to this, but if we're going to be throwing around melodramatic statements like "insult to philosophy", let's get real.
So if the question is, "can you have knowledge without belief?", you can rephrase it as, "Can you know something if you don't take it to be true?"
Can you?
Well, youre just too smart for me.
There's literally not an ounce of hostility in that. It's a pretty straight forward question, it's not a trick.
I have noted that in practical terms, this is a fine way to go about your life. But in fine-grained discussions It just doesn't survive as far as I'm concerned. There is nothign direct about a route that changes not only direction, but form, multiple times - whether it's temporal, geographical or conceptual *shrug*. I share your certitude because it works better, not because I actually think that certainty is warranted. Statistics are great indicators, but not guarantee-ers.
For me an empirical fact is something that can be directly observed. That said, I think we may be talking at cross-purposes. I agree that, in the sense that everyone is aware of things, believes things and knows things that awareness, believing and knowing cannot be completely independent.
My point is that we can be aware of a particular thing without believing or knowing anything about that thing, we can believe a particular thing without being aware of or knowing anything about that thing, and we can know how to do something without believing anything or being aware of doing the thing. Of course, we do have to be aware of what we are doing when we are learning to do something. I think it really comes down to how you want to think about it. There is not just one correct way.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
It's a possibility, although for all we know he may already have felt he was burned.
Exactly! I agree and THAT is my point.
I like your additions to the concepts.
Admittedly true. But I am self confessed as 'knowledge is only belief', and sadly I DO believe it is ONLY belief.
That is to say I believe it is impossible to be objectively correct. It is critically important NOT to prevaricate/equivocate by saying 'I am being objective' AS IF you are perfect. Nope!
The correct statement (to me) is 'We cannot know anything so much as we know that knowing requires perfection and what is considered knowledge is therefore only belief'.
Again, the difference between the stuff you know and the stuff you merely believe is that hte stuff you know is true.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
No, it requires truth.
Yes, precisely. And more to the point, for me, is ... we should all stop LYING to each other about 'knowing'. These false pretenses are doing us great harm. And we claim to be lovers of wisdom.
I have social issues every time I HONESTLY say, I am not 100% certain guys, but I am fairly sure this is true ...' because socially ... idiots ... respond much better to certainty. The driving need for certainty is other people's foolish fear.
Fear as an emotion is rooted in the need for comfort and certainty. And certainty is absurd. Sp, by pandering to that fear, we cause more problems than we really solve. Fear is always, when served in this fashion, a cowardly short-cut to wisdom, to truth, that is a lie, a delusion, an immoral mistake.
Exactly. And if we are purveyors of wisdom, or even something as unknown as 'truth', we are obliged to at least try to point that out. In fact some people's believing a thing is more evidence that it is untrue than that it is true. And they are the type to use the words 'know', 'fact', and 'certain' all the time.
My statements are intended precisely to call this foolishness into question. A fact or knowledge, both, are only a subset of beliefs. I have used that exact terminology dozens of times.
And to those that erroneously believe there is so much of a difference, you can easily sample 100 people on a reasonably complex issue and you WILL get 100 different nuances of what they consider the 'facts' to be.
Even if (perhaps especially if) you assess certain groups (scientists, intellectuals) you will narrow that spread because all of them are closing ranks as a rep of the group DESPITE personal feelings or beliefs or 'known (ha ha) facts' to the contrary, because they would rather do that than let chaos get a toehold further into their protected spaces.
There can be accidentally true statements. But knowing is delusional as a base. This is along the lines of a broken clock is still right twice daily.
And these games are fun, but missing the point in part.
It is not really the real me that is reading this. It is a subjective interpretation of me that I am projecting currently onto the real me. Symbols meet my eyes and the brain seizes on how my agenda can be furthered in response. Is that reading? You tell me!
Or is that also an accidental truth?
Think a bit further. If you say you believe something, then you say that you believe it to be true.
You cannot get by without truth.
Again, no that is wrong.
True is being misused. What is your level of granularity for truth? For me it is absolute and it SHOULD morally be treated as such. Until that is believed, NOT known, people will continue to erroneously profess knowing and make foolish dogmatic stands when there is room for discussion.
I can believe many things whose truth is unknowable, whether they are actually objectively true or not.
Truth is accessible but NOT knowable. That means we sit in a realm of truth and we are incapable of knowing. We are indeed only capable of believing. Truth INFORMS belief. Knowledge implies certainty and perfection that are not humanly obtainable.
This doggedness is a sign of order-apology, the generic conflation that order and the GOOD are synonymous, a delusion.
Quoting Banno
Truth and perfection are synonymous. You could also say 'God'. But I do not prefer that delusional moniker.
Well, no they are not.
But you thinking this might explain your error.
I am deontological in belief. If you intend something that is an accident you are still not really right. The summation of your words in the simplest sense may mean something close to truth. But the intent ruins it. That solves the quandary you are trying to break the argument with.
Quoting Banno
That has no bearing on what we are discussing, except that knowledge is the same. Ergo knowledge is only belief.
Quoting Banno
In that we agree.
Truth supports the possibility of choice for delusion.
You claiming this with no explanation at all shows the depth of your intent or lack of it.
Perfection can only be the sum total of truth. Its effect as an extant thing, in what we call the ideal realm say, like Plato's forms, is intuited by us because we FEEL it out there. Perfection draws us to it. It causes desire.
All of truth is just and only perfection. That is distinct from true statements entirely. We tend to describe little statements that are asymptotic to truth, as truths. That is an error.
What leads you to believe there is a "real you" over and above, beyond or apart from the you that you are familiar with?
This is certainly true, as I've recently found out in going through one commenter's religious feelings here. Their need for certainty has them forego even Empirical considerations.
Justification is not actual proof. It is only 'good enough'. This means different things to different people as you yourself just pointed out. So your own definition or the one you quoted here is clearly wrong.
Knowledge IS NOT justified belief. Knowledge is only belief that the believer believes is justified. And that difference is EPIC.
Using the word justified alone like that sounds like a much more authoritative delivery of ... probable bovine poo. It is much more honest to say it as I did.
Quoting Gnomon
So-crates was wise enough to know human nature. He was accounting for it. His Apology was disingenuous.
To say you are not wise and then that you are the wisest man you can find is hilarious. I agree. But, there are ALWAYS the two perspectives (and only those two).
1. The absolute. That is the realm of perfection and truth and although it informs intent, it is unknowable. The BETTER term for knowledge is awareness. It does not imply completeness in its use as easily.
2. The relative. This is a comparative issue and can then enter into the realm of things like 'truth value' and colloquial truth. That is to say, although many and most will present 'facts' and 'knowledge' they are lying to themselves and others to say this unless they admit that these are only beliefs. Still, indeed, and perhaps this is the reason so many here want to challenge these assertions of mine incorrectly, there is the relative proximity of an assertion to unknowable truth. There are ways of testing to demonstrate that 'we are closer' or 'this path seems more promising'. But NOTHING can be more compelling as decided, as a 'conclusion', than that.
Amen to that! ;)
Humility and the 'fact' that I cannot know truth in any way, only approach it in many ways.
But you do know that you just responded to my previous post, and that it's true that you did. What possible reason could you have to doubt that? It seems to me that you are confusing yourself unnecessarily.
When it comes to metaphysical matters, I agree that nothing is known or knowable. We cannot know truth in any absolute sense. It is in the metaphysical domain that belief reigns supreme.
Do you think that you are that good a mind reader? I'm quite certain that you are not.
Peace wants love, not war!
DM me if anyone knows of hot deals on motherboards/CPU/Chassis/DDR5 TY TY
I'm horribad at it. The clarity of my own world is simply never seen in others.
Confusing you maybe. Events are not truth. They may true, as in 'This happened'. The laws of 'Truth' Involved is what we are discussing, not events or truth value.
Further, to demonstrate, we only believe we know what happened. If we describe an event, more and more we realize that what remains to truly understand what happened IS NOT limited. It CANNOT properly be limited. The limiting force of fear is COWARDICE. All he universe must be included. Perfection must be shown in the delivery of free will to the scenario, that happened. So, I am only confusing ... some people ... who believe in delusional limits where there are none.
I am NOT saying I am capable of transcending limits in the general case. But in the specific comparative case to, for example, your arguments, I am transcending that limit.
Quoting Janus
There is nothing but belief because knowing is not possible.
I agree and that was a fairly lion's share portion of what my claim was.
The essential issue is that the word 'knowing' is used to invoke delusional certainty, just like 'facts' and even the term 'certainty' itself. To be more correct, we all need to stop using them that way.
I am not holding my breath. Comforting lies are daily fare and happily pursued by many and most. But you know, lovers of wisdom have to try.
Yes, I agree with you herethe most significant and dangerous example of that being religious fundamentalism.
Dude, check out my posts on page three. I think I've set out enough to be getting on with.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
I'll take that argument to be facetious.
Here's where I think we stand. You said that knowledge is just belief. I've pointed out that in addition to being believed, the things we know also have to be true.
You might come back by asserting that in that case we only have beliefs, and do not know anything; this because we don't know what is true and what isn't. My reply to that is that we do know some things - examples given previously; and that further you are treating your explanation as something of which you are certain, as something you know, giving only lip service to your doubt.
That would be much better than the alternate account, asserting in the face of evidence to the contrary that there is no difference between belief and truth.
Knowledge requires that it is true, and not just a belief. Now, whether or not it is true is probabilistic, so it could turn out that what we think is true isn't; but that doesn't negate the importance of knowledge (i.e., true, justified, belief) vs. belief.
Likewise, a belief could be justified, insofar as the probability of it being true is sufficient to warrant a belief, but not considered knowledge; because the probability of it being true isn't high enough.
Knowledge, to me, denotes sufficient confidence (credence) in it being true, given its probability/plausibility of being true.
:up:
Can you know uncertainties?
Since you cannot know certainties, uncertainties are right out! 'Nod's as good as a wink to a blind man, eh?'
Apologies, yes. As you might have surmised I DID NOT read all the pages that accumulated in my absence. That is no guarantee though that there is the answer there. I doubt that it is there, and for reasons. Some reasons that border upon what I will mention again here in this post.
Quoting Banno
As I do your responses of this ilk in meaning.
That is to say, the deadly serious idea of accuracy is not being treated properly at all when we say we 'know' something. Colloquial foolishness notwithstanding, WE, lovers of wisdom, should do better. It is MORE accurate in every way to claim some dearth of awareness by forgoing the term 'knowledge' and similar absolutes that partake of perfection by implication. Only a facetious person would do otherwise. And that facetious person is not me in this scenario.
Quoting Banno
Your adjective, 'true' is analogous to 'knowing' more so than to a measured awareness. True has that logical 1 or 0 finality to it, an error (in all cases). A floating maybe is more, not less, accurate. And that statement is ... true. Totally not being facetious at all. I can have fun writing something without it's being facetious.
Quoting Banno
And now you are equating confidence with certainty. That is JUST yet another error.
Confidence is the anger based choice to STAND to all else and hold the line. When dealing with belief, which I acknowledge here and in every place before is where I am at with this idea, a person who speaks with dread confidence is only expressing their anger hold. That is NOT the foolishness of knowing. It is in fact yet another one of the paths to truth, the anger path, there being only three, fear, anger, and desire. Those are all my beliefs.
So, each of your points is wrong and all wrong based on the same type or quality of error, over-dependence on pragmatic short-cuts to truth. That is limited truth. That is actually delusional non-truth in every case. It is true (ha ha) that this effect does not make things, being, living, EASIER on us. It instead makes things appropriately harder. This is a BETTER way. It is more wise.
Quoting Banno
No, these are disparate issues. As previously discussed in full. Truth is only able to inform choice. Belief is a form of choice. There is no choice we can make that is not just belief.
We are not perfect. We cannot be objective. We are wrong in some way, infinite ways actually, even on little niggling event statements that we take in as 'true', a dangerous lie. That lie is only used to facilitate the short-cut, to prevent people from pondering on an on because time is short and the climb via evolution to perfection, ... hopefully, ... is hard and long and we need to have some awareness short cuts. But let's call them THAT honestly. That would be wise.
All sorts of categories can have as subsets, members that work much better than others.
There are chess players. Magus Carlsen is a chess player. He's not only a chess player or a mere chess player (the word 'only' her taken in a similar sense to 'mere.' But he is an individual subset of the set of chess players.
While there are bad dentists, I don't go with a toothache to prison guards or stock traders.
From what you say it follows that we don't know that we know. If knowledge must be true and everything I think is true may not be, then I cannot be confident that I possess knowledge, even though I may, despite not knowing it or even being able to know it, possess knowledge.
Quoting Bob Ross
If we have no knowledge, then by what standard could we assess the likelihood of something being true?
If we don't know what is true, and we don't even know what beliefs are justified, then what do we know, if anything, according to you?
I don't agree with you anyway, I think there many things I can know to be true, or at least can be certain are the case: namely everything I am presently experiencing and doing. Of past events I can only be as certain as I am of the accuracy of my memory, so confidence must diminish with the temporal distance of events.
But we do know things, all sorts of different things, often with good reason.
Science is not the world. Limiting your examples by presuming that science is the only, or even the best, way to determine truth will lead you astray.
You want a moral argument.
As I already pointed out, if all we have is belief, then there is no correcting ourselves. If there is only opinion, then one cannot be mistaken, for to be mistaken is to believe something that is not the case, not true. In the place of learning, there would only be changing one's opinion. If there is no difference between believing and knowing, one cannot cease to believe a lie and so know the truth.
You are confusing absolute knowledge with knowledge.
If knowledge is a justified belief that has a high enough probability of being true, then you can know you know X IFF you have a justified belief that has a high enough probability of being true that X.
All you have noted, is that you cant be absolutely certain that it is true; which is not a qualification of knowledge.
Ones theory of knowledge, just like truth, will be used to examine itself: it is necessarily circular.
For example, take correspondence theory of truth: what makes the correspondance theory of truth true? If one accepts that theory, then they would say: it is true IFF it corresponds with reality. See what I mean?
If you ask how do we know what knowledge is?, then same deal: you have to evaluate that from the perspective of your theory of knowledge.
It is not that we have no knowledge, it is that we only have probabilistic reasons to support the truth of things. Theres nothing particularly wrong with this: the alternative is absolute truth.
The only way this negates my position, is if you could validly claim to it is absolutely true; and you cant. The things you know, are based off of probability: all you are noting is a high probability.
For me 'absolute knowledge' refers to knowledge which is true independent of any and all contexts. I don't believe such knowledge is possible, so I am not confusing ordinary knowledge, which is knowledge relative to contexts, with that.
If you cannot be certain what the probability of something being true is, then you would be operating with a mere belief to support your conclusion that your original belief was justified. An infinite regress ensues.
Absolute certainty is possible within contexts. I can be absolutely certain of what I am doing and experiencing right now. If I look outside and I see that it is raining, I can be absolutely certain that it is raining, or if I see a caterpillar climbing a tree, I can be absolutely certain that there is a caterpillar climbing that tree while I am seeing it. But all of such certainty is within the context of the collective representation we call "the world", it has no application beyond that.
So this:Quoting Bob Ross
goes to that point. If I say it is raining my statement will be true if it is raining. If I see that it is raining, I can be certain that I am justified in saying that it is raining. So, my statement would correspond to the actuality, it would be true, I would know it to be true and that would count as knowledge. When it comes to past events I rely on memory, so I can't claim knowledge there because my memory may be faulty (and studies have shown that people's memories very often or even most often, are mistaken).
Gang gang.
???
I've also generally held that there is no absolute certainty. And no realm where certainty or truth lives (in the Platonic sense). But I sometimes wonder what is served by adding the word 'absolute'. Isn't certainty finally just a human word, an artifact of language use and convention which can mean various things depending on context?
There are things we can call true because to deny them would result in catastrophe - eating arsenic, jumping from a plane without a parachute, etc. Which unfortunately for my antifoundationalist tendencies suggests that truth (certainly in some instances) is not merely a product of human construction but is grounded in an objective reality that exists independently of our beliefs and perceptions.
On the positive side, having a definition of knowledge or truth is of almost no use in my day-to-day life, so there is that. All I need to know about truth exists in convention, usage or domains of intersubjective agreement.
Quoting Tom Storm
I don't believe in any Platonic realm either, but I do believe in the mystical experience, meaning I believe that it is an altered state of consciousness that seems generally to carries with it a sense of elevated experience and understandingthe problems come when people try to use it to prove some metaphysical claim or other. I prefer to draw no conclusions in that regard.
Like you, I'm happy to live with uncertainty, with not-knowing. And I agree with you about the existence of a mind-independent actuality. I have no need of a definition of truth either, I feel as though I know what it is wordlessly, so to speak, and no need to attempt any more fine-grained analysis
I think what we know is restricted to what is right in front of us at any time, and what we have experienced to the extent that we can rely on our memories and what we are able to do.
Beyond that it's all more or less justified belief, with the assessment of justification being reliant on what we do know if it relies on anything at all more substantial than merely a feeling of being more or less certain.
That's intriguing. Especially the 'elevated experince and understanding' part of it. What would be an example of this? Are you thinking enlightenment... gurus and such?
Midgley, amongst others, points to that. See Rings & Books
Perhaps the problem is not, not being able to find "absolute certainty", but the framing of these issues in terms of "absolute certainty". Garbage in, garbage out.
Could be. Certainty seems to be a kind of pragmatic continuum. I am certain Bob Hawke was a Labor Prime Minister in the 1980's. I am not certain if he was a good prime minister. That kind of thing. But as soon as we get to questions of gods or metaphysical extravagances such as 'enlightenment' or mystical experiences, certainty seems absent.
Notice that these are things we do, not statements about the way things are.
The advice is not to talk about such things, but to enact them - whereof one cannot speak, thereof one can do.
:up:
Quoting Tom Storm
I see the psychologist Jon Haidt's notion of elevation as having a lot of support, and fitting well with my experience:
I don't count "elevated experience and understanding' as being demonstrably more than a feeling. In other words I don't think we can know what the implications of such experiences might be. The guru thing might be helpful for some people, personally I dislike the smell of it.
Quoting Banno
I agreeabsolute certainty is not possible except relative to some context or other.
I think you're right here regarding "talking at cross-purposes".
I'm arguing from the standpoint of evolutionary progression. The safest starting point for this conversation may be the moment of conception(fertilization), although any acceptable robust notion of belief must be amenable to the evolutionary progression of the species as well; by my lights anyway.
Examples may help me to grasp what you're saying here. The above, as written, seems plainly false to me. I would argue that all three candidates/examples/suggestions are false, as they are written.
The evolutionary progression of human thought and belief is not a matter of personal preference. It evolved however it has, regardless of how one wants to think about it.
Either all knowledge is existentially dependent upon belief or it is not.
Ok, cheers. But I would go further and suggest that "absolute certainty" is a nonsense formed by concatenating two otherwise innocent words. Trying to make use of such a term leads immediately to misunderstanding.
I can be aware of whatever it is that is present to me right now without believing or knowing anything about it in any propositional sense. You can believe something, for example that your wife is having an affair, without being aware of (having evidence) or knowing anything about any actual infidelity on her part. I can know how to ride a bike without believing anything about bikes, and I can ride a bike without being aware that I am doing it (automatic pilot). I don't know about you, but when I ride a bike I am on automatic pilot for much of the time.
Quoting creativesoul
I don't think there is an empirical matter of fact about that (certainly not a determinable one, in any case), just different ways of looking at it, talking about it. So, you can say it is or it isn't. it comes down to personal preference or intuition
Quoting Banno
I think you're probably right about 'absolute' being a loaded term. Perhaps 'complete certainty' would be a better fit. I'm completely certain, i.e. have no doubt whatsoever that I am currently typing this response to you.
:up:
.
Planing a board cannot be done without a tool. A tool cannot be made without belief. Planing a board cannot be done without belief. Belief is necessary for planing boards in terms of existential dependency as well as practicality. Belief less creatures cannot know how to plane boards.
Robots can plane boards, but they cannot know how. Robots are automated tools. We can learn how to use them to plane boards, and given sufficient time and practice, begin using them without consciously focusing upon the task at hand. We can sing to ourselves while going through the motions. We can carry on complete conversations while using planers.
I think that you're getting at or pointing towards the kind of habitual muscle memory habits that develop given enough time and repetition. With that I'd wholly agree, but as "cross-purposes" implied, that's not what I was talking about.
Yes, I hinted at this myself earlier.
Quoting Janus
Got ya. Fair point.
Quoting wonderer1
Interesting. New one for me but I guess I've felt this intuitively.
Quoting Banno
Ha! Yes. Apart from this place, I spend almost no time talking or reading about such matters and am almost entirely a creature of doing.
The same reason we no longer seriously entertain geocentric models.
It is not. I've just mentioned it more here in recent past.
What I meant about planing boards and riding bikes is that you can watch others doing them, and then have a go, trying different things and improving with practice. I see no need for any particular beliefs in that, just willingness to have a go.
Quoting creativesoul
Creatures without hands cannot plane boards. Look, I agree that you can frame things in terms of belief, and I think they can be framed in terms not including belief. Which is the better framing? That depends on preference and/or intuition.
We may not disagree there, depending on the candidate filling in the blank left by "whatever it is". I'm not fond of the notion of "proposition"...
I just mean by that something like "assertion that something or other is the case".
Ok. nice.
Ok. The notion that evolution 'progresses" is somewhat problematic. Take care.
Well, in my defense, those words left your keyboard, not mine.
"Evolutionary progression" implies process over time.
But yes, it's complicated.
No doubt.
"In that" is not how I would put it. It's that mimicry presupposes at the very least, that the mimicker believe they are mimicking.
It's not that I'm 'framing things in terms of belief'. Rather, I'm situating belief in such a way as to revive it's vital importance to being an intentional being/agent. The church has not helped. Truth, knowledge, belief, and certainty were absconded. Many folk are repulsed by the words due to how the church used them. That's really too bad.
"Absconded" is the wrong word, but hopefully you get the point. It's been a long day.
:wink:
"Tainted" would be better.
Quoting creativesoul
Yup, that's what I'm keeping in mind.
What are the pitfalls you warn of?
OK fair enoughI just don't see why one cannot merely mimic. If I am conscious of an intention to mimic then I know that is what I am trying to do. Some say there can be no knowledge where doubt is not a possibility. I don't see it that way; the way is see it is that there is no place for belief where there can be no doubt. If I'm trying to mimic something, I don't see how there can be any doubt about that.
I agree with you that belief plays a major role in all our lives. I just think we will disagree as to just where it has its roles, or to put it another way, about where it is appropriate to speak about belief being a factor..
You might consider here Aristotle's two types of truth, which gets at this distinction.
I would add that our limited cognitive bandwidth requires that we make frequent use of this second type of truth. In statements, predication, etc. we say things about things, or we evaluate such statements in thought. However, when we do this, we cannot "unpack" all this detail. I can say something about, say "Russia," without either of us having to unpack all our propositional knowledge about Russia. There is both a subconscious and pre-concious element to this. Subconscious because we use terms as shorthand for a huge network of connections, pre-concious because the objects and processes we perceive are organized into discrete "things," automatically. It is this automatic demarcation that allows for the phenomenology that gives rise to predication and syntax in the first place (Husserl's argument).
It's probably worth saying that one need not be aware of their own beliefs. Beliefs come first, then awareness of them. That is to draw a distinction between mimicry and mimicking for the sake of mimicking.
Sometimes, very young children are acting like others around them... in times of mimicry, that is. They are trying to do what they've seen done. Their attention is not towards the fact that they're mimicking, they're attention is on what they're doing(that counts - to us - as mimicry).
Quoting Janus
Perhaps, but that is the interesting part of all this. How it is a factor, and in what way, as well as to what extent, etc.
:wink:
That is exactly the issue, and what I was trying to convey to @Janus.
Oh, I completely agree. There are an abundance of them.
Sure, that's one way of using the terms. It's odd though, in that some language less creatures are capable of both; believing and knowing that a mouse ran behind the tree.
If that was the case prior to language use, and I see no reason to deny that, then knowing and believing are not just language games, because language less creatures do not play such things.
I'm not so sure that we are in agreement. Take:
Quoting Bob Ross
Follow your own argument and apply this to itself. Are you going to say that we only know that, say, P(A) = n(A)/n(S) is probably true? How could one find the probability of such a thing? But there is a step further here: the whole framework of a probabilistic theory of truth must be taken as true in order to function as an account of truth... that is, the sentence "n(S) is the total number of events in the sample space" must also be assigned a probability, but this cannot be done without our having already assigning a probability to that very statement.
The only way out of this is to suppose that there are statements that are true outside of this game of assigning probabilities.
And this does not just apply to the supposed "analytic" statements. What is the probability that you are now reading this sentence? How can we even make sense of such a thing?
Pragmatism, probabilism, correspondence, coherence... Whatever substantive theory of truth is chosen, something will be left out, something must remain ungrounded. We are left with T-sentences, and descriptions of how sentences about truth function rather than theories about what is true and what isn't. And that should not be a surprise.
Perhaps you believe that you have more than 28 eyelashes, but until now that belief has never been articulated. The belief is not a thing in your head.
It would be absurd to suppose that each of one's innumerable beliefs exists somewhere in your mind.
That a belief can be put into a proposition is a grammatical point about the way the word "belief" is used. If you can't put it into a statement, then you can't be said to believe it.
"The cat believes the mouse ran behind the tree" shows exactly that - "the mouse ran behind the tree" being the content of the cat's belief. What is not claimed is that there a thing in the head of the cat that somehow is named by "the mouse ran behind the tree". Rather there is the cat's capacity to recognise, chase, anticipate, and so on. It is humans, you and I, who benefit from setting this game out in terms of belief and intent.
It also shows that the cat and the mouse are participants in our language games, which are never confined just to language, but show how language is part of our interaction with the world
I think folk have had enough of this dead horse.
That's just not true, despite the fact that you've been charging me with it for years now. You've a clever little quip about first misunderstanding a position prior to disagreeing with it. It fits here.
I agree with most all of that. I used to reject the bit about articulation in a broad sense of rejection. I no longer reject it out of hand. I still question the truth aptness of unarticulated belief, as well as whether or not it makes sense to say one holds an unarticulated belief true - prior to articulation. Nonetheless, there's nothing here aside from that that causes me pause.
Agreed.
Again. Agreed.
Two sticking points directly above. The first is the same one hinted at earlier at the top of this reply; that you're arguing against an opponent of your own imagination, because I do not argue for spatiotemporal location of beliefs, let alone 'in the head'. I reject and vehemently argue against that sort of mischaracterization.
The second involves the content of the cat's belief. If the content of the cat's belief is the proposition "the mouse ran behind the tree", and the proposition consists of the mouse, the tree, the spatiotemporal relationship between the mouse and tree, in addition to the mouse's behaviour, then I agree. If the proposition consists of words, then I disagree. The content of the cat's belief is meaningful to the cat. Those words are not.
That's the contentious part.
I'm currently watching/studying Searle's lectures on philosophy of mind. I also recently purchased several of his books including "Mind". At least I think that's the name of it. I understand that on Searle's view, the content of the intentional state of belief is the proposition, but I do not yet agree with that. I may never.
The content of the cat's belief is meaningful to the cat. Words are not. Of that much, I'm certain. We've not even bridled that horse yet, let alone ridden it to death and flogged it afterwards. It's germane to "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs", and 'meaning is use' cannot apply.
:wink:
I appreciate ya, bruddah.
Aloha! A hui ho.
I would say the difference there would be intention, not belief.
Sure. The meaning is just what the cat does.
Yawn.
Or something like that.
To which the reply is simply to show that we do know things. Like, as pointed out, how to type a reply on the Philosophy Forum.
Chet suggested there was some virtue in saying one believed but didn't know. Such virtue resides in being able to correct one's opinion, to change what one believes from what is false to what is true. But if there is no way to know what is true, then all we can do is change our beliefs, true or false; it makes no difference what we believed. If there is virtue in correcting our beliefs, then there must be correct beliefs. Humility is different to ignorance in that humility admits truth.
I mean that is just some sort of gloming onto 'their' sentiment. I would maybe see one of 'them' also suggesting that we not use the the derogatory word 'subset' implying inferiority. No, 'only' and 'mere' are PRECISELY the same (to me) in meaning and they are certainly no worse than 'subset'. So, I confess, I do not get this complaint. It's like saying to 'them' that 'OK, if you concede the main point about your door, we will agree to paint it chartreuse, as you direct.'
Quoting Bylaw
Most 'grouping up' as a fallacious attempt to argue by mass or numbers, is cowardly, if you follow, an approach/need of fear and order. Anger does not care if others agree or not. It will hold the line to the balance of its own belief, regardless. At least that is GOOD anger.
This yields a dynamic where only the most solid and anger standing type of challenger will come against the too set in 'their' ways authorities of any current span in time and location. History is full of such examples where individual challengers were called out as insane or just comically wrong, until that challengers new path was proven by some set of undeniable demonstrations of or overwhelming need for the new change.
Quoting Bylaw
And this last bit is another appeasement of 'them'. It surreptitiously implies that maybe this application of the word 'subset; even works, but not well.
Quoting Bylaw
Knowledge is ENTIRELY belief. Knowledge is ONLY belief because in the sense that I am referring to it is entirely belief. Knowledge is MERELY belief because belief itself is more interesting and useful than 'they' give it credit for.
The fact that there is an intersection for some people into knowledge that means 'beliefs that are believed to have been verified' can be stated, and EXACTLY like that. There is no need to state that statement any other way. There is no need to apologize for the fact that knowledge (colloquially) is only a subset of belief. But as mentioned previously to another user, what 'they' are calling 'knowledge' (colloquial) IS NOT knowledge.
Knowledge, to me must partake of perfection and its parts and its whole cannot be wrong in any way. I would wish to show that there are words that take from or partake in the absolute nature of the term perfection. 'Know' is one of them. 'To Place' would be another one. The implication is perfection inclusive and this should alarm the more accurate observer. It should alarm them because it is not possible so the claim set being made is spurious. We SHOULD doubt it (more) than a claim that humbly includes this doubt up front.
Quoting Bylaw
Yes, on some of that we can agree. But we both know that in reality and especially human reality, there are many situations where the fox ends up guarding the henhouse. Why is that? I 'know' (ha ha) why. It's fair to use the fox's tricks against them, maybe (not really) The fox is likely to sell out truth. The fox is likely to call it doubters facetious when they are the serious ones. The fox was appointed by other foxes. It's there to corrupt the serious nature of truth, precisely to let slip things in a certain way. We are all beset by wisdom, by truth. It is too hard to live up to. The 'powers that be' have to make sure that some roads to truth are obscured. This aids in the pragmatic short cutting of truth in daily life. This aids in immorality, the opposite of wisdom.
This complaint has no quality. You are just repeating the same mistake. You offer no argument.
Quoting Banno
I cannot tell who you are not quoting here. Quote for better responses.
I never said that science was the only anything. So, I will mostly ignore that statement. I tend to agree that science is not the only path to truth. That is something I would say. It is mostly a fear-order path.
Quoting Banno
And your fear here is correct. There is no other way than belief. It is the strength or quality of the belief that is critical. That strength includes elements of the other two paths, desire, and anger.
Desire is included because perfection casts a shadow upon us, upon non-perfection and we sense that very real effect. It causes desire in us and a sense of worthlessness meant to spur us on to greater effort.
Anger causes us to seek all balances. These balances will shove out non resonant beliefs. It will become impossible to stand (to perfection) until we are balanced.
Further, these disruptions of belief caused by desire and anger do show RELATIVE correctness. When an experiment is repeatable reliably it is in balance with truth. It may even break some desire. That is good. Desire is chaos and so many desires run off in immoral directions.
When reason (order) counters a belief or balance (anger) counters a belief they assist us in possibly more awareness. They cannot assist us in knowing. Knowing is too final, too prefect. And we confuse the unaware and the wistful that sense still that our knowing is not the whole answer. And that 'they' is correct. The best that we have right now, is still not perfect. So there is no 'knowing'. To suggest that there is, is to promote confusion.
Most people would not know the difference in these terms. That is my point. I contend that in fact those most people are more correct than anyone claiming as you are here.
Knowledge of any kind is just belief. All knowledge is subsumed under the mantle of belief. It cannot be KNOWN. The word know already means absolute. That is how most people take it.
If you mean to say there is some doubt, most people are happier when you say you do not know for sure. That is correct. Most people are wiser than anyone claiming there is a difference between knowing and knowing absolutely.
Saying you know is a deceptive claim that you know absolutely. And that is impossible so the you making that claim would be a liar.
Quoting Bob Ross
All of these other angles on the same thing are just more subterfuge, more deception. Justification can be in error and is only belief as well. What is believed as true is again, also, only a belief. So error creeps in. Blah blah blah.
Knowledge is only belief.
Quoting Bob Ross
I would say that saying 'to know x' does imply absoluteness. That is the colloquial understanding.
I would say that saying ' I am aware of x' does not imply a closed set of awareness. I would say that colloquially listeners would feel they have more of a right to question the awareness than the knowing. And that is the point. You, the speaker, MUST NOT, morally, say 'know'. You MUST instead, more properly say 'aware of' to show that you acknowledge the lack of perfect awareness and deny absolute knowledge.
That is all.
No helping some folk.
Cheers.
I agree that there is no helping some folk.
You are again precisely wrong, not just wrong.
Pragmatism is the philosophy that accepts and encourages practical short-cuts, the fear approach to truth. Pragmatism encourages the word 'know' as sufficient given some short cut or cutoff or less than best because its less than perfect approach to awareness. Pragmatism is the fiat-giver, order apology. It allows for wrongness via truth claims when such are not possible and thereby lies to ALL.
Granted that Pragmatism can enjoy this position and that most people will not have the courage to argue against its workable everyday ways. In other words most people are both 1) Willing to accept that when you say you know that knowing is possible. AND 2) That its ok to say you know if you have done some UNKNOWN amount of justifications, especially if some reasonably thought-of-as-known(not really known) authority (group of bozos wearing the same orderly clothing and using the same orderly practices) says so. THAT is Pragmatism.
I adhere to a better way.
My way encourages the more truthful position that doubt may be unpleasant but that certainty is absurd. And I can explain what that really means better than ANY group of order apologists have so far. It is in the nature of Pragmatism, its very definition, to fail at that explanation.
So you are again PRECISELY backwards in your assertion.
Oddly, I am not just an idealist either. I also stand up against their magical thinking in that 'all desires are equal'. Their fungibility error is epic in much the same way (just reverse) as Pragmatisms insistence that we can be certain or 'know' things. Both are unwise. Wisdom is the middle path and there is even more to wisdom than that because the middle way to be wise must also not be lazy, which is the sin of anger. Extreme moderation would be the lazy way.
The confusion lies in the fact that I am using there term probability in a looser, more colloquial sense, than you. If we are talking about probability in strictly the sense of a mathematical, quantitative likelihood; then I completely agree with you.
If we use it more loosely, as also plausibility, then your issues disappear. The probability, in this sense, of me writing this message is qualitative and to the degree of confidence I have, given the evidence I have to support it, that would suffice for me to claim it is true.
Normally, colloquially, knowledge does not refer to absolute truth. When someone says "I know that the distance to my local grocery store is 10 miles", they do not mean that they are absolutely certain nor that it is absolutely true that <...>; rather, they mean that they are (1) have a belief that , (2) are justified in, (3) and have high enough credence levels to claim that it is true that <...>.
And all of that is fine. It's all error, not truth in any way. But you can bet on it as highly probable and be correct.
The term intention has very different uses, particularly between laypeople and philosophers. I'm guessing you know this already. Just thought it worth mention. It's relatively new to me. That said...
If we're using the layman's notion of intention or the philosopher's, intentionally mimicking for the sake of mimicking requires believing one is mimicking for the sake of mimicking. The object of intention(the philosopher's kind) is the mimicry in both cases, it seems to me. Although, I suppose ridicule could be the object in the deliberate cause of mimicry. The difference between mimicking without knowing one is mimicking and intentionally mimicking is the knowing part. In either case, one knows how to mimic when one mimics.
Both cases require believing that there is something to be mimicked; believing that another individual behaved in some certain way; believing that someone else did something or another.
Earlier you wrote that one without hands cannot plane a board. Strictly speaking that's not true of everyone without hands, but yes... that's the gist of the existential dependency I'm setting out regarding knowledge and belief.
I understand that this is not really germane to the thread topic, but it involves belief, and I'm a sucker for that topic.
:joke:
As far as the OP goes, you and I agree much more than disagree. It's when we unpack our respective notions of knowledge and belief that things begin to get more contentious. It seems that way to me anyway.
Meaning is not equivalent to behaviors. The identity of indiscernibles shows that nicely.
As I just said to Janus, you and I are in near complete agreement when it comes to the OP. Best leave it there with you. I'd rather keep liking you.
:lol:
Anyway, this is a discussion we have probably had before, an it is clear from Chet's posts that he does not have much of a grasp of basic philosophical terms, nor much by way of a capacity to engage in a coherent argument. Yet another case of someone spouting supposed "philosophy" with little to no background knowledge. I had you in that category for a while, but you have shown a capacity to develop and change your ideas. They are still mostly wrong, but they are less wrong than they were... :wink:
No, but we see meaning in how someone uses words as well as with other things. The indiscernibility of identity is just using words coherently.
Quoting creativesoul
Yep. Turns out Chet's position was pretty shallow.
Thanks for that. Interesting take on truth.
Could you explain it a bit more while applying it to the context?
Cheers. I'd rather be encouraging than discouraging. Enacting morality and all.
:wink:
You're often good at that.
I would say 'seeing that there is something to be mimicked', 'seeing that another individual behaved in some certain way', 'seeing that someone did something or other'. Unless the case is that those things were not seen but reported by someone else, in which case 'believing' would be, for me, the apt term.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, I agree. We each have our favored ways of parsing and talking about things. :smile:
:lol: :kiss:
This is the part I don't see why it is necessary (for knowledge). Are you saying that we must be certain (which, to me, requires absolute truth) of something to have any knowledge?
I would say that we must be very confident that we both exist and are in a discussion to continue the conversation: I don't see why we need to add in 'and I am certain of it'.
I'm certain I am writing this reply.
Aren't you certain you are reading it?
When I say I am certain that I am writing this, I mean, more or less, that there is no room for doubt here.
I'm not just very confident that we are involved in a discussion. Any doubt would need to be manufactured, contrived - phoney.
What is "absolute truth" here? It's a strange notion to invoke some something as commonplace as replying to or reading a post on a forum. Statements are, generally speaking, true, or they are false. Sometimes we don't know which. There are exceptions, of course, but these need some explanation, some further account, to explain why we might consider such an antirealist position.
Why do we need to add "I am certain"? Why shouldn't I be certain? In order to get things done, one must hold certain things to be the case, not to be in doubt. One must hold some things as certain.
I agree with you on this, but I wonder whether you think that those things we hold certain are in any degree fallible. Do you think they could ever be falsified?
One can presumably construct games of doubt about anything. Whether these are to be taken seriously is probably a function of one's credulity. But in constructing such games, other things must be held to be undoubted.
I've said a few times that whilst perhaps anything can be brought into doubt, everything cannot coherently be doubted. Is that too subtle a distinction? One doubts this or that by holding something else firm.
I've always like Peirce's adage (I believe specifically targeted at Cartesian doubt): "Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts"
Well, if we take it that adiaireta, awareness of something, is a sort of knowledge, it seems like we can possess it without formulating any propositional beliefs about a thing. We can have false propositional beliefs about something, but I'm not sure if we can have a "false awareness" of something. So, at least this sort of knowledge seems possible.
Further, if we think of knowledge as grasping the intelligibility of something, or "making our mind like it," it seems like we can do this either well or poorly. There is a gradation here, not a binary known/unknown. But whenever we act in knowing something at all, there is adiaireta, which is at least some sort of grasp of the phenomena.
I tend to like the ancient and medieval understanding of knowledge as being more or less perfected, as opposed to the total reduction of knowledge to propositional beliefs and their truth values so common in modern analytical philosophy. It seems obvious to me that I know my brother for instances, but I can know him more or less well than I currently know him.
It seems that most forms of "we cannot know anything about the world," rely on a certainty that there is indeed a world and a real truth about it out there. I just don't know how advocates of these theories can claim to know this given their position.
The infinite nature of perfection, even as a concept, is shown in every experience, and in every philosophical concept in many ways.
That is effectively like saying, 'Experience shows us there is an objective truth.' We feel it. We sense our remoteness from it. Desire itself represents the effect the remote perfection has upon us. That perfection is, to me, the cause of desire itself. This need not be religious, of course. It is a general part of understanding, of wisdom.
If we pretend that everything is subjective, that our choice or intent can change what is objective, then there should be so much more instability in the universe than there is. To me that notion is laughable. It has no leg or meaning to stand on at all. Everything points to an objective and misunderstood truth.
Math itself and the concept of limits shows the asymptotic relationship of our efforts to perfection. I do not know of even a single concept or choice that defies this relationship as a model in any way.
But language and the nature of fear combine to produce in us the foolish, the unwise, need for certainty; when that is unattainable or at least elusive. We do damage to our earning of wisdom, to our awareness, when we suggest or believe that certainty is possible. There are no exceptions.
This does not mean we cannot acknowledge probability and in so doing admit we are partly wrong in all choices. We take the more likely path knowing the likelihood is not and never can be 100%. The discipline of speaking and writing this way, is required to be more moral. It is shunned by those intending a less moral aim.
It is not clear to me which immoral aim is more compelling in these cases. That is to say there is fear which excites people to order apology and they need the comfort of delusional certainty to proceed. Socially this is quite common and leaders everywhere use this CERTAIN language to calm and to incite their constituency. But in every single case that certainty is delusional, no matter how slight the use or implication.
Doubt does not rely on certainty. Doubt relies only on fear, which is finally a reaction to comparison with that extant and felt perfection. Overcoming this fear, in order to assist in the effort to aim at perfection, is one major goal of life, the universe, and everything.
Clearly, a person like myself, that claims knowledge is only belief, does not believe that I know that there is an objective truth out there. I admit to only believing it. That is more honest than to claim literally anything at all as 'knowledge'. It always will be because it's a law of the universe, to me, by way of belief.
I stand to my fears, my doubts, using anger, and desire, as guides. That is a proper approach (is my belief). I admit to knowing nothing, but I claim to be aware of many things. Those are not the same things to me. Indeed, people react less well in general to someone claiming some awareness than they do to someone lying to them and claiming knowing. This is a terrible problem with understanding in most people. It is inherently more correct to applaud and suffer with the person only claiming some awareness. That is the gist of my claim stated fairly plainly.
There are many people who claim to know they did or did not do something. They are ALWAYS wrong to some degree. It is inherent to reality itself. Their memory of what happened, the sensory data, is delusional and incomplete. That is indeed enough for my claim to have more merit than any claim of knowing can ever bring to bear. If this is not understood, I can only pity us all as we suffer more and more because this relatively simple but distasteful matter is not easy enough or seductive enough to accept. If the would be charlatan disguises their efforts towards truth with minimal assertions like 'I wrote something sometime.' their quality of effort is all the revelation one needs. This IS cowardly Pragmatism writ small, again and again. It is a short cut. It is greatly immoral in its aims.
To be objective, one must be perfect. This means any knowing must know everything, or it is not knowing at all. It is in fact only awareness of SOME PART of all. And that IS NOT knowing. All lesser scopes than all are delusional in separation. Separation or reduction is only a process to aid in understanding and NOT a state that is acceptable morally, finally. That is to say, one MUST ALWAYS resolve back to unity (and truth).
It makes more sense to me, to applaud and enjoy with the people who demonstrate that they have knowledge. You can't know that it is inherently less correct, right?
I think it's a bit of an empty claim. It's intuitively true, if you take the position, but in itself, I don't think it's a claim to certainty. Given that the other option is to be certain, which the position rejects... Perhaps language just doesn't do it's job here, though, as there is obviously a difference between being certain about lack of certainty, and being certain about any real-world concrete proposition.
It seems to me that I know my parents. I do not know them perfectly, as God knows them. I do not need to know them perfectly to know them at all. It would be more speculative more dishonest for me to claim that I know nothing of my parents than to admit I know something about them.
As St. Thomas says in his commentary on Boethius, all knowledge is received in the manner of the receiver. The human intellect's grasp on the intelligibility of things is necessary finite, imperfect, discursive and processual. We do not grasp things in their entirety, nor is what we grasp present to us all at once. This is simply the nature of human knowledge, that it is not angelic knowledge. But this does not make it such that there is no such thing as human knowledge, only knowledge from the "God's eye view."
I take it that you then might agree with the following claims, that human beings are intrinsically motivated to seek truth, to attain to [I]veracity[/I]
However, I think there is a misplaced sense of piety if we begin to claim that we do not know anything of our parents, anything of arithmetic, or anything of ourselves for fear of error. This strikes me as the "fear of error become fear of truth," that Hegel discusses in the preface of the Phenomenology of Spirit. For, "as a matter of fact, this fear presupposes something, indeed a great deal, as truth, and supports its scruples and consequences on what should itself be examined beforehand to see whether it is truth."
No one lives as if they actually "know nothing." Phyrro of Elis, the arch skeptic of ancient Greece was himself caught running away from a wild dog, apparently confident that it would indeed harm him if it bit him. As Aristotle remarks on such skeptics, they obviously believe they know some things, as they find their way to the Lyceum to bother him, following paths that take them there, whereas if they truly knew nothing they should not prefer one path over any other when they set out to travel to some place, or should not even assume that walking will get them from one place to another.
One cannot live into veracity while thinking they truly know nothing. To be sure, we can always doubt, just as Moore points out that we can always ask of something "is it truly good?" or just as we can always ask "is it truly beautiful?" or "why is it beautiful?" This is part of the reason that truth, beauty, and goodness were proposed as transcendentals by the scholastics. Reason is transcedent, ecstatic. We can always go past current beliefs and judgements (moral or aesthetic as well). This is what makes reason special, it's ability to transcend who we.currently are and make us into something new.
But it is a mistake to take this property of reason as grounds for doubting everything. This makes veracity impossible. We can not overcome a doubt of reason itself with reason, and this is the risk of misology. Yet embracing misology is to fail at living as a rational agent.
As Plato says in the Phaedo:
Belief in reason itself is a noble risk, and reason shows us we know some things. We know them in our manner, not in a divine manner. This does not mean we lack all knowledge.
Now if your point is merely to use the word "know," in a very uncoventional way, such that people don't "know their parents," or "know that two and two makes four," because radical skepticism can always ask of [I] anything[/I] "but is it really true?" this does not seem to me like a worthwhile exercise. Not only that, but it seems that many of our experiences are not even open to this sort of doubt. If I am in terrible pain, I might very well ask, "ah, but am I truly in pain?" but to deny that I know the truth of this matter is simply self-deception. Being in terrible pain is an ostentatious reality. Likewise, if we cannot know our own propositional beliefs, then veracity becomes impossible, for we cannot even know what we hope to improve.
I think that the self-indulgent position you take here is part of the problem, not the solution. Enjoyment of awareness is STILL NOT knowing.
Agreed that I cannot know its less correct. I believe it though. That is the claim. That claiming to know finally is immoral compared to claiming only some awareness. Then that means its better to speak and write that way.
Even Kevin does not know Kevin. He surprises himself all the time. If you claim to know Kevin you are just clearly wrong. If we mean to say 'know of' or better yet 'are aware of' then that is a better way to speak and believe than is 'knowing'.
It is precisely the dread and mistaken certainty in the word itself and the way it is used that is the problem. That problem will only worsen until it is addressed, properly. We can all continue to wade through hordes of people that believe they know something, or we can begin, in wise discipline to cast aspersions properly on that methodology. We should morally call into question such terminology and the practices surrounding its use in that way. If one enjoys what is wrong, one is wrong to do so.
That is MY point. You are ... aware ... of many aspects of your parents and how they are, who they are. But you DO NOT know them. They do not know themselves. That way of writing and speaking is BETTER than saying knowing.
When we say incorrectly that we know someone or something we imply that we are done. That implies that they are done. So many erroneous conclusions. We can rest if we know. But we do not know. Doubt remains and so the humility should advise us to say we are only fairly aware of this or that or someone.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree with his point, but his conclusion is wrong. If he was instead to say we are only aware of things, he would have spoke or written better. There is no cut-off of something or someone pour-soi. Even if they die and are en-soi there is still false awareness of what was.
I am not denying partial knowledge. But even that term is less than best because the term to know is an absolute negating for the most part the word 'partial'. It's just like the goofy people that say 'very unique'. Its redundant and shows the person has no awareness of what the word 'unique' means. Now people IN GENERAL will understand what is meant. But the confusion happens then when the more aware person objects and takes issue with the formulation, just like I am doing here. It's ok. I am used to it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Not at all. They are often in fact motivated to seek delusion. The comforting lies desire is all over this thread. Truth is elusive and hard to hold on to. The wise suffer more and exquisitely compared to others. Awareness is a burden and causes suffering and that is ok. All virtues are similar. Wisdom is nothing so much as the union of all virtues.
The hardest things is usually more moral than the thing that is easier.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I disagree that truth seeking is a fundamental choice. If you are saying instead what I would, in other words, it would be this:
Desire exists and its perfection impacts us, despite our choices to ignore it or overwhelm it with immoral intent. As such, the truth of perfection, via evolution, is a great suffering we must experience. We fear to be unequal to it and we thus compete with less aims as practical excused cop-outs. We desire to already be perfect and thus we also wallow in worthlessness instead of assuming or aspiring to the perfect.
But in neither case is truth seeking an assumed thing. It is always and only a matter of choice.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I disagree entirely. That is a messed up way of looking at it. The choice to delude oneself and in what ways one does so, are not veracity and we should not poison that word as well with foolish interpretations. There is no false veracity. There is only accurate veracity and all else is moral failure. Even if the failure is relatively better than everyone else's, it is still failure, finally. It is just BETTER than others morally /relatively. The wording is critical to understanding properly.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Truth seeking is wise, but, amid that process we often fail. Especially if we believe that truth or morality is subjective.
I find curiosity to be a part of wisdom mostly, lighthearted truth seeking as defined.
Yes, curiosity shows the desire infusion of awareness, the desire to know ... more. Desire is always the more-needer.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I do not think that is curiosity. I think that is judgement.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, veracity is a state. It could be the truth value of a thing, its expected state. But curiosity itself or just truth seeking would be fine for stating a desire for truth. I don't agree that veracity means that.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Inclination is desire is passion. All desire is passion. One could also say that inclination is pattern is order is fear, as in a trait. But I do like the idea that inclination includes some desire.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I disagree. Passion to me is synonymous with desire. There is no need to muddy the waters there for me. Reason is not the servant of anything, but its own thing entirely. And that thing is sourced in fear. It is only a pattern that is something one can be aware of or not or to greater and lesser degrees.
Reason cannot exist without the objective. If there is nothing objective then reasoning is a lie.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I disagree. Dishonesty is a lack of truthfulness. Honesty is a part of truth. We are all always partially dishonest. It is the same thing in some ways as saying we cannot know. We cannot be truthful absolutely. We can only intend to be truthful and do the best we can.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree that truthfulness is something to aspire to as part of perfection.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Agreed, but since I did not claim that your idea is moot. I did not say we have no awareness which is what your strawman argument there implies. You are trying to act as if I am claiming that we are aware of nothing, as in we have no awareness at all. We do not have knowledge because any knowledge is all knowledge really. Only by knowing all can we know any. But we are indeed aware of a lot. And awareness to me is already steeping in the understanding of its limitation, which is far better.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Again, this is using the word know wrongly, colloquially. To know is an absolute is my claim. I agree that no one lives as if they have no awareness. But they SHOULD live as if they know nothing. They are just wrong not to. It means they do not understand the subtle difference in the terms.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This conflation you offer again proves my point. The word 'know' is an absolute and should not be used hardly ever. If you change to my term as directed your statements are more correct. Most such are marginally aware of some things, yes, like the way to the Lyceum. But they all know nothing because knowing is unattainable as a skill.
It is the failure to admit this that causes the confusion of certainty in people and then on to 'being done' and not needing to know any more because you already know. Nope! There is more, so, you do not know (anything).
I cut it short because I suspect we are just doomed to stand our ground on opposed sides. And that is fine.
and only can have the same meaning. Not necessarily, but possibly. Oh, it's only a regular pizza, no toppings. And given that you present them as the same, I disagree with their use there. And subset alone is fine.
Subset is neutral. British cities are a subset of the category cities.Quoting Chet HawkinsI mentioned methodologies. This would include my own methodologies also, so really it has nothing to do with number. I am lying in bed and I think it's raining. I thought they maybe said something on the news that it would rain today, but I'm not sure. But I believe it is raining. Or, I get up, look out the window, see drops falling, hitting puddles. I now also believe it is raining, but the methodology I used in the second instance I respect more. So, it is when I evaluate how others reach conclusions: their methodologies - and perhaps past record, my sense of their trustworthiness and other criteria.
This has nothing to do with fear or anger.Quoting Chet Hawkins
Sure, I haven't said: if the experts say X, X must be true.
But I recognize differences between beliefs. I use the word knowledge for beliefs that I consider very likely to be correct. It is a subset of beliefs that I have confidence in over other subsets of beliefs. I don't expect perfection, because I and we are fallible. We do our best.
Messi is a football player. He is one football player in the set of football players. But I would choose him to play on my team over three random players.
The parallel here is not that Messi is a kind of knowledge, though he certainly has that.
It's just I have no reason to say he is only a football player or a mere football player because he is part of that set.
Set's include better and worse members, given the purposes one has.
If I am interested in surprising beliefs, then out of the set of beliefs, many beliefs not considered knowledge and many considered knowledge will fit my needs.
If I am trying to successfully navigate the world, then those in the subset knowledge tend to work better.
But I see no reason to use mere or only, especially if the latter is considered a synonym of the former.
Sorry, I missed this response initially.
I have no problem with what you are saying, because you are using the term 'certainty' in the sense of ~'that which one doesn't have good reasons to doubt': in that sense, I agree that I am 'certain' that I am writing this reply.
In terms of whether it is absolutely true that I am writing this reply, I cannot afford an answer.
And yet here you are hypocritically indulging in discussion with knowledgeable people, and using the internet which only exists as a result of people having the knowledge required to make the internet work.
Believing another's words is one species of belief; one way to draw correlations; one way to make connections; one way to attribute meaning(in this case to the terms "belief" and "believing").
One way to talk? Sure. A bit shallow though.
Thanks for the engagement. I agree that some knowledge(that a thing exists; is there) does not require forming propositional belief about that thing. So, I agree with the above. I've not claimed that all knowledge is existentially dependent upon propositional belief. I'm claiming that all knowledge is existentially dependent upon belief of some sort or another, in some way or another. The sorts and ways are many. There is more than one kind.
Whether or not a case of awareness counts as knowledge that is not existentially dependent upon belief greatly depends upon 1.) what may be called "the object of awareness"(what it is - exactly - that one is aware of), and 2.) the biological machinery of the candidate. Awareness of some things is only possible via language use.
One cannot become aware of something that does not exist(purely imaginary things) without language use.
However, belief about the world and/or oneself is being formed long before language acquisition begins in earnest. So, I would think awareness is needed during those times. I may agree with calling some cases of awareness during such times "knowing"(that something is there).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes. We can.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Depends upon the something.
Secondhand info exists. The recent public usage of "CRT" is evidence of how one can become aware that there is a theory named "Critical Theory" based upon false belief about the theory. If based upon false belief, and it counts as an awareness that there is such a thing as "Critical Theory", it could be said that they know Critical Theory exists. Such awareness/knowledge seems to require propositional belief though, so it's not a good example of the criterion/outline you've offered, although it seems to be a case of "false awareness".
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I would think it's impossible to become aware of something that one does not believe exists. I do not see how one can become and/or be aware of something else that they do not believe is there.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Indeed. I've long argued against those practices.
Failure to commit? No, rather "absolutely true" is like "solicitous chalk" or "oligarchic sandwich"; putting two words together doesn't necessitate that the result makes sense. You perhaps can't afford an answer because "absolutely true" is a nonsense.
There's something incongruous in Chet being so certain of his lack of confidence.
He is in effect asserting that his claim that there are no truths is true. Such self-defeating nonsense should not overly concern us.
The claim that knowledge is only belief ignores the simple point that the things we know are true. To know some statement, that statement must be at least a true belief. The things we know are a proper subset of the things we believe, differentiated from our other beliefs by being as at least true.
If it seems shallow to you, then so be it.
Quoting creativesoul
No, seeing is seeing and believing is believing. I can see the tree outside the window, I don't need to believe it's there in order to see that it is. Belief is only operative where the possibility of doubt exists.
Exactly. A lot of phenomenological treatments go a step further, claiming that one cannot be aware of the intelligibilities of things without language. Language is what allows us to both explore the intelligibility of things (dividing and composing á la Aquinas/Aristotle) and in turn to develop a noetic grasp of their natures (essential vs accidental, genus, species, etc.). There is, of course, awareness prior to language, and animals are aware of things, but this would be the sort of awareness associated with Aristotle's "sensible soul," not the "rational soul." This sort of awareness does not allow us to be agents of truth in that it cannot allow us to "say things about things."
I'll admit that I was initially skeptical from this view point, but I find Husserl's explanation of how predication emerges from the phenomenology of human experience quite convincing. It's not that this view necessarily replaces the Kantian view of certain properties of mind shaping how we come to the world, or the neuroscientistic view of how our faculties are grounded in biology. Rather it's a "yes, and..." addition to how the nature of experience creates the ground for predication, which in turn allows for language, syntax, and the grasp of intelligible edios.
Perhaps there are species somewhere in the universe with an intelligence on par with humans whose grasp of intelligibilities is not like this. If we were a solitary species, something more akin to a tiger, language and conversation might not be so essential to how we grasp the world. But it seems true in the human case at least.
Or incorporeal entities/properties, e.g. economic recessions, complexity, information, chaos, order, communism, liberalism, Catholicism, etc.
That's one way of looking at it. I think the Aristotlean view would tend towards saying that this is an awareness of something, namely a propaganda narrative. The person is simply mistaken about what they are aware of. That is, they have both false propositional beliefs about CRT and they are also simply ignorant of many facets of it. They are aware of a real thing, CRT, but their awareness is quite incomplete, for they are ignorant of much of it.
In the case of UFOs, we are aware of other people's experiences of what they take to be extra terrestrial craft. Those people are aware of some sensory experience they have explained in terms of UFOs. Something caused that experience, and so the awareness of it isn't false. It [I]is[/I] an awareness of something. Rather their propositional beliefs about the causes of that experience may be false. Similarly, chemists used to think they were aware of phlogiston when they saw flames. We now realize they were aware of the process of combustion. The awareness was of something (not false), it just has false beliefs attached to it.
Consider the case where the Loch Ness monster is real. Someone sees a huge ripple in the loch, like something big moving under the surface. They ascribe this to some normal animal or a drone. In reality, it was Nessy, the last elamasaurus!
Well, in this case they have been made aware of Nessy, or at least effects produced by Nessy (which are signs of their cause). They just have false propositional beliefs about what they experienced vis-á-vis it's causes.
This is, of course, just one way to look at it. But I think the Aristotlean frame is useful here in that otherwise we very quickly slip into having the opposite of awareness become falsity rather than ignorance. However, I do think there is a difference between ignorance and false belief, and that it's helpful to keep them apart.
Sokolowski talks about the problem of "vagueness." Vagueness often creeps in when people talk about a topic they understand poorly, e.g. quantum mechanics. Vagueness is the product of a mix of ignorance and false propositional belief, a sort of haze over something, a poor grasp of its intelligibility such that we not only predicate the wrong things of a thing, but are also simply ignorant of what might properly be predicated of it.
Colloquial or personal nonsense notwithstanding:
[i]adjective being nothing more than specified
a mere child
synonyms:
specified
clearly and explicitly stated
adjective apart from anything else; without additions or modifications[/i]
That is the first AND second official definition of the word. I'm fine with that. And even so, I am now stating regardless of definition (because some of them are wrong) what I mean. It is the same as definitions 1 & 2 here, and nothing more.
Quoting Bylaw
Subset has the word sub in it. By bizarre personal or colloquial standards of the day I could claim you are trying to dominate British cities by the category cities and you expect sub drop and eyes lowered. Why? Why?
Quoting Bylaw
I suppose that sounds fine enough. You have SOME means of accrediting supposed authorities. But the only final authority is you, yourself, for your beliefs. Even if you choose to accredit or validate an external authority, your own nexus/locus of choice is still 'to blame' for your beliefs and you have to own those beliefs by way of moral responsibility.
Quoting Bylaw
So, I WILL write in terms of my model to answer or post. That means, as in my model, there is nothing in this universe that does not ALWAYS partake of all three emotions, fear, anger, and desire. So, it is not factual at all to say that anything at all has nothing to do with fear, anger or desire. Of course such facts are only potentially facts to me, but they are facts by my definition. I have done as much due diligence as I can to validate these assertions as facts.
Quoting Bylaw
So, far, you have been ... excellent in your approach, as in: not just dismissive of a let's call it 'fresh' viewpoint and willing to temper what I usually get, a rudeness. The rudeness is fine to me. I don't mind a fight, of any type really, as it is the nature of reality. But the dismissiveness is when the fighter offers no argument at all for their side and just says 'you're wrong'. They lose when they do that, but, it doesn't mean they lose the public vote. This is just one reason why Democracy is a deeply immoral system. You cannot vote truth into existence, nor out of existence.
I agree experts are not always right. But I go further, amid honesty. Experts cultivate their position in order to sell out. It is the NORM, not the exception. The Capitalist system (and others but especially that one) foment a culture of sell outs. Fake it til you make it and then sell out. What a system!
In my olden times, the word 'drip' was not synonymous with personality or demeanor as it seems to be today on the street. Instead it meant a square, someone who was not street smart, a boring and unstylish person.
My ROTC detachment commander was a man I greatly respected. He had been a Pentagon consultant for decades. He understood communication so well, I suspected he was involved in inventing it. He referred to 'experts' in the following way: 'X is an unknown quantity, and a spurt is just some drip under pressure' I have to say, I agree with all my heart.
As an ENTP on the MBTI scale I am prone to upending experts at their chosen professions. They are not sufficiently 'perfect-aiming' in their own disciplines. They are used to the sell out angles. They prefer them. They want to make things easy and defensible. They are children in wisdom and in the pursuit of truth. I do not seek out this situation and it costs me dearly in all walks of life. Yet it has served me and the people I love quite well as a disposition. Do not trust anything at face value, especially authority. I still hold to that ... near truth.
Quoting Bylaw
I do not expect perfection either. In fact I dismiss claims of it. That is what this is about. Expose those that say, 'I know', for they do not, and they should not say that they do. Certainty is absurd. We should speak as if that is true.
I coined the (OK its obvious) phrase 'non-conclusion' for my book (upcoming). It means what people believe improperly that the word 'conclusion' means. Look at how hard truth is! I can literally change the phrase to ostensibly its opposite and still be NOT ONLY CORRECT, BUT MORE CORRECT. THAT is critical to understand. To continue to 'conclude' is a damning failure of wisdom. One cannot conclude. That word partakes again of perfection, too much. The assumption would be that 'our work here is done' and that is ALWAYS a lie. What is this need to wallow in the delusion of certainty? Did we not learn from philosophers of the past? Was Voltaire joking?
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you do know, for certain, that just ain't so." - Samuel Clemens
I disagree with Sam (or Mark) on that one. What you don't know is at least equally likely to cause you trouble, but, his point is along the lines of the MUCH BETTER quote by Voltaire.
Quoting Bylaw
This analogy is incorrect.
Knowledge is wholly subsumed into belief.
Messi is not wholly subsumed into football player.
You are confusing intersection with subset. They are not the same. And in doing so, you make again, my point for me, like so many have in this thread. For my part, it does not matter if others conceded the point that resonates BETTER with truth than those that they defend. Truth and falsehood ... you know (ha ha) the rest; or do you? Is the meaning actually lost?
You can rest assured of public support for the wrong choices, the wrong theories. That is only because they are relatively acceptable to the colloquial audience. Actual truth resonates more only with one side of this argument. That proximal resonation is not based in opinion.
Quoting Bylaw
Incorrect. Reality is objective, so subjective belief does not matter to truth.
Sets include only members and set theory has no designation for 'lesser' and 'greater' until we redefine the set in those terms. You are wrong.
Quoting Bylaw
Characteristics of elements within a set are a case for intersection, not exclusion. So you are burning a strawman. I do not know (ha ha) what else to say. More properly: I am not aware of how better to express this to you. That is a lie to some degree. I can go on and on. But I admit to not knowing, nor having the capacity to arrive at a conclusion (delusion). Therefore I am eternally engaged as is morally proper. I suggest a similar way. "This is the Way!' - Mando
Quoting Bylaw
Indeed, one should be able to depend more thoroughly upon one's beliefs that one has vetted well. Bu even the best is not knowledge, really. It is not to the objective standard and should be treated that way. I am NOT suggesting dismissal of moral duty related to judgment of which beliefs are better or worse. In fact, quite the opposite. I am saying that the dread finality of words like 'know' and 'certain', and even 'fact' and 'conclusion' are dangerous as colloquially used. They are used by choosers possessed of LESSER awareness only. They imply a perfection, an objectivity, that is NOT and CANNOT be present. They should be frowned upon as modes/tools of speech and writing.
Quoting Bylaw
I used it because 'mere' IS only or merely a synonym of 'only'. That is a fact. Other beliefs are using tertiary and beyond interpretations of this word. I certainly consider it no less disparaging a word than any word with a prefix of 'sub' in it. I mean really!?
Since knowledge is delusional belief, knowledgeable people are delusional. And that is ok. But we are trying to become MORE AWARE in this process, or at least that is my aim.
Practical manifestations of effort that 'work' are also fine. It has no bearing on the delusional nature of their 'knowledge'. Society worked quite well when it was all 'Sky Daddy saves!', or mostly so. Use your illusion is 'workable'. But, the work of philosophy, the love of wisdom, is to acquaint the quaint with the esoteric truth. That is to say, truth SHOULD NOT BE esoteric. We should live in resonation with it.
And I am called Hypocrite for championing this cause of denial of delusion, acclimation to truth, on a forum dedicated to the love of wisdom.
It IS true that I indulge myself amid the struggle. But my delusions of being on the right side are still a lesser failure than ... yours. (And by all means let's restrict that assertion to JUST THIS set of posts and case).
Coherency certainly isn't his strong suit. (Not to say he scores better when it comes to correspondence.)
The issue isn't really the word. If you don't mean something negative with only and mere, then it doesn't matter. It seems like you are saying all beliefs are the same when you say this. If that's what you mean then we can discuss that. If that's not what you mean we can hop over that discussion.Quoting Chet HawkinsI recognize this phenomenon. But still, I will tend to believe experts over random non-experts. And, as I say later in my previous post, I also take a portion of beliefs to be better than others. I have my own methodologies. I am not separating beliefs into different categories just on expert opinion.
It's not clear to me yet what your overall position is, so much of what I am doing is triangulating, probing, until, hopefully I do understand it.Quoting Chet HawkinsI'd say I am an outlier in my criticism of authority and expert opinions. Of course, often I am going with marginalized expert opinions that have informed my disagreement. Also my understanding in general that leads to my rejection of authority, when I do that, is also informed by the work of experts. I have intuition, experience added into the mix and also a sense of paradigmatic biases.Quoting Chet HawkinsIt's not wrong. And I went on to give examples. Of course better and worse have subjective elements - given our purposes!!!!!!, but if we are saying all members are the same and we have no context for that, well, who cares. But to me there is a context for discussing the issue of knowledge and beliefs and that has to do with what we want and how we use these things.
If this topic is just about sets for you and getting the members that fit those sets and you have no other purpose, OK, fine. It's not a topic that interest me and I'll bow out.
Notice that I even gave examples of different subjective uses for the set of beliefs.Quoting Bylawyou quoted this part but seem to have ignored it. Given the purposes we have which would be based on our subjective values. I'd prefer to know that 2 inches of ice would likely hold my weight and I'd want a good source for that information. I don't want just any belief from the set of beliefs, I want one that meets my criteria. Our purposes are subjective, yes. That condition is right there in my explanation (given our purposes). A surgeon has a set of tools available but doesn't ask for 'a tool', she asks for the one that is better for her purpose. If they were playing some game in the operating room with no patient there, than other purposes might be afoot and any tool would do.. Given the purposes.Quoting Chet Hawkins
Honestly I have no idea why you called my explaining my thinking....note: my thinking - a strawman.
For me when two people are communicating with each other, here online especially, I think it is important to lay out my thinking. This often helps prevent talking past each other. In the process of trying to understand and yes, possibly also criticize, someone else's position, I will do a number of different things.
You mentioned earlier that you were used to being insulted or it seems implicit in what you said. Is it possible you are seeing my posts through the lens of how other people have reacted to you? Are you assuming that I fully understand your position, so, for that reason and/or other factors you think everything I say is an attack or somehow supposed to be a representation of your position? If so, that's not what I'm doing. Quoting Chet Hawkins
I find the distinction useful and at the same time do not assume knowledge, for example, must be and is perfectly correct. I don't even assume despite the capitals and lack of qualification in what you said above that you mean what you said MUST be 100% correct. Perhaps you think it is, but I don't assume that's the way you think. And even if one avoids using those words - the ones that you think entail a claim of infallibility - one still batches some beliefs over there, some here, some in another batch. With varying degrees of confidence in them. I'm happy to use the word knowledge. If someone else assume this means perfection, well, I disagree, but I'm open to whatever noun they use for the category of beliefs they have a great deal of confidence in.
If I read your post it comes across that you are not just a skeptic. You tell me, for example, something I said was incorrect, period. No qualification. Many of your positions and reactions seem very confident. Nothing wrong with that. So, when you assert things this way, that set of assertions, which presumably reflect beliefs of yours, what do you call that set?
That idea is not new to me, although much too much is made of this, and without a proper intent (yes, according to me).
That is to say, the goal of a philosopher SHOULD BE to unite the people with their wisdom, thereby aiding in all of us living in a better world, a world where more properly informed choices is more likely. 'Their wisdom' being that served to them by the experts, ha ha, the philosophers, people intending to understand what this truth thing is and how it's pursuit can help us all. That IS NOT aligned with accepting these 'different uses'. We should clear up these differences and put the right way into use as much as we can.
Quoting creativesoul
Since knowing is impossible, when we use a BETTER term, 'to be aware of' this cleans up a lot of conjecture and confusion. For some, it may seem to add confusion, but that is only because they believed that knowledge was somehow actually fundamentally different than belief. The truth is it offers a better understanding to all to aim or intend in that direction.
My own belief with intent makes rather quick work of the so-called divide between metaphysical naturalism and religious or spiritual naturalism. Since nature and all its laws are NOTHING BUT consciousness (to me as fact), they are the same. Done.
Intentionality, like all concepts, all things, is grounded in natural truth which is all consciousness. So, of course, intent is a matter of conscious action, choice.
Choice can only and always only involved JUST the three emotions. Even matter is only the three emotions. Of course that last bit is a HUGE derail, but I am mentioning it for completeness.
Any intent can thus be broken down into fear, anger, and desire components. Further, an intent could be said to contain any number of sub-intents, either wholly subsumed or merely intersecting the base intent. So intent is a rich world of consciousness. And its focal point can be said to colloquially and understandably be any nexus/locus of choice.
So, it would be wrong and or adding to confusion to say 'let's maintain or respect this difference of definition for the same thing.' Clarity is, well, again, perhaps only to a few including me, a goal of actual wisdom. To maintain without a statement of belief one way or the other disparate viewpoints is useful for imagination, but not advisable finally as wisdom or as intent.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, and in all cases, 'knowing' nothing (for sure). It is my assertion that the word or verb and all its ramifications, 'to know' is misused and further that its misuse is a causal agent for confusion, allowing and encouraging confusion to grow, as opposed to wisdom.
Quoting creativesoul
The decision that one 'knows' is merely in error. In all cases that sort or quality of error is MORE ERROR than just admitting to belief instead of claiming 'knowing'. Knowledge in this case is shown to defy belief. It claims to be transcendent or better than belief. That is a lie. Instead say the supporting argument by which you harden your belief. Or claim the belief as fact with the tacit admission that fact is only a subset of belief. All beliefs, facts included, are partially in error. That does mean I am claiming that belief is not important and wise. But claiming to know is surely unwise. That is my belief.
Quoting creativesoul
I am a sucker for most topics because all meaning is embedded in every topic. This is both a joke and a truism and humor and seriousness are juxtaposed but non-contradictory.
Quoting creativesoul
He is the OP. So, what do you mean?
Until we are perfect, objective in understanding, until we do 'know'; we have only varying degrees of awareness and of course, belief.
I see the tree in the yard but do not believe it's there.
You seem more a lover of your belief that you are particularly wise, than a lover of wisdom.
But here's a chance for you to show me that I'm wrong. Name five posters on TPF who you have learned from.
Well you can get that you claimed I was implying something negative with the word 'merely' or 'only' if I recall properly. I was not.
So, I am very concerned about the proper use of words and in the case where they are used improperly or let's say oddly, that they should then be accompanied by a personal definition, and, I do try to do that if the context of the discussion is not already making that abundantly clear.
Quoting Bylaw
If one feels or believes one has been misunderstood, one tries to determine why. If people cannot agree on some aspects of what a word means, that is OFTEN the reason for the confusion and miscommunication. So, the issue is OFTEN the word or words.
Quoting Bylaw
I do not mean anything negative. I do not consider subsets of sets to be a negative thing either. But again, that speaks to MY point. Neither is merely or only. They properly infer the condition or state of being a subset.
Quoting Bylaw
Not at all and that is another strawman as an implication. I never said that but I know you used the word 'seems'. So, ok.
No, what I want to show or assert is that:
1) Facts are ONLY or MERELY beliefs.
2) Knowledge in the colloquial sense is really only beliefs.
Neither of those assertions assert that any random individual's process for validating 'facts' and colloquial 'knowledge' is incorrect or useful in any way, including my own. I must say colloquial when I say knowledge because, to me, knowing and thus the term knowledge partakes of perfection and is not really best used to show belief unless of course we all agree that knowledge is only belief. And round and round we go.
Quoting Bylaw
Yes you are separating them as you just admitted. It's ok. Even I do that some. I tend also to trust people who have a vested interest in a subject of being at least marginally aware of the truths related to it. But, it is also true that in most cases I find that my allowance in that regard was woefully incorrect and I should have treated the expert as potentially worse than a common sense guess, e.g. a random non-expert's opinion. It is frankly quite scary what passes for expertise and it always has been.
Quoting Bylaw
No worries and thank you. I do appreciate someone that tries to understand my point. I get of lot of what I would characterize as intentional misunderstanding. That relates to your later question I will answer about 'feeling insulted' etc.
Quoting Bylaw
All of that is as it should be, or, let's say simply, I agree.
Quoting Bylaw
I mean, what is going on here? I am aware of what is happening to some degree, but still ...
The set is or is not accurately believed as 'related in the sense of what defines the set' Sets do not include better or worse members until we filter or intersect them, perform some function on that set which reveals the ordering. Granted that the set of things of which a person is aware can be divided into 'beliefs believed more strongly', and 'beliefs believed less strongly'. That is not really the point I have been after.
The assertions are like this:
1) Knowledge is only belief.
2) The word and its ramified terms, 'to know' is not well used often. It is taken most often to mean certainty, which is wrong. ... Because ...
3) Belief is almost always partially in error. Belief is almost never certain.
These assertions are crafted more carefully to avoid the superlatives that one is tempted to use.
Quoting Bylaw
What is 'wanted' is often self-indulgent and wrong. What should be wanted is the objective truth in each case. The want to obscure truth by encouraging or not calling to task issues like how often and incorrectly people believe that 'knowing' and certainty are acceptable, is not wise. The desire or want to call that bad habit to task may be unpopular, but it is wise.
Quoting Bylaw
So that is only the meat of the argument, as in what is needed to explain the relationship between certainty and belief. Beliefs are most commonly accepted as uncertain, by definition. Knowing is sadly not understood to be only a matter of belief. Therefore many and most people treat 'knowing' as if the believer is certain. That is and always will be an error. It is an error even if the use of that belief works and works regularly.
Quoting Bylaw
Right but although we are all left with only subjective belief finally, we should aim at being as objective as we can be. Even still, we will not arrive at objectivity. So we should not claim to 'know'. It confuses people CLEARLY as this thread shows. Many of them believe that 'knowing' is the same as certainty.
Quoting Bylaw
None of this is anything but tangential to the issue I am trying to get across.
I'm just genuinely concerned that some people consider knowledge and facts to be something more impressive than beliefs quintessentially, when they are not. It does make some difference, I suppose, when you yourself have validated the belief somewhat, but no matter what it's still just, only, merely, belief. I mean if we agree on that then that is the whole reason for the thread.
In order for me to be wrong, knowledge, a given bit of it, would have to be greater quintessentially than belief. It is not. That means it would have to break the set barrier and belong to a superset rather than a subset.
Quoting Bylaw
Because you made a case for purposes or value judgements UNRELATED to the categorical formation of the set mattering, when they do not. It is always the case that your thing is the strawman when a strawman is being used. I did not bring that to the argument. Correct. You brought that strawman. So, my usage of the term is also correct. I would not bring a strawman for you to burn (unless you are going to burn me, in which case let me know and I will indeed bring a strawman for you to burn in effigy).
Quoting Bylaw
I agree. But the implication is that I have not done that which is in error. I have laid out my thinking. And I do not get the sense that we are only talking past each other. Some other posters in this thread are doing that with me, but not you.
Quoting Bylaw
It is possible, even probable. I apologize for being on the defensive, to the degree to which I am.
Quoting Bylaw
I do not assume ANYONE understands my position, or at least well. I do not really think it's all that hard to understand it. But, that seems to be an ineffective impediment to many let's call them 'detractors' of my assertions.
So, over time, that effect has given me a fairly robust ability to hang on, keep explaining, until at least some few can relate my position back to me in enough detail to allow me to feel heard. It is NOT strictly necessary, thank the fates, that I be understood at all. It is again a truism that relative resonance is acceptable in place of some foolish expectation of certain or complete resonance.
Quoting Bylaw
Well, I did qualify it. But at least you and I are in agreement on that point of knowledge not being certain and therefore being ... yep ... merely belief.
Quoting Bylaw
Good. I think I made it abundantly clear I do not even like the implication of certainty, let alone the assertion of it.
Quoting Bylaw
And that is my point. All beliefs, including all knowledge, are in the belief bucket (only). They cannot escape that bucket.
Quoting Bylaw
In any case THAT is the problem. The reason it is a problem is one that I have qualified over and over and over again in these posts. That is ... people use it as a stand in for certainty. Maybe you don't. But you are participating willingly by your own admission in a cultural practice that spreads confusion. That confusion is allowed or caused by the situation that people object to or TYPICALLY intend for the word 'know' to mean certainty. And it is being OK with that nonsense, that is the root problem. It is not wise. It cannot be wise. It is wise to challenge people to stop doing that. It is wise to NOT be happy to use that word as long as so many people use it that way. So very many communications are confused by this concept.
Quoting Bylaw
Beliefs and you could say then, assertions, which are also only beliefs.
Well that's your belief. It is not mine. I do pursue wisdom. And I am happy to engage in the false modesty of Socrates when I say, 'I am not wise'. It covers the point a bit nicely. That is to say, despite the fact that no one else I can find is wiser, I admit as well that I am not finally wise. This is rather the same point about perfection that I am making with saying something as goofy as 'knowing' when its colloquial definition is an error involving certainty.
Quoting wonderer1
I learn from everyone, even if it's just how they are usually.
So I could name any five. But, to not avoid your challenge I would say:
wonderer1
Tom Storm
Bob Ross
Bylaw
and heck we will even throw Banno and Janus into the set.
I did six so I am excelling at this task.
Is there another sense where it means something else? Quoting Chet HawkinsI don't take it that way. I guess I'd need to know the context to know if it is most often taken to be certain (and then perhaps what certain means - does this mean that someone is infallible when they categorize something as knowledge? I can't say I know how many groups would answer, but it seems like there are quite a few people who think knowledge may end up getting revised and are aware that this has been the case in most fields in the past. But I don't know numbers.Quoting Chet Hawkins again
given our purposes. If I look at the set of beliefs and my purpose is to find a range of unique suggestions/strange seeming ideas, I will view different members of the set as better or worse...for my purpose. If I want to know how deal with a loose chain on my bike, because I really want to fix it, some beliefs about this will be better than others. They're all peachy members of the set, if the only issue is, does it belong in the set. But my purposes will lead to some members being better than others. And given that knowledge is part of the topic, that often leads to purposes, for me, around how to navigate my way around life and the world. Some will be better or worse for that, given my purposes. And I have critieria for determining which I will try - whose beliefs I am more likely to try out myself, for example.Quoting Chet HawkinsAs if the believer is certain or as if the belief is accurate. Do you mean that people assume that if someone says they know those people falsely assume the person is certain or they falsely assume that what that person claims to know is correct?
Quoting Chet HawkinsI don't. I am aware of scientists that consider knowledge to be open to revision. We have rigorous criteria, they would say and if something passes those it gets considered knowledge, but they are aware that it might be revised later. I know people in other fields who have similar ideas. As I said earlier I can't really speak to numbers, but I find this a fairly common position. Of course, sometimes it is the official position but this gets forgotten in the specifics.Quoting Chet HawkinsThere is the whole knowledge is JTB camp and in discussions in other threads some people, myself included, objected to using the T. I think that objection is fairly common in philosophy forums. Quoting Chet Hawkins
So, if you do decide that some beliefs are more likely to be true or better justified, what do you call that set of beliefs, if you call it anything?
You can call it whatever delusional thing you prefer to call it. It still is actually JUST belief.
I suppose one could, as we already have, delve into justification methods and qualification of so-called experts. That misses the point.
We cannot KNOW or be certain of anything. If we are all fine using the term 'know' as colloquially meant which is 'nigh unto certain', then I suppose my advice is stop using it until people get used to the idea that it does not really mean that.
That is to say, it is better to use 'I am aware of some aspects of this subject' rather than I KNOW this subject. In every way, the former is more accurate. The latter is intended to and DOES for most people imply an assertion of 'dread certainty'. It is humorous that many 'believers' will indeed be the ones to claim that knowing is certain and then that their belief is certain.
We need a better way of expressing ourselves that allows for doubt, the unpleasant condition, to be maintained with less need for the false comfort of the delusion of certainty.
Quoting Chet HawkinsPresumably including this and that any label for beliefs we consider better justified would be a delusional label.
If I said that believing asking my bicycle chain to repair itself was a less well justified approach than replacing a broken chain with one I buy, I would be delusional? IOW if I break my or someone's beliefs down into well justified and other beliefs.
Quoting Chet HawkinsI can manage to use a lot of formulations, even 'knowledge' without feeling that there can be no doubt belief X is correct.
Yes, but people can manage to assert things in ways where they seem certain, without using know or knowledge. And they do all the time. In fact, I'd say this is more common. People asserting things without qualification. Rather than saying I know this subject, they act like they know the subject. I don't hear that formulation much 'I know this subject'. Instead one gets a lot of blunt statements.
Absolute truth would refer, in your terminology, to anything that is considered true with absolute certainty; and 'absolute certainty' would refer to a level of certainty which cannot be doubted legitimately (e.g., a tautology) as opposed to what one doesn't have good reasons to doubt.
I don't believe it is possible to actively disbelieve in something you see in front of you. Well, I know I can't at least. I also don't see that as supporting the notion that active belief is necessary in those situations. That said, I don't deny that you can talk about believing that the tree you see is there, rather than simply saying you see it there, but I think the former way of speaking is less parsimonious, even redundant. But ye know, that's just me; I don't have a problem with others disagreeing.
You have your way of thinking about it, and I have mine, and the twain shall never meet, it seems. I think we know many things, as I've said, but I admit there is no perfect, absolute, context-independent knowledge, and since such a thing is impossible, I find it to be an absurd inapt principle by which to attempt to assess and understand our concepts.
What's the difference between having no good reason to doubt something and not being able to doubt something legitimately?
Well, is the following a tautology?
It depends on what one is doing.
What of this:
Which Intuitionist logic denies; or this:
which paraconsistent logic denies?
Again, we can do surprising things by bringing into doubt that which can not be doubted.
That is not quite the point I would make, though. That relates to your thread on unanalysable concepts. Both "absolute" knowledge and "absolute" simples depend on context. They depend on what one is doing. Some things are held constant in order for us to be able to move other things. Some things are held indubitable in order for us to doubt other things. Some things are held to be simple in order for us to be able to analyse other things.
And we sometimes change what we hold constant in order to change something else.
The over-used example is a bishop remaining on its own colour for the purposes of a chess game, but not for the purposes of putting the pieces back in the box.
Interestingly this also relates to the nearby discussion of what an "object" is in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. That's not surprising, since that book is a failed attempt to ground analysis and hence knowledge. The "simples" there were "tractatrian objects", the nature of which is famously enigmatic. The Wittgenstein of the Tractatus was engaged in much the same exercise as you, seeking a foundation for analysis and knowledge, only to find such an approach unworkable. The Philosophical Investigations gives an account of why this "logical atomism" will not work.
And its this that makes his ideas distasteful. We've had enough of dogmatism masquerading as liberalism. His confusion is gross.
:up: I think you're right that it is dogmatism masked as liberalism; it's couched in terms of being merely Chet's belief, yet it's asserted in a way that is inconsistent with that.
Or consider the relation to Frankfurt's philosophical bullshit. If there is no knowledge and truth doesn't matter, then all that remains is bullshit: speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. Which is seen in Chet's posts.
It's Chet who's position is immoral.
Something like that.
wow. Do you know where that post is in the thread?
I tend to agree with this. I think using 'know' and 'knowledge' is fine. I don't take assertions put in those categories as impossible revise. Yes, it can happen and has happened. But I don't need to walk around doubting everything all the time. I think I remember that I boil the water first before I put in the egg, but then perhaps my memory is false and I don't know that that works. And then working is working getting my egg boiled the way I like it. What if my liking it that way is actually not liking it? What if I am someone else? and so on. Having a category we call knowledge works well. Yes, you might run into problems if you consider all things considered knowledge unrevisable. But the opposed danger of thinking every belief is a mere belief and it's wrong to divvy that set up into subgroups seems to instantly create a mass of problems. Like today, now, in the next few minutes dozens of problems will arise and any moment of decision becomes an infinite regress.
It's not clear to me he is saying we have to doubt everything (all the time?) or that he doesn't categorize beliefs into better and worse groupings.
I don't share the optimism that changing the words will make much difference. And people assert things as if they are certain all the time without using the verb know or the noun knowledge.
Quoting Bylaw
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Quoting Chet Hawkins
As for anger, well, take a look at this search. I've not been able to follow what is going on. There is something a bit unbalanced here.
And wouldn't this better way include a collection of assertions that you think are better than pragmatist assertions? Aren't you dividing the set of beliefs into those that are better and those that are worse?
In general, you are discussing what I call the path of anger, of being, which is what empowers real confidence. Of course, if you understand my model, which admittedly is not yet fully revealed here, you realize that it is over expressions of an emotion that cause or ARE immoral choices. Balanced emotions are better than imbalanced ones and more is better than less.
So, more anger is properly balanced by more fear (as well as more desire). That means the very aware and skilled confidence is better than the confidence lacking in that because its confidence is 'worthier' or wiser.
Likewise, fearful types that express only the 'dread certainty' of over expressed fear, without balancing anger (confidence) are then more immoral than not. And if they can get to balance they usually have to add anger to make their awareness/preparedness worthier or wiser. That is the fear path to pretend to confidence that is disingenuous.
Desire has its flippant confidence as well. Used to convincing its followers to take every hit for it, desire can be immorally 'confident' also. This also has a negative vector where the 'confidence' (immoral) is such that it is 'known' or wallowed in that the universe is stamping out the negative blotch that is them. That is what they are disingenuously confident about and they consider it as correct as it is persistent.
It turns out that amid the three emotions the tendency naturally is to be weak on anger. I would say anger is the most denigrated emotion. It is also the most honest emotion. It can seem like fear and desire need to be balanced first before anger is addressed. That is not the case, but if you look at the spread that is experienced, it does seem that way. Perhaps it is because we are embedded in a fear-desire polarity in terms of our temporal placement in history. That may seem like chance but these major vibrations are quite hard to affect and one could be forgiven for expecting incorrectly that there is such a thing as pre-determination.
I do think or believe though that fear and desire are the natural first order 'balance' in most ways. There is a massive reason and it is the anti-gravity like effect of wisdom itself. Each choice that is more moral than the last is harder and harder. Anger alone turns from this truth in laziness, avoiding the truth. But fear and desire are not avoidant so much as they are delusional. Avoidance is a type of delusion, but one could argue that anger is still keeping it real and at least is reacting to the actual perceived difficulty rather than fooling itself, like the other two emotions do. But it is this reverse gravity or reverse magnetism of moral choice(s) that is effectively another law of the universe.
Wisdom can only be earned through suffering, but the wise know this and accept it. Therefore they suffer more exquisitely than others do and they pursue their own necessary suffering in that regard. Unwise people often fall in to Hedonism and or simple laziness and try to avoid suffering and thus they avoid wisdom itself.
I get it. I understand the (your) position, Thank you for starting this thread as, to me, it has been fun and good work and clearly something people are willing to engage on. That's what such a forum is about!
What is absurd standard? Perfection? Well, I like worthy goals.
Certainty is part of perfection only. One step shy of it is not it in any way. Yet it is and will always be the real goal. Pragmatism (the fear path), whether you understand its definition or not, remains extant in the world. That is to say its understandable that fear seeks the comfort of immoral certainty. But it is not finally wise. Until the very last step of perfection is attained in either single choice or whole universal choice, which may be the same, mystery remains and certainty is truly absurd.
The word and ideas surrounding the concept of knowledge are too often taken and used with a hubris that makes mine here seem quaint only. Even in the face of quite clear balanced arguments to the contrary the need for certainty, and surrender to its grasp, has done in legions of soldiers, whole nations, and most certainly almost all academics. (That last bit was intentional in case you doubted)
An ideology is nothing but a well of beliefs. All of us therefore have one. I am not forced to ignore what is known for certain because NOTHING is known for certain. I am only adding a new sense of awareness, not the lack thereof, to us all, in that we SHOULD morally tend to remain more open to what we 'know' changing. I am as well, by my own statement of belief. But that is harder with me. It is harder because I was already standing ready, less sure of myself. My anger has reinforced my fear. Further I know my foolish desires are tempting me off balance. I am ready to reel them in as well unless I can detect no reason why they are not aimed at the single path towards the objective GOOD.
We DO have a sense of morality. That sense responds to two things, resonance and consequence. The resonance side is the harmony with fear, anger. and desire that is further along the path to the objective GOOD. The consequence is only and always GENUINE happiness (the first thread I posted on this forum). It is easy indeed to mistake immoral pleasure or joy for this happiness and that is disingenuous happiness, which is another reason moral choice is so hard. The same consequential reward system that is a law of the universe still accurately returns its reward by law to a chooser. Having never felt anything better than that so far in their lives, they press the feed button like a chicken in a box and fail to try elsewhere to get other discrete virtues to be included in the mix. It's a big reason that other points of view, even immoral ones, are needed to show us our ignorance. In such a way it is easier to use the mirror selves that have other failures but also other strengths to show us what strength of any kind is. Then we can toe test that virtue and BOOM, genuine happiness comes to us and we see how blind we really were all that time. Out lopsided approach has been revealed. Balance calls to us and we can course correct.
One you 'know', you can never go back, you gotta take it on the other side! - Chili Peppers
All the reasons I have for doubting that I exist are highly implausible thought experiments (e.g., the evil demon, simulation theory, etc.) and given the immediate experience I am having, I have no good reasons to doubt my existence; although I cannot be absolutely certain I am, because those highly implausible possibilities are actual and logical possibilities.
I cannot doubt legitimately that 'a = a' because any reason to doubt it I could conjure springs from a misunderstanding of what it is. 'a = a' is a tautology and logically necessitous: there is no possibility of it being false. Any doubt I have will thusly be illegitimate.
Anger's sin is laziness. In the righteous rejection of immoral desire and the challenge for a fight towards immoral fear {see here now}, anger is doing its part. But often enough, anger or the lazy exemplar avoids conflict and moral choice suffers.
Peace is delusional. It is not what anyone that advocates for it thinks it is. Any and every task is hard by a rough parallel to its worthiness. There is no long term respite. Indeed anger suggests that to be finally moral, one must learn to never need rest. Of course medical practitioners aplenty will disagree and chastise the righteous for their sense of moral duty. And they are like most fear path types, more right than not, as in, probability is on their side that the anger type will fail, not being perfect. But this ignores the real truth, the hidden mystery, of perfection. Perfection transcends all cases, and we must practice for it. That means that finally, rest cannot be needed. It is a tautology if one understands or comes close to grasping without knowing the nature of perfection itself.
Every act one or we take, must be maintained by constant vigil. This is the nature of 'no rest'. But there is maybe a way to properly rest amid the approach such that fallibility is taken into account in the best way possible. Each unit (us) must take turns manning the wall. Surround evil on all sides and chant! Maintain a pure discipline. Re-commit each day, each hour, sometimes each minute, to the pusuit of truth and the GOOD.
You had best martial your anger, indeed!
No, this is not logically necessitous; and therefore is not tautological. This is a proof derived a priori in our intuition.
What relation does intuition logic denying the law of excluded middle have to do with the geometrical intuition you expounded (above)? I am completely lost at your point here, other than that there are many theories of logic; and to that I say that there is only one, and each is merely arises out of a (human) disagreement about the one: they are competing theories about whatever logic really is, and is objective.
I am not seeing how the concept of being is merely being held constant for us to move other things: it seems, to me, to really be absolutely simple, and that it is not as malleable as you seem to think.
What you are describing is humanity learning; which is not a negation of the existence of absolutely simple concepts.
By way of unhelpful digression, I like to use this principle in reference to arguments by analogy for other minds - we are similar to frogs, trees, viruses, rocks and possibly even Palestinians in many more ways than we usually pay attention to. Not that I want to derail the thread.
List them please.
Quoting Bob Ross
Glad you put this in there. What is it about 'immediacy' that is so compelling?
Quoting Bob Ross
This belief is not correct. You might have immoral (not good) reasons to doubt your existence. But then you have not listed them really. I need more than some title. Show the work. Explain each one you care to, please.
Quoting Bob Ross
These calculations are wrong then, and not possibilities is my gut pre-action. Being is already sufficient counter to a denial of existence. Negation, as mentioned in the Brahman thread, is foolishness.
Logic is only fear, asymptotic to the GOOD. As a singular approach to the GOOD, it will fail, in orderly fashion, lacking the confidence (anger) and will (desire) to go the distance. Balance is lost and a logical prison is formed. This is why death happens, usually.
Quoting Bob Ross
'a=a' is a juxtaposition. If I were to say 'b=b' as a second clause and then say therefore 'c=c', logicians would go berserk. They are wrong to do so. Such is the trap of fear.
The unity Principle, not my own creation, but an extrapolation and extension of all such 'oneness' concepts, monism, etc. shows us, if understood that nothing does not belong. All things partake of all things. Separation (fear and order) is delusion. Reductionism is delusion. The truth is 'You are me and I am you, and we are both God and everything' Therefore 'a=a' where a and b implies 'b=b' and even 'a=b'. If you are confused by temporal state, there is no reason to be. Time is delusional and it is a moral error to bow to that delusion,
The single path of fear, all your so-called logic, intersects the single point of perfection at only one infinite point. It is better by far to support fear with anger and desire to realize truth. It's over-emphasis as that like enshrined in academia, is a dazzling failure in most cases, an echo chamber of foolishness and false certainty.
I have made nothing but assertions. If you are just ignoring my many statements because they are not formally numbered, that would laughable.
I do still number some of them as above quoted to assist in fear types understanding. ;)
Assertions themselves are a prison, a logical or fear based path artifact. Take in all streams that are delivered via experience. It is precisely the ones you are not skilled at that will inform you more.
Quoting Chet HawkinsYes. I didn't say anything about you not making assertions.Quoting Chet HawkinsI was responding to your statements not ignoring them. And I said nothing about their being numbered or not.
I asked above two questions you quoted.
Aren't you dividing beliefs into those that are better and those that are worse? If so, would naming those that are better, better beliefs be delusional?Quoting Chet Hawkins
I didn't understand this section.
So, understanding that every choice contains delusion is wise. Then you have to make progress based on relative wisdom, rather than 'being right'. Something like 'knowing' can really get in your way amid such a process.
Yes, judgment, your 'dividing' mentioned just now, is morally required. Although many people (all of them) are wrong about what 'better' means, some people are better about what better means. Ha ha!
So we MUST partake in delusion. The goal is to do so less and less. This is part of the truth that suggests that a moral choice is harder than an immoral one. It is harder in every way morally. That is a law of the universe. So, if you take the easy path, it is almost always in error.
Readiness to change stance is critical. Anger knows this. It understands the nature of balance intuitively. Fear has trouble accepting this truth on every level at the same time. Nihilism and foolish pride (certainty) are the usual suspects as immoral paths. The need for certainty also causes stubborn disbelief as in simply an unwillingness to remain open and try new things as moral duty to test 'that which is unknown' or better even, 'that which does not fit existing logic'. Exploration is a moral duty. 'Use the space! We need more cowbell!' - Christopher Walken
Quoting Bylaw
It's not to understand (or not too hard to understand) so I ask you plainly to re-read it.
The new ground, the new action, is more informative than the old 'known' patterns.
What was laid out there was knowledge of a sort, but admittedly to me only belief therefore, because knowledge is merely belief.
Still, the fullness of your question is more important.
No. Existence is being in essence, mass, anger. A fear based approach would prefer to categorize things. My inclination is just to refuse, as anger simply stands for itself using mass to make its argument. Fear rarely approaches unless it can overwhelm the intimidation. Often fear ends up grouping and clumped to meet anger. Or in fact fear can orbit anger. These are natural effects well and often observed.
But yes also. Being IS awareness. Sum ergo cogito. All these (emotional) maths are obvious.
I guess I am lucky, in that all I have to do is to look around, to see all sorts of people who are wiser than I in a wide variety of ways.
For example, those who know better than I, than to waste time on narcissitic guru wannabees.
Well I am lucky as well. I also see people that are more virtuous in some ways than me all over the place. I try to learn, to earn more wisdom by integrating the lessons from them. That has no contradiction to what I claimed.
If you understand, wisdom is ALL traits and individual traits combined. The virtues are the parts. But the final thing, wisdom, is never best described as anything but ALL of the virtues. So I still encounter paragons of virtues and earn more wisdom, but, so far, I am the paragon of wisdom in my experience. That is not to say that you are not yourself actually wiser, only that I have not experienced the full show of your ostensible wisdom. I am much more familiar with myself. So my potential mistake is understandable and not really that criminal.
We should all be guru wannabees. That is wise. The pursuit and broadcasting of wisdom is quite wise. I admit to error in all my endeavors, a fact that people perhaps like you miss all the time. I just did so again. Did you? Yes you did! You admitted to looking around and finding some better wisdom in others. Great!
But false modesty is no way to be, either, and it is not wise. I am a confident bridge-builder and I will say so. I do enjoy Socrates' will o the wisp style of wisdom claiming. But to admit one is partially wrong in every belief and yet claim to still be wise is actually a measure of wisdom. Humility and confidence juxtaposed, non contradictory to the careful observer.
If love of wisdom and its pursuit, including love of the self and the unity principle meaning the self is you and you are me, is wrong, then I don't want to be right. But it is not wrong and I do want to be right, even more right than I already am, which is damned well impressive.
But hey, you do you.
Yep.
The rest is dross.
If anything I would say fear is more ready to change stance. In any case we often use anger to bolster our stances rather than feel the fear that we might be wrong and might well need to change (be open to something else or something new).
I don't understand your schema, but perhaps starting with something specific like what I quoted above might help.
I see both emotions having their place, dependent on context.
That is true. But acknowledging the 3 paths amid any choice is better than not. In any case your partial quote doesn't capture the right context of my meaning. That is why it is better to quote the whole thing and respond to each part. This also is a lack of unity in addressing issues.
Remember that I consider 'knowing' a moral failure, more akin to certainty seeking, expression an imbalance between anger and fear by definition. So defenders of that wording are like to over-express fear, ... is my forecast. None of that means a more balanced person does not use fear to categorize all the while standing more appropriately to that fear with anger by admitting only to 'awareness of' the matter rather than the indicated as likely delusion of 'knowing'.
The goal is maximized balance. I am not saying I do not properly use fear. I am only advocating challenge to its over-expression.
Fear is synonymous with order. It regulates and makes 'laws'. It advocates for stability over change and it is rather obvious, is it not that limiting oneself to what is 'possible' by choice is a prison of fear. That is the over-expression of fear. I feel and believe that this eventually leads to death itself. It's more complicated than that, but to say that plainly clearly is more right than wrong.
Anger holds its ground against everything. That is the nature of balance. If this is not intuitively obvious, I can go on an on, because every other aspect of reality supports that non-conclusion.
Quoting Art48
Yes, over-expressed anger and imbalanced overconfidence are possible as well. I am not denying that.
That is not what this thread is about though. This one is about the fear-side failure of 'knowing' as opposed to merely being aware of or believing, which are better ways to express that choice.
Quoting Art48
I suppose I can begin to outline it shortly, but, really its mostly about that core idea that love is nothing more than fear, anger, and desire maximized and balanced. The perfect maximum of all three in balance is perfection.
Quoting Art48
Clearly, that is what I am saying. I am also saying that 'knowing' and using that term is a fear-side order apologist failure in moral awareness.
THis is a neat little microcosm of hte senselessness of most of your writing. Unsure whether that reflects on your positions though, because it's so unclear.
I can see fear leading to order and rage leading to order. The law and order crowd often seems very angry. Fascists and other dictators who enforce extreme order often seem rather angry to me. In any case. Quoting Chet HawkinsAnger can be defensive in this way, but it also can be offensive.
I actually do sympathize. I realize I have not explained the entire model yet. Really though the basis of it is fairly simple. Explaining it thoroughly though is a really a matter for yet another thread.
Even in plain English this sentence is not nearly as bad as you claim though.
First, and I happen to mean this admiringly, your words awaken already hovering suspicions that this forum is creating a very specific form of complex poetry (especially if you modify the comma placements). I'll stop. And yet...
Secondly, more, hopefully, to point. My current thoughts align with "certainty seeking," but why "moral failure?" Only because you find fear and anger to be the source/position of certainty seeking? If you could surrender that hypothesis, would certainty seeking still be moral failure?
Are you compelled because you find it illogical or unreasonable for Mind to "simply" have evolved such that "knowledge" is seeking "certainty " (and I say they are the "same" mechanism), emerged as a "necessary" "step" in an "autonomous" "mental" process? (the quomarks are necessary to delineate that when vague hypotheses are being worked out in a forum of many "scientists" and "technicians," then, notwithstanding their arguably poetic byproducts, it is best to be honest about the vagueness)
The intuition which we all share, which makes your hypothesis interesting (presumptious on my part) i.e., that it is "weak," for e.g., or "attached/desiring," and, thus fear/anger based (the intuited organic source of these constructed "movements" "dialectics" or "emotions"), to need to seek reassuring, I.e., to be driven to seek certainty, may have led you to construct such a hypothesis.
And, still, there is on a balance of probabilities, a much greater chance I have misunderstood and am misrepresenting your thoughts. If so, I apologize, but autonomously continue.
Plainly, if certainty seeking was evolved, now built-in, it is not a failure, but a "necessity". And from there, I would go on to suggest that "belief" too is an evolved mechanism incorporated into the holy trinity of knowing--seeking, certainty/settlement, belief. That no matter what a person thinks they have done to arrive at the mental state wherein they can claim, "I know," they have passed through that autonomous process and settled at belief. Temporarily! That's the thing! All the fuss about certainty, and most knowing gets modified, if not completely reconstructed by settlement at a "new" belief.
So, all colloquial definitions for emotions do not really serve in my model. That can be confusing because of habit.
But I insist that these words are more properly used non-colloquially and my model is one of a number of theories or strategies, models for the universe that asserts some aspect of this 'better' way of dealing with these emotions and the general idea of consciousness.
So, I am not saying 'forget what you know' but only 'be careful, what you know is the tip of the iceberg a nd mostly wrong'.
So, this is really another thread. This one is on knowledge is only belief. True. I guess we can discuss my terrifying or nonsensical model in another thread.
Base idea to respond to this one though is:
Over-expressed fear is what is colloquially called fear, e.g. an imbalanced fear reaction (fear seems to be a reaction) to what is.
Over-expressed anger is what is colloquially called anger, e.g. an imbalanced or triggered anger based on the need to support or overwhelm fears or desires.
The goal IS NOT immoral over-expression (or immoral under-expression) of emotions. The goal is wisdom, which, at any stage, is only and always balanced and maximized emotion. The GOOD is the single point of perfection in intent space. That means any given scope of chooser (for example one human) intends with all possible might towards the GOOD with maximal fear, anger, and desire and all that in balance.
A balanced and maximized presentation of emotions is what wisdom is. It would seem infinitely calm and it is anything but that. The effort required to maintain that state is infinite. So that is why that state is damn near ... might as well be ... impossible. But it is still the only proper moral goal.
To get back down into the 'real' world where practical human examples can be discussed is fine. But the model's assertions make it clear that this balance as an aim is commendable. We then begin to suspect and accept that imbalances are trouble. They can offer us growth space but that is when there are by definition over-expressions of one or more emotions and corresponding under-expressions of other emotions. So, the critique of ANY and EVERY choice is done by feeling out the balance of emotions within that choice.
For example if someone was busy readying for an attack on their fort, and they kept re-arranging things or discussing them they would be experiencing an order immorality, a fear side failure of analysis paralysis. They could become quite angry if confronted and insist that they were not ready. The anger is serving the fear though. The fear is the issue in that example.
A desire side failure is often easy to show with something so simple as over indulgence in any choice. That is the emptiness of addiction, rather than a wise desire for balance. Note that increasing desire can enable increasing wisdom though, so, wanting more is not necessarily bad, but what is wanted must be GOOD, and that is objective, not subjective. So addictions that are empty abound!
OK, interesting. Let's see where this goes. By the way, I answer posts AS I READ THEM. That means I simply start by quoting your whole post and then begin. I have not read the whole thing before I answer. So I have no idea yet what you will write next in this same post.
Quoting ENOAH
Well if you had read the responses thus far, you would hopefully know (ha ha).
The need for certainty is moral failure because certainty is absurd. The Voltaire quote is correct. 'Doubt may be an unpleasant condition, but, certainty is absurd.' - Voltaire So, I agree with him. It is NOT certainty we seek, properly, morally, but only ... more ... awareness ... endlessly. THAT is a subtle but required distinction to be moral.
It is my contention that many and most people FAIL rather spectacularly at this endeavor, most probably unaware or unwilling even to consider it as a goal. Nevertheless, our entire society would be improved to an alarming degree if we all could develop the discipline to speak and write that way which would then point to us thinking more properly as well. Effectively, we would FINALLY (about time) be giving Voltaire's wisdom in making that statement its due. My model agrees.
Fear is characterized in general by a need for certainty or more and more near certainty to calm it down. That need is partially immoral. Anger is the strength to stand and face the unknown and force fear into balance with courage. This can be and often is over-expressed and immoral anger such as foolhardiness. But that IS NOT the point. The point is that the word 'know' and its many derivatives like 'knowledge' and even the concept of 'certainty' itself all partake of perfection which is an unattainable state, in general. So, it is BETTER by far to avoid speaking and writing that way. It is better to say instead 'aware of' rather than 'know', in all cases.
That is because as the thread title says, 'Knowing is only belief'. True.
Quoting ENOAH
Anger is not the emotion of certainty-seeking. Anger can support over-expressed fear and add imbalance or it can push back against over-expressed fear to the point of balance and the need for certainty would vanish. If one has sufficient anger, there is no imbalanced need for certainty. Anger allows us to stand up to the mystery of the universe with confidence in that balance.
Why would I surrender the better hypothesis? That hypothesis is my challenge to existing cultural wisdom (or lack thereof more correctly). Certainty seeking is almost always moral failure. Notice the word almost that diffuses the superlative case. That is discipline in writing.
You will notice that many responses to me call my confidence into question, rather than being supportive. They do not then actually critique the substance of the model in the small ways it was delivered. No, they just rail against the confidence. That is improper fear attacking proper anger. If fear wants to make a point, it has to get into the details and substance where its order can show its truth. It cannot beat anger on confidence as that is the purpose of anger (in balance).
Quoting ENOAH
Honesty about the vagueness is precisely the point.
That is why I demand or argue for such things as changing the word 'conclusion' to the phrase 'non-conclusion'. The former is a lazy and fear driven need for certainty expressed. It DOES, whether THEY admit it or not, imply that we are done, finished. No more work is needed. Granted, the better able among the readers and writers are well aware that they are not done. They 'know' ha ha, that this conclusion is ANYTHING BUT a final conclusion. But how much more honest would it be to say something like 'non-conclusion' or 'awareness suspected as gained'? These phrases are BETTER fundamentally because they clearly indicate we are not done and more work is required. That is a tautology so, let's start speaking and writing more in alignment with what is true and with LESS embellishments and short cuts designed to deliver false assurance.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes, that is a big part of it. Leaping to a short-cut to assuage fears is common in all walks of life and perhaps none so egregiously as mainstream academia. Get the grant! Be seen doing so. Say complex words! Cast aspersions on others that seem weak. Be seen doing so. Win! But even just the idea that 'Hey, fish or cut bait buddy! Do something (even if it sucks)! Pragmatism (fear) is all efficient short cuts that deny the aim at perfection. Idealism has its equal problems as well. But this thread is about awareness, which is all fear.
Quoting ENOAH
Engagement is respect. I appreciate any valid attempt. So far, you do not seem uninterested or simply derogatory as many others have been.
And you are right about probabilities but being reasonably educated, most of us here, I assume, we should expect all of this philosophy to be several standard deviations away from normal discussion. It is rare air. And I find this fun so I am clearly odd. I believe or I am aware of the fact that most of us here can sympathize. Most of my friends are aware that if they let me I will get on the morality soapbox anytime. I offer warnings and make them formally ask a second time before I begin my ... tirade or lecture or discussion (choose the form of the destroyer).
Quoting ENOAH
No, that is the Pragmatic retreat, order-apology, and it is precisely the immorality of over-expressed fear. The need to be aware is fine until it goes too far, like any virtue. The need for certainty is NOT the same as being as aware as we can be in reasonable time.
The foolish expectation of the masses that what people say and do should be exacting is ridiculous. It should instead be understood and accepted that a 'try' was in the offing only. Yoda was wrong, and ridiculously so. The jedi quotes are full of anti-wisdom. Most past aphorisms are anti-wisdom, not wisdom. Fear is just as moral as it is immoral. It is much denigrated in our culture. But fear is responsible for awareness, preparation, all structure, all thought, logic, and anything involving its patterns, order. Imagine how foolish Data and other such characters appear to me when they say something as stupid as 'I run on logic not emotions'. Logic is ONLY emotion, only fear.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes, so you have stated the real pattern. But at no point was certainty involved. We should become comfortable with that and speak and write that way to be more harmonious with truth.
I don't think you're really understanding much of what anyone is saying to you, most of the time.
You certainly haven't understood the vast majority of what I've thrown your direction.
You've not explained anything adequately.
Ha. Me too. As we "speak."
Quoting Chet Hawkins
First, thank you, in spite of your well deserved dig.
Second, Ok!
But still, now to satisfy entirely justifiable rules of methodology (dictated by this very specific form of poetry), I should have to read (or re-read, I don't remember) Voltaire on how he arrived at the absurd etc. But for the thrill of the expedition, and for whatever edifying artifacts we dig up, I'll proceed trusting either way, it's something to learn. And asking your indulgence.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Wow! Yes, ok. Sorry. I should have read, and not so boldly entered. But though indefensible, in my indefense, I was looking for a shortcut answer to that specific question "why immoral?"
Voltaire, and you, are recognizing that there is never certainty, and only incessant movement, thus seeking is absurd; instead, be watchful of the incessant movement (?)
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Totally! But I'd say, "think," first, speech etc follows suit. But I sense you mean something akin to discipline, like when we insist upon reason or empirical process. I mean "think" first that all knowledge is a thing in constant Flux, and given dozens if not hundreds of factors, my mind will settle every now and again at belief. Who cares what it's called? I need to be endlessly vigilant, watchful of the changes, where I settle, and so on. In that sense, speaking and writing are less disciplined, free to explore the endless changes, unrestrained. But You watchful you, not chained by seeking certainty, not chained by seeking anything, you can settle where you believe, in your thinking, it is justified to settle.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Oh, yah. Beautiful. I agree. Voltaire and you? If that's what you mean. I see how functional that is for thinking, and why you'd place it third.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
I truly respect that! Does it manifest as poetry? Sorry. Yes. But I respect the point. Sincerely.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
I hear you, neighbor. A pathology in the Dialectic. Nothing's perfect.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
I hear you, brother! Anger. Mind. A beautiful thing, how it constructs Anger, as if out of the blue, just by mixing memory and desire.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Totally get you. Why not "settlement" "current point of settlement"? You know, it recognizes, not only what you're after, that the speaker hasn't provided Us with the end, that they, the speaker are "aware" (as per you and Voltaire), that they have not provided an end.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
You're not talking to me anymore, are you?
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Yes. I get how I misunderstood/misplaced previously. And I now understand why you would reply to my comment directly above in that way. I agree! You and V! Certainty seeking is absurd. Of course! And awareness is Monarch.
Thank you
Yes, well you are now proving that it's hard to get people to understand. I am apparently not a great explainer, who knew. Sticking just to the erroneous colloquial definitions of emotions will not aid you in any way.
I understand everything everyone says to me. They do not return the favor though, in any way, usually.
You conflate understanding with agreement.
Yes.
Quoting ENOAH
I will assume that was genuine. OK, yw, on we go!
Quoting ENOAH
Well your juxtaposition of the absurd and the 'non-absurd' is troublesome. As in I cannot tell if your form of poetry is to make Voltaire's arrival at the NON ABSURD position of declaring certainty (as a pursuit) to be absurd, or to try to flip the script sarcastically and suggest that he arrived at the absurd (which is not the truest point). So your wording confuses me. I suppose I should admit that mine confuses others, and I do, but that was not my intent. What is yours?
Quoting ENOAH
Ah, ... well, you seem to be on the side of the angels, so, sure, on we go.
Quoting ENOAH
All weakness, all no perfect intent is immoral. That is a tautology. Immorality is ubiquitous, common. But that again is not the point. The point is to be slowly more and more able to discern which position, between any two, is more moral than the other.
There are better ways and better models to use and rely on than what we now have. When we formulate them and use them to make progress they will fade into obscurity because they are also not perfect. That is not the point. The point is that AT THE TIME they were better than ... anything else going on.
Quoting ENOAH
This is miswording and strikes me as perhaps intentional. How can one misunderstand? Seeking is not absurd, as seeking awareness is wise. Truth seeking is wise. What is not wise is the belief in finding as a final thing. As in 'job done on this, let's pack up the effort and go home to laziness.' No, immoral choice. So, instead of saying 'I know this', say 'My awareness suggests this'. Or instead of saying 'In conclusion we say this', say 'Our added suggested awareness is this'
In such a way, with such a discipline, we avoid not seeking, which is wise, but the false perception of arrival. 'Motion' is maintained.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes that.
Quoting ENOAH
We all must care. To not care is immoral. The label is critical as it causes certain effects in its use. That is why 'know', 'knowledge', 'conclusion' and similar words should be called into question. If we realize properly that KNOWLEDGE IS ONLY BELIEF, we are better served by that admission than we are by denying it.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes, this 'endlessness' is the endless pursuit of perfection.
Quoting ENOAH
Again your backwards wording. It is I that does not settle, they that do. At least the they I am speaking of that use 'know' so flippantly and will not agree that 'knowledge is only belief'.
There is never a justification to settle. Settling is a form of certainty, satisfaction. It is a quote from me by all my friends that have heard me say it a thousand times, 'Satisfaction equals death'. No settling. We are not done. There is work to be done.
Watchful me, yes, Changing the paradigm is required. Real change. What shall it be?
Quoting ENOAH
I do not understand your use of the word 'third' here. You mean the word 'certainty' in the list? Well, OK. That is not the key point there. The key point is clarity in statements that confer meaning or truth. Knowing is not possible in the final sense, so awareness is all we have and it would be better to speak as if that was the case and not about 'knowing'.
Quoting ENOAH
Any aspect of art is an expression that either makes sense in some way, resonates truth, or does not seem to, and therefore is indiscernible as art in fact. Beauty is objective, like truth. It is impactful in its relationship to truth. That is to say, true beauty commands attention because it reveals the mystery we align with or even one that we do not. It can be a comfort, but more often it is a challenge by its very resonance.
Quoting ENOAH
It is a burden, but no big deal. I am well past the point in life where I let the opinions of others deeply bother me. I do care and very deeply, but it would lessen my delivery if I were too reactionary.
Quoting ENOAH
Well, I am not sure about the conjecture there, but, Body, mind, and will work together in all things.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes, well, settle has its own negative connotation, that of satisfaction or death. That misses the core aspect of the complaint against 'conclusion'. We are NOT done properly. We do not 'settle' properly. Properly, we are agitated and unsatisfied at all times. We engage every fiber of our being in growth and change for the better.
Quoting ENOAH
No that was like, as if, anyone, the practical speaker speaking TO ME, me saying it in their stead. Practical speakers say things like that to people all the time. 'Do something!' And the funny thing is I am an anger type, a doer. Have no fear! I will do something! Ha ha! Be careful what you ask for.
So I was speaking to you to reveal the pragmatic play out. In most situations people prefer or expect the baseline practical (order apology) effort. They do not mesh well with idealism. Even idealists do not.
They (both types) lower their expectations based on practical matters. But they do worse than that. They aim for less than perfect. That is INTENTIONAL FAILURE. It is deeply immoral.
Perfection-aiming IS NOT perfection-expectation!
Quoting ENOAH
Cool! Although I have no idea why you said 'Monarch'. What does that mean?
I like you, though.
Hah. This stands as a good example of how I need to communicate more precisely. It's hard when you follow this technique. I read a sentence, it triggers a response, I text the response. What I meant was simply this, "OK, I should read Voltaire before I speak but, here I go anyway."
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Not intentional. I know what I mean. I'll work on it. Anyway, I should have specified, "seeking certainty, as if there is a final end
Quoting Chet Hawkins
I recognize why you are right, as in if we were playing musical instruments. But to make a brief a point on this as possible, 1. I think morality is ultimately what is functional. Think big picture. And, 2. I think that insistence on certain precision in speech serves a limited function. Free speech, even in philosophy can be moral. Just as it can be moral to insist on strict precision of speech in philosophy. It is the usage and context together where morality should be measured.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
We agree completely in principle. We're on 2 different pages. To you "settle" means think there is an end, you are always moving and aware that you are moving. To me settle is that same thing, temporarily adopting a position as it serves a function, yet aware that we are moving nonetheless.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Not as important as you thought. A thought I expressed earlier then corrected.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Ok, I read it more in the connotation of a traveller's temporarily settling, weather temporarily settling, and so on.
So, how does one do this?
I understand that eliminating 'know' is a good idea from your perspective. What other changes are needed? What are the signs or problematic communication? What are the signs of communication that are more harmonious with the truth?
So, I think we can end up just agreeing.
The sense that you describe here is order apology. But it is less egregious if and only if the ideal is still admitted to as the aim.
The fail is when the order-apologist stands hard on the stance of 'let's just get er done!' That is to say dismissive entirely of any idea of ideals and perfection aiming. The new cult belief is 'Just do it!' and whereas I am a fact of trying to do some good rather than none; it's that throw your whole heart into the short cut way that is repugnant. The short cut should be taken as a moral FAILURE. It should be a sorrowful act. The person should understand and mean the sorrow, at least briefly. And then get on with the joy, the music of the day.
Fear - the singular emotion responsible for order itself as a concept. Fear is an excited state that arises as a result of matching a pattern from one's past. Fear and order are thus associated with the past in a temporal sense.
Any and all pattern matching is just fear. Thought is fear. Logic is fear. The pattern that is the structure of something is itself fear, although that something in essence is not fear. The pattern is the fear part.
Ken Wilber refers to the Noosphere in his book 'The Theory of Everything'. He does not link this to fear. To me, it is all fear and nothing but fear.
Fear is a function of limits. This is exactly the same as in math. The limit function is always towards some end but the relationship is asymptotic. That is to say the aim never quite reaches the actual.
The limiting force in emotive space, intent space, is fear. It cuts off awareness of truth and this cheap cut off is noticed by the wise in every way. Fear is the limit where everything is incorrectly separated from all. Fear is the force that causes this separation.
In this act of separation, a spiritual or wise failure, fear then must try to calm itself. Note that some excitement is drummed up and not in need of becalming. The fervor of nerds in a room all discussing some highbrow or technical issue, full of imagined limits where none exist, is all just fear. The author looks around with an expression of sympathy at these environs.
So fear seeks comfort in like minded others, like patterned environments. The word 'like' is a fear word. The love of friendship or comfortable love is the part of love based entirely in the emotion of fear. 'I like you because you are like me!'
Fear is the great divider. It limits interaction. It encloses and imprisons. It is cold and judgmental in nature. The pattern either matches or it is relegated to the unattainable status of 'other'.
Fear is always entirely delusional. The pattern IS NOT known. The pattern is not therefore understood. The pattern is incomplete. The pattern is not the pattern.
Fear is asymptotic to truth. It is never arriving there.
Socially, anger and desire types will tend to shun fear types. That is because this separation is felt more painfully by non fear types. The panic spreads fast. THEY 'know' this and so THEY shun. This is also a fair response to the shunning involved as originating in the fear person separating themselves and perhaps judging others with delusional limits. It all makes great sense, but it's deeply tragic.
That is just my belief concerning one emotion, fear. It is a tiny bit of truth adjacent issues related to order and fear.
1) Admit to the greater truth behind the assertion. It is dangerous to speak in terms of 'knowing'.
2) Realize that all of us are guilty of this trouble, when we allow that pattern to continue.
3) Challenge yourself to do better by first recognizing when you are failing morally by using such words and phrases.
4) Actually correct the words used in speech and in writing from yourself.
5) Begin to realize when others do this same thing. Note the abundance of the wrong pattern.
6) Challenge the pattern when the mood is right to be a discussion where progress can be made by those thus challenged.
7) Fit all of this into a model of the way you live to make it a consistent part of who you are, your beliefs personified.
So, these are mainly attitudinal. Which is good information for me. I just want to separate it out from the practical changes to the language itself. Numbers 1 and 3 mentions 'such words and phrases' and 'knowing' and 'know' is clearly on the dangerous list.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
And this gives a kind of plan along with the first ones.
But I was wondering more about this part:
Quoting Bylaw
For example, in a philosophy forum, we have the words on the screen. The people writing may have similar attitudes - potentially even when they use the word know, not taking this at all to mean it is necessarily infallible. And/or when they avoiding knowing and know, they may be utterly certain that what they say must be correct and never will need to be revised.
So, what way should people write to be more harmonious with the truth beyond avoiding 'knowing' and 'know'.
I am not denying the importance of the attitudinal shifts, but give the specific danger of 'know' and 'knowing' in your schema, it seems like the actual language use is important.
Are there other things to be avoided or added to avoid the danger?
Well, that is an amazing question. Thank you for asking it. It is a 'step beyond' (the standard limitations of interaction) for sure.
So, would you agree with the assertion that the more truth you ascribe to, believe in, retain amid the humility of not 'knowing', the more genuine happiness you experience?
I do believe that. It was kind of the first thread I posted here. It was not at all well received. Eh ...
Anyway, belief in truth is like a house, not easy to maintain. And more to the point, as time goes by, and the house becomes more complicated, reflecting all of reality more and more properly, it is harder and harder to maintain. We realize this and horror begins to creep in.
We realize as horror overtakes us that we are unequal to this task, the only task we really have, to live and pursue wisdom and morality. So the system is terrifying. That is not the system of men and choice, that is the system of truth and living actually within it. But this again is just fear talking. The horrid terror.
So what happens then when we look out and experience a kind soul or a wise one? We see them maybe from a distance and it seems they are magical. They brush off discomforts. They do not wallow in pain. They smile and we have the impression that the smile is genuine. It may be.
What is it that allows us to 'know' the unknowable or to believe in it with humility which as this thread discusses, is even better as a pattern?
It is courage, anger, confidence in truth as truth. This balancing force accepts the pain as required. It does not turn from suffering, but happily turns INTO IT. The wise suffer by choice, exquisitely. They understand so much more of the imbalanced and self-inflicted suffering, the limiting prisons, that we all put ourselves into. Courage and confidence, born of anger, is rarer than order-apology or its desire based cousin, self-indulgence. Anger is closer to truth.
This is why anger is responsible and accountable ... for the single eternal moment of now only. Fear has the endless past. Desire has the perhaps infinite future. But anger is limited. Its limit in this pattern of reality is to essence, to being, and the only time in which being is 'certain' is now.
So when we experience life the balanced perception must be on the lookout for one thing above all others. That thing is ease. Ease is the great enemy. Ease has many forms. Comfort is one. Certainty is one. Giddiness is one. I could go on and on. Basically, the truth is that 'doing your best' is never easy. Moral choice is the single hardest choice in existence.
Do you feel that these many posts and answers and baring up under the examination of well schooled and interested people is easy? Is any aspect of such a capability easy? Amid the turmoil of daily life, and the many pressures others and our society places upon us, is any of THIS likely? Are we privileged in some way to have this? No, we are not. The order that built this was an intent that has resulted in THIS. But maintenance is required. Suffering is required. And the price paid to get here is trivial compared to the detailed and ongoing price of maintaining it. Unless balance is properly understood, this scenario will crash to an unhappy end. And then it must all be built again, anew.
Grow or die is a real dynamic. Only just doing what was done so far is never enough. We have had this. We want more. Desire is endless and its purpose is clear, even if it is misinterpreted by everyone. Singer tells us mankind is base and effectively evil. He is wrong. Consequentialism is a dread lie. It only seems that way because there are so many ways to fail and objectively only one path upon which to resonate the GOOD and enjoy/make the consequence of genuine happiness. The effort required for deontological intent to grow is immense.
When you listen, listen with an ear for someone trying to make things easier on themselves. Who does that ever help? The answer is NO ONE. It is a tautology.
"Out of love of humankind, out of despair over my awkward predicament of having achieved nothing and of being unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, out of genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I comprehended that it was my task: to make difficulties everywhere." - Soren Kierkegaard
This sentiment is aligned with but contra opposite to the philosophers real aim, to make the difficult easier to understand so that it can be accepted. There is a middle ground to these efforts. That is what wisdom is, the middle way. So Soren was just angry and lamenting his fate. As such he was getting revenge in a way, intending immorally to 'make things harder' but not in pure spite. He wanted to show the truth for its real self, a hard climb, a hard growing season. And he was right more than he was wrong.
Quoting Bylaw
What says this: 'I like you because you are like me' ?
What says this: 'Look I don't need you to research this, I need you to know it!'
What says this: 'Brevity is the soul of wit?'
What says this: '... utterly certain ...'
Am I advocating for becoming certain by not using 'know' and 'certain'? No! I am not. The depth of belief in the idea that 'knowing' is poisonous is key to any belief or wisdom. If you only pay the idea lip service then that is what you shall receive as resonant happiness. in other words disingenuously following a trend in the local environment.
If when this same user or writer is confronted by someone that says, 'knowledge is only belief', then if they realize the fallibility of their 'knowing' they should just say, 'right on brother, I was not claiming ... utter certainty', no agreed, far from it!' But there is image to consider. These other esteemed colleagues, site-mates will think less of me if I resonate with not knowing. That seems ... scary? This new confident charlatan is bothering about something so pointless. Easier to dismiss it. And what an easy target! He keeps redefining words we all ... KNOW. Yup! No internal consistency at all, right? Just a jester, really!
Listen with an ear to understanding when someone is trying to make things easier on themselves.
Is knowing or doubt easier? Is being aware of something and actively trying to maintain a belief easier or harder than making a firm decision and 'knowing'? Is speech infectious? Is there some comfort in the delusion of 'knowing'?
Quoting Bylaw
There are many examples in this thread alone and most of them I called out. Look for the concept of the limit in such matters. If there is an end drawn, a destination arrived at, it is a failure in most ways. That is the delusion of fear talking. The authoritative fool: 'You have reached the border of these lands. A wise man will go no further!' Me: 'But there is land a mere foot away! There could be cool things and ... well ... women .. over there. I think I will risk it.' As Jordan Peterson often claims, we must risk offense and being offensive in order to live, to grow. That was not the intent. But we can own the choice. Living in fear is not living at all. Ease and pragmatism is an enemy of sorts.
Quoting Bylaw
Speech is just a signal of belief. Actions other than just speech do the same thing. Disheveled appearance and environs speak to a lack of concern in image, a lack of pursuit of perfection shown by cleanliness and some degree of taste in presentation. That is just one example. Each of the virtues has a set of flags and indicators that show either fear side delusion, desire side delusion, anger-side delusion, or ... a VERY rare and laudable balance aimed at the objective GOOD.
"Redundant" is n interesting choice of terms. So, do we agree that belief is necessary for seeing the tree in the front yard?? It goes without saying that seeing a tree in the yard includes believing that something is there, doesn't it? That necessary presupposition is what makes the terminological use redundant, right?
Quoting Janus
Waddaya mean "actively"? If you do not actively disbelieve, then by default, you believe something is there, even before learning the name of it. We need not say "I believe a tree is there" to ourselves in order to believe we're looking at a tree. Unless we're one of those people who say they believe that they're not looking at a tree, but rather looking at a representation of one.
We agree that one need not formulate propositional belief to themselves at every moment throughout one's life in order to see trees. I'm attempting to point out that propositional belief are not the only kind. Although, any and all of our candidates will take propositional form in our report of them.
It's all about the necessary elemental constituents. That is determined and facilitated by biological machinery. Physiological sensory perception. Words are not always part of the content, despite being part of the content for each and every report thereof.
The way you're using the term "belief" cannot take all this into account.
By the way, my apologies for how the "shallow" comment came off earlier. "Inadequate" is more in line. Sometimes things do boil down to a matter of how we're using words, and there's no relevant fact of the matter to compare/contrast differing opinions with/to. It doesn't follow that all frameworks are on equal footing. Sometimes there is not a fact of the matter, but rather an abundance of them. All of them are germane. One's notions cannot - ought not anyway - conflict with such facts.
How your opponents see it is that perhaps you'd make the horrible jump of thinking. . . that because there is vagueness in some categories, whatever they may be, they can be abandoned along with their intuitions for new intuitions both familiar and peculiar for only one of the categories in consideration. I.E. if statement 'A' of strong intellectual support is a belief, expression of scientific confidence 'B' is a belief, and irrational nonsense postulate 'C' is a belief then it would seem they are all the same in kind as they are also in value. When in reality its obviously the case that various beliefs entertain certain hierarchies of certainty. . . intuitiveness. . . truth-likeness. . . knowledge status. . . etc. Regardless of what word we give to that doxastic attitude.
To state it another way, even if you say 'knowledge is merely belief' the hidden illusory specter of knowledge doesn't leave us but rather returns with a vengeance as you attempted to remove from reality a stubborn aspect of our psychology or a rigid part of the world. Except you don't call it knowledge but certainty.
Boy do I love philosophy. . . the great pointless semantic game we all play it seems. "We aren't talking about knowledgeable beliefs and unknowledgeable beliefs. . . but certain beliefs and uncertain beliefs!"
Analogously, as I beat a dead horse, to talk about change you need that which doesn't and if you made change fundamental to the world you have to do a whole lot of heavy lifting to resurrect the term, permanence, that you thought you killed.
We are still left with the question of why certain beliefs are more privileged compared to others and why? I.E. we are back where we started.
Except, as I stated in a reply above. Its as to the correct methodology of determining the entry status of beliefs into the 'certain' category rather than talking about whether a particular belief counts as 'knowledge'. Its seems merely semantic.
Am I going insane here?!
@Janus has consistently taken a more restricted view of "belief" than that which I think more typically found in philosophical discussion. I'd characterise it using propositional attitudes, roughly, as follows: I take "Adam believes P" as simply that Adam holds P to be true. Janus takes "Adam believes P" as both that Adam holds P to be true and has consciously assented to its being true.
That's what seems to sit behind his notion of "active" belief. It seems this leads Janus to being unable to deny what is before his eyes; that being before one's eyes somehow amounts to the sort of conscious assented he requires.
At least, that's how I have understood some of his comments.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Yep.
Quoting substantivalism
Presumably, because they are true; not because they are certain.
Confusing these two is the reason this thread is at page 14.
I don't want to put words in @Chet Hawkins mouth, I may sadly have already and I apologize, but that he may consider it more fine grained.
While people such as yourself with regards to statements being strictly either true or not true and nothing greater, lesser, or in between yields a coarse grained reading. In fact, a strict dichotomy. The greatest coarse-ness possible.
So if one denies that there is a difference between knowledge and belief, one also drops realism.
There seems to be space in realist accounts for both what Husserl calls the "truth of correctness" (true/false) and a "truth of completeness" (awareness/ignorance). I think the intuition that there can be gradations of knowledge generally flows from an understanding of knowledge in terms of completeness and perfection.
Vis-á-vis completeness, a set of statements is more true if it truthfully describes more of what a thing is, and more false just in case it attributes false things to the subject of knowledge or precludes true things. It's possible to have descriptions that are more complete than others, but which also have more elements of falsity mixed in to them. These can still seem to represent "more knowledge" of a thing, a "better grasp on its intelligibility," than a description that is entirely accurate, but extremely sparse on detail (accuracy versus completeness). There is a sense in which, as completeness increases, accuracy becomes more difficult.
It's easy to draw comparisons to the idea of entropy here. As a description becomes more complete, there are fewer ways the world could be and still be wholly consistent with the description. The formalization of completeness might be something like a thing's Kolmogorov Complexity, the description that allows it to be uniquely specified (and we might add "constructed" to avoid problems in the philosophy of information akin to the Meno Paradox). This is finite, whereas there is an infinite number of true propositions that can be made in reference to any thing because we can list all the things that are not true or it, which appears to have no limit.
I also don't think you need bivalence for realism. It's more of a metaphysical question as to whether all statements about the future have truth values, or if potentially/actuality and potency/act are required for an accounting of the world.
The attempt to reduce truth and knowledge totally to propositions isn't intuitive. At the very least, it misses something psychologically intuitive.
Now you are speaking to my point, and since you said it could be my opponents and not me, then ok. Yes, impossible or unknown proof of any 'knowledge'. is a sliding scale, vague where it begins, how much effect it has.
But that issue is also one that I would say is typical of order-apologists. As in bringing up that issue is not precisely the point.
My assertion is that as far as what defines belief, knowledge is indeed fully included. That is all. Knowledge is only belief. It is fully included in that set.
Now we move on to a separate matter:
Second assertion: We cannot be certain of any justification applied to a belief that 'makes' it or transforms it into knowledge. So this is where we are working with the mathematical concept of limits. It would seem that that effect is one way to cause the Sorites paradox. Since the definition of a category is weak, not specific enough, the paradox appears. But there is a difference. When for example we feel the need to define a heap of sand as containing a finite number of grains in order to escape the Paradox, we CAN do that. Assuming we were willing to take the time, we COULD possible count. And yet the Sorites Paradox is still deemed present simple because users of the 'heap' term refuse to do so.
But the limit is different. Limits are special in that nothing is being said about the content of either the axis or the asymptote. It is their relationship that is the point. The asymptotic relationship defines the characteristics of the limit.
So, no, this is not the same thing.
It is the 'fact' or 'knowledge' or better as I mentioned, let's say it is the awareness of something that approaches objective knowing, BUT NEVER GETS THERE, that is the point. And it cannot get there. That is critical to understand. One is tempted to say or add, '... in finite time'
So before we continue I wanted to address that part of the issue. It is not clearly just Sorites.
Quoting substantivalism
Far from it. They can carry on with delusions all they want (clearly they prefer that). I am taking the eyes wide open approach. We cannot know, so why speak of it? I am NOT saying that one belief is not more properly held than another.
I am saying that we use the word know and its derivatives too freely to mean 'certain'. And frankly, its a no contest argument, really. We do that. All the time. I've had so many arguments based on the other person saying I should know a thing and with me honestly saying I cannot know. I can only be aware of something more and more and never know. I've had them order me to say that I know. Ridiculous!
The warning I am putting forth is to call into question the Pragmatic nonsense of soothing fools with lies about certainty. We all need to become more amenable to the idea of not knowing. Clearly the Yogi mentioned agrees with my general aim. It's a matter of respectful wise humility.
Quoting substantivalism
Yes, with respect to doxastic attitudes, it is better to treat everything as withholding, suspension of disbelief, rather than to simply believe or disbelieve. That is a tautology.
And the thing is that tautology comes first. So we do not speak of knowing already. We know (ha ha) or we are properly aware of the fact that that is impossible, so done.
Now, there is no problem (the problem of this thread). We didn't foolishly speak of knowing. Now, let's hear the argument you say supports your belief. That is entirely different than whether the idea is indeed belief or knowledge. Knowledge is impossible. So, duh, it's belief. Now, why do you think so?
And you are free. You are free to justify the belief in any way you can. So please do. But it is not and never was knowledge.
Language is such that we all cannot agree on some vague percentage of awareness that constitutes the cutoff between general belief and the sub-category candidate, 'knowledge'. So for me, knowledge is only a single point of perfection at the top of belief. Knowledge would be an objective belief. And people will stupidly say that as well. They will say, 'Let's be objective!' You cannot. We are incapable of being objective. We can only TRY to be objective. So that is another example of the same problem. You see, you understand, the NEED for certainty inherent to the delusional method of speech. It's cooked in. And its wrong.
I love it that people TRY to be objective. I love it that people try to justify their beliefs. But that is NOT the issue here. The issue is when any of us say we 'know' or that we are 'being objective' they are actually just simply wrong. We cannot know and we cannot be objective. We can believe and we can try to be objective and let's speak and write about that correctly, please.
Quoting substantivalism
Exactly, well said! Stubborn and you could have said also stupid and been correct. You are now switching into the defensive posture that rather proves my point. People start to get angry instead of reason at this point. But that is anger led by fear, and not in balance.
Fools always defend untruth with stubborn fear clinging to the past. 'That's how it's done! That is the way it is done!' Yeah, ok, bozo, and it's wrong, and it always was wrong.
Quoting substantivalism
Know = certain in colloquial terms. It doesn't even matter if you deny it. It is true for many people so that alone makes you wrong. I am asking that we clear things up and make sure that THOSE PEOPLE are aware (because they cannot know) that ... they cannot know. Knowing objectively is impossible.
We have to change the COMMON usage of the word by slow choice, to represent a more proper awareness of reality. Eventually when the 50somethingth percentage of the human herd turns their head to the right idea, we will all spring off in that direction and be the better for it. Let's be a part of the correct subset of the herd leading the way to a better understanding.
Quoting substantivalism
Yes well, as mentioned, the more moral choice is always the harder one.
Truth and certainty are the same thing.
Anything that is not 100% true is false.
If you want to instead speak of truth value, then again STOP using the wrong words. Truth is objective and perfect.
I love this because this is the same problem with chaos-apologist thought. They believe that perspective is ok and that morals are fungible in many cases, basic subjectivism. But that is a delusional self-indulgent lie.
Perspective is always only the degree of error you have to the objective truth, so perspective is just error.
That DOES NOT mean that one perspective is not closer to objective truth than another one is. That would be just more failed logic on top of something as ridiculous as believing that truth is fungible.
I suppose it could be the case that formal Realism is something I would deny.
As I understand it in brief. there are arguments about existence which are largely just sense based assertions. 'I can feel this rock so it exists.' But that to me is also just an awareness and not knowledge at all. Even to say something as general as 'Rocks exist' would also be just awareness or belief and never knowledge.
But I object to the loaded term realism then. Realism is a tacit assertion of a delusional thing as real. It's somewhat the same argument as between knowledge and belief. We as moral agents do not experience reality as it is, objectively. We are not capable of that because we are not perfect. Likewise what we can sense is debatable. So, what is being done is a fear based short-cut as usual, some part of Pragmatism. Because most people are aware of what they mean when they say 'rocks exist' or 'I can feel this rock so it exists' is widely accepted. So is Jesus as more than just a man. I could rest my case there. So let's all first agree that what is widely accepted and deemed true is not relevant in any way to actual truth, to even something so vague as 'reality'.
To me reality includes unicorns. I am not saying that to be facetious. Something that has meaning is very real. So in that sense is seems more plausible to say 'Jesus was real', for example. It does not even matter if he was real in the colloquial sense of he did EXIST. It matters then only that he has meaning to many. That makes it real. If we want to say that is fantasy only, then we begin to realize that imagination is real. It exists. Therefore its objects kind of exist.
So, we need our terminology to be cleaned up, more clear. If we mean to say that something was instantiated into physical reality, then we should say that. Because to many people real meaning is 'real'. And I sympathize because it is my belief that reality is only consciousness. The well of meaning is MORE, not less important, than physical mass instantiation.
Regardless, the core debate is a three way, not a two way one. That is there is a perspective that prefers fear based orderly Pragmatic viewpoints on everything. There is a perspective that prefers desire based chaotic Idealistic viewpoints on everything. And there is a little admitted and less understood third perspective that advocates balance between them, sometimes immorally to quickly or too lazily (which is why it is misunderstood and not admitted as extant in many cases).
The 4th path of wisdom is all three of those combined and maximized.
So what I am trying to do is hone the arguments, the argument set, that acknowledges the idea that all of these emotional relationships within intent space are asymptotic to truth. The big one is the know/belief issue. It has ramifications into many perspectives like it that are ONLY in error currently.
:up: Quoting Chet Hawkins great point and i feel drawn to point out how that initiative "to soothe" when it comes to the means of that situation. Its not just about the soothing others, the fools that are actually being soothed are themselves. I can admit I am a self soother and I like to believe I can justify my reasons to no end. It may be true, but it is not what is RIGHT. I take warnings seriously and I think some folk might miss the heart of the AND IN the message because they take your style as they can. "Thanks for the warning, big guy...i think ill be alright" but its not about that (even though that impression I assume is just that, an assumption but i believe it is not 100% incorrect, NOW WHAT?) Its just true, some times....in some cases dealing with some specific individual experience and all that comes with.
Anyways, it's now obvious to me reading your last reply in full that it's understandable to be to the point of brute honesty. You're feelings and beliefs about these fools are valid, I get that. I am looking past the personal zest in your tone, and the MEAT of your assertions will help correct this behavior. Will it take some time and WORK, absolutely. Will others pick up that slack regardless? I have no doubt. It is the right thing to do, and KNOWING how to become aware of our place in the world only requires selfless self awareness. Just by, like you go on to say, it can start with doing the work to write better. I definitely need to get moving in this department, but sometimes I slack off. But being better at communication using the right language and proper format DOES give my words better reach. When I post a discussion one of these days, it will be nothing shy of my best! I will do that for me, and more importantly it benefits all. I dont do it for others, that would be a white lie but not incorrect. I do things for ME and when I am better, I do things for others. Things I may never know, the impact the impression the inspiration (the frustration, even too lol). We all do that for each other. I like to call those moments out! I consider the last few points knowledge, self-knowledge is a knowing but its changing. I definitely believe in my self, but I have no system of belief that filters or limits my knowledge when it comes to admitting I am wrong, or taking corrections with stride and implementing the new information only helps my awareness. My belief is not linked to my doubts, and boy do I have them. I question myself when I am doubting, and waste time which is unfortunate. Beliefs can become your enemy if they are not growing and uplifting you, i feel. The balance is always earned and never given. The choices are given, and we figure it out from there. Navigate. I believe in my capabilities and self enough to be more than willing to be better, for my own sake at least. BUT on my time, of course :wink:
I know people and I believe in building awareness with NO LIMITS. Limitless knowledge, we can't literally know EVERYTHING. Can our brains handle it one day? Maybe. I would 100% donate my body to science to experience futuristic body mods. Thats just me though. But you'd think we could know now more then ever ALL types of things. But do we know the relationship we have with knowledge and how we obtain, use, share, interoperate etc it? How can we be better there? How good is knowledge really if lets say a person has bad memory? How does knowledge differ from thing to thing, person to person? How do we see knowledge. Our beliefs shine no matter what. Truth revealed.
It's interesting what sticks and what doesnt and WHY certain knowings come easy, NATURAL to certain people. The how isnt important, its a question of WHY are certain people picking up some things better than others (like concepts, sports, puzzles, music, charisma, math, logic, reading etc whatever) Everyone ought to question themselves into knowing, BELIEVING they have a place and do the best they can to position themselves to set the self up for success. I think foreseeable outcomes for individuals can be predicted easily if you observe with detail. Sometimes it doesnt take too long and sometimes YOU are right. Give credit where it's due, to self, to others.
Quoting Chet Hawkins Since you asked nicely! Ha...its interesting how some people only respond to those requests when they are asked politely. The "good manners" and respect THEY DESERVE seems to hit them in that way without thinking deeper, the good manners WORKS in persuasion. A lot of things are verifible, like you mention with the grain of sand paradox, its the refusal and the tolerance I am also beyond frustrated seeing being repeated and regurgitated in the WRONG ways. The way that is right and true is knowable, I believe. Not for all though, thats up to the TIME!
I wonder how much in that attempt could be reduced from all statements? All statements broken down to some broken down to a few broken down to one? What if statements arent good for measuring truth values, what gestures still hold truth might suffice in its place? You have to assume statements might hold truth, but I think holding truth is not in only statements about the future. It travels with them, perhaps capturing sentiments could change the order of operations to get those answers... I think verification processes might be able to gather all statements without taking up the space, energy and time of inputting all statements about the future and still determine truth values. Why do you think (if you do) these truth values in statements about the future have anything to do with what is required for accounting of the world? Is the goal accounting of the world or finding the truth values in all statements of the future? and say that is doable, then to "have" them (the truth values) how do you input that to accounting. To do that, it requires something that knows how to explain truth from the statements and if one can know how to do that, how can it be understood for what its actually worth? Who do these answers help? I dont even think the proof that comes from this matters in account of the world. It matters for understanding humans of it. And its not so natural, im beginning to believe...good stuff!
Yay!
Quoting Kizzy
That is precisely the point. And in general then, on that issue, the person is revealed as an order-apologist acting from a place of imbalanced fear. It is a listening skill to be aware of this.
The 'know' word is thus a red flag for fear side errors, order apology.
Such a person is likely to conflate order and the GOOD. They are also likely to denigrate desire and anger as opposed to fear. The classical and huge example of this is claiming something like, 'Let's not be emotional! Let's use logic.' Logic is only fear and fear is an emotion. So, this one revelation and people's reaction to it is actually rather germane to the overall effect.
The need for order is the need for clear rules and delusional boundaries WHERE NONE EXIST.
Quoting Kizzy
Exactly so. We take the low hanging fruit amid self-soothing, for practical reasons. And it can intersect what is right but the pattern itself is not safe as right. And THEY think it is, more or less.
Quoting Kizzy
Lol, well yes. Like taking life advice from Gene Simmons. Wait ... sign me up!
Quoting Kizzy
And yes, Pragmatism can HIDE behind that process. The probability is their 'bet'. They are not worried really about something so pesky as truth. They are more concerned about something as obvious as efficiency of day to day progress. I suppose they can be forgiven, but only just. Each time such a premise is accepted on its efficiency, we create a society wide delusional plateau that will take a whole lot more activation energy to overcome that .. .lie. It's very dangerous and the next standard of wisdom needs to disinclude that inclination.
Quoting Kizzy
Sadly, that could be said of me in general. Still, most of my thuggish friends consider me elegant and noble to a fault so, what does that mean? I am an anti-Zelig. I do not become you, I become the you-foil. The quintessential challenger. Touche!
Quoting Kizzy
Well that's the intent anyway. It's true, I will not be holding my breath. Wisdom is not a very popular thing finally. The touchy-feeling warm snuggly wisdom is well received, but the get off your ass and set your house straight wisdom is rarely offered anything but 'line on the left, one cross each', or public stoning. 'Are there any women with us here today?' - Life of Brian
Quoting Kizzy
Well I have my doubts. THEY simply rarely do the right thing.
Quoting Kizzy
ONLY that? Well then why are we all not in the Federation already? Free medical and career path investment for all! Where's my replicator?
Quoting Kizzy
Well yes, and I am only admonishing a community that should sympathize in theory with an aim towards perfection and truth. But even here it is seen this tendency, as a law of nature, order apology. And of course the occasional bought of chaos apology. And these are not even admitted tendencies within reality. How far indeed do we have to go from ... here?!
Quoting Kizzy
In the fullness of time, for sure. It can also get you banned by order-apologist moderators. Likewise the feel good chaos-apologist moderators will ban you for their reasons. But both reasons are fundamentally immoral. It's quite tricky to thread that needle and not get ostracized.
But what do we know about any kind of separation? It's an immoral aim, finally.
Categorization and separation by way of reductionism is useful only as a temporary device amid discussion. Everything MUST be properly unified back to ALL before any non-conclusion is drawn.
Quoting Kizzy
Ha ha! 'One of these days!', the procrastinator's oath! I relate to that!
Quoting Kizzy
I like that. It's the same for me. I own my choices as for me, even if it is me trying to help others that is still for me.
Quoting Kizzy
Well due to the Unity Principle they are finally the same thing. That IS NOT to excuse Hedonism and self-indulgence. That is the lie the subjective moralists push. It is only because morality is objective that helping yourself is helping others. That is to say you must ACTUALLY help yourself in an objectively GOOD way and not a delusional self-indulgent way. Eating a box of sugar cookies is not objectively helpful to you.
So again, this concept of objective use of words and concepts helps us, for real, all of us, to understand what truth is, where it lies in relation to other assertions, and how to navigate in a world of false limits (order apology) and false unities (chaos apology).
Quoting Kizzy
I do as well. Feedback, your cue to quality interaction!
Quoting Kizzy
Well that bit is maybe you working out how it is for you. As mentioned, I do not believe that people have knowledge except in the colloquially meant sense of 'beliefs that are strongly believed' and that really says NOTHING about any credible attempt to justify that knowledge as such, as more than JUST belief.
My belief is NOTHING BUT linked to my doubts. In other words there is no belief I have that is not doubted somewhat. I think that is healthy and that the alternative is not.
Doubt and questioning are not wastes of time. They are healthy. They are more a part of truth and wisdom than 'knowing' is at any stage. The delusion of 'knowing' without doubt is precisely the point I am speaking against.
Finally, although I agree that what DOES grow us objectively is GOOD, what we believe grows us is subjective and always partially wrong and therefore not 'known'. We are left only with belief (and of course doubt). That is healthy. So, many people will judge that this or that belief will grow them and that this or that belief is too much an impediment to growth and these same people are very often wrong on BOTH counts.
Still, amid the effort to have society mirror love as a functioning thing, we prefer properly that free will be 'allowed' within the law (order) as much as we can. That is to say, we respect each person enough to allow them and encourage them to experience and reject or justify any and all beliefs. This is why a wise parent or leader MUST wisely inflict suffering on their charges. This is done in a controlled way to facilitate the earning of wisdom. It is in this way that belief becomes stronger. It can NEVER become knowledge.
Quoting Kizzy
Exactly and that is very well said. It is a fight to get to balance and an ongoing fight to maintain balance. The peace seekers are delusional. War is the only constant. And it is morally correct.
Quoting Kizzy
I like it. Delve into the free will thing. Seek each path in experimentation and have the strength to pull back from the bad ones. Some are so obviously bad that a full delving is not needed, only a cautious approach.
Quoting Kizzy
Well truth shown about a thing is not truth. That is a status, a state. So we get confused all the time into calling personal states or states of anything truth. If it can change it is a state. Truth does not change.
I agree that awareness has no seeming limit. It extends out into infinity and that is my point that kind of started this thread to some extent. The limit as x approaches infinity in math is a way to describe this relationship. We get the impression that arrival at knowledge is impossible, but that we can indeed always do better, as in earn more awareness.
It's just that you use the same word and words 'know', 'knowledge', and 'knowing' where I would ask for aware of, awareness, and being aware of; instead.
You can even say something more indirect and be right for me as in. 'try to know' or 'almost know'. But to just say 'know' partakes of the error.
I to want to contribute to our awareness. Part of that is the discipline to make words and their colloquial use less ambiguous.
Quoting Kizzy
Exactly! Again, why people hold information as belief, why they justify it, speaks MORE, not less clearly to reality than does HOW they hold or justify it.
Why in fact is the central question of all questions. Why encompasses everything. No other reason is not subservient to why. All wisdom, all meaning is contained in the one word, 'why'.
Quoting Kizzy
Well, probability is an issue. It is what blinds Pragamtists. They will say things like, 'How is that working out for you?' when you maintain that a small probability thing is possible. You are correct but they are ... something. We are tempted to fill in that blank the way THEY want us to, by saying they are ... more correct. But that is a lie. They are not more correct. They are less correct. But they are betting on a more highly probable outcome which makes them SEEM more correct. That is order-apology.
Quoting Kizzy
Well suffering is hard and wisdom reflects an increase in suffering, not an increase in ease. So I sympathize with the rejection of these 'truths' as people are only seeking their ease. Bu tin order to be a servant of truth, to speak real wisdom, I cannot counsel them to 'know' or to pretend to 'know'. I can only counsel that they instead say they are aware of something and then they can qualify that by explaining what they believe they know. In all cases they will discover that what they know is only belief.
its normal, but not necessary
edit:(above is original sent comment- this edit* is to explain my quick reaction vaguely claimed by ME. I will add the deets to this later, i must, but this immediate response is just that, nothing serious- im just reading and responding)
edit2: it was serious in fact...
Except, in my case I made the claim earlier that I had no doubt the slack would get picked up...but I dont need to know anything else from that, i believe I meant it when i said it but do i give a shit if its true? No. I would be surprised if I was. But doubting for me brings up more doubting thoughts/thinking. I almost avoid doubtful thinking, but not out of righteousness. my humility is strong enough, I have the shielded shell of a hermit. I do, succumb to doubt without even having to claim anything, in the privacy of my mind. Its true you may be right, if I embraced the doubt my attitude would be enhancing for the best! Towards happiness again. Its a weird battle i guess for me...Especially in the moments of conquering it, the doubt, I use time and acts of proactive procrastination to hide my doubting dual. Try again tomorrow, you can be better then I say at 11:59 pm. Here we go again, lets do it! My hope is in that chance, time is wasting because I could of been believing instead. Doubting is strange now that I am thinking about it. Sometimes I know when to doubt automatically but nothing comes from it...dealing with doubt is intuitive and internally practiced for me.
I do doubt, a healthy portion i believe. How do you know I have not doubted in my mind, and decided to not agree with the doubt. I am glad you have your doubts, but I think you ought to! And you can choose when to doubt with more force some times over another. Or whenever you feel it inside!
Yeah what if i already doubted before I said what I said and its faced with another doubt? But with no intention behind "i have my doubts" clearly expressed. We have them, we dont use them as efficiently as others do. Its learning...we ought to. I believe the doubt lingers but not im my sight at times. Blinding, masking, and perhaps for good reason. NICE! (yikes) Blinded by the light!!! Springsteen style!
I think people are right for doubting, especially judgements. Im aware and was not lost at the idea of that what i assumed by me to be common sense. That place to judge from is real interesting..."who do you think you are?" WHO can speak on other peoples delusions without understanding? "You know what I meant" its not delusional until we take it to that level. Its more then statements, but yes to YOUR point that is why its important to have better ones. Statements. Fighting against them is still a dual, but I think some people in here want to fight. Like you said in the first response to Janus, about picking a bar fight and then getting beer after! Lets go! Were all just humans anyways...we dont know our full potential until we know our purpose. Some die before knowing but the purpose remains. Who wants to know lifes purpose? How can you? What is yours? Figure it out, if thats what we want to do that it is....anyways, we can decide.
I think if the NEED to know your own correctness of statements like mine,Quoting Kizzy and turning it into a right vs wrong match on the spot, those who need to act like that, "I am right and YOU are wrong" and not only act, NEED that act its not about truth its about the answers chosen to accept while willing to lose chances to grow in return for the validation of self ONLY.
Im glad I commented, this is fun. Relishing.
You should know, I like your doubts. People should be questioned yes. They are also predictable. Maybe thats why my doubts seem not present but what if I doubted from the start? I disguise the doubt in the questioning, but is it a good thing? I dont know. But does it not show the interest is there and also that it can be followed to the intentions behind the questioning for both parties... You doubt, but come to what answer from doubt or because of doubt teamed with, balanced with what? A measured belief and/or knowing perhaps. Does that doubt just drift around your mind until you believe something has been doubted enough? Doubting isnt taking place in the backround of my mind, it jumps out at me! I am delusional but I am not seeing hallucinations....yet. Just actively engaging in some unhealthy but still GOOD screen time!
But I cant help think about now that doubting leads to questions from doubt and those answers can/may be tailored to any liking. Why you believe, trust, act like you agree, say you understand a certain persons words IS telling. What they share, and why and how is also. Behavior observable and verifiable. I consider or believe what is noted from behavior is information, not knowledge. I believe what I see, tell me what I am supposed to be seeing? We ought to know. I dont know what is going on sometimes, because my receptions was off not because I mean to. Thats fine, until I do?
Even saying "I have almost no doubt" seems like soothing or convincing an audience, to me. But your doubts would pick up on that wouldnt they??? AHHH I see what you mean NOW! They would! Dang those doubts are good! "Give me some," says the poorest beggar...as if you didnt work hard to have them. Pft! You have your doubts and you are valid in them. Valued.
I literally do not doubt or question certain statements in the act of making them. Maybe because my "knowing" that statements can be revised, rewritten and deleted and I could deny it ever occurred. BAD KIZZY! Easy way out, get back in there! That perhaps, is a personal delusion but if aware of delusions is it just a display of the will one has or hasnt. It can display the will and its alignments to beliefs through intentions. So people are delusional? Get them a shrink and some medicine then, doc! Whose paying for it though? Ha!!
Just to be better, please. you are saying to me in the crowd and I cant say more to that because we ought to be doing that anyways! Bravo :party: :flower:
BUT I wanna say more, for fun! :naughty:
I dont need to be right, I said this early...we know this, we dont believe it, we dont have to. Dont believe, fine with me. Believe! Not fine until verified. I dont know if I am delusional, I dont believe it. I feel it but I am sometimes at fault for being influenced by how I am perceived some times. Thats my flaw. I can jokingly agree that I appear to be delusional and some people here wouldnt BAT an EYE at that BUT that ground is only stable from the stance taken upon it. Surfaces and bases. Evidence is not the base, what is it upon makes the point. I believe I agree with my bias sometimes, its not limiting enough to prevent the ability to attempt to objectively moralize.
I think that morality is objective. Doubting does nothing for truth but everything if its linked to belief--doubting can lead people in a direction to or from the truth despite beliefs though. Dual it out, the strongest prevails. Or quits willingly. Or dies with honor. Witness the truth and do nothing about it. Shame!
Doubting is not required in my delusions, but i can understand what you mean by believing its "healthy" Its fine, its natural, its normal. Perhaps, doubt exists for me always a little under belief, it pushes it up when im leaning too far in my own right...its a balance. I guess it is healthy afterall, would you look at that. I take back my haste in correcting you use of "healthy" in place for normal. That is not better, you had it right and wise.
Healthy is better...I cant deny that. Good stuff, chet!
it did grow on me, see my previous comment if you dare. My comment was a response to the quote I lead with and didnt read from that point until after posting. I see you predicted this might happen! Upon further reading, I am pleased with the synchronicity. Can it convince wonderer1? Is that all we must do? Ha!
Quoting Chet Hawkins I got ya good looking out!!!
Yeah I think I got scrambled. It isnt only that, but only that as a stand alone attribute is not effortless in itself. So ONLY that does imply that work is within that. What is required of selfless self awareness? Its takes more or less, depends.
I don't think believing the tree is there is necessary for seeing it. I see the tree there, and the question of whether or not it is really there (answering that question being the point where belief enters into the picture) doesn't arise, certainly doesn't have to arise.
You can say that seeing the tree presupposes believing it, (like the old adage "seeing is believing") and that is one way of speaking about what is happening; I just happen to see that way of speaking as redundant. I think believing comes into play when there is doubt and we decide to go with one possibility or another.
Sorry I missed your comment earlier. I think this is an important point: leaving aside faux-skepticism or global skepticism, which profess that we cannot be certain of anything at all, I think it is true that there are many things of which we can be certain. The distinction you seem to point to is that many people feel certain about things they obviously cannot be certain about.
I agree that exchange of and argument about the different ideas we may have are fun and also worthwhile for the endless task of clarification. I don't share your notion of "capital T Truth" because I think the idea has been egregiously abused throughout history, and also, I think that if we have no knowledge we cannot even begin to approach 'small-t truth" let alone the Capital-T chimera.
There's certainly that, but my point was more that I think many of us use the word 'know' while generally understanding that we might be wrong AND then there are people who don't use the word know (on a specific occasion or in general) but who think they are infallible in what they consider true.
We can cosmetically remove the word 'know' but easily continue with what CH is concerned about.
Adding to what you say we could equally fail to cosmetically remove the word 'know' from our lexicon while continuing to tread the spiritual path @Chet Hawkins seems primarily concerned with.
To me the main area the word know, in its propositional sense at least, seems inappropriate is the metaphysical.
I make no claim that I understand his schema. He laid out some information above, but I felt like it would take more time than I am willing right now to suss it out. That said, it seems to me that his communication often looks extremely certain. Things are often bluntly stated and if this was a different thread or I just came at those posts, I would likely assume that he is on the high end of thedamn well sure he is correct and sharing knowledge spectrum. Despite not saying he knows X or Y.. Presumably, behind the scenes he does not think he knows. My point being however that I don't think removing the words know and knowledge is either necessary or effective.
In addition, I don't think there is a problem with having moments of certainty. I don't think we can or should organize out minds that way. In part because it takes language so literal and final. I see language as expressive, ad hoc, context dependent and having all sorts of uses. Telling my kid it's a bad idea for them to keep a bottle of toxic pesticide on a shelf in their bedroom and that I know this is a bad idea, is to me not a problem. And I wouldn't spend a moment debating over whether I merely believe it's a bad idea. Yes, it may be possible that it's somehow not a good idea is some scenario I can't imagine right now, but I don't have time to unravel what seem like minute possibilities. I gotta make breakfast and go to work.
Also, I see language as eliciting things, not just containing things. Oh, that assertion might contain something that could possibly be false. Sure, but I wasn't - in some other scenario - presenting a portion of my Bible of unquestionable truth that we can mount on a wall. I was seeking to elicit things. If we look at truth models there are problems with language mirroring reality and correspondence theories of truth. Language is a very versatile set of tools - containing information being one, but only one of many.
And then, if we are to avoid claiming we know because we might not know then this includes judgments that one should never use know.
And the moment you get to where you are judging people as bad or immoral or evil for not using words the way you believe they should, you might as well be making a knowledge claim. I mean, you went that far. (you in the general sense, not you in the Janus sense)
Quoting Chet Hawkins They also may refuse to define the terms as such BECAUSE it wouldn't do justice to the difference between a few grains and a heap. Not a decision of laziness or failure to assuage the troubling ambiguity bubbling within our accuser but rather to emphasize that something deeper is going on. Something that a mere precisification of terms will not solve.
Quoting Chet Hawkins However, similar to a Sorities it will have the same solutions or attempts at one. Whether this is along esoteric mystical routes, semantic ones, or in adopting new novel forms of logical grammar/syntax.
Second, the idea of a limit seems to underwrite part of your thought process on 'knowledge' and such an analogy is what allows for or is inferred from holding knowledge as the greatest unreachable but one with which we can in principle. . . approach. Despite the intuitiveness of this, that I admit to, I can't help but feel that all an opponent would need to attack is the coherency of 'getting closer to the truth'. Even in ignorance of such a journey.
There are two approaches that come to mind with one being rather esoteric and the other that probably has semantic/psychological positions in greater philosophical literature ->
Meaning Equivalency: Basically, this position denies that any of the assertions you are making which 'seemed' to be distinctly different claims/descriptions/beliefs of the world were in fact not so. Specifically regarding ones which resist any or all attempts at justification and truth assessment even in principle. I have a feeling that one of the methodological methods, lingo, that would be used to get at this point would be to split up assertions into falsifiable and unfalsifiable. However, that may have its limitations and therefore I leave open what such a criterion even is. Suffice as to say once such a split is made between claims/beliefs which can be assessed versus those which are impossible allows us to then use this positions' patented semantic translator to render all such inaccessible beliefs as vacuously true/false about the world. Instead of allowing for each belief to independently be possible of being true or false this person's intention is to figure out how it is that huge swaths, if not all, such types of beliefs are all equally as vacuously true or false. Basically, its to give you your point about beliefs being closer to this objective thing as more true or false but only in the most vacuous sense possible so almost all such similar beliefs are similarly true/false. In the same manner as tautologies or contradictions, they don't say much but they are true/false strictly speaking.
Mental Reductivism: This position is simply to assert the meaninglessness of assertions regarding the outside world and our language as having any coherent connection to begin with. In principle, then, such a position would survive off of re-translating everything into purely observable/experiential language or throw it in the garbage bin of meaninglessness if it cannot be. Could such a position dissolve into Berkleyian subjective idealism of a sort or external world skepticism? Yes, but perhaps this is a cost worth being subjected to if it removes us from some unhealthy dichotomies. Basically, it doesn't even let your idea of 'getting closer to the truth' or this objective thing off the ground and denies that assertions about the external world have any meaning at all let alone truth values.
Quoting Bob Ross
Let me lazily link a article which might be of interest: https://thedangerousmaybe.medium.com/the-deconstruction-of-identity-derrida-and-the-first-law-of-logic-3a6246c42eb
The comment is also interesting.
Also Tones' comments in this thread strarting here https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/897006
Quoting Banno
:fear:
Exactly! As pointed out to me before this word only can get misused easily and sometimes it is incorrectly taken as derogatory.
Awareness requires more than just or only selfless self-awareness. In fact, selflessness is a delusion. I know I am overfond of that word, 'delusion'. But it is accurate on so many aspects of human behavior and belief that I am well justified in its continual use.
Still, colloquially, the way the word knowledge is used, it is only belief.
That is because THEY, others, as opposed to me, do not view the word 'knowledge' in a trying to be objective way, as partaking of perfection. But that causes a red flag in me.
That is because in social settings the word 'know' IS, whether THEY do it or not, whether THEY admit it or not, used to imply certainty, a known (ha ha) delusion. Many and most people love it when someone says they know something because that means they are then accountable, for instance.
There are those of us, the wise, that are accountable, even if we do not know. That is moral duty. But the unwise that believe themselves unaccountable because of a lack of awareness are just making excuses to suck as a person. Confidence allows us to approach mystery with responsibility rather than laziness.
So, as meant colloquially, knowledge is indeed ONLY belief.
It (knowledge) is wholly contained in the superset(beliefs) as an element.
Abuse is acceptable as a risk and then must be confronted by challenge.
Just because abuse exists is no reason to crawl under a rock and pretend to half-truths (your little t truth).
The big T truth is the only thing in life that really matters.
Yes, well, what we call reality is not reality. Physical reality is a shortsighted version of the actual reality, the capital T True reality.
We are embedded within the capital T reality. Its awareness and union is the only real goal of existence.
So metaphysics is a greater effort, and thus more worthy than physics is or could ever be. This truth does not diminish physics in any way. It shows it proper placement in actual value.
I agree. Confusion results when knowing and believing are conflated. We might not always in practice know the difference, that is we may not always know which we are doing, but they remain conceptually distinct, and losing that distinction is not going to help.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Abuse might be acceptable as a risk according to your personal beliefbut there is nothing in the fact that you believe that that gives me any warrant or motivation for believing it.
Little-t truths are not half-truths, they are truths relative to contexts, not absolute truths. There are no absolute truths, or at least none that are determinable by us.
The idea that big T-truth is all that matters is a dangerous ideathe very foundation of fundamentalism.
So, I reject your beliefs on ethical grounds, apart from the fact that there is no empirical or logical support for them. They cannot even be cited as inferences to any kind of best explanation. To me they are nothing more than rhetoric.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
I get that you believe that. I have some sympathy for those ideas, but I am not confident that it is anything more than a fantasy.
So, let's say you believe those things, and I don't. If you don't know anything more than I do, or if I don't know anything more than you doif it is all just different beliefs then there is nothing to argue about, and no being right or wrong about it.
That there is no determinable right or wrong when it comes to metaphysics is the situation as I see it. No amount of high-falutin' talk is going to change that.
Do you really believe that the question of whether or not we're hallucinating(whether or not the tree is really there) comes before belief?
All doubt concerning the veracity of our vision is belief based.
Yes, I do believe that the existence of the tree I see is not in question. If I decide to question it and then accept an answer, then, and only then, has belief come into play. In other words, of course all doubt concerning the veracity of our vision is belief based, but I am speaking about the situation prior to any doubt about the veracity of our vision.
As such, I at least gave a cursory examination into each of these academic issues you put forth here by way of a pittance of due diligence.
Quoting substantivalism
So, when we discuss the mechanism of a behavior or choice, we lose sight of the actually relevant parts of it, the dedication to meaning. Getting all bent out of shape about the physical aspects of belief is precisely the sort of failure in reasoning that I am trying to warn and take a stance against. I am not saying some aspects of that secondary effort are not worthy. They are.
But action and choice are related and often guided by belief. Belief is only just another choice. And belief has the nature of states and not truth. It can change and the breadth of its change is not really something to worry overmuch about. Effectively the degree or breadth of change is infinite, and probability is not involved. In other words, yes, if you want to create an algorithm to predict what choice will be made then probability is relevant to such a discussion. But I am only or stating that I am only concerned about what is in any way possible. And a default belief I have for that is that choice is infinitely powerful, despite the lessening probabilities of some extreme choice examples.
After reading your linked pages or skimming them to some extent, I believe my definition for belief is most closely shown by Interpretationism. That is to say, the mechanisms by which the behavioral patterns is accomplished DO NOT matter effectively to my understanding of belief.
And none of these belief definitions change IN ANY WAY the point that I am making about belief and knowledge. That is to say that such an issue only relates to the probability of awareness being true, as in a 1:1 correspondence with objective truth. Since we cannot actually know what is objective, i.e. the probability of a belief is never 100%, that means all knowledge, all beliefs, are partially in error. They are limits approaching 100% certainty, but never properly arriving at that probability.
So, no, it does not matter which definition amid these that I choose, as I understand it.
Quoting substantivalism
I mean I love the term precisification. It kind of underscores what I am talking about. What I am saying effectively is this: It does not matter how precise you make the guess at 'knowing' something, you cannot make it 100%. So the effort of precision is worthy, yes, but NOT RELEVANT to the claim I am making. The claim I am making can ONLY be wrong if the probability of 'knowing' can reach 100%, and it cannot.
So there is a conflation here that is typical of order-apology, too much fear. That is too much respect for precisification as a concept and not enough respect for the precision of the over-arching truth that truth itself is approachable but not arrivable. It is THAT distinction that is the one that matters.
If this makes me flamingmonkyism, I am fine with that.
Intent does not always reflect belief. Stated belief does not always reflect belief. Choice or action and consequences do not always reflect belief. So belief remains an implausible interpretation from every angle that it is viewed or considered. We all understand, unless we are being intentionally obtuse, that belief is something you fear is true, desire to be true, or that you reason is true based on sensory data and experience. These are the three paths of wisdom, fear, desire, and anger (being). It is more useful to approach belief that way than in any of the ways I read about on that link.
Quoting substantivalism
And my response to that would be 'who cares?'. The reason I am left with or prone to this response is that you made no argument as to why that is a 'bad' thing, but, presumably you would not have mentioned it unless it is a 'bad' thing. What about Sorities solutions is 'bad'?
Quoting substantivalism
And I sympathize with this problem you mention. But, I offer that we are not as powerless or lost in this process as you imply. In fact, this is a response indicative to me of a defensiveness that is not advisable.
The fact is that although perfection seems unreachable and may be, we can indeed detect and measure progress towards it. The means of that demonstrable testing is a concept that like belief will not be easy for anyone to agree on. The fear types especially, and most people that call themselves openly philosophers are academic fear types, are prone to this mistake, this error. That error is not realizing that happiness is indeed the consequence of alignment with objective moral truth and by degrees. Therefore if we begin to get better at measuring genuine happiness we will solve a lot of this issue, assuming the certainty needers can back off realizing that certainty is delusional and therefore not a goal per say.
Notice I say genuine happiness because joy is often conflated with happiness and Hedonism with the GOOD, when that is not accurate in any sense.
Each virtue in the list of discrete virtues does offer a happiness component to total genuine happiness, but, these often become detrimental to the chooser. That is because the pursuit of a single or a few virtues still offers positive discreet feedback for those virtues only. That then is the only happiness some people know of. They confuse that with genuine happiness perhaps understandably. They have simply never known better. The sample case for this revelation is seen in many stories where the dyed-in-the-wool cynic or dark intended anti-hero slowly accepts the more vulnerable good oriented culture they are in. Specific examples include Philipa Georgio of Discovery and Negan of The Walking Dead. Real life examples also abound.
When you say an opponent would only need to attack the coherency of this idea or assertion set, I disagree. All arguments that talk overmuch about coherency are based in order-apology, fear side thinking only. As such they run into the limit I refer to in all cases. Therefore, effectively, no argument can be coherent. All arguments are delusional. All arguments are beliefs, only. If THEY think they have found a coherent one, that is even more certainly a delusion than if they remain in doubt.
Anger has the intuition that logic will yield to it and to desire in certain ways. The thing is, a dedicated logic or fear path person will never admit to the coherency of such anger and desire side arguments. But the Truth is that reality is constructed such that its structure, its Truth, is split into these three approaches. Therefore finally, it IS logical for logic itself to give way to the final union with anger and desire. As such, indeed, fear side approaches do intersect anger and desire at precisely one point in intent space, perfection. That is where each of these three asymptotes actually merge.
So, these arguments you suggest, and I realize you sympathize with the other paths, are themselves indicative of a fear-side failure. When I see the word 'coherent' or any variation on it. or the word 'knowledge', or the word 'fact' on THAT side of the argument, I know I am dealing with an order-apologist, someone who does not properly value anger and desire. Further, since most such types do not realize that logic and thought is only fear, they do not realize or admit that fear is what is causing their failure.
Quoting substantivalism
This position is the classical fear oriented order apologist failure in understanding as related above.
Quoting substantivalism
And this position is even worse. It is just Nihilism effectively. Even a cursory examination of meaning shows a fairly grand 'wisdom of the masses' effect. That is not just a throw away. It means that although all of THEM are partially wrong, they are partially right as well, at the core, in some way. This is the intuition of mass, of anger. It is understandable that fear types would not be comfortable with this assessment or assertion and yet it will stand based on mass appeal. So, the something that 'wins' must at least not deny this set of intuitions at its core. I am hiding in the term 'core' the eventual belief set that will indeed be married up with 'getting closer to the truth' by other less denying fear types. That is what we would have when, in the fullness of time, such a matter is ... better ... resolved by all three paths, as it must be.
That's when one's initial basic worldview is forming. One is acquiring and accruing belief about themselves and the world around them. Prior to doubting the veracity of one's own vision, one completely and totally trusts their physiological sensory perception(eyes in this case). During these times prior to that awareness... seeing is believing. What I mean is that one does not doubt their own eyes until they become that they are sometimes untrustworthy, by then we're operating under a belief system.
When we begin looking at the world, we believe that there are things all around us, despite the fact that we cannot articulate nor formulate our own experiences. It's impossible for a bike rider to swerve in order to avoid an obstacle that they do not believe is there. Belief is baked into all experiences.
Incorrect and obviously so. Confusion results when people claim to know and they really do not (which is every time they make that claim).
Your use of 'in practice' shows your clear nod to Pragmatism, immoral fear side failing. The conceptual distinction disappears until each chooser is allowed or required to understand the justifying evidence. But these choosers CANNOT understand all such evidence. So you are setting them up for yet another faith based let down. Granted, over time the practical, pragmatic approach has yielded some fine results and I am not denying that. The discipline of not saying we know is wise, even for these pragmatists. They can still speak in terms of greater awareness and then WHY that is so, in other words show your work.
You can look at every script ever written and see the mistake easily. In every single one it's what someone 'knows' that is untrue that is the problem. It would greatly behoove them all to erase this false level of certainty from their beliefs. In my own real life the first thing I do when I am solving a software or hardware issue is to disregard what I think I know in the most immediate sense. As in not all the base awarenesses, but the specific bits or assertions of awareness that I would write down as probable. I always get assigned the tasks no one else can solve, because what they know is not correct, and I do not assume what they know is. So I, often alone, can solve it. I have been ordered off tasks where that method was being used by me and then called back and that with me having to tell the CEO or interested parties that I would be assuming what they know was not true and if they wanted me to work on it they would have to allow for that. In almost every case my original assessment was correct. What they knew was the problem and was not true. It was not all the time, but by far most of the time. So, even the practical implications for what I am suggesting are wise. They are wiser than leaving things as they are, unless people begin to have MUCH MORE diligence about what they say they 'know'. foolishly and or what the word 'know' means.
Quoting Janus
Well that sounds horrible! It's as if my acumen is deemed to be chopped liver! I like chopped liver actually. So yummy! But that is the expression.
I also added that abuse 'must be confronted by challenge'. That's what I am doing here. The word 'know' and all its derivatives are abused regularly to mean 'certainty', which is absurd.
Quoting Janus
Actually we agree on the last sentence. That means that the first sentence is just wrong. A truth relative to a context is a state and not a truth at all. States are effectively meaningless although awareness of them is not. They cannot be known. The flux of reality does not advise knowing in any case. It advises constant vigil, constant effort towards awareness. That is my point.
Quoting Janus
Yes, truth is dangerous. I like it. But you are flipping the script there, without realizing it. It is I that am counseling to avoid the certainty of fundamentalism, not you. I in fact am so cautious about approaching fundamentalism that I advise we presume to know nothing, and only accept statements of increasing awareness of something. That is much wiser and so your point was backwards.
Quoting Janus
You rejection is based on your backwards assessment of my proximity vs yours to fundamentalism. But since you do not agree we end up rejecting each other's beliefs on ethical grounds. War it is. I am ok with that. Down with the infidels!
Quoting Janus
And you never will be, because knowing is impossible, and unwise.
Some fantasies are BETTER than what we think we know. But I am not advocating abandonment of plausible and probable tests. These are still just based on awareness and some awareness is better than others and we should judge that. But in no case is it certain as in 'knowledge'. It is only a state of awareness and states are not truth, not objective.
Quoting Janus
Yes, there is because I say so. If I am willing to argue, you have no choice but to or concede the point. I am not saying that to be aggressive or bullying. I am saying that because aggressive bullies exist. Might might not make right, but as intuition says, there is a certain rightness to might. It partakes of SOME rightness, by definition, competence on a certain level, mass effect.
Further, and much more importantly, genuine happiness is an extant and demonstrable measure of right vs wrong. It is in fact the only real one in the universe. So we DO have a means of measuring your beliefs vs mine.
Quoting Janus
Well, yes, this is the stance of the incoherent champions of coherence. They do not believe that anger and desire offer as much truth as fear does. I get it. It's hard to see or feel past what you are. But each of us is capable of all three paths and then the fourth path that is an integration of all three others. So we can indeed be deluded into assertions and beliefs that partake too heavily of one path or another and that is infinitely more common than not. But wisdom also exists and it means not devaluing any of the three paths, but instead supporting higher instantiations of all paths by admitting to all of them. And that admittance denies the need for determination -> certainty.
As usual, you, an order-apologist demand certainty or 'determinable' right and wrong. Too bad that that is not the way reality works. You are allowed to demand these things but you will never be realized in that demand. You have to take truth in part on faith.
I don't demand determinable, metaphysical rights and wrongs, I observe that such are impossible.
There are determinable rights and wrong in the everyday empirical context, and that's all I've been pointing out.
You have descended into posturing rhetoric, have offered absolutely no cogent arguments or explanations of your beliefs, and I'm not interested in trying to engage with that kind of approach, so I think we are done here.
Virtually total respect. But
One question. I am compelled by your presentation. And not just above. But why is "anger" the 3rd? presumably corresponding to reason and being, the latter of which you anointed with parentheses, or suspended. (I know you've explained it. I'm inviting you to abandon it or express any new openings since you began this dialectic journey)
For instance why not just two? In addition to your e.g.s, Desire covers "convention" "belonging" Fear covers "revelation" "authority". Maybe Reason falls under one or the other. Maybe reason is a category of belief. Rather than anger.
Again. I'm sincererely asking.
Or, if anger is a legitimate 3rd, and not a (poetic) attachment (the preceding parentheses were definitely a detainment), then how does reason (and being) correspond to that category? And why not a 4th for reason?
This deals with a situation where professionals have failed to solve something and it arrives on your desk. In such a situation I would be on high alert (so to speak) that conventional approaches are probably not working and something new, lateral, unexpected is going on or is needed. I would be in a more exploratory state than when I reach for the soap on the soap holder in the shower. Or when I see the back of the head of a blond woman - my wife - sitting in her chair in the living room. I'll just reach out: I'll just start talking to my wife before walking around to see if another blond woman broke into my apartment. I happen not to use the word 'know' a lot in my communication. I'd be more likely to say I'm sure. Which does not mean to me that I can't possibly be mistaken, but it means that I consider it extremely likely that X is the case. I have degrees of certainty and for practical purposes I am not questioning a lot of things, each day. I choose to question in response to indications something is interesting, not what it seems, failing to be accurate and so on. Then also there is a range of issues, I keep exploring. But a lot of things every day, I assume are the case. This doesn't mean I think I couldn't possibly be wrong.
One reason to not fussing with many things each day is because they are very much like taking a jump shot in basketball. I am rising up in the air, my opponent is trying to block me....and I don't start reassessing things 'perhaps my right hand should be placed more towards the top of the ball, perhaps I should draw the ball further behind my head. Those are issues that could come up in practice, when being coached, if something has gotten worse in my %ages, if I have decided to improve and want to retrain and so on. Or, heck, not being a pro player and just wanted to enjoy a weekly pick up game, I'll be exploring other things that are more important for me to improve outside that game.
Enforcing a kind of 'not knowing, not being sure' in a lot of my daily moments would actually reduce my skills.
I'd also want to avoid infinite regresses: is this the right moment to try to improve my shot; do I have the right information to make that evaluation; am I actually playing basketball; what are the phenomenological differences between fantasizing, dreaming and actually playing basketball and how certain am I which one this is: is my sense of the % of moments/actions a good heuristic: should I develop a logically arrived at heuristic or base my choices to explore on intuition or some combination; was that the right question to ask.....and so on until they are closing the gym and ask the b-player lying on his side ratiocinating on the court to go home.
Different beliefs on my part get categorized differently. Some I consider knowledge, but I do not consider knowledge infallible.
I don't consider language just a container for truth. Now that's categorized as knowledge so I cannot notice counterexamples, must defend that belief the to death, must never listen to someone who is questioning it - of course in some instances I will not want to discuss whether I exist. That's not something I will allow a toll booth operator to question with my participation. Going to work, find a philosophy forum guy, gotta go. If the toll booth operator thinks there is small fire in the back undercarriage of my car and I think he's wrong, I'll probably still get out to check.
Language is also eliciting things, prioritizing, instigating.......
I've been around people who qualify what they say, avoid stating things with certainty...and they are so damn sure it oozes out of their pores. Or they don't come off like that, but for all their supposed open mind, and their ability to entertain alternate ideas, they never change their minds. They would easily admit they can't be sure, or they don't know. They can say those words and even mean them honestly. But it doesn't really matter. Nothing really gets at the beliefs they have except perhaps when catastrophic events slam them out of their beliefs.
I know people who do use the words knowledge and know who have changed their beliefs about what they consider knowledge. Because they don't think those word indicate absolute perfection and infallibility. And many of these people don't have to go through catastrophic failures to move off positions.
I remember working in an alternative preschool that did not like negative words. So, if a child did something 'wrong' they would say to the child that their action wasn't in harmony with the other children or some such.
Well, lack of harmony judgments went into children's bodies and did that same thing as the words the school was supposedly avoiding. Words just being sounds, and the children picking up with dynamic regardless. Now a different sound meant what they did was wrong.
So, I could never abandon anger. It all starts in balance and only we (and all choosers) disrupt that balance with delusions. In the context of this thread belief is only one form of choice.
So, there is not real first, and that may seem to undo what I said last paragraph. Since we do not know what reality is, we can only each add conjecture and then try to test if that matches with all empirical data. My model does, is my opinion. I cannot prove it because no one can prove anything, really. But it matches even more what reality is than so-called science does to date. That is to say, I have no problem with the scientific method as long as we realize that confirmation of a tendency in nature is not proof, finally. It is pattern matching. And sure, pattern reliability. But that reliability never goes to 100 percent.
So, on with the explanation.
Anger is not the 3rd. None of the emotions are ordered, as they are in balance. There is never really a point in time that does not contain all three emotions, and only those three. I think I did explain earlier, but, in case I did not, Fear is properly defined as a excitable state that arises as a result of matching a pattern from one's past. This energy can be something that is in need of being calmed or it can be something that, due to the comfort of the match and what it means, our awareness of certain patterns as 'safe' (delusional) we actually stoke that feeling of excitement. In all cases thus, fear is associated with the temporal dimension we refer to as the past.
The patterns can only be matched if we are aware of them. So, this seeking awareness is fear in action. It is the first rung of the fear action/reaction. We become aware, It is obvious that the state of being must already be present to seek awareness. But fear is involved in a more intimate way than that. If we picture a physical blob of tissue or matter of any kind it is impacted by its environment. A layer forms of interaction between substances. That layer will itself differentiate into hard pack or toughness, sensor stuff, and interactive stuff. These are always the three splits and the correspond to anger, fear, and desire respectively.
The sensor route is the route we are taking now. That is the path of fear. Eventually the blob becomes aware of the pressure or pain or whatever stimulus is acting on it. A good example in the human case is sitting on a chair with a weave. That weave is transferred to the blob of tissue and whether we move or don't that pattern is shown there for a time. Of course humans find it funny or annoying and BOTH of these responses are fear, an excitable state arising from matching a pattern from one's past. If we we such a blob that we sat on chairs like that so often that it became a sovereign pattern to us, we would indeed evolve to be tougher and or sculpt our bodies to interact in some premium way with the chair. It is inevitable.
The second rung of fear's actions, fear's virtue set, is preparedness. We reduce our excitement to becalm ourselves by adding patterns to the first pattern that reduce the danger to being. We put down a buffering towel to reduce the effect, the pattern impact, of the chair on our essence. This is preparedness. It is also a loyalty thing, a connection. We have connected with the idea of an identity to protect at this time. Our awareness has congealed upon the self. Fear is the origin of identity. It establishes the delusional border between the us and the them. So fear is of course the source of all bigotry. That line is delusional. But it is useful to protect the self, so it is both delusional and useful. We are not gaining awareness and preparing AFTER we encounter patterns in case we meet them again. So now we have this thing, the pattern and its recurrence. We 'realize' in being that patterns repeat because of memory. Memory is pattern storage. Memory is a construct made from fear. The mechanisms that match memories to sensory input are fear path mechanisms. Eventually, everything we call 'thought' and then of course all logic, is only fear manifested.
The third and final rung is the pattern we prefer to continue without alarm. Such a pattern resonates with something not quite beyond the awareness of the essence, our emerging thought. So that is the call of perfection, extant, from all of reality. This is desire. And since it is preferred when such a pattern emerges we relish it, we wallow in it, as it is wanted. This is the cause of the singular consequence emotion known as joy. It is NOT full genuine happiness. But it is a type of fear, yes fear. It loops and engages instead of trying to becalm itself. It is important to understand each of these three responses of fear.
Now let's re-examine fear. If we fold anger, which is being in essence back into fear and combine them, we get the blob trying to sense and remember patterns. That is awareness, the first fear reaction. If we add more fear to that fear, the memory or the sensory data as it happens, that is fear-fear or the second fear reaction, preparedness. If we add desire to fear we then can have the third fear reaction of joy or even something as banal as excitement, just in general. And look at what that does. Rather than just being, just reacting, we now might seek action, instead of reaction.
Action is the realm of anger.
Our joy filled blob has advanced. It is now 'leaping' into situations, remaining aware, preparing, but, finding favorites and pursuing them. The first action of anger is to challenge the self to overcome this fear at every opportunity. The fear is seen, perhaps rightly so, as weakness. It must overcome. But fear is also appreciated. It recognizes the patterns and orders our lives. Categories are formed from fear. We have structure. But the blob needs to become aware of all, prepare for all, and find joy in all. So the blob must become tough. The truth becomes manifest. More patterns, more toughness, and more joy also. So this desire infusion of fear, joy leads to desire infusion of anger, challenge. Innocent exploration of all leads to weaknesses discovered and addressed. We throw ourselves at everything.
But then anger comes in a second wave. Anger at desire. We have become reckless. Perhaps some of what we identify with, other individuals, are lost. That pattern is something we become aware of slowly but it has seeped in. Now anger pushes back against desire. And the result is a balance. It is not the balance of fear, as that was observation and awareness, anger infused fear. This is anger infused anger. And just like anger was an inaction push into fear by way of observation, as opposed to participation, now anger is against anger. So we have peace, calm, and a very balanced point of view. This is also where laziness comes from, as we can go too far with this effect.
Finally we realize that the call of something is still out there. That something is perfection. It makes us restless and the power of desire is calling. But having gotten to a peaceful balance we are afraid of this call now. So this last step for anger is the fear infusion. We begin to choose more properly. We go back to leaping in, but only after more than simple observation. The prospective patterns are now placed more thoroughly into categories of right for us or wrong for us. This is judgment. This is fear infused anger. It prepares us like nothing else for the future.
And now we must face the future. We must 'give in' to the call of perfection as we realize via judgment that anger should not just squelch desire. It should use judgement to determine when to leap in. At first our identity helps us achieve the mass needed to overwhelm fear and we again leap in. But we realize that something can be done in most cases. Action can be taken to encourage us to jump in correctly or to repair damage when it happens. We have begun to admit in others the call of desire and we sympathize. We understand that the pattern called them to do the things that might have hurt or slowed them. So we help. We support. We want to do it, so that we can all arrive. This is patterned. We have to know what to do. We must separate support from its opposite patterns. So this is fear infused desire.
We have the basis now for much faster success. More of us can leap in because some of us will show the support pattern. We have memory and judgment, perspective. From this we determine there is an image we wish to show. That image is not us, but we can show it some. We want to. Its fairly close to this perfection thing that calls us. We feel some matches in our showing. But there are many non matchings in this showing. Who cares! Keep showing what we can. And thus deception is born in the pursuit of image showing, or achievement. Fake it until you make it! It's a law of reality itself. This is desire infused desire. We have realized that too much desire makes you only supportive and not exultant. Some of us prefer not being the martyr but showing off as if we were nearer to perfection than we really are. This is wanted so badly that deception is common. And amid that truth is a deeper truth, self-deception. Such types must pretend not to see that they are only showing. They realize if they act as if they are not just showing, but that they acting as if they are fully realized, others will have a better chance to pattern match them with perfection. And it works. It works so well that they begin to believe it of themselves. These are the winners of the world, that show success and work like hell to do anything to deceptively show.
Finally, we come to the last permutation of fear, anger, and desire. No longer is desire overwhelming the self to show false images. Now, authenticity is demanded. This is more balance, Anger has come back. Anger is demanding that pretense is erased. This has many effects. Anger infused desire puts off desire but the effect is we must dig to know the real authentic path to perfection. We must BE right in the show. So this type will wallow in its showing of perfection. This is art. This is beauty. But this wallowing shows such types over and over again that they can glimpse perfection, but they demand of themselves to be authentic and they are not perfection. So that truth is underscored to them again and again amid their wallowing. They are the most likely to commit suicide.
These are the 9 types of the Enneagram. They start properly at type 5 and proceed all the way around to type 4.
Notice the strange gap between 5 and 4. We have the past of fear stretching all the way through the permutations of emotion to the final extent of the future types. This is the 'open circle' part of my model, not recognized in the enneagram itself. Further the Enneagram does not claim that fear, anger, and desire are the basis of reality. I do. But as a model the Enneagram IS INDEED the basis of reality. There is none better (so far).
The Enneagram was conceived from a search amid meaning taking all the best examples of wisdom throughout the world and combining them. There was the way of the monks, the yogis, and the fakirs. These were taken loosely to be fear, anger, and desire. And George Gurdijeff then started what is best described as a cult called the fourth way. He realized that combining all of these into one was the real wisdom.
My model is a multi-dimensional extension of the model of Claudio Naranjo and ultimately Gurdijeff's but it is so different as to be merely informed by them, rather than truly an extension.
I have found that this model answer to every single aspect of reality in every way. That is my model and not JUST the Enneagram or its assumptions/assertions. Compared to the wisdom of the Enneagram the Big 5 personality system is a colossal fear-sided joke. I can critique every aspect of its solidity as just certainty seeking fear-side failure precisely similar to the attitudes most prevalent against me in this thread.
Quoting ENOAH
No. You miss the essence.
Fear is the past, is order, is the limiting force in all of reality erecting delusional barriers where none exist.
Desire is the future, chaos, the limitless force of perfection's call. This is evolution's source. It is delusional in the sense that desire seems to run in all directions at once and yet morality and the GOOD, perfection are objective. This means there is really only one path. From any location in intent space we see a differing path to perfection, a single point. This deludes us into the belief that morality is subjective.
But anger is the cause of physical reality. It pushes back against fear and desire both to achieve balance. This balance is being in essence. It combines the limiting force of fear with the limitless force of desire into the single eternal moment we call NOW. Anger is being, is essence, is mass itself.
Quoting ENOAH
Hopefully that answer helps.
Quoting ENOAH
It is a delusion, of course.
Fear constructs, all thought, is delusional. But anger pushes them back into balance. Re-read this thread in that context. ;)
Of course all three emotions interact with each other. But the physical realm, ALL OF IT, is the realm of now and therefore the realm of anger (being-in-essence). You are trying, struggling, to conflate the fear inclusions so that you can reason it all out. Only your past and your memory allow this. Fear is an artifact of order and always the past. If your fear informs your being that this pattern sensed by the sensors embodied in anger are bad and to be feared, you may run. But that run is finally a desire of what to do from now and into the near future. The impetus is many fold. But fear was the basis. All three emotions act in concert to create the opportunity of choice, the enactment of free will.
Free will is REQUIRED of any sensible model of reality. The balance needed is such that even a tiny iota of will is all that is required to move you. If it were too much off of that pure balance free will or choice and action could not exist. It is a 'proof' of sorts for free will.
Anger and the present are the motivational basis of this balance. Anger is thus closer to truth than fear or desire are. But anger is prone to its sin, laziness, as discussed above.
Then you are thinking about things wrongly, is my assertion. And that false confidence born of fear and not anger properly, WILL cost you.
Quoting Bylaw
Incorrect. As a volleyball coach I know that my players are being trained as well as might be. But my knowledge is flawed. Their knowledge is flawed. The game is a flawed construction. Being sure via fear is delusional and will cause great troubles. Instead I coach confidence. You have trained. You have listened. You have practiced. You have played many times. Resolve within yourself to take on all challengers and see what you can do. Certainty is a dread enemy. It is the player who thinks they know. It is the coach who thinks they know. It is the game that pretends to be the best. Self-delusional lies are not wisdom.
Instead, stand. Decide to face the unknown. You must push back fear that you are not enough, that you do not belong. You did the things. You mean it. Now fight. Show the universe that you are not afraid, that you are not so foolish as to 'know'. You are open to new things, new awareness. You are not decided, because that would be stupidity.
Quoting Bylaw
Exactly! You speak of fear unbridled or desire unbridled. Only anger brings the balance. Natural athletes are usually anger types. They are balanced. I see this all the time. The fear types are in their heads and some form of old school smack has to happen to get them out of there. If they do not get out of their heads, they WILL fail. Trust to the body's memory. Practice. Stand to the foe. Engage with confidence in your training. The pattern of fear was there, in the past, in the practices. It was either better or worse for your team than the other. The pattern of the day and the location matter. The pattern of the player's decisions to retain lessons matters greatly. But if they are certain, then they will lose. I've seen it hundreds of times. A great team can lose to someone willing to stand no matter what. The fierceness of anger will destroy fear until fear cheats. That is why there are rules to games. But life's rules are laws of nature only. And nature allows deception as a path towards perfection. The fake it til you make it step. It is supposed to be brief. And anger balances the desire such that finally one is no longer faking it either.
We can learn amid doing, but, for sports and other imminent actions, like war, there is less of this and more of only confidently, despite all odds, acting as your patterns of training have prepared you.
Quoting Bylaw
I know (ha ha). So you already agree with my point, really. Why waste more time. Knowledge is only belief. It is belief that we have decided is true because 1) we are afraid that it is true, 2) we want it to be true, or 3) sensory and memory data within reality (being, experience) seems to show it to be true.
But nothing in the statement 'knowledge is only belief' is wrong. Knowledge partakes of an objective character. It is at least mistaken as meaning that by most. Thus such terms are ill advised in general.
Quoting Bylaw
You're right. Its also a container for deception/delusion. Will you now defend that?
Quoting Bylaw
I admit that sentence was too ... something ... for me to understand.
Quoting Bylaw
Operating on belief is wise. Operating amid certainty is not. Operating within confidence is wise. Confidence and certainty are NOT the same thing. They arise from different emotions,
Quoting Bylaw
Yes and all are beliefs and choices, some of them to delude; and some to promote more resonance with wisdom and truth.
Quoting Bylaw
Even then you cannot tell. Catastrophe comes with damage. So it is unfair to judge so much after that at least for a space in time.
And yes, anger confidence holds its truths more aggressively than fear certainty does. Fear crumbles in the face of anger. It must cheat usually to win. That is a matter of numbers or skill or some structure that denies being in essence. Fear almost always places a false separation in the equation. Country borders. Identity as an ego. Rules of man. These barriers do not really exist. But fear has CUT OFF its awareness with knowing. And hell is always the result. The same value is had by awareness alone without the Pragmatic cut off.
Quoting Bylaw
Neither do I. As long as knowledge is assumed to only be belief, I am good. But, I caution against the use of the word, because so many others ARE NOT GOOD. They don't get it. And thus, the word knowledge is like a bad drug, convincing people that having it is good, and that if you have it, you are done, you are good, that there is no more work needed.
Quoting Bylaw
Inept teachers make wrong adjustments all the time. They should do better. My mother and father told me that if I stepped in poison ivy I would 'break out'. It sounded awful and I was an extremely careful child in the woods until I figured out that they were foolishly exaggerating. They did not know. They were aware that sometimes contact with that plant's resins can cause a skin itch that spreads. If they had said that and not some idiomatic nonsense it would have helped.
You also make my point for me. It is VERY IMPORTANT that all advice and learning be balanced. Wisdom must be used to include fear, anger, and desire; all in balance with EVERY communication. Earning greater awareness is always a better expression than knowing is. That is all.
Because if my hand finds not soap there I can pull my head from the water and check. Or must I always be treating every situation as completely up in the air? Or does the specific situation affect how much I consider things up in the air?Quoting Chet HawkinsExactly. So, I get to trust. I get to act as if it is knowledge in many situations. Of course it might not be correct. And I am a natural athlete, while we're on the topic. In practice I may focus on a habit, a kind of physical assumption and tweak it, but in a game, I trust my body. I act as if I know.Quoting Chet Hawkins
Sure. I agree with the point but the prescription.Quoting Chet HawkinsI think 'only' is wrong. I think its a poor heuristic. I do fine without that word. I remain unconvinced that changing my words the way you think I should is necessary or an improvement.Quoting Chet HawkinsOf course it's also that. But it's not just a container for truth or assertions or beliefs, it is something else often also and someone only these other things/functionsQuoting Chet HawkinsNo, language is not always a conveying of beliefs. It can be also or only an act. An eliciting.Quoting Chet HawkinsI think you give too much power to your particular interpretation of words. Our minds are not all the same. You are acting as if you know what happens when everyone uses those words. You are acting like those words mean one think and you know what it is and you know what happens in other minds than your own when they use those words. I think language and minds are vastly more complicated and variedQuoting Chet Hawkins
But I feel they were making the same cosmetic mistake that you are.
I agree. But that is because that cost is not yet apparent nor will be, necessarily. After all it's actually there already in past uses between the two emotions. But, usually, in these matters I do not have to be the one to say, 'I told you so'.
Anger does not really need to be right until it gets too far into enneatype 1; and even that is just an overexpression of that type. The certainty thing is fear talking, fear talk.
It's ok though. I do not know how to move the bar forward between us because we are both mostly on the same page and only disagree about 'only'.
Quoting Bylaw
If it is not the certainty part of knowing that you are advocating for, and instead only that this 'knowledge' thing is 'special' in some way, then what way is it special? To me the idea that we (anyone) should credit anyone's knowing with something more impressive than only any other belief is dangerous and so prone to error that I almost can't believe I am having to defend the notion.
There are indeed sources I trust more than others. But with ALL of them, my discipline is to replace their word 'know' in all its forms with 'believe' or 'claim to be aware of this as likely'. It has served me so well in terms of efficient tracking of problems in almost all cases that I had decided and maintain that it is useful for others to adopt that strategy as a part of general wisdom.
The trouble is that when most people say 'know' most others that have not already come to doubt their knowledge incorrectly assume that matter is settled. So, the mere assertion that knowledge is something other than belief is dangerous and almost always wrong at least in some particular way. The trouble IS NOT that Pragmatism correctly identifies a merely useful short-cut that is a 70-85% solution for the trouble at hand. The trouble is that most people stop caring or thinking when that word is used and they forgo the other 30-15% that is where the real value is. Not knowing as an assertion is clearly a superior paradigm to live by. The use of proper language to express that awareness is also a superior paradigm to live by.
Quoting Bylaw
This does not involve language. So it misses the troublesome point.
But to not avoid the specificity of the question I would answer, 'there is always a better way to do anything than what has been tried before.' Therefore although confidence is still in place, especially in a familiar environment like your own shower, the truth is more subtle and wonderful both. That is that 'no plan survives contact with the enemy (reality as ever-changing in states, not in truths). So, the correct doubt comes in remaining confident BY always optimizing your actions. This means confidence IS NOT properly blithely assuming your senses/memory/expectations are ever right, but including a mitigating balance to every action AS IF any assumptions are wrong. And knowledge is mostly just an assumption.
Quoting Bylaw
No. There is no 'understood scenario'. Each time your woman complains the last thing you should do is use certainty/knowing to unravel the current state. In fact, history will often serve you not at all in solving the situation, and neither will appeals to logic. There are exceptions, of course. But 'everything is a minefield' as an attitude will work best. Anger kind of 'knows' (ha ha) that its you against the universe, especially with your 'best' friends and family.
Quoting Bylaw
Ugh. That is not 'knowing'. That is the inertia of intuition. You are giving fear credit for anger's value. It is not uncommon.
Quoting Bylaw
Whereas I think it's addition to the statement is rather precisely the point. Unless I know (ha ha) the justification of the other, their knowledge is best treated only as belief. I do not even have to have experienced them for a long time to understand that as true. It's always true.
Quoting Bylaw
This is another strange wording that I cannot quite follow. Yes, that is MY point. Knowledge is not a container for truth. It is a belief (only) and that means without awareness of every aspect of the other party's justification, it is best only treated as such. It really is not too hard at all to pick apart what someone thinks they 'know', usually. And that picking apart process should not be so easy, if knowledge meant something past belief. Truth cannot be destroyed.
Quoting Bylaw
That is wildly incorrect to me. Language, even being, is nothing but a set of beliefs, choices. Any act is a conveying of beliefs ONLY. That is to say all aspects of that act, any act, are reducible to beliefs.
Quoting Bylaw
Yes, perhaps, because power in this sentence only means belief. But it is not for lack of attempted best efforts towards justification.
Quoting Bylaw
This is all wrong. Truth is objective, not subjective. It matters not what opinions are offered, truth does not change. Knowledge changes, so it is not truth. We agree on that I think.
But the goal here is to approach truth more properly. That is not best accomplished by ever presuming to know. In humility alone we demur. In language we should show that acquiescence to belief only, and although we may add the words to describe our justification of belief(s) the short cut statements of knowing are ill advised. The false confidence this inspires in many is too dangerous to have the use of the word 'know' to be wise.
Quoting Bylaw
Cosmetic? Hilarious! Well, I have tried to convey the importance of this issue. There are many others in language and action that also share in this perfection assumed stance that is always wrong. And it does not matter if they say 'we know (ha ha) it's not perfection' OK, then, SPEAK that way.
I do not eschew fear. Far from it. I encourage fear. It is awareness, preparedness, and joy; all three.
But the point you miss is that they must be in balance. That means the certainty must go away and things that make us feel too much comfort via certainty are immediately and eternally suspect. Increasing discomfort is wise, because it means we are more humbly aware of the need to be strong in all ways.
I also do not shrink from the messiness of life. I walk into mystery with confidence, many strategies in place to tackle unexpected things, like having what someone 'knows' be wrong. like it always is. It's not a struggle to prove I am right. It is a struggle to explain that we all are always wrong to some degree. We should not delude ourselves or others in this process into any sort of fear calming show for certainties' sake.
But I find little value in trying to parse the chaos and complexity of human life in terms of simplified concepts like fear, anger and desire. And of all delusions I think free will the most persistent and pernicious, based on the fear-based illusion of autonomy as it seems to me to be.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Understood and agree.
I'll admit I'm still pondering the role you place on anger. Alhough now your reasoning is clear, I am not as yet persuaded. I'll explain why, though in fairness to you, I (anticipatorily) don't blame you for not liking it. Your reasoning, I don't disparage. I even found it to be profound and interesting. Once again there is also latent, admirable, drama or poetry in your explanations.
But your focus on anger, though impactful, doesn't have a function in my current narrative of thinking. And I also don't blame you for explaining that if your hypotheses are reasonable and moving, then I am compelled to fit them into my narrative; it is otherwise, to sum up, cowardly, immoral.
However, I am leaning on desire, manifesting in a special way as the driving of the movements to belief. Because I agree with you that we can't prove anything and that reality is unknowable (or at least as worded below), I am wondering whether, difficult as it is a pill to swallow, the nearest we get to truth or reality (both, so-called) or "knowledge " (presumably thereof) is how a "conlusion" functions. All the possibilities are driven or "desire" manifesting in experience. And belief is ineluctably tied into that movement too. Whether we care to admit it or not, we weigh (the) things (competing for expression as experience) (sometimes imperceptibly, other times seemingly deliberately) then settle upon a conclusion (believe), based on how that conclusion functions. For e.g, but not limited to, does it satisfy an emotion, a bond, an organic drive, reason, logic, convention, the law, etc.
You are blameless for pointing out to me how your categories, fear, desire, anger, balance, and so on (though we arrive at the same station) stand up to the test of reason etc. But nevertheless. Your protestations, if examined honestly, are based upon the deficiency in the use you have for the categories proposed by me. And I'm not complaining. Good for you.
If you object that your rejection of an illogical position is not based upon the function of its conclusion, but upon the dysfunctional process. I'd say yes, function is the deciding factor all the way through. Nothing else in the end brings a conclusion to belief, not even some central being we call you or I.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
I agree with you. But tell me, how do we know we don't know what reality is when we don't know what reality is *?
*(to ever discern, or to have accurately discerned in that, now, hypothetical, first place)? But that might be a question beyond the scope of the OP.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Like I said, I now understand, and you presented it with admirable punch. My primary original question, "why link anger with reason," is profoundly answered. Just as for Kant or Heidegger, those who argue in favor of your constructions have found them fitting, and settled for now. And they will go on constructing along side you, varying yours for perfect fit with their own. The others who cannot make a fit will not settle. Some may congratulate you and politely decline, some may politely present their own narrative disguised as a deconstruction of your flawed reasoning, some might find your constructions so unfitting to their own that emotions get the best of them and they demean you and your constructions with a shocking vigor.
I realize for instance how my own proposal here would find few good fits with other Narratives, those whose structures have already closed the door on movements of the plot beyond certain--highly respectable--parameters. Or in plain English, those who can like great Doctors, quickly spot the holes in my logic and reasoning.
But if we cannot know...and we ultimately believe...for a while. Then, who's to say it's only logic and reasoning? I am not saying they ought to be excluded and that we seek truth in one hand clapping. I'm saying that logic and reasoning can only take as to the furthest edge of the abyss between our constructions and reality. And yet WE human animals are the other side of the abyss. So perhaps feelings might have a role...but I'm wondering into another chamber. On our side, function ultimately decides, autonomously too.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Ok, I didn't know that. Interesting. Neither more nor less compelling. But interesting. Are they somehow Jungian? Or is that a myth? Am I confused?
It is the nature of truth and ever increasing proximity to it, that resonance, or drama/poetry will necessarily occur.
Quoting ENOAH
You have the final bit in sync. But you say you disagree and do not say why here. On we go ...
Quoting ENOAH
So, no. In fact I also choose the word 'conclusion' to be in error. It should literally almost never be used. That is because if we conclude, we pretend that we are done, that the matter is settled, that we 'know'. This is a precise disservice to truth and the pursuit of truth.
So I will dare this statement/assertion: There is only one conclusion in existence and that is love.
In order to be proper morally all papers that end in a block of text should have that block be honestly labelled, 'Non-Conclusion', because that is the truth. This labelling reminds us that we are not properly done seeking truth. It does inform us that for now we are resting our arguments and assertions as is.
But it avoids the egregious assumptions of done work and certainty most commonly associated with order-apology and use of words like 'know' and 'conclusion'.
Quoting ENOAH
Well, yes, sort-of. Again the absolute leaning terms like conclusion take away from any gains we think we made. It is in humility that we assert only a non-conclusion instead.
But your core point in that last paragraph I may have missed. I didn't quite follow the desire manifesting in experience or the competing expressions (of what) as experience. I would say fear, anger, and desire are all always being expressed to greater and lesser degrees. Still, in any expression one emotion will tend to dominate. Further, over time, as a personality, we manifest virtue patterns that correspond to each Enneatype. Any modestly capable observer would classify me very quickly as a challenger. It is what I do. That is Enneatype 8. The core of a type 8, their holy source, is innocence. Because of this truth they grow to despise weakness and challenge it. This is related to their own innocence causing them self-betrayal pains early in life. But that is itself a factor based on the light-hearted innocence that is core to the type. Animals and children find 8s MORE approachable than all other types for this reason.
Quoting ENOAH
This would normally be the point where you make an argument by explaining again those categories as I admit to not knowing what they are at this point in our back and forth. Saying WHY you disagree to anything simply has not happened yet. On we go ...
Quoting ENOAH
The function of a conclusion is ONLY to conclude, that is exactly the problem. The real function that should be addressed, the thing itself, the matter the conclusion was about, gets lost. That is similar to the wording here in this sentence which again I cannot quite follow (what you mean).
My rejection of others argument or assertions is always argued. It is explained in detail each and every time. I will reiterate if I have to. It's not a problem. The goal is always just a better understanding. Clarity in word choice and expression is the greatest skill after genuine truth-seeking in these endeavors.
Quoting ENOAH
IF and that is a big if, IF I understand you here, then no. Function the way you seem to be using it is almost like a synonym for the word usefulness. That emphasis would be order-apology only, a Pragmatic failure in understanding. It is fear side thinking and prone to that exact conflation. Correct me if I am wrong about what you meant.
Quoting ENOAH
Well some things are just obvious. Ha ha! It's always safer to assume you do not really know. Certainty is a really big fear side devil. Calming that fear is the coward's balm. Lock the doors! Hang the 'No Trespassing' signs up! Prepare your arguments and your loud chanting when the foe speaks! We are no longer appealing to actual reason. We are Trumping this scenario! Make philosophy great again!
Yeah so all of that is a joke of course. Don't do any of those things and you are better off. That means start from a position of humility and assert not knowing. You know like that yogi I quoted. He gets it.
There are quite a few people saying things like 'Chet is so certain it seems, and he hates certainty.' but they miss that I also say I am wrong in some way about everything and that is fine. Its the RELATIVE correctness that matters in this case. We are both or all absolutely wrong in that any wrong is just wrong , finally. But between two wrong positions, one and only one is always closer to objective moral truth (a long way of saying truth).
Quoting ENOAH
No, that is the entire point. It is completely and specifically germane to this issue. Keep everything asserted in the realm of the hypothetical where it belongs. Human experience is subjective. Truth is objective. The objective INFORMS the subjective. We can subjectively assert the objective but not ever be sure. The discipline of balance and the humility of genuine doubt and a proper stance of NOT knowing is wise. The alternatives in any way are LESS wise.
Quoting ENOAH
Yes indeed and that is glorious! Peace was always only a delusion. And I welcome the times when the trenchers on one side call over to the trenchers on the other and declare a temporary ceasefire for tea and talk. Just watch out for those sneaky sappers that have to 'win' at everything because they will lie about something as innocent as a ceasefire to prove how hard and 'winning' they are. Those Enneatype 3s are some real jerks! Some few of them (like all types) are higher functioning though and they are grand to meet.
Quoting ENOAH
Well, not to be a jerk myself, but, there has been no argument yet. I still do not know your objections, if any. You keep alluding to your arguments but none is here.
Quoting ENOAH
I would not say that. Logic and reasoning are fear side. There also needs to be anger and desire side parts to any belief or choice. That is a big part of my position. Most of the 'knowing' types are fear side only or way fear side over-expression. That is not wise.
Quoting ENOAH
I get what you mean, but, we can seek it there. Truth is unchanging and omnipresent.
Quoting ENOAH
Exactly! The math of emotion, limits, asymptotic to truth.
Quoting ENOAH
I cannot fathom what you mean this to mean. If you are saying we are real so we partake of all parts of reality and that means +anger and +desire on top of the reasoning (fear), then I agree. Is that what you meant? If not the 'other side of the abyss' needs a better definition.
Quoting ENOAH
You keep using the word 'function'. To me, generically, that means 'proper use'. The only proper use of anything is morally, so for example, a Pragmatic win by any means is not really a win in truth. It's evil. Of course nothing is entirely evil. The win itself is indicative of achievement and that is some good.
Quoting ENOAH
They are so not Jungian, at least to me.
The cognitive Jungian functions really relate best to HOW a person thinks and see the world. The Enneagram is BETTER, as a tool. It speaks to core motivation, the WHY, the wisdom of the chooser. That is far more important.
Quoting Chet Hawkins Proper use assumes there is one....are we users, consumers, creators? I believe we are both the creation and creators, the design and the consumers....
Do all good things must come to an END, or do good things just tend to LEAD to the end? Good things eventually can leak into THEE END. That LEADS to a discovery, which doesnt always translate perfectly into knowledge...but how can we speak on anything we claim to be "perfect" what do humans know about perfection?
What ended that is bad? What was bad that shouldnt of ended? When should endings see the bad through to its possible goodness or is it not bad until the worse arrives...what if that chance was never an idea in mind? IS it bad or could it just be better? Tailoring "an end" instead of "the end" to your liking means you may have a new unique vision, but how certain are you that your"ending" is less problematic then the one that was created, and not that easily, cheap, or without some sacrifice from the creator, the builder, the manufactor, the assembler, the consumer, and the consumer feedback considerations and accountability and acknowledging consumer, creator, and device relations....?
Quoting Chet Hawkins Its more of a non-issue, for me. I believe I am free from a will to worry about such issues you see that I dont yet. Maybe my view is obstructed on purpose. I'd like to believe. I'd also like to not worry. But trusting the fear is instinctive, letting the worry come and go is me being safe. being, feeling, in that i acknowledge, determine, doubt, value, verify, judge, confirm, care, consist, compare, believe, hope and love...resist, repeat! Yeah for me it is because its telling what we ought to not have to question...its confirmation, its useful, its helpful. Its power is weak though, i believe in the larger scheme of "things" Its issue for me is wondering how important it is to learn as a concept to think its serving its functional purposes to any end that I can do anything about, let alone begin to attempt to care. I can try if its necessary. I doubt it really is for me. I should care, I do when it matters. But overall its value, its own weight holds up but thats just what it is/was/could be. Its a piece, it matters but compared to what? Curious to see how you respond to the last question I proposed above given your similar curious nature to mine surrounding topics of function serving, "purposes". For my view to be obstructed "on purpose" that would mean the functions of probability ought to be known BY ME,for me, to have reason to believe that....and I think I do enough to show its functions are at least as DELUDED as my own beliefs backed by real accounts of my experience in a comparable reality....
Quoting Chet Hawkins sniffing this out, ill be back...release the hound dogs! Belief does not have to exist in the purpose on intentions, but the purpose of the individual with intentions linked to beliefs can be traced to a foreseeable outcome but that outcome itself is both cause and effect...the causality is also not grounding enough to be a base alone, perhaps it is when intentions are properly judged and considered along with the causality in a relevant realm of reality. But is this telling of ANY nature of the Universe? I dont think so.....you cant force the awareness you are not bound to obtain, thats your BLOOD...blame your ancestors for that lack or accept self in its own nature. Where do we belong to judge from rightfully?
To me and so many others, the word conclusion smacks of certainty too much. A function or use of something is ongoing. That is not to say the belief is not ongoing, but to warn that the knowing is complete and static, dead. Belief takes effort and knowing is effortless once accomplished is kind of the assertion. The lack of ongoing effort is a nod to laziness so fear and anger can team up in immoral aims in that way. We have to be careful.
Quoting Kizzy
Yes and no. Time does eventually push things to a head, a fight, one way or another. And that is fine. But the perfect goal is always NOW, living truth in the present tense. So, time itself is only a reminder. If you let time push the process you are BY DEFINITION lazy. You be a godlike being and choose to push the process into the present at all times. That is the real goal, or let's say the BETTER goal.
Quoting Kizzy
I mean I do agree, but, the goal is to have a framework wherein these types of multi influenced decisions can be mapped and wisdom actually understood better.
So we have to become more aware of why things work the way they do amid choice. A lot of what you allude to in this paragraph relates to anger, intuition, body sense and muscle memory, making changes on the fly. It works similarly with social intuition, not being sniped, not being too much of any extreme way so that the 'loudness' of your approach, or its relative timidity, can be properly socially digested without emerging predatory or dismissive responses in the audience of note. Look at how everything collapses onto the present moment! So all is happening right now! In every now, all happens. It is either moral or not. And each aspect of morality, each virtue is part of the pattern of how and why we choose.
Quoting Kizzy
I kind of agree. There is no other justification besides a moral one. That is why I posted in the Leontiskos thread with his two thesis. He is chasing a delusional separation when he even suggests that humans are different, that there are human acts, and that there are any acts that are not moral. But rather than look past my energetic response he just calls me 'dumb' (hilarious) and puts me on ignore. He will not have the courage to look at that which is the real challenge.
I see so many mostly chaos-apologist thinkers that want so very badly, twisted by immoral desire, to declare that some acts and some beliefs are not impacted by morality. It's so sad and so obvious. They want any excuse to pursue immoral desire. So they pretend that morality is not a thing or a social construct or doesn't apply in certain situations. It's all just cowardly excuses. Morality is a law of nature that predates human existence.
Quoting Kizzy
So, don't let recursion confuse you. An intent always has a goal by definition. Even if that goal is as simple as 'be good'. That can seem so vague that it seems like you would not want to say its a goal.
But it is a goal, and really the only one. Be as good as you can be. Be better. Be aiming at perfection. Because every other aim is intending to fail.
We get all caught up in short term goals that are just small state changes. In that it is sometimes hard to sense any moral differentiation. 'Should I wear blue today or red'? The path to objective moral truth is objective, not subjective. So there IS a right answer morally. We are just too unaware of all the threads of truth to make that choice properly. So we pretend there is no goal, or that the greater 'quiet' goal of 'be good' is not the goal we are talking about.
But that is the THING. That greater goal MUST morally be what we are talking about. Losing sight of it in intent is critical failure, in any and every way that it happens. Perfecting the pursuit of perfection is the goal of wisdom.
Quoting Kizzy
There is NO vs in there. Planned, thought of, imagined, believed ... are all the same things. They carry the same type of weight. The purpose is still unified and MUST be so. That is 'be good'. It sounds a bit lame. But if it's understood the difficulty of it is profound. It's like saying, 'be perfect and pursue perfection perfectly'.
So, I disagree. Each and every intent MUST have a purpose. And that purpose, which is only another intent, either aligns with or is by degrees in misalignment with what is objectively good.
Quoting Kizzy
All of this tack on things seems to be a nod to desire to me. It is very similar to what I was referring to with Leon, et al. Desire prefers to believe that its all fungible. That any path is an informative or 'good' as any other. But that is not true because morality is objective. Immoral actions and flippant actions are good examples in general, are bad choices that lead to less chance of moral growth because they are already surrendering to indecision and randomness up front. This is just self-indulgence talking.
The good is an infinitely constrained path. It is perfectly constrained. All constraints upon that path are valid. These constraints combine to make a moral choice the single hardest choice in all cases. Perfect effort is required.
Quoting Kizzy
Yes, there is a proper use. It is objective. These doubts are based in subjectivism. They are mostly chaos, self-indulgence.
We are indeed ALL. But that does not mean that the perfect instance of us, God, or perfection, the GOOD, is not ready willing and able to show us the path to the GOOD by letting us punish ourselves via bad choices. That is the definition of free will. Rest assured that perfection is out there calling to us, giving rise in us to desire. That is the pull of evolution.
But it's a deep mistake, perhaps THE deepest mistake, to believe that there is not a proper path. That is the chaos-apologist point of view, subjective morality. The largest fear side order-apologist mistake is the concept of separation, the limiting force itself, giving rise to things like ego, identity, and us vs them thinking.
Quoting Kizzy
This is a great question. It has already been answered but it's so important that I will answer again and again if I have to. Genuine happiness is the consequence of aligning ones choices closer and closer to perfection. So we DO HAVE a demonstrable way of sensing that perfection both exists and that we are on the right path to it.
We can sense for sure that whatever this 'right' path is, it is damn sure hard to do. So, we can then speak of some far off, almost unreachable point that includes the concept of infinity as a target. This is perfection. That is how perfection is imagined. Then the mathematical limit function as x approaches infinity shows us the climb of difficulty in choice in reaching that aim. It is clearly asymptotic. That totally fits with what we experience in reality. Its just so amazingly hard to be perfect.
We are tempted by self-indulgent immoral desire to validate all paths. But that is not wise. The hard climb is there, taunting us. The origin of desire is perfection itself but the difficulty of the climb to it makes us very quickly seek skewed side directions that are immoral. It's understandable, but error.
The 'leak' you propose is a lazy drip, the minimum path, to perfection. Would it surprise you if that effort is insufficient finally to survive the 'end of the universe'. That is to say, tempus fugit! Get busy. The right time is now. The leak will fail and that fail will be FINAL. Active intent and choice is required of the moral exemplar.
Quoting Kizzy
The threat of all forms of immorality is many fold.
Cowardice, laziness, and self-indulgence are involved to some degree in every choice. They do not end because they are laws of the universe. The pressure is eternal and constant. Deal with it. Morality is forgiving! How does it do that? The balance of free will is eternally available in any moment. infinite choice is always there for you, for any chooser. That is PERFECTLY fair.
Quoting Kizzy
We must explore and discover. We use imagination to go before we go. We test or simulate the worst outcomes to prepare. And then we try. That is all we have. We take the patterns of the past as lessons for probability only and we act in confidence with our beliefs. We are NOT saying we know. We are saying we believe this now. We try and we fail. We do that all over again.
The path to the good is thus beset with many failing choices. But that is no excuse to embrace abject and capricious failure amid that effort. No! Wisdom is not earned that way. We do not look for accidental fallout amid our choices. It can happen and we take that as grace. But that is NOT something we can claim. We must admit that that was our failure still and change.
All the time we give people WAY WAY too much credit for being born beautiful, for example. Or we think someone is themselves amazing for winning the lottery. That is just stupid.
What amazes me is witnessing a person that starts out less than attractive and with no resources and becomes a champion in both and in other realms also. That is wisdom and growth.
Mainstream success is almost something you should morally counter-credit.
'It is no measure of success to be well adjusted to such a profoundly sick society!' - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Quoting Kizzy
Yes to both and that is always true.
You win no points by not realizing the error. 'good enough' is a lie.
Quoting Kizzy
That was an odd aside tirade there at the end. You went from philosophy to marketing. I was like, 'What just happened?'
The 'leaf on the wind' philosophy is lazy and self-indulgent.
Quoting Kizzy
I am assuming that is two sentences.
This belief of yours is dangerous. It is the 'leaf on the wind' philosophy, ephemeral and blithe. I do not sense that from you all the time. There is worry in you and maybe your worry is what you are responding to with this dangerous wish.
Quoting Kizzy
Yes. It's delusional pretense. It CAN work for you, the dancing methodology is replete with 'leaf on the wind' thinking. But when the lithe dancer takes a real hit they are broken and forgotten. That is unless those that care about and for them can pick up the pieces because leaves just rot on the ground if left to their own devices. And the wind is random and sometimes uncompromising.
Quoting Kizzy
Believe, yes. But you mean you'd like to believe in that purposely obstructed view, the short-cut truth. That will not help you. There is a valid reason that Sisyphus pushes the rock up the hill EVERY SINGLE DAY. Atlas probably understands. Try holding up the world. The GOOD is well beyond these small labors.
Quoting Kizzy
And you see, do you not, in this, the subservience to pattern, order-apology?
Wash, rinse, repeat. Roll the rock up the hill!
I agree! trust the fear! Increase it, do not try to erase it. Seeking ease is unwise.
Quoting Kizzy
This is a great sentence to unpack. Worrying about what you should not question is 'staying in line'. Again with the patterning. But growth lies always in the direction of asking the hardest questions and thinking outside the box and THEN returning to a better box, the real box. Most limits are delusions and fear is partly informing you of delusion. That is what is missed.
Desire knows instinctively, hey there is a rule! Let's break it (and see what happens). In other words, we get the question now, 'is it a rule at all?'. But subtlety is not simple. Sometimes the rule breaking is ok, like when you are young and the torture you inflict on yourselves and others is worth the squeeze past that line. But the DAMAGE still happens. There is no escape from truth.
Quoting Kizzy
The power of choice is infinite. Belief in this truth is hard to come by. Fear would have us believe that we are only as good, as powerful, as our past and the patterns we 'know' (ha ha). Desire would have us believe that since we are not perfect, we are worthless. And if we are worthless then our chosen direction doesn't matter does it!? How freeing! How deluded!
Yes, the larger scheme as a goal is wise. Caring is wise.
Quoting Kizzy
This 'not caring' pretense, or even actual, is dangerous. Each part of morality is critical. No single part can be left out. The perfection of each virtue is required. What is perfect caring? It is caring about EVERY SINGLE DETAIL, ALL THE TIME. To not care in any way, is immoral.
Comparison is a trap. Be the best you can be. Yes comparison has a purpose. It's to see past your limits when another nexus of choice, another human being or even animal, or tree, does something you sense is both worthy and beyond your scope. You then become aware of (not know) that the possibility exists that you can grow in a way you were not previously aware of. That is the only real use of comparison. Adaptation to greater resonance with truth is wise.
Quoting Kizzy
For me the word function, as mentioned, is a red flag for order-apology. It means the person is Pragmatically attached to usability. They are willing to 'let go' of the ideals in order to 'get er done'. That is not wise.
Quoting Kizzy
No, there is that word again, confusing the issue. You said, 'known'. You cannot know. So you are instead aware of things as a set of beliefs. This awareness is flawed and that is ok. It is ok because amid effort and comparison to others' efforts you sense the amount of happiness or balance. We all have this moral sense. Much is made about sociopaths and their supposedly missing moral compass. But I disagree. A blind person still 'sees' the world via other senses. Eventually, if everyone was blinded, and the new children were born blind, as in the series 'See', sight would evolve again in record time. Awareness is a will of the universe, as a natural law.
So, you do 'see' some. Some probability is intuited. When you make ANY and EVERY choice probability is crucial. All aspects of reason partake of probability, by definition. All aspects of justification partake of probability by definition.
Things only really seem to 'break' when we talk about infinity and perfection. But that is only because we are unaware of the way that math works, the limits, and that that applies to all emotive acts, all choices.
The pursuit of the impossible is actually the pursuit of the highly improbable. That is wise. To seek the probable is not wise. That is the problem with order-apology. They would rather 'get er done' with cheap efforts at low hanging fruit than face the difficulty of the real task of wisdom.
Quoting Kizzy
This is getting to be word salad to me, I admit.
Reality is only one thing, and it is relevant. There are no other relevant realms. Imagination and all of its devices and objects are WITHIN reality, not, as most poor thinkers might think, outside of it.
Belief DOES have to exist in any choice, any act, any purpose. Either that or the definition of belief is wrong/not-what-I-mean-by-belief.
The outcome IS NOT EVER the cause and effect. That is because there is error in the choice. The objective nature of a consequence leave it surprisingly unrelated to the belief or intent. Your statements here are part of consequentialism, a deadly lie.
The cause is a belief, only and always. The belief is partly in error, always. But the belief side is informed by the ideal of perfection, sensed erroneously, but still sensed. Over time this process narrows towards perfection and that again is evolution. But the sensors and the choosers other inputs to choice, other beliefs, all causal, are all flawed and by degrees. They fail to care enough, to be aware enough, to be in harmony enough (beauty), and in being accurate enough. That is not a complete list of the virtues. It is only a set of examples. So the consequential outcomes IS NOT as predicted. If it is as predicted the prediction itself was flawed. It (the prediction) was too vague, too undemanding, too wrong.
Quoting Kizzy
Being in the universe you assert that your experience shows nothing of it? That is comically wrong.
Just by chance you will get some things right. Granted that is no credit to you. But over time, you intuit those bits and then in humility you step forward with awareness that was always there anyway. Just living, the rote force contained in the body, with its patterns of effort well known and unconscious to you, is still a very large portion of good baked in.
You can disrespect that effort of millions of years and people do it every second of their lives. Instead of investing by choice in what evolution and the call of perfection shows us, we work in the other direction with self-indulgence, cowardice, and laziness; in general. We do it intentionally and often. And still, the unconscious parts of us accept the limits of reality. They try to breath when we eat so much our own bodies are choking our lungs. The cells are still working, making their less scoped choices. If they had any sense at all they would let us die, right? But they 'know' (ha ha) that it takes time for the greater moral scope chooser to earn the wisdom not to make such stupid choices. Caring is an earned activity. Awareness is an earned activity. 'Knowing' is just lazy cowardice. If you knew that alcohol would dehydrate you, why the hell did you keep drinking it? Crossed virtues! Over-expression of some. Under-expression of others.
We are instead REQUIRED to judge everything. All intents and actions/choices of ourselves and others and in that judgment (belief) we form new intents that are hopefully better than those we have made up until now. THAT is growth.
Like you, I usually read your response and answer immediately as soon as I "feel" the drive to answer. This time, sensing I had blind folded you early on, I collected a few related points to respond to at once. This time, too, I added this preface, written as an afterward.
Given I have afforded my self the breather of a preface. I'd also like to note how intriguing it is to me that we can share one principle concept, e.g. that we cannot hold to conclusions, that knowing is (or at least necessarily includes) belief etc. and yet express it so differently.
And as you justifiably pondered what my expression of that was, you overlooked one of its most "prominent" features. I.e., that it is inevitable that we will express differently, and that, in the end, it is not that one of us is correct (though as to presentation, I might readily defer to you as by far the "best"), it is that we are both ultimately "incorrect."
And no worries, I already know you don't adopt that statement.
I've also answered below since there are intersections of thoughts.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
I agree with you regarding the word (hence I placed it in quotes, and often mix in "temporary." However I'm not meticulous. Perhaps I should be, at least, more meticulous).
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Quoting Chet Hawkins
First, kindly NOTE whenever I write "misunderstood me" I fully acknowledge that it is because of my reckless use of Language. I've wondered half seriously if maybe I have a cognitive "condition" which causes me to think people can read my mind.
So, I think you misunderstood me here. And this will illustrate how I must think you can read my mind. Because now I won't be so lazy, and I'll explain it. That was a foot note to the puzzle, how can we know we don't know what's real if we don't in the first place? I'm suggesting that there was a hypothetical first time the root "word" (I.e. "concept") now called "reality" emerged. And that in order for that hypothetical root to have emerged, it must have represented a thing "known" to its hypothetical first speaker. Did she know reality, and its been lost? Or is there no reality? ... but now you see why I added "this is beyond our scope here." But, the point is you can now see, I already agree. Truth can only, as you very nicely put it, inform subjectivity. So even that hypothetical first speaker of the hypothetical root for "reality" was already speaking a "lie"*
*I am being deliberately hyperbolic. Not lie per se, just "uncertainty."
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Here I have definitely assumed you can read my mind. Here is what I was saying, now attempting to use plain English and where applicable your (better) language.
1. Reasoning is great. But assuming it is the "best" path to "truth" it cannot get you to truth. It can only get you to the furthest reach of "subjectivity". You will be at the edge of the cliff where there is an abysmal gap between you and actual truth, reality. It is a gap you cannot traverse.
2. Yet--and here you will not agree. It does not fit**. We human animals, meaning, the Organism, the conceited ape (not the minds where constructions are processed and moved only so far before it reaches an abyss), are already on the other side of that abyss. We are reality and truth. It's just that our organic consciousness our real aware-ing, has been hijacked by the Subject, the "one" who knows and believes, who concludes because it is functional and never because it is true. All the while the Real Being cares not for anything else but being. And that is truth.
**fit is what I mean by functional, and I will explain below.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
What I mean by Functional is a long and detailed thing. I feel hoggish using up too much space, and prefer to engage simply to see how my thinking might develop. But here goes something concise and thus necessarily vague. Best to paint a picture for now.
1. Our experiences are not of this real natural world, they are written, in Narrative form, by Signifiers operating autonomously and according to evolved Laws and mechanics or dynamics.
2. These Signifiers--primevally, images constructed by the brain to trigger organic response (feeling and action) evolved a "desire" to surface, as they "compete" they move by a dialectical process until finally "one" is temporarily settled upon, belief.
3. Functional is the mechanism which triggers the settlement upon. It doesnt mean usefull though it can. It means "fit for surfacing." So when I say I do not believe the "anger" portion of your hypothesis, it is ultimately because it was not fit for surfacing as belief in my current locus in History (all minds together as one) following a dialectical process of weighing the Signifiers competing to surface in my narrative.
That's why truth is only what is fitting. For all we know there is a remote Amazonian tribe who "know" stuff that would be easily
be adopted by us. But it's not in the local Narrative so it's not true here.
Quoting Kizzy
Is it just me, or do you see the uncanniness? I answered Chet first. Look above.
Yes! Exactly. Motion. Time. Becoming. In movement our Narratives only become, and we mistake them for being. Belief are those temporary settlements in the movement of fleeting becoming.
What do you say? Inspired by Chet, I'll read on.
Quoting Kizzy
Ok. That might just be what I think of as temporary settlements based on what is the most fitting to surface or "move the project forward."
Note, part of the movement is that individuality is there and not there. We move as one in the big picture of history. Hence the excitement when we agree. We love to agree.
I'll read that link you directed me to and get back to you.
Vive la difference! Like you, I have to 'feel' the motivation, the welling up of the answer, to vomit it forth upon those expecting or otherwise.
By the way, did you know that poetry and drama are elongated, disrespectful, sporadic, intellectually lazy, and unsubstantive? You learn something new every day! (That is only for a laugh. No public commiseration needed)
Quoting ENOAH
Damn! I sinned again. I cannot say I am surprised but I am mustering remorse, steadily if ambivalently.
Quoting ENOAH
Hilarious because you know very well that I do. No claim to be the best, but we agree entirely without knowing for sure that we are both incorrect. I stand corrected! Wait I'm sitting! See, wrong again!
Quoting ENOAH
Shame on you. I am Meticulon, fourth of his name, protector of The incomparable Deteriorata! All objections will be noted in triplicate. Invalid in Puerto Rico and Wisconsin (of course).
Quoting ENOAH
There are other such conditions to be observed in the self. My own is a natural ability to irritate everyone in some specific grating way. I now attribute that, of course, to wisdom. Wisdom has the unique quality that when we (anyone) sees it they are shamed and reminded of some weakness. So whether everyone admits it or not, philosophy is not a mainstream thing, not really. Happy strength promotion virtues are lauded without fail. But critical admonishments and warnings, well, lets table that for the year now+2011 years. You know make it the next Koyaanisquatsi! Wait! Cultural appropriation! Immoral failure! Release subconscious! (Drool)
I can read your mind and I invented pants!
Quoting ENOAH
That is at least my ninth sin so far. Meticulon will now move to the final form and finish him!
Quoting ENOAH
That was a terrifying journey into your inner mind. Please refrain from sharing in the future!
Totally kidding! Loved it! 'Bat country!' (waves arms and looks skyward where there are indeed no bats)
Quoting ENOAH
I get it. The interaction is 'real'. The consequences are 'real'. But our intents are subjective, so we do not really know (ha ha) even our own selves. We clearly simply agree here in almost every way so not even really that different in approaches to truth. You make a mess of the presentation and I of proper decorum in the forum. But we can still both take a chalice to the palace and have a good drink and a laugh, all the while both being and yet knowing nothing.
Quoting ENOAH
Well, the Amazons have something, that's for sure. I do want some of what they have, if they'll have me in return. But the nature of truth suggests as I am sure you are well AWARE that they to cannot really know. It's a good thing to because the thoughts in my head right now ... ugh!
Quoting ENOAH
I have to add in here for no reason other than it struck me at this point, DESIRE, is the emotive source of any and all becoming. The moving target seems like an excuse. Everything narrows in the temporal sense to the only non-delusional time, NOW. So, you can forgive (barely) the fear tendency to short cut everything to 'get er done'. But that approach alone, as we both believe, is insufficient.
Wanting to become the right thing is so damn hard. But all the approaches, desire included, have that same asymptotic climb to truth, the abyss. When we get all three approaches right at the same time, the great bridge will magically appear. And it will not be magic at that time. It will be just the truth that was always there.
You're killing me! :up:
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Very Nice
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Maybe, in the end, the only (fitting) truth. Thank [god] there's always that!
Quoting Chet Hawkins alas
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Yes!
Quoting Chet Hawkins
Which means
It's there now.
Hmm. When "they" were expectations, were they "belief." And now that your expectations have been affirmed, are they knowledge?
Sorry, I regret any part I may have had in meeting your expectations. That was my lame attempt at returning to the root.
The thing is, I still believe knowledge is given its "breath of life" only when the mind makes the final (temporary) movement of belief. Even your last statement can be prefaced with "I believe." It doesn't make grammatical or conventional sense to our ears for nothing. It states a necessary mechanism for a thing to be known. "I believe" is the Signifier structure which is necessarily implied in I know.
Like if I say "give it to me," and "You" are the implied subject addressed. In the implied subject e.g. it's necessity manifests more obviously as grammatical. The implied "believe" is not as obviously necessary in the grammar, but remains just as factually necessary as in the implied subject. However, its latency in grammar has accustomed us to affirming knowledge without the implied belief.
But it is there. We know this intuitively. I'm really not understanding the resistance. And someone more competent and industrious might take the time to demonstrate. But never mind we cannot know with 100% certainty. That reveals another eerie fact about our experience. We cannot know truth period. Knowledge and truth are alien to one another (spoken from the knowledge side of the gap). Thus, after completing a process (and there are many variations of the process, some simple, others complex, slow, fast, etc) and one knows something, it is because they have settled upon it. Sure, with reason. But still, they have believed.
What about truth? If you know truth you know it, belief might be a mechanism. But it wasnt necessary. This might be an objection which hooks us into knowledge doesn't need belief. But worded better I admit by its proponents.
Knowledge takes place without truth. Knowledge is constructed out of the available data. It's not that we don't know whether or not belief was needed. It's always needed to ordain the settlement as knowledge; even if very silently. But it's that we cannot know truth. And I don't mean we can't know if we happen to have stumbled upon it. I mean can't know truth because "know" is constructing a point of temporary settlement.
Lazy e.g.s: this topic deserves much more elegant, microscopic ones, but in 1100 CE they "knew" the earth was central etc. After Newton and before Einstein we "knew" what gravity was.
"Unfortunately, this thread has degenerated into a [s]wankfest[/s]. It was to be expected, though."
Oh so the "unfortunately" was sarcasm? Unfortunate [s]but[/s] AND expected? Yeah actually that does add up! You were the OP right? Were the expectations based on reality? Sometimes when things turn out as expected, the one with those expectations are let down (sarcastic or not) BECAUSE it turned/s out as expected.....wank on!
Edit: i define or MEAN when I said "expected" as expecting an outcome to happen that turns out different (negatively or positively) then what actually did...an expectation shouldnt but does happen after an act AND before..the before is preventative (fine) the after is realization and acclimating/accepting in order to proceed HAPPILY
This is exactly where we need to begin because we get our meanings from how we, as a group (not as individuals but as a group) of language users, use our words or concepts. How we use words precedes our definitions. The evolution of using words correctly, started with use, not definitions. I say this to point out the importance of what @fdrake is saying.
If you start with a particular use and use that as your overarching definition, then you're not getting the full picture (at least generally). For example, if we use the word know as an expression of a conviction (which is just an expression of how we feel about a belief), then we're not using it in an epistemological sense. If we're talking about epistemology, then we're necessarily talking about some form of justification; and even where we are referring to justification there are different uses. For example, using reason (logic), using testimonial evidence, and using sensory experiences, to name a few ways we justify our beliefs. Our tendency is to conflate these uses (uses outside epistemological uses) as if we're referring to the same thing, and we're not. Throughout this thread people are conflating the many uses of know as if they're all referring to the same thing, and they're definitely not the same (hence, conflation).
Knowledge in the epistemological sense is at its core, a belief, but it's a particular kind of belief. It's a belief that achieves its goal, that of being justified and true. If it's not justified and true, then necessarily it's not knowledge. If you're using the word know, for example, to express some feeling about a belief, then you're not using it epistemologically, you're just conflating your meanings and adding to the confusion.
Thanks for the reference. I'd highlight, in another context, that there's room for revising an understanding in ordinary language for some purpose. Like "know" could mean something different in the context of a mathematical proof, a scientific experiment, or a history book. But it's not particularly relevant. Even if those understandings may even be better in context than the pretheoretical one which we all engage with.
Most justifications can be categorized under the following methods, which are simply different categories of use.
1. Reason (inductive and deductive)
2. Testimony (books and lectures from experts, for e.g.)
3. Sensory experiences (often used in experiments)
4. Linguistic training
5. Mathematical proofs
6. Etc
These are a few uses of justification that fall within the subject of epistemology.
In my world 'wisdom' is at least as loaded a term as 'knowledge'. I use that one also, but I notice a lot of people have a hierarchy belief, knowledge, wisdom. With the last term being the best. Of course this is not necessarily a spectum of certainty and an indicate type. But It seems to me allowing oneself to categorize 'my beliefs X and Y are wisdom' is as easily misused as doing that with the category knowledge.
I'm not close to anyone who does this. Assume it is settled, period, shall not be questioned. There are many situations where I just move forward with what they've said as the case. And I like having, for example, my wife using think and know - or some other similar categories. I don't assume when she says know that she cannot be wrong, but I work with it in a different way from 'think'. I think I shut off the stove. I know I shut off the stove. Yes, she might have hallucinated or shut off something else and been confused. But she's got a great record when sure and I find the distinction useful. I certainly don't want her walking around saying I believe regardless of her certainty. If she says she knows, but I am aware of things that put this in doubt, well, I may well go back up and check. She just got terrible news. She's had a couple of shots - she doesn't drink, but just showing some obvious examples of things that might affect me - and also might keep her from saying she knows also, given her self-awareness.
I don't find it useful to follow rules that might good for most people to follow. Also I think if most people stopped using those words, they wouldn't stop thinking they knew, nor would they stop conveying that they are right and you go against their belief at your own danger.
I mean, you responded to me by saying that in the future I will suffer if I don't do as you believe we all should here, advice you categorize as wisdom.
So, while adhering to your own guideline you spoke without qualification what you classify as wisdom and predicted that I would suffer in the future.
I mean, honestly. I'd rather someone said 'I know.' I don't assume either one of you is correct, but in a sense of I feel like the other person is being more honest even if they are incorrect about being right and infallible.
Oh yes absolutely. I have in mind Austin's comment that while word use should be the first word on a topic, it need not be the final one!
Yes indeed. And I understand why you think/believe that is a relevant response to my statement.
My choices are informed equally by anger and desire; relative to fear, because my model and beliefs show that to be more proper, more GOOD. So, the point I am making underscores that while fear and logic are useful, their very usefulness is often used as an immoral excuse, when other emotions and approaches to truth SHOULD be informing you that this need for certainty is leading you astray of truth and wisdom. This balance is actually logical, but only finally. Until that final step is realized, logic seems to fight against the truth of balance.
The label I used and I already DID use it, is the GOOD. Wisdom has resonance and equal resonance for all three approaches to truth. If any of my emotions is not ringing a low hanging bell of alert, but instead is ringing a highly hung bell, then I must attend that ringing.
An example of a low hanging bell is the need for certainty. A higher hanging bell that answers the same general problem domain within reality is the increasing awareness bell. This is why increasing awareness is BETTER than certainty.
Quoting Bylaw
I simply agree and in fact, one is well advised that wisdom, being far trickier than knowledge alone, is something handled in far worse ways than only knowledge is. I admit that up front. This is the first such accusation levelled and I simply acquiesce.
But we cannot immorally throw our hands up and start just cutting bait. Fishing is the real task. The 'throw your hands up' and cut bait approach is only fear side Pragmatism. "get er done' usefulness IS NOT the way. The word way of course, is the root of the word wisdom. The range or domain of ways (that are right) is way dom, wisdom. Otherwise just means other ways, of course. Other wisdom.
Quoting Bylaw
Do you understand how that hierarchy is wrong? It is only really desire, fear, anger; as additive. That is the behind the scenes wrongness of that model. That is a fear-centric model. That fear admits to desire and places it lowly. Then it sees itself in the middle. It does not even acknowledge that anger is what finally causes wisdom in that progression. And keep in mind the error structure of that progression is still including all the elements in my model, just incorrectly juxtaposed.
Quoting Bylaw
I agree.
But to say that some statements purported as wisdom are less correct, less wise, than others is agreed upon. So, great. Now, in with the real game. Are my statements of wisdom more or less wise than .. yours ... or the prevailing wisdom, and why?
You should not morally conflate the general case with this specific case. That is chaos-apology. From the order side that is over-expressed humility then broadcast back to the universe. It is the immoral assumption that because we are quintessentially equal our assumptions and beliefs are equal as well. That is the fungibility error of the left wing, of subjective morality. It is a anti-wisdom.
So the conundrum is solved by anger. We must do ... SOMETHING. Risk must be taken. The foolish believe that because power corrupts, all power is evil. The wise realize that power has only a tendency, a strong one, an exponentially strong one, to corrupt. And the trait least likely to succumb to that corruption is wisdom. Anger demands being. And there is no escape from it. You cannot actually be made to un-belong to reality. Time passes. A choice must be made with any assertion or set of assertions. Is this wisdom, or not?
We are guaranteed within humility and probability alike that we are wrong. But that wrongness is relative to each assertion set made by others. Therefore we can be wrong finally, and still BETTER than all other contenders for what is wise. This analysis must be rigorous. And it can never just throw its hands up. A choice must be made. And the goal amid humility is to get closer to the objective moral truth, perfection, the GOOD. We are not allowed to pretend that all choices are equal in moral value.
Quoting Bylaw
Again, and for the thousandth time in this thread it seems, I will say that the usefulness of the distinction is the problem. It IS an expression of probability and not truth.
The GOOD is the most improbable thing of all and it is truth. So at some point, seeking probable outcomes is a short cut that is immoral. This is either understood and admitted or the belief is immoral.
If you want to trust that which is merely more useful over the truth, you may do so. It WILL cost you.
We all have to place our bets on the actions and beliefs of others, as well as ourselves. It is no violation of trust to suggest that each of us is not perfect. It is in fact a suggestion that acknowledging this truth means questioning everything, and as we get closer and closer to truth, perhaps questioning EVEN MORE CLOSELY that which we trust. We are ALWAYS partly wrong in every belief. That means we are always partly wrong on what we choose to trust. The percentages LIE or seem to, because the good is so hard to get to, so highly improbable. This is the trap of fear.
Quoting Bylaw
That is a horridly immoral position to take.
Quoting Bylaw
I agree. More errors on THEIR part.
The idea is the request from me, allows them to consider the failure inherent in the use of the word in the first place. I think that warning is wise and will continue to be, as a tautology. That is until some truly greater truth overturns that idea when we are well past being so silly that we clam to 'know' anything.
Quoting Bylaw
Indeed, an idea and assertion that I maintain. I have defended that position in the words of this post.
Quoting Bylaw
Correct. And suffering becomes greater with awareness. Now that I have warned you and that situation exists in the world, you will begin to see and understand more where it comes into play. It will rankle and tease you as an idea from the sidelines, until you make a better choice on its veracity.
Quoting Bylaw
Your need for certainty comes out clearly in this suggestion that allowing for certainty in others that are equally deluded in its existence harmonizes with. You like those that are like you, all fear. The comfort of similar beliefs is dangerous.
Instead choose to be uncomfortable, because it is harder and wiser. Do not be foolish with this pursuit either, like wearing a hair shirt.
You just honestly admitted your predilection for that immoral need. I get it. That is why I am adding the challenge of my warning. The trap of fear is hard for a fear type or even a person who is, in this specific instance, adhering too much to fear's approach, to admit, to avoid.
To expect something, to think it most likely, is not necessarily to believe it will happen. Of course you could say that it is a belief that it is most likely to happen. Once the expectations are met, and one observes that they have been met, then that would count as knowledge. I might expect that it will rain, and when it does rain, if I see it raining, or stand in the rain and get wet with it, I could say that I know it is raining.
Quoting ENOAH
No need to apologize. We all follow our inclinations, and far be it from me to proscribe against such investigations. My characterization of "wankfest" is nothing more than the way I interpret the goings on; I'm not claiming there is any right or wrong, or fact of the matter there.
Quoting ENOAH
This is where we disagreeI think we can know many things with certainty.
Thanks for your response, but I'm afraid I don't get what you are driving at.
I agree. I was recklessly pursuing a thought.
Quoting Janus
I appreciate that.
Quoting Janus
Is that not, then dependant upon our definitions of certainty? Assume 100% is a fitting adjective. I.e., that there is absolutely no room for doubt or possibility. Still? I personally cannot see that anywhere
Except, maybe if you "enclose" the knowing and the object of knowing in the "conventional". For e.g. to say I am 100% certain I have a nose on my face. But take that statement outside the box, and already questions arise, what is "nose", what is "face" is it really "on" what is "on" what is "my" is it "my" is there a me, or is there just a lump of flesh? Etc.
When I explore my environment I do not find any room for doubt that the things I perceive there are actually there.
No, it would be immoral to pretend that guidelines and rules must be universal. No one should drive because some have Parkinson's (metaphorically speaking).Quoting Chet Hawkins
Right or wrong it is present. So, you come out with your prescription. Some follow it. Now other people hear wisdom regularly instead of knowledge and the same problems arise. Or the problem is driven underground: correct words are used and the exact same interpersonal, intra-personal dynamics continue. You can wag dogs in the short term, but you're not really changing anything but the surface. And wagging parts of the body is actually more intimate than wagging the choice of words.
The same problems seep out of the undealt with unconscious patterns and imprinting.
Perhaps you have a program to deal with these also, but so far I see a focus and to me fear of certain words. They can certainly be problematic, but changing them is consmetic.Quoting Chet Hawkins
Sure. Probability of what, however?Quoting Chet HawkinsSure, that's a given in my outlook.Quoting Chet HawkinsI think predicting my internal states - so, not even mindreading me in the present, but telling me what I will be thinking and feeling - is unnecessary and, in specific often confused.
You seem to have met certain kind of resistance to your ideas and then assume you understand what anyone is like when you encounter them.
There are people out there who use the word know, but also rapidly realize that what they thought they knew they didn't.
So, when I encounter then, sure, they come at me with assumptions, but then they have feedback loops which lead them to rapidly get off their positions.
You can have people who religiously avoid 'know' for example. But end up continuing the pattern of assumptions. They don't recognize anomalies very quickly, despite their epistemological position and use of language.
This is sets off warning bells in me.
I appreciate the situation's effects: online, words on a screen, philosophy forum - the last entailing tendencies to have positions on logic, reason supposedly versus intuition, what parts of the brain are honored and so on.Quoting Chet Hawkins
Completely missing the point.
They do not have the same beliefs and this is reflected in their language.
To me it's like you want to teach used car salesmen (taking that metaphorically) NLP and more cognitive science.
And given that those people already exist, I get my warning bells despite whatever cosmetic dress up they are wearing.
To me focus on the dress up is fear based because it assumes we need people to use certain words. I get it: raising the issue around words may help some people begin to notice a pattern you and I notice. It can be a starting point to question not just practice but what is going on in them.
But the project is not actually noticing what is going on. It presumes this kind of reformative dialogue could EVER get at the roots of the problem.
I don't think you understand the fear not being noticed in your assessment of the situation. This approach is not going to get at the roots of the problems.
In part because they are not going to listen. But also the why, the what is going on ontologically that keeps them from listening AND why if they listened we just get a new layer over the problem. We get slightly more sophisticated problem makers.
I hear a lot of 'this is your fear'. But I experience someone who has not even faced certain fears, lecturing about fear. Fear denial is a problem.
And yes, I see that you are confident in you system of feedback. You'll hear those warning bells from fear also. But the denial is built into the model your presenting. And then the moment you are denying fear you are also denying anger and desire. For example. I am not saying that is the only direction these denials flow.
None of this means that I think nothing can be done or hands have to go up in despair or a sense of futility or that mine do.
Understood. Thank you.
So, when I look at my hands I cannot but be certain that I have hands, and the kinds of 'evil demon' or 'brain in a vat' objections hold no water for me, I just can't take them seriously and I don't believe anyone bar possibly the mentally ill really does either.
I do not agree with that position either.
It is obvious that your eyes see and that the objects are there, and are real. That's not where the uncertainty is. It's in this, my expression of that hypothetical event, and, with respect, it's in yours. We do not disagree that when we look we know and see that we have hands. As to what "your" or simply "knowledge" of that event is, that's where we differ.
If "my" skepticism about that must be relegated to "radical skepticism," so be it. I would then believe there are some who do not understand radical skepticism and think it entertains the foolish idea that you can't be certain you have hands. (Who knows, maybe what you're calling Radical Skepticism is just misunderstood. I haven't studied it well enough to know).
I'll consider whether, and how best to discuss this further. Either way, your OP was perhaps more interesting to some than you might have intended/expected. Sincerely, Thank you.
It's not apparent to me just what your skepticism consists in with regard to the example. Can you explain?
Quoting ENOAH
I don't see how your skepticism in this example could be radical or in other words global, I think it is possible to play at doubting, in the radical sense, anything, but I don't think it is possible to doubt everything at once or that such doubt based on merely imaginable alternative possibilities, whose only quality that could recommend them is that they are not logically contradictory, is significant or interesting. For example, I might claim to doubt I have hands by citing the possibility that I am a brain in vat or being deceived by a demon, but those possibilities depend on their being brains and vats or deceptive demons, so I can't at the same time doubt the existence of whichever of those I am using to support my radical skepticism.
Quoting ENOAH
I appreciate your kind words, but I can't take credit for the OP. It was Chet's suggestion to start a new thread in which to question his position if I wanted him to explain his ideas. I think he has failed to explain anything. Anyway, thank you for your interest and participation.
It requires a long and patient (I.e., on my part) explanation, given it appears "unconventional." Add to that my own limitations at translating my deepest reflections, many not necessarily fully processed (sorry, I know that sounds self serving and pretentious) into text, and, the fact that this is a shared space, you can imagine my challenge (I know, Im not the only one). And yet, my passion to share (which is autonomous, and runs through all of us. . . But Im expanding)
So, I'll give something brief and limited to one aspect of a much larger "picture;" leave it at that for now. Note. I'm trying to be surgical with my words, a skill I lack. I beg some play in the reader.
Sticking to the "I see my hands" example.
Yes we both agree there is a Real, and for the sake of discourse, "knowable" event. That is, in the presence of its being. There are real eyes seeing, real hand seen, all of which takes its place in the presence of being.
But in the instant that that event arises as a thought; specifically in our discussion, the instant it becomes the object of knowing, it (or our real conscious attention to it (?)) "ceases" to be, and "enters" (not literally. Organic consciousness, which naturally attuned to being present (eyes--see-ing--hand) has "its" attunement displaced) is now attuned to becoming ("something"); that is, to no longer really "experiencing" that "knowable" real event (long forsaken), but to constructing it. And that construction process is what we are arguing about as knowing. And that is what I say requires belief and is necessarily not 100% certain.
Even for something as lightening speed as seeing your hand. I say, yes, "you" know this because "you" were there. But you're not there anymore, you're truly just making shit up. Best you can. But still. [Not sure I like the last bit, but wouldn't want to cheat you out of it, should you wish to "attack"]
Agreed.
So, yes, you are saying that, as I define it. That means anything in the same pattern as 'but saying know or knowing is useful and understood by most' is effectively throwing your hands up and taking a short cut for efficiency and fait.
It sets up a pattern of continuous 'acceptable' incorrectness that is participated in by almost everyone. It's similar but not quite of the same flavor pattern as setting a speed limit so low on a road that the statement innocent until proven guilty gets flipped whether people realize it or not. It's either intentionally wrong (pure evil) or accidentally wrong (dumb evil). It would be far better to say, 'I left the lever in the up position.' as a claim, an assertion, rather than to say, 'I know I left it in the up position.' There is no need to make such statements that definitive anyway. Likewise to say 'I have 6 years of experience with programming in C# is better than saying 'I know C#'.
You are effectively saying, 'get er done'. Use that word I 'know' what you mean. But you really don't. It's all a matter of best precision.
Quoting Bylaw
I mean, of course. I am the one advocating for intuition and desire as EQUAL to logic and reason.
Quoting Bylaw
We disagree here. Morality is objective and people's and culture's opinions DO NOT MATTER to that distinction. Such differences only serve as arguing points where there should be none.
Your example is horrendous and not relevant. You are being specific with your clauses and not making the moral rule generic enough to fit. The rule would be very general like,
One should only engage in tasks being aware of the risks involved and both being capable of performing to a minimum standard and being tested and certified by society as such, unless the activity is new and unknown which takes a much higher level of expertise in many areas.
Quoting Bylaw
I get what you are saying and yes the moral action is harder and that is fine and partly the point. What some idiots are still going to do is not really the debate here. I am trying to get non-idiots to agree to a better truth approach.
Quoting Bylaw
Yes-ish and not really relevant. The point is being made here in the rare air for people of a quality that say they are for that sort of thing to discuss. My guess is, if such people are not ready for it, then maybe the general public is not either, and that is really sad. Still, the general idea of the point is important enough for everyone to be at least exposed to.
Quoting Bylaw
It's precisely not cosmetic. Cosmetic is a change on the surface that means little. This is not that. It's the reverse of that. Its addressing the problem of words that poison deeper understanding, specifically NOT cosmetic. Way to get that completely wrong.
Quoting Bylaw
And we should never say 'know' about a bet. You're proving my point for me.
Quoting Bylaw
I know we agree on that point.
Quoting Bylaw
Nonetheless, I stand behind my belief as stated. It's bound to come up and soon, in everyone's life reading this thread.
Quoting Bylaw
Granted, I, like everyone, makes assumptions. The difference is that I call that awareness and belief and not knowledge. You should to.
Quoting Bylaw
And I encounter almost nothing but that. Meaning the word know is no more useful in reality, and actually less useful in almost all cases than them saying they believe. I mean, really, you are proving my point over and over again. Don't you KNOW that?
Quoting Bylaw
Some do and some do not. But neither one of them actually knows.
Quoting Bylaw
Just like the word know does for me whenever I hear it. It becomes a lesson in humility for the speaker in almost every case. Nope, you didn't know did you?
Quoting Bylaw
It's much less 'parts of the brain' and much more intent.
Quoting Bylaw
I just want them to understand two points really:
1) No one really knows things so just say 'I believe that ...' instead of know.
2) Just because no one knows anything does not mean that one person's ideas are not better than the other ones.
Quoting Bylaw
You'd be surprised. Language effects great change. So changing language can do that as well.
Quoting Bylaw
I believe that you are right in that. But that is not the point. The point is that my point is better, even if it will not be useful enough to work (and it still would slowly).
Quoting Bylaw
Yes, but progress is incremental and we need to start taking steps.
Quoting Bylaw
I have no idea what you are referring to now. I embrace fear and since I have great anger, I can balance a lot of fear so it does not get over-expressed. Over-expressed fear is what I am arguing against. That is a fear approach with not enough balancing anger or desire.
Quoting Bylaw
You are entirely incorrect about what I am denying.
Greater wisdom, greater balance, is actually more of each emotion. That part of the point of my model. And this higher fear, still in balance, is better. It IS more critical and more expectant, as you perhaps rightly point out. I am challenging people to be ... BETTER.
Quoting Bylaw
If you give in to 'how things are', human delusions, as opposed to truth, that is exactly what that means.
The following quotes are Chets replies to my comment above and the italics are my latest responses for clarity.
"This is getting to be word salad to me, I admit.
Reality is only one thing, and it is relevant. There are no other relevant realms. Imagination and all of its devices and objects are WITHIN reality, not, as most poor thinkers might think, outside of it."
When I talk about "relevant realms of reality," I am referring to the different environments a person regularly encounters, such as where they were born or where they live now. The range of these influences can vary greatly from person to person, and they carry these influences with them every day. These places shape our daily lives and experiences, influencing our views, actions, and the decisions we make. I was thinking of reality and how it hosts a collection of experiences that are lived through and from and by the pov of the person in a specific location, environment, time, circumstance. I think where a person spends their day to day life, geographically matters and a boundary exists for each person to be considered "their relevant realm" meaning the diameter, the range of comfortable living where you travel to how far do you spend away from "home" each person has a different radius, a reach. A reach meaning like its not possible to affect a person outside of my realm because our existences never cross paths.
Chet you say, "Belief DOES have to exist in any choice, any act, any purpose. Either that or the definition of belief is wrong/not-what-I-mean-by-belief."
to which I want to make clear, Yeah I am with you, I just tossed the salad a little hard and over dressed it. WILTED. Here is fresh: I am seeing a problem though when "beliefs" are the excuse to justify acts or behaviors that are noticed when certain outcomes take place.The intention is what I was saying does not need a purpose, the individual has purpose and should be judged morally in how the use intentions. Intentions change to fit into the individuals perception of reality and the reasoning to justify the acts that support beliefs can be judged right and wrong. I think a ground exists to be able to judge right from, and the behavior from those consequences can determine and create beliefs that change projections potentially. What happens when people have false beliefs and they are purposely placing them to avoid even having to justify themselves in their beliefs...like i said in the link, morality is justification itself. They appear to be a moral agent of good faith, hope, and religious beliefs but by putting that "belief" or "fake belief" or "reason to make belief" in order to AVOID justification so they can hide their actual intentions.
Then you went here and I want to defend myself a bit, "The outcome IS NOT EVER the cause and effect. That is because there is error in the choice. The objective nature of a consequence leave it surprisingly unrelated to the belief or intent. Your statements here are part of consequentialism, a deadly lie."
I spoke no deadly lie and I dont speak for consequentialism. That is judging right or wrong from the outcomes. I am saying that judging from just outcomes is NOT going to work. I never said that actually...What I meant when I said, (causality, the nature of cause and effect) is NOT grounding enough to be the base alone to judge outcomes without more details surrounding the purposes of the person in their relevant realms in reality. In their reasons, truth, their experience, it should be noticed in the way they lead their life. The outcomes are foreseen not to be judged morally from there, you are misunderstanding my goal. The outcomes are how the person handles the consequences after being judged, a foreseeable reaction. Behavior displays emotions in action! But yeah my statements were not explaining consequentialism thats the problem, when the place people judge from is wrong, and what they judge is also wrong. How can you say "your statements here are part of consequentialism, deadly lies" but admit that my comment is just becoming "word salad" to you? At that point, it would be better if you just swallowed the bad lettuce for what it is or perhaps just decline tasting it. Instead you spat out my word salad right back out. YES CHEF!
"The cause is a belief, only and always. The belief is partly in error, always. But the belief side is informed by the ideal of perfection, sensed erroneously, but still sensed. Over time this process narrows towards perfection and that again is evolution. But the sensors and the choosers other inputs to choice, other beliefs, all causal, are all flawed and by degrees. They fail to care enough, to be aware enough, to be in harmony enough (beauty), and in being accurate enough. That is not a complete list of the virtues. It is only a set of examples. So the consequential outcomes IS NOT as predicted. If it is as predicted the prediction itself was flawed. It (the prediction) was too vague, too undemanding, too wrong."
Well I lean towards thinking that perhaps while beliefs are influential and "the cause" they do not set the parameters for objective morality. Instead, they serve as a reference point, helping assess whether our intentions and actions are in harmony. Our daily existence, too, is framed by the geographical context of our livesthe places we visit, where we were born, and where we reside. Each individual operates within a "relevant realm," a comfortable living range where their influence is most potent, and beyond which it wanes. I never said consequential outcomes, I am saying foreseeable outcomes of the future because humans are predicable. How they handle consequences is only a part of the outcome to be predicted, and the predictions are far from vague, undemanding but can turn out wrong. But they also sometimes turn out right, in the same way. I am not worried about what happens when the unlikely becoming likely, I am talking when the unlikely become real. Or when what is "likely" does not become real. Something is becoming real and is it coming from the belief as the cause? Do you mean the cause as in the drive the motive? Does the cause see an end in the acts to come from the specific belief?
"We all understand, unless we are being intentionally obtuse, that belief is something you fear is true, desire to be true, or that you reason is true based on sensory data and experience. These are the three paths of wisdom, fear, desire, and anger (being). It is more useful to approach belief that way than in any of the ways I read about on that link."
I am not approaching belief at all, I am approaching morality by imagining if there is a common place where judgements are verifiable and in a proper place to be made from and held accountable from/viceversa. Morality can be verified in the justification of a belief that is true and shown in the intentions, behaviors, act and choices that are available.
EDIT: addition to this comment posted 11:10pm, as I am reminded that you have mentioned before in your thread "Happiness and Unhappiness" an assertion that is relevant here, I believe.
"It is my 1st assertion that happiness along its entire continuum is evidence for morality. It is in fact the only evidence possible for morality. The basis of the happiness result, either more or less happy, is the consequence of choice/action. So, the only causal agent in the multiverse is free will. I do not want to debate determinism here. I can, but that is not the point of this post. So, please despite your reservations, assume free will is true."
I thought your model was great and spot on. I followed what you presented in the thread and am relating it to this thread like this:
Acts/choices > both have consequences > pushes the HAPPY button (more or less- the basis) >Happiness scale (decisions, personality based? behaviors, moods, states? Who is dealing with happiness and how? subjective well being? how individual handles emotions) >more or less HAPPY because of who we are and virtues(balance the scale)> Happiness (more or less)
Say three different fear based people (random, no correlation) and they all three make decisions/act/choices regarding a similar task...then of course from the choice, all three differently justified their morality in how their virtues play out together by having more or less happiness as the consequences?? The consequence is not about the outcome, here is that where I was scrambling the salad?
Being in the universe you assert that your experience shows nothing of it? That is comically wrong.[/quote]
HUH? I meant like these predictions of outcomes are doable and can be replicated, for instance Fitness Functions*, what good is it? [I know its valuable] I am defending the uncertainty when I said that, I could be more clear next time...I am saying the awareness is gained, some are built for it others are not. Predictions are just the truth that was always to occur anyways....
*A fitness function is a particular type of objective function that is used to summarise, as a single figure of merit, how close a given design solution is to achieving the set aims. Fitness functions are used in evolutionary algorithms (EA), such as genetic programming and genetic algorithms to guide simulations towards optimal design solutions.[1] per wikipedia
"Just by chance you will get some things right. Granted that is no credit to you. But over time, you intuit those bits and then in humility you step forward with awareness that was always there anyway. Just living, the rote force contained in the body, with its patterns of effort well known and unconscious to you, is still a very large portion of good baked in."
CREDIT to me? For WHAT? Cmon, I am not lost on this comment but I dont know why you add the credit remark. The rest has been obvious stuff to me. Fine with it.
"You can disrespect that effort of millions of years and people do it every second of their lives. Instead of investing by choice in what evolution and the call of perfection shows us, we work in the other direction with self-indulgence, cowardice, and laziness; in general. We do it intentionally and often. And still, the unconscious parts of us accept the limits of reality. They try to breath when we eat so much our own bodies are choking our lungs. The cells are still working, making their less scoped choices. If they had any sense at all they would let us die, right? But they 'know' (ha ha) that it takes time for the greater moral scope chooser to earn the wisdom not to make such stupid choices. Caring is an earned activity. Awareness is an earned activity. 'Knowing' is just lazy cowardice. If you knew that alcohol would dehydrate you, why the hell did you keep drinking it? Crossed virtues! Over-expression of some. Under-expression of others."
ME? Hmm, thats it! You got me...... :eyes:
"We are instead REQUIRED to judge everything. All intents and actions/choices of ourselves and others and in that judgment (belief) we form new intents that are hopefully better than those we have made up until now. THAT is growth."
Yeah you are right but isnt that almost obvious? I pretty much served that up in my word salad...if not,it was served in my latest response. This explaining is not so much word salad, its more dense...a word sundae is what is could be! Messy, but you should get through it before it melts!! Or get the napkins ready! Anyways, it should speak for ME a bit better. You spoke loud and clear, chet!
Chet--You said also, "The cause is a belief, only and always. The belief is partly in error, always. But the belief side is informed by the ideal of perfection, sensed erroneously, but still sensed. Over time this process narrows towards perfection and that again is evolution. But the sensors and the choosers other inputs to choice, other beliefs, all causal, are all flawed and by degrees."
I am wondering, like narrows towards? like "focuses in" on perfection...or like simplifies to perfection. Narrows towards could meaning the process is guided by what aids and bouncing off how many things? Dont have to get into evolution to clear up my questions here...
Quoting Chet HawkinsI haven't weight in on cultural differences.Quoting Chet HawkinsIt's extreme. I often use extreme examples to get a foot in the door. In the realm of epistemology, of self-awareness, or introspection, of intuition and so on, there is an incredibly vast range of skills sets and approaches. I am not going to follow rules, unless the consequences of breaking them are so negative, that are put in place for people who are far away from me on the spectrum in the relevant skill set.
I'm not going to stop using metaphors or analogies because many people misuse them. As a kind of parallel example.Quoting Chet HawkinsWhat some idiots do is part of the real world where I live. This is not a side issue. And to be less harsh...the real world includes what happens when people are given cosmetic language based changes but don't really change. I live in that world. I am skeptical about these kinds of language-based reformations, for reasons given in previous posts on this specific language reform you are proposing.Quoting Chet Hawkins
My point was that I think it is misleading to propose this kind of reformation since it is not the source of the problems. Even the epistemological naivete is not. Quoting Chet HawkinsAre there language-based reformations that have eliminated evils?
Quoting Chet HawkinsThe point we agree on.
Quoting Chet HawkinsAnd here you are making my point for me.
'It's bound to come up.' This is an expression of certainty. 'everyone's life'. You can tell me that 'really' you never mean 'know' but I experience you are exactly as certain as the people who do. In response to my saying the mind reading is unnecessary you use bound and everyone.
Will my interaction with you have any effects?
Will my interaction with someone who uses 'know' have any effects?
How often? Has the likelihood increased because of your attitudinal change and no longer using 'know'?
Has the attitude actually changed and in what way do we see this change in you?
How will we in Philosophy Forum notice the differences between you, in dialogue with us, and someone who uses know?
I can certainly find people who use 'know' who mind read
and stand by their mind reading and present their positions without qualification and who in response to my criticism or questioning start to tell me about my emotions and how these lead to my not accepting the truth of their beliefs. And I can find people who don't do this who use 'know'.
To boil that down. I can't even tell if it's cosmetic in you.
Quoting Chet HawkinsI thought you believed this but it's good to have it clearly written.Quoting Chet HawkinsThere may well be an example in the past, but if you have a specific one, share it. And, of course, even if there isn't one in the past, I'm not ruling it out, but it's not my main objection.Quoting Chet HawkinsI agree with this. But what this actually looks like and if someone is, as a specific individual evaluating themselves correctly...that's a different issue.
So, to focus on what we seem to agree on, we both seem to see positive things about fear, desire and anger. We wish to have these in balance. We also value intuition and my sense is we both see intuition where others think they are going on some intuitionless immaculate logic unsoiled by intuition - and likely have poor intuition about what they actually are doing in their minds.
These are not small agreements, so I think it's good to emphasize them.
Intuition and emotions are often denigrated in philosophy forums, directly or implicitly.
And there can often be this implicit or explicit post-Enlightenment judgment that really it's best if these things are weeded out of everything from epistemology, science, politics, interpersonal interactions, discussions and so on - and with some real-world horrible trends where actually modifications through social pressure and even technology are trying to be put in place to eliminate emotions and intuition.
Well, yes. VERY indirectly we are indeed responsible for everything, each of us, as in we are all each other really, when the objective truth is uncovered. That does not mean of course that subjectively some of us are not more responsible than others, especially in the case of their own personally scoped immoral choices.
Quoting Bylaw
Well! When I see formulations like this sentence, I know (ha ha) that we are in for a real treat. Let's see where this goes.
Quoting Bylaw
Yes, that is what imagining a better future is about. It's important not to dip into Consequentialism in either way amid this endeavor. I admit that this is only my belief at present and I have stated my case as to why. This has advantages. That is, until society tries IT (<--- the terrifying it) my way, I can kind of stand on ceremony and keep appealing for sense and wisdom. If - all of society (a bit more terrifying for real) - were to adopt this idea theory and try it, they would either become enamored of it in short order as the right way mostly, or they would all be like, we prefer being foolishly certain, ... please bring back 'porch monkey' as a thing. No monkeys nor porches were harmed forming this paragraph.
But I would be remiss, if, in seeing a better way, I did not engage in the then morally responsible behavior of at least suggesting a better way be tried, DESPITE ANY AND ALL DIFFICULTIES in bringing that better way about. And further, amid this same thought, it is not required that such changes are immediate or all-or-nothing, because frankly that is the same stupid sh*t as the idea I am fighting against anyway, certainty, and it criminal order-apologist problematic nature.
Quoting Bylaw
I get it. Most of history is the blind leading the blind. Why should now be the exception?
Still, we try things and dare to take risks because that is the only way to confront mystery. We have to have the SPINE to do so and this spine is kept in good shape by testing its limits frequently. I played 23 games of volleyball yesterday, half on indoor hardcourt and then half later in the day on sand. Even in my prime that would have been a trick. And of course these games were not to that level of competition. But at age 58, let me tell you, my spine was tested. In some ways it was found wanting. But I made it through and oddly I am only marginally sore today. The point is proceeding apace with what is 'known' is a disaster in most cases, because what is 'known' IS NOT KNOWN. And growth lies in the direction of that which is UNKNOWN always, anyway. So backing off on any and all importance of 'knowing', especially since that 'knowing' is delusional, is wise.
Quoting Bylaw
Our 'values' are mostly horridly polarized foolishness. One has but to take a casual cursory glance at todays court proceedings (if the term proceed means anything other than 'get er done') to witness the rather pointless chicanery that passes as 'leadership' in the United States.
There are so many levels of immoral nonsense piled on top of one another in any 'system' of today, that to suspect something as clearly esoteric as 'proceeding' or 'progress' is the height of reckless optimism.
Quoting Bylaw
I know (ha ha). I am aware of that (better). Please forgive my fit of whataboutism because I think it's clear neither one of us is convinced by the arguments of the other. We have both stated our case in many ways. Whataboutism is all thats left. I'm looking into the well dressed strawman closet at this point. Nod's as good as a wink to a blind man, eh?
Quoting Bylaw
Amen brother Bylaw! Preach! Rules are for order-apologists. Real beings take responsibility for all their actions and beliefs and therefore are free to break poorly conceived or situationally inaccurate rules. Isn't having a spine wonderful? Has mass, occupies space. Yep! I guess it matters. Even a chihuahua can stand its ground with a mean loud attitude. And that IS real.
Quoting Bylaw
Yes, they allude to a strawman with a strawman analogy. Great ... delusional presentation of other delusions. Where does it end. Just give a machete! It's getting to be too thick up in this jungle.
Quoting Bylaw
It is though. Despite protestations to the contrary, the idiots WILL GO where various pipers lead them. The smart and wise among us ARE INDEED capable of steering them wisely or not. The trouble is now meta though.
That is that these leaders are INTENTIONALLY steering into stupidity. And we all know how hard a house of cards is to build. It's trivial to knock it down. We are thus beginning to realize that the infrastructure of wisdom must be addressed. That is what my book is really about. We need a new paradigm that shows clearly what wisdom is, objective, and we need to develop clear and procedural steps to arrest leadership on the left (chaos-apology), the right (order-apology), and the extreme middle (anger-apology, or laziness).
As is both sides are conspiring to keep idiocy safe. Thanks so much! Where was that machete again?
Quoting Bylaw
We need more harshness, not less. The delusions of pleasure and peace are costing us dearly right now, and will continue to be a increasingly difficult problem. See the enlightened visionary future of Wall-E as a footnote of likely dystopian scenarios. Idiocracy was a little too street/stupid.
Quoting Bylaw
I am skeptical as well because we have not really tried all that hard, ever. This is new paradigm territory. I admit it. As OneMug mentioned, the problems of today will take better, as in meta level better solutions. Muzzling sheer forms of stupidity is probably required. That is not a full on muzzle. We love the puppies. But if they keep biting themselves or others, they get the cone of shame.
Quoting Bylaw
Yes it is (one source). You just do not want to admit that. It's ok. It remains a big source of the problems. Fear's need for certainty in so many ways is a/the fear problem. Its manifestation across all behaviors is similar in pattern to JUST THAT.
Quoting Bylaw
I agree there. We are talking about intent and intent led by over-expressed fear. Naivete is best discussed as an innocence of sorts. That is balanced as a default. So, I am NOT talking about naivete when I speak of order-apology or fear over-expressions. I am talking about living in fear such that you need to know and prefer to speak as if knowing is a good idea, as opposed to accepting the risks of life and living it that are required to be wise. In humility, we assert that we cannot know, so we proceed then carefully. Those wanting to say they 'know' are those wanting really NOT TO KNOW, finally, so that they can effectively pretend to know and mess things up without ... care. It's a baked in short-cut aim. Fear does not want to admit this.
Quoting Bylaw
Pre-1900 citizen(idiot): 'Has an airplane ever flown?'
Quoting Bylaw
We cannot KNOW. Therefore a statement or assertion is only a belief. If we agree on that point the thread is mostly concluded (and not to be a stickler for reality checks but, in my favor).
Quoting Bylaw
You're only comical at this point. 'Bound to ...' is certainty? Not at all. It's like saying 'highly probable' or 'I believe'. So, no, again, I am not proving your point, but you are proving mine, again and again.
Quoting Bylaw
I've aready taken great pains to explain the difference between anger-confidence and fear-need-for-certainty. Either you get it or you don't, but, no, you're again wrong, it is a casual thing for me to admit as I have in so very many posts that I KNOW nothing. I have only belief. I speak confidently, yes. Do not confuse confidence with certainty.
Saying 'I know' is the fear types way to stand with the confident anger types. It doesn't work really. Ask most females. BEING (anger) and risking the bad confidently, IS NOT the strength of fear. Digging into every detail properly is not the strength of anger. But since reality rarely requires extreme over-expression, and in fact over-expression is actually by definition unwise, anger is a BETTER default case than fear is. Anger is the emotion of balance wherein risk is accepted in the present moment of now. That is where we are by the way. What was 'good enough' in the past, what we 'know' amid delusion, is not proper for a more moral footing. It lacks spine, in general, and attends to a laziness actually of awareness based in already-knowing (delusional).
Quoting Bylaw
Only time will tell. Assuming I hold true to patterns of the past and place emphasis on and participation within a community of people that at least pretend to understand my arguments, we can revisit the question in 5 years and that would indeed be interesting.
Quoting Bylaw
Almost (<--- pay attention to that word) certainly! Attention to detail (fear side value) is something I do have, despite it being perhaps less formalized than some classical philosophy academics here. That is in fact endearing and proper for a more balanced approach that allows said supposed philosophy to reach the general public. So, by all means, continue with the fear-side separation and be separated thereby. That is at cross purposes to the aim of wisdom.
You might argue that my wishes for the change in language are the same. But they are not. One is doing what is hard for wise reasons. And the other is doing what is easy for unwise reasons. Again, either you get this, or you don't. That is in the nature of wisdom and next steps. Next steps always seem 'too hard' to the weak. I am ALSO sometimes the weak, so this is not an admonishment to be taken too much to heart. I'm just not weak on this issue.
Quoting Bylaw
You have but to re-read this thread and even this post in it to discover, if you really look, at how carefully my words are chosen. I am adept at this and post extremely detailed (elongated lol) posts that actually explain my arguments but in plain English so everyone can understand. I am no ivory tower academic or Pragmatic sell-out.
If you are asking how I feel about this the answer is as strongly as I have felt about anything in my life. I have not had children though so, some feeling strength may be beyond my ken. But having interfaced with vastly differing seas of humanity over 58 years of life, I admit in my defense that I rarely find others as passionate as myself about things they supposedly care deeply about, including their own children.
Quoting Bylaw
I venture to say frankly that most people who have interacted with me here consider me in some way different than almost anyone else they have ever had dialogue with. If not, well, that still speaks volumes about ... them, and their observational powers.
Quoting Bylaw
And missing the point or trying to label my admitted guesses as to your future as 'bad', just cuz is not an argument either. What is qualification to you? What level of acumen must be shown that can transcend some external third party certification or credentialing? I have made an extensive career out of beating the many Phds I work with, not by intent, but by blunt force trauma, as in they could not solve the problems, so I was called in to do so. As few of them were worth their papers. Most by far were not even close.
Quoting Bylaw
Well, again, time will decide. Risk is acceptable. Opinion does not really matter. Truth does.
Quoting Bylaw
I have been fairly clear throughout this dialogue. Many would call my clarity blunt even. It has been fun.
Quoting Bylaw
My great intuitive leap on this issue would be that the military mandates much of its chatter. The reason is that lives depend on the second by second efficiency of what they say in the field. If you watch Star Trek Discovery its so comically bad in that way. The original series had military adjacent speech and was therefore far more accurate and sensible. The foolishness of blather seen even on the last few shows would have them all dead in nanoseconds in that future world. But luckily for those bozos the writers are infinitely powerful and on their side, as a pandering group of sycophants. In roleplaying games I had to put segment limits on the syllables of soliloquies for the carebear drama lovers of today's roleplaying world, because if they said one tenth of what they say in combat situations they would lose initiative, suffer several surprise attacks and be dead and bleeding on the floor or gassed out on the ethereal plane before anyone understood their ridiculous self-indulgent nuances.
(easing off the trans-axle now. I'm just grinding metal)
Quoting Bylaw
A matter of debate for sure. And here we are.
Quoting Bylaw
I must agree. Thank you for stating that. Yes.
Quoting Bylaw
I would say the culture in such lofty forums is decidedly order-apology, foolish in the extant need for certainty, devoted to rather pointless qualifications, and entrenched in esoteric language that is a balzing impediment to their de-facto goals as 'bringers of wisdom'. But, ... yeah!
Quoting Bylaw
Exactly, and the HUGE, world-shattering truth is that logic and thought are all fear-based. Fear, last time I checked was not only an emotion, but it is properly and very improperly denigrated. If thought were properly understood as a manifestation of fear, their bulwark of delusional certainty would properly collapse.
Let's end this here, and I know you still disagree with 'only' and my language oversight suggestions. But we really have hashed it out well.
If you would please, take the final word on this to which I will not respond (unless you lose all perspective and go full nutcase). I have faith!
The irony is that @Chet Hawkins constantly talks about things which are undecidable, and hence mere matters of opinion, as though he knows the truth concerning them, while refusing to use the word "know".
Others addressing like questions will acknowledge they are just expressing their opinions and will reserve the word "know" only for those (countless) mundane cases where we actually do know.
I think the intellectual honesty belongs to the latter group.
I think it's a tricky issue. In a certain abstract sense I share, I think, a number of beliefs in common with Chet. I differ about the prescription for reasons I've raised in a number of posts. He has at times taken this to mean that I give up. But my problem with the prescription of eliminating 'know' and 'knowledge' is not just that I think this won't happen. I also understand that he considers this only a part of his solution proposal. My main problem with it is that I think it actually will simply create better used car sales reps.
I'd say I also object on philosophy of language grounds: that placing so much focus on the words presumes a philosophy of language that I think is both misleading and limiting. It takes language literally - me thinking in terms of all the dead metaphors and other tropes hidden in literal language. It likely connects to the conduit metaphor for language/communication and it's biases - Reddy
http://www.biolinguagem.com/ling_cog_cult/reddy_1979_conduit_metaphor.pdf
as opposed to a diverse set of actions in the world, a dynamic set of options that do things, rather than or in addition to merely containing things. Along with some ideas about what truth is: mirror/representational (only).
And his approach it seems to me reinforces people's assumptions about themselves and their beliefs: such as that their beliefs are conscious and what they (the people) assert (necessarily), that our beliefs are in words, that words are literal.
I also think it implicitly understimates the problem. He may not, but I think his prescription and approach does.
I'm wondering what you're saying here. Are you saying that looking at your hands (sensory observation) provides a justification for the belief that you have hands? There is no epistemological justification for the belief that you have hands. To know this is the case ask yourself if there is any good justification for doubting the belief that you have hands. If there are good reasons to doubt, then justification makes sense, but if there are no good reasons to doubt, then justification doesn't make sense. The connection between knowledge and doubting is an important epistemological connection. This is an important point that Wittgenstein makes in OC.
Knowing and doubting require good reasons when we speak epistemologically. Given what you wrote previously you seem to agree, at least, with some of this.
The way you express this is jumbled. I DO NOT state ever that things are 'undecidable'. That is your word and very wrong. Everything is decidable, just always partly wrong. That is the nature of belief.
I do not refuse to use the word 'know' as I have shown in many cases in this thread. I bet I wrote it more than anyone else did. So again, your precision is incredibly bad (kind of my point overall). The precision of 'knowing' is relevant. The implication and the way the public (and even you guys) treat the word 'know' and its derivatives is not as functional as you all believe it to be. Instead, it causes problems. The more precise truth is that knowing is only belief.
Quoting Janus
No, you actually do not know. And every time you claim to, you prove that point.
Quoting Janus
If the word 'intellectual' means deceiver and or delusional, sure. But I have met quite a large class of people that are what I call 'intellectual' and they are more dedicated to truth, you know, wisdom, ACTUAL philosophy, instead of the stuffy academic version, a deluded stiff interpretation of what is and is not intellectual. If you believe you are on the honest side of that debate, it will be very hard to help you.
I prefer to proceed properly from assumed casual ignorance rather than delude myself that I 'know'. Even in trivial matters this stance makes a fine and useful difference. But in serious matters it blows away the conceit and 'assumed objectivity' of people incapable of being objective.
All Theory of Knowledge (TOK) statements on this issue are just ridiculous, as is the philosophical treatment to date for the difference between belief and knowing.
Otherwise respectable 'intellectuals' post and defend pointless arbitrary designations for words such as 'opinion', 'belief', and 'certainty'. It becomes increasing obvious reading their tripe that they have no idea and cannot agree between them on anything, except this:
Some words in language SEEM to mean CURRENTLY less certainty, and some words SEEM to mean CURRENTLY more certainty. That is just hogwash. Stop drinking it and the Kool-Aid.
There is a logarithmic function to awareness. There is no arbitrary line/break ANYWHERE on that line. The line is asymptotic to truth. It never arrives. This means you cannot know anything with absolute certainty. This means that to claim you do is very problematic, conceited and rather dully situated in terms of ACTUAL awareness. Speaking and acting in accord with truth and ACTUAL awareness is BETTER morally than not. Thus confusing people with arbitrary designations that then get interpreted by people vastly differently.
This DOES NOT empower used car salesmen to the careful observer. In fact, quite the reverse. Listeners will be more on guard now if knowing with certitude is off the table. Such types, used car salesmen are paragons of speaking in absolutes that are never realized (AND YOU AND OTHERS ARE DEFENDING THEIR CHOICE TO DO SO).
The world is risky and unsafe. Cling to your delusions at not only your peril, but the peril of us all, and ultimately the whole universe's purpose. That is my belief.
No. I'm not thinking in terms of justification. I just see my hands, feel them, use them, so I know I have hands. Doubt about it is impossible unless I buy into some silly artificial possibility like "brain in a vat" or " evil demon.
. I agree with you that eliminating the word 'know' from the lexicon would make no difference. That said, I do think that people often take themselves to know things which they really don't.
My issue is that we do know many things, so eliminating the word 'know' would be impossible in any case, because then we could no longer speak accurately about our experiences.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
This is confused, If something is undecidable then we cannot know the truth about it. We can know the truth about many things, and these are therefore decidable. It doesn't follow that people cannot decide to believe they know the truth about those things which are undecidablethis happens all the time.
Quoting Chet Hawkins
You know perfectly well that I meant that you do not use the word to apply to yourself. Of course, you must use the word in order to refer to the idea so that you can reject it. Your thinking seems quite shallow, but I don't doubt that it is clouded by some dogma or other.
I'm familiar with the teachings of both Naranjo and Gurdjieff, I have participated in the Gurdjieff Foundation in Sydney and completed two of Naranjo's 'SAT' workshops. The enneagram typology has some interesting insights, but life and people are not so configured as to fit neatly into such systems.
Quoting Janus So Janus is onto something and Sam26 was wise enough to point it out... The distinction between certainty and knowledge is crucial.
G.E. Moore would argue that the knowledge of having a hand is as clear as day; it's a basic truth that doesn't need to be dragged through the mud of skepticism. It's like saying, "I'm certain I had coffee this morning,"no one needs a signed affidavit from the barista to believe that.
On the flip side, Wittgenstein suggests that our game of doubting everything, including the existence of our hands, is like sawing off the branch we're sitting on. It's all fun and games until someone questions the existence of the tree. Wittgenstein's 'On Certainty' whispers to us that there's a difference between knowing something for sure, like the presence of our hands, and just being stubbornly skeptical.
In epistemology, certainty is a state of no doubt, like knowing one has hands, and doesnt need justification. Knowledge, however, is a justified true belief that requires evidence. Wittgenstein argued that basic certainties are needed to build knowledge. While certainty is immediate, knowledge seeks justification through evidence. Doubt is valuable as it leads to knowledge, but for certain truths, like the existence of our hands, seeking justification may be unnecessary. The relationship between certainty and knowledge involves understanding what we accept as true and what we justify, shaping our view of the world and our self-awareness.
EDIT 920 pm
I am now aware, I should have just edited my last comment and included in it the quote above instead of making it a separate comment. I'll remember that next time!
EDIT 1114 pm - In addition to my questions above: I wonder if we just have good enough reason TO KNOW what we DO NOT believe...why/how can we though without knowing a belief? Perhaps in "thinking we know" So then, do you know you have them...do we know you have them? Yes? Who needs to know?
The issue from the start is that @Chet Hawkins claims we do not know anything, and yet provides no argument for that claim, while speaking dogmatically in a way that suggests he think he knows a whole lot.
It's tedious and boring stuff, totally vacuous, and you haven't helped make it any more interesting...to me at least.
I asked that because you questioned if I was. You initiated that term! EVEN WITH THE EVIDENCE IN FRONT OF YOU.
you dont have to ask, READ...its not "seemingly" irrelevant IS IT? OR IS IT NOT?
Quoting Janus
Also, not really an issue but a personal one. One you have with a dying interest in understanding anyways... He claims not that, just that there is NO knowledge. Has nothing to do what he thinks he claims we dont know or how he says it...would that change things FOR YOU if how he said his arguments were tailored to your liking how does that affect your issues? Do the issues transform? Do they stem from an underlying issue, or just not HELP YOU UNDERSTAND your issues through?
Although the coherence of that idea turns on justification and it may not be entirely clear as to just what constitutes justification. There may be many cases where we believe such and such is the truth, and if we have good reason to believe what we do and if what we believe is the truth we may be said to have knowledge under that definition, even if we are not certain the belief is true, In that case we could be said to know, but not to know that we know.
Because tomorrow, for all we know life could suddenly stop making sense, logic that we once thought we understood so well could suddenly change, causing us to not understand how to make reasonable arguments anymore. We assume that it doesn't because of belief, because if we didn't use belief then we would know, but we can't do that because we are dependent on our ability to reason, not our ability to know. To truly know something is to not need to use reasoning because you simply understand exactly how things are in regard to what you know.
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
Because a back and forth is required and you do nothing to help yourself understand, besides what you always have done. You are claiming no arguments have been made, but what if we are getting there??? You are limiting the possibilities and ultimately only robbing yourself...Its the same old DOG SHIT, a shame.
Great questions. Lets see if they are coherent, mine apparently were not for Janus. Maybe I will take a page from your book, if your communication efforts work better for his understanding. If anything, I will know (ha ha) and NO THANKS to him, what about my questions were not good enough to be acknowledged...based on the evidence that Janus provides in how he proceeds with answering your response. My THANKS to you! Do I believe MY and HIS exchange is pointless, not on my end. BUT they are when such refusal is happening, its fine. I am not here for JANUS' amusement, "Quoting Janus" I am here because I CARE. Pointless exchanges are only that, for Janus, but not for the right reasons...He calls this an exchange. Do I believe this exchange is pointless? No I do not. For the reasons that ought to be clear, people are continuing to engage...18 pages later. And JANUS gets nothing...
When you say, "I just see my hands, feel them, use them, so I know I have hands," you're giving an argument using a sensory justification. It seems to me it's just an enthymeme. I'm not sure why you would think that's not a justification. You're even using the word know epistemologically.
Quoting Kizzy
We often use the term certainty as a synonym for know, so there is no problem there. You seem to be using the word certain as a kind of subjective feeling, i.e., as a conviction of what you believe. If you're using certainty in this way, it's not an epistemological use. We also sometimes use the word know in the same way, i.e., as an expression of one's inner conviction. Both uses are fine, but you have to be clear about how you're using these concepts, otherwise, things get a bit muddled.
I'm using the "know" of familiarity. I see my hands, feel my hands, use my hands, know my hands. I'm not justifying any belief, simply reporting the experience of having hands.
Quoting Echogem222
Life does make sense to us, provided we don't ask incoherent questions. Of life didn't make sense we could not survive. We speak from present experience, not from barely imaginable possibilities.
Quoting Echogem222
That is merely a vaguely imaginable scenario, not a serious consideration.
Quoting Kizzy
Don't presume to speak for me...that would be a good start if you really want to engage.
I don't know, perhaps I didn't read you closely enough, but to the extent that it seemed to me that you were indulging what I see as Chet's self-indulgent grandiosity it seemed to me a "wankfest" I don't know if you agreed with him or if you were just being polite to him, but if I misunderstood you, then I in turn apologize.
I basically agree with your "move forward peacefully" but I also don't mind a bit of conflict and confrontation and challenge in the process of examining one another's ideas. I never take anything personally on here.
Quoting Janus
Life does make sense to us provided we don't ask incoherent questions... That's like saying, fairies are real until you start asking questions. You think incoherent questions invalidate your reasoning if you were to take them seriously, but the fact you can do that at all already invalidates your reasoning.
If life did not make sense we could not survive? Yeah, that's why I believe that life makes sense, but I still believe it, and yet you're acting like if you did what I'm doing now, you'd go crazy... yet I'm doing it just fine and not going crazy at all.
Quoting Janus
It being even vaguely imaginable already invalidates your reasoning. If you truly knew things, that should be impossible.
+++
It is your subjective opinion that things are like that which you are using to say I'm wrong. But if I decided to use your reasoning, I could just say that you're wrong because what you're saying doesn't make sense to me given the severe lack of depth your counter argument has.
When someone says they know that apples taste good, but someone else says they only believe apples taste good, the fact that someone can have a belief of something which should be known as true, should already be a strong indicator that you can't know such things.
I am taking the word 'undecidable' to mean what it should mean, and does in some ways, even colloquially. That is that which cannot be decided upon. We are able to decide. So you're wrong. This does not mean that decisions cannot be wrong, as you just showed. The matter IS NOT confusing to me.
Again, if you wish to break out some esoteric knowledge, even if it's academically narrowed or specific, that is less available to colloquial understanding and so hurts in helping people to earn wisdom.
Quoting Janus
No, it does not. That certainty is not possible. That is my point.
Quoting Janus
No, as mentioned many times I do not know anything. I believe I was aware of your incorrect turn of phrase there, yes. But my confidence IS NOT certainty, so you're wrong again.
Quoting Janus
If you'd really like to compare thinking between us, a simple review of this thread only will reveal the true quality of Farmir of Gondor (me). You're much more akin to the likes of Boromir who thinks he can know things. It's ok! I have a few decades on you in all probability. There is till time for you to visit the snack bar and come away enriched!
Quoting Janus
Yes, they are. And I can agree with you that the Enneagram intelligentsia itself is often not quite ready to stand up properly for their system. They are loathe to put the system in moral terms because they want a new secular faith to take the place of religion and also they want to make money at it. Mixing moral and immoral concerns muddies all waters.
So this is ad hominem. I clearly state that I do not know things in many posts, so you're accusation is not only ad hominem, but also just wrong.
Further, I have given arguments in many, many posts, meaning you are racking up quite a list of decidedly uncareful statements of wrongness.
:rofl: