What is knowledge?

_{kairosfocus

November 26, 2017

Food for thought, Logic and Reason, Philosophy, Sciences and Theology, Selective Hyperskepticism}

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Sometimes, exchanges at UD come down to truly basic (and hard) issues.

This is one such time, where Origenes has challenged prolific objector Critical Rationalist in the Personal Incredulity thread:

>>100 Origenes November 25, 2017 at 7:01 pm

CR

What is your definition of valid knowledge?>>

I have thought this worthy of responding to and of headlining:

KF, 106: >> Origines,

Generally, I would argue that “knowledge” is used in a weak form sense: warranted, credibly true (and reliable) belief.

Drawing out, slightly:

Warranted —

there is an available account (as opposed to internal to the given knower, who may simply accept a message from reliable sources . . . ) that, properly understood, would justify accepting or treating belief x as true in serious contexts.

Credibly true —

the warrant for and circumstances of belief x are such that we can have good confidence that the belief is likely to be true or capture enough truth that we are entitled to trust it.

Reliable —

the warrant for x is such that if we act on the belief that-x in a consequential situation, we are unlikely to be let down.

Belief —

that which is accepted, perceived, or held to be so; often in this context, for good reason.

Of course in today’s day and age, “faith” and “belief” are often despised and dismissively contrasted with “science,” “reason/rationality” and “knowledge,” etc. as though acknowledged faith/trust/belief is invariably ill-warranted.

Such reflects dominance of radical secularism and evolutionary materialistic scientism, which, ironically are not well warranted, are not trustworthy (being fallaciously rooted, esp. through self-referential incoherence and/or the fostering of ill-advised cognitive biases) and should not be permitted to act as gate-keepers on what we regard as knowledge.>>

So, arguably, knowledge is well-warranted, credibly true (and reliable) belief.

Many will find that unpalatable, but I confidently predict that they will have difficulty proposing another succinct account that answers to issues ranging from the classical “justified, true belief” definition of epistemology, to the fact that scientific knowledge is not utterly certain, to the challenge of Gettier counter-examples, to the Grue issue, to the Agrippa trilemma challenge and more. END

Comments

DS, weak form knowledge in science is embedded in bodies of knowledge and linked praxis -- paradigms -- that are often framed on theories. Surely, you are familiar with the commonplace rhetorical move of saying that Darwinian macro-evo is as certain fact as is the roundness of the earth or gravity? I would point out that this is exactly a case of failure of warrant and confusion of category. I would further point to the use of a crooked yardstick, so-called methodological naturalism, and the linked embedding of ideology, evolutionary materialistic scientism, which is self referentially incoherent. Surely, you are also aware of what "science" itself means: KNOWLEDGE, in Latin. Similarly, you know that "unscientific" is tantamount to irrational, ill-founded superstition and prejudice or the like. hence the issue of demarcation arguments, which actually are another example of crooked yardsticks. Likewise, as I pointed out, memory, leftovers in the refrigerator etc are all potentially fallible means of warrant. We have to be honest about uncertainty and limitations in our bodies of knowledge and best praxis, and our usage of the term knowledge has to be humbled in face of that challenge. In fact, what happens is, we have faith in the reliability of a given body of knowledge and praxis and apply it. But, faith is a despised term in a radically secularised world, so there is a refusal to acknowledge what is going on even as so many disdain those who admit to living by faith. But in fact the import of the above as discussed is that knowledge is a species of reasonable, responsible faith that we can trust enough to live by in relevant domains. For instance, do you know beyond all possible doubt -- utter certainty -- that the food on your table for dinner is not tainted? No, but you may have moral certainty, and know also that absent eating for long enough, you will die. So, you act on moral certainty of warrant. In more desperate situations, you will take much higher risks regarding what you eat or drink -- I have heard of men in combat drinking ditch water and swallowing Cl-based Halazone pills as that was the best they could do. (BTW, it is suggested that iodine is a better agent esp in the tropics.) KF PS: Bodies of theory are objects of knowledge [one knows Newtonian Dynamics or Quantum theory or Molecular Orbital theory etc as info that one has on tap and which is warranted and empirically reliable per some extent of testing] but I would count them as explanatory constructs that differ from engineering models inasmuch as we hold the hope that they may just be true in significant part. Actual observations have generally higher degrees of warrant as credibly being true: g is observed near earth's surface as about 9.8 N/kg, and are used to correct theories. Among other points, this is why a theory about the unobservable deep past of origins is inherently less well warranted than say the roundness of Earth or the orbiting of the planets on gravitational interactions and empirically founded laws of high empirical reliability . . . which is not quite the same as truth. Theories of the origin of solar systems are examples of origins theories that are less well warranted inherently. And the discussion of them is as a rule put in those terms.kairosfocus_{November 26, 2017
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Axel@25 Ha!Latemarch_{November 26, 2017
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'As to your reply to J-Mac I would have said that wisdom is the application of knowledge to life “;^) Latemarch, Would you not qualify that along the lines of, for example: 'in the long term, in particlar, under an ultimately spiritual perspective'?Axel_{November 26, 2017
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KF,
Would you say that “scientific knowledge” is a misnomer? Wouldn’t that be passing strange?
Yes, unless "scientific knowledge" has a slightly different meaning than what we are discussing here. For example, I would guess that many people take "scientific knowledge" to mean the propositions that follow from some scientific theory. In fact, it seems that this weak form of "knowledge" that we are talking about is fairly similar to what I understand "theory" to mean.daveS_{November 26, 2017
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Whatever "knowledge" is at a time it depends on context. When courting my wife I once exclaimed, "but we know so little about each other." She replied, "we know enough." Enough to make a decision to marry with all that it meant. So is what we "knew," knowledge?Belfast_{November 26, 2017
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It seems to me that knowledge and human life are both, perforce, interconnected, and both connected to the godhead, the divinity, God. I get J-Mac's point about knowledge and wisdom, and I think it is probably most might helpful to consider the Catholic church's understanding of the soul, the human soul, as the faculties of memory, will and understanding. The deepest truths are so ultimately inscrutable that we all of us end up believing what we choose to believe: we are ewishful thinkers. Christians and athiests alike. But just as atheists look for events that vindicate their unbelief, so we are alive to God's mercies, and are convinced we have an unparalleled authority for subordinating the potential negative implications of the things that go wrong for us, in favour of embracing, as best we can, the Christian rationale for our sufferings, as trials - and, in fact, educators in wisdom, Jesus having learnt wisdom, spiritual knowledge and understanding, scripture tells us, through suffering. Aldous Huxley dilated fascinatingly on the subject of the worldly intelligence and the spiritual intelligence, viewing our brain as a reducing valve, for the purpose of enabling us to survive in time - or we'd simply be 'spaced out' all the time, beholding in some manner the Beatific Vision. The wonderful hallucinogenic drugs, such as lysergic acid, mescalin, temporarily opening the valve sufficiently for the subject to have a quite heavenly view of the most mundane objects surroundng us (creases in a fabric, for example). I see David as the ultimate figure of the wage-earner, according to the Beatitudes and, indeed, scripture, as a whole, the 'poor' or poorer folk having the greater connatural propensity for wisdom and virtue, and the rich, the greater propensity for wordly intelligence and worldly vices, such as greed, decitfulness, guile, violence, oppression, etc; whereas the reason God gave them superior worldy wisdom was primarily to help the poor to survive in this world of time. Solomon, we know, identified with his father's interests, as a true son of David, and as such, a figure of Christ; Absolom, the emblematically false son of David, whose nature, like the serpent on the pole in the desert, was emblematic of sin: Jesus being made sin for our sskes, we are told - though perfectly fulfilling his heavenly father's will on the cross. It seems to me more than a little coincidental that Absalom was found, having been unseated from his donkey and suspended above it, with his head caught between the branches of a tree. Not entering a Jerusalem of good omen, we can surely surmise, although David, whose throne he had usurped and whom David feared would have killed him, shed floods of tears over his death at the hands of Joab. It calls to mind Jesus lament over Jerusalem, the false coinage it had become, to its own increasing spiritual blindness and eventual physical destruction. Joab had transfixed Absalom with three darts, evocative of the Holy Trinity; interesting, too, that there should have been a rivulet of blood in the form of a figure '3', on Jesus' forehead, visible on the Holy Shroud of Turin. To revert to the more speciifc point you made, J-Mac, we Theists recognise that the faculty of the will is crucial to life intelligent life. Indeed, in spiritual terms, the Christian faith and the whole of scripture is predicated on voluntarism, that we know what we want to know. Imagine if the criterion for entry to heaven had been a high worldly intelligence, instead of a lot of love in our hearts. We could end up seeing the likes of Pinochet, Videla, Lorscheider, all the South American 'caudillos', not to speak of Hitler, Stalin et al.Axel_{November 26, 2017
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KF,
DS, you don’t count known false beliefs as knowledge in the weak sense and only count responsibly warranted, credibly true (and reliable) ones. In short you are here accepting provisionality and open-endedness. There is a strict form, well warranted (to utter certainty) and actually true beliefs, but the set of such is tiny — and for those rejecting self-evident truths or clinging to hyperskepticism, shrinks towards zero.
I suppose you can do this; I guess I'm breaking up things differently. I have a collection S of warranted, credibly true, and reliable beliefs. Of course I don't know any of these to be false. I would count those elements of S which are actually true to be knowledge, whether they are warranted to absolute certainty or not. The rest? Merely false beliefs. Clearly I can't know for certain exactly which of my beliefs are knowledge and which are false under this view.
On dinner last night, memory and testimony or even leftovers in the refrigerator etc are all less than utterly certain as warrant. How do you know that it is true — yes, a regress begins — that you had say leftover Thanksgiving Turkey for dinner last night plus veggies and starch, washed down with say a Bud or two?
I have beliefs about what I had for dinner, and I judge that it's very likely that those beliefs are knowledge in the strong sense, but yes, a demon could have implanted false memories in my mind, so I'm not completely certain.daveS_{November 26, 2017
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DS, you don't count known false beliefs as knowledge in the weak sense and only count responsibly warranted, credibly true (and reliable) ones. In short you are here accepting provisionality and open-endedness. There is a strict form, well warranted (to utter certainty) and actually true beliefs, but the set of such is tiny -- and for those rejecting self-evident truths or clinging to hyperskepticism, shrinks towards zero. My emphasis is, when we practically deal with knowledge, e.g. for science, we are actually using the soft form. On dinner last night, memory and testimony or even leftovers in the refrigerator etc are all less than utterly certain as warrant. How do you know that it is true -- yes, a regress begins -- that you had say leftover Thanksgiving Turkey for dinner last night plus veggies and starch, washed down with say a Bud or two? Would you say that "scientific knowledge" is a misnomer? Wouldn't that be passing strange? KFkairosfocus_{November 26, 2017
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KF: You asked an open ended question and I responded with my usual economy of words. We are in essential agreement. As to your reply to J-Mac I would have said that wisdom is the application of knowledge to life ";^)Latemarch_{November 26, 2017
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As has been pointed out by others, knowledge presupposes consciousness. I would like to add that understanding is also presupposed. "E=MC^2" held by a not-understanding mind is not knowledge. Similarly, "siya ay tahanan" is not information to a person who does not understand Filipino. What I am saying is that knowledge is not a thing on its own. Knowledge is ontologically dependent on a understanding mind. "Siya ay tahanan" is not information on its own. It is only information at the moment that it is held and understood by consciousness. Next, I would like to point out that understanding is placing something in its proper context. Understanding is 'seeing' that something fits in context.Origenes_{November 26, 2017
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KF,
Would you say we cannot know that we had what we had for dinner last night? Or, that we cannot know someone to be guilty in a trial? Or even that much of Mathematics (post Godel) is not knowledge?
No, I would say we can know such things, such as what we had for dinner last night. I would count the beliefs I hold which are well-warranted, credibly true (and reliable) and actually true as knowledge. Obviously that leaves me with the difficult problem of sifting out the actually true beliefs from this collection, but what else can we do? I simply believe it's very odd to count false beliefs as knowledge.daveS_{November 26, 2017
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J-Mac, you are right, wisdom requires genuine knowledge but goes beyond it. Insight, understanding, epistemic and general virtues, prudence, a good heart, ability to read subtleties in a situation and much more are involved in wisdom. And of course Philosophy is literally the love of wisdom, where PhD is literally a teacher of the love of wisdom, and a Master is similarly a teacher of slightly lesser rank. Sadly, many have forgotten or dismissed the first steps of true wisdom: the reverent fear of the One who is supreme, maximally great and supremely good and just. KFkairosfocus_{November 26, 2017
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Knowledge is veridical information that is kept in someone's mind and can be either revealed by someone to someone else or personally acquired directly through empirical observation or indirectly learned by studying the information available on the subject.Dionisio_{November 26, 2017
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Latemarch, you see there the reason why I speak of "warrant" as opposed to being "justified" in holding a belief -- post, the Gettier counter-examples . . . one can be justified in holding a true belief that is demonstrably not knowledge. Typical cases are seeing last year's championship game rerun on TV -- which has the same teams and result as this year's, without knowing that; so one has performed one's epistemic duties and has a right to the belief that team A won, which is true, but due to objective circumstances it is not knowledge. Yes, too, reliability is indeed implicit in both warrant and credible truth, but we need the emphasis. This is like how the essence of Newton's first law of motion is implicit in the second, but it serves a significant purpose to draw it out and actually start with it: F = 0 => a = 0, where F = dP/dt thence if m = const F = m*a; in turn, F = 0 entails a = 0. In the weak form sense, what is perhaps better is that KNOWN error cannot be knowledge save for the knowledge of the error. That in turn gets complicated really fast through that self-reference: how do we know some E is an error, how reliably? KF PS: I may as well inject here that key self-evident principles such as the first principles of right reason (esp. LOI, LNC, LEM) are crucial as plumbline frameworking principles that warrant knowledge. The self-evidence of consciousness and its role in the act of belief brings out how knowledge is objective but involves the subjective, it is a bridge from the inner world to reality as a whole. In all this, if we make a crooked yardstick our standard of truth, what is genuinely straight, accurate and upright cannot pass the test of conformity to the crooked. From this, we can see just how important plumbline self evident truths are.kairosfocus_{November 26, 2017
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DS, the point is, that science is open ended and provisional but is usually taken as knowledge. Similar for any empirical domain such as history etc. We do not generally speak of scientific beliefs. Of course, there is strong-form knowledge where the criterion of truth is strengthened to utter, unchangeable certainty, this then collapses to a very small circle of that level of certainty. Would you say we cannot know that we had what we had for dinner last night? Or, that we cannot know someone to be guilty in a trial? Or even that much of Mathematics (post Godel) is not knowledge? Notice, I spoke to credible truth and to reliability, rooted in warrant which comes in differing degrees appropriate to what we can access and what we have to weigh in the balances in deciding. There is a trade-off between degree of warrant and reliability and the scope we need to take as known in order to live and to operate prudently. To err, and so to be uncertain to some extent or another, is human. Also, if something hitherto seen as reliable, well warranted and credibly true is exposed to be error, it is struck from the domain of knowledge; so, KNOWN errors (see the issue in that?) cannot be held to be knowledge, and we must be open to correction. Beyond, we must all walk by faith, the issue is in what and how reasonable and responsible we are in that walk. KF PS: In the discussion elsewhere I found some stuff, including a shocking statement by former CIA Director William Colby. Then there is a White March case in Belgium that seems to be the tip of a big and very dirty iceberg. WJM has to be heard seriously, and we may well live in a civilisation that is far uglier in many of its elite circles than we fear in our worst nightmares.kairosfocus_{November 26, 2017
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Latemarch: Knowledge requires a knower.
Good to point this out. BTW this basic insight is denied by CR — he claims that knowledge is something independent from consciousness. Nonsense of course, as Vallicella wrote:
... all we know of things like intellect, will, consciousness, thought, etc. are no more than - and in principle cannot be more than - our own experiences of these phenomena. I have no intelligible conception of "knowledge" unless I inherently presuppose both myself as Subject and some other, outside existing thing as Object. Yet simultaneously (and absurdly?) I cannot actually posit said object as something absolutely outside my own conscious awareness of it. For I can have no description of The Object independent of an already conscious experience. That's just what a description is. Every description, and therefore every species of knowledge, presupposes consciousness and implicitly denies the fact that an object is existing "in itself" unperceived. Thus, all knowledge is somehow the occurrence of a subject containing in itself an object as in-itself and not in-itself. This is, to me, incomprehensible, mystifying, inexplicable. Yet there it is, the most common thing in the world.
Origenes_{November 26, 2017
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All I know is that knowledge doesn't equal wisdom... That's one of the reasons why educated, knowledgeable people believe that random process created the universe and life... They think they have knowledge but they are actually stupid because the wisdom is missing....J-Mac_{November 26, 2017
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Latemarch,
Truth: What is false cannot be known.
Yes, that's a very clear way of stating what I was trying to get at.daveS_{November 26, 2017
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Knowledge requires a knower. Atheist/Materialists are at a disadvantage in that they start at a deterministic/no free will position that does not have a knower. And as per Origene one is not allowed to step out of the circle to criticize positions that have a knower. Truth: What is false cannot be known. Belief: One cannot know what is not believed. Justified: Something might be true and believed but that belief is formed inadequately. A flipped coin, not seen, believed to be a heads and truly is a heads is not justified until examined. I believe that KF’s reliability criterion is enfolded in justification. Good reading here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/Latemarch_{November 26, 2017
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KF,
Generally, I would argue that "knowledge" is used in a weak form sense: warranted, credibly true (and reliable) belief.
This might be true, but if you asked me personally, "what is knowledge?", I would say it also has to be true. Can a false belief ever be knowledge? I don't see how.daveS_{November 26, 2017
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"The Knowledge of the Holy" by A. W. TozerDionisio_{November 26, 2017
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Hebrews 11 says the following of Moses:
27 By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. 28 By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them. 29 By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, whereas the Egyptians, attempting to do so, were drowned.
Verse 29 stands out to me. At this point Moses had ample proof that God existed, and what He could do. The Red Sea was parted before Moses' eyes. Would he have faith that he could trust God to act in his best interest during such a frightening event? The rest is history.bb_{November 26, 2017
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KF, halve a year ago I asked CR:
Criticism based on what? I have asked you this one month ago and you fail to answer. … it [criticism] needs a prior foundation. One cannot reason based on nothing. You seem to “overlook” that basic fact.
KF, as you have pointed out repeatedly, what CR does not do is apply the same criticism to his method of criticism. Somehow this is simply 'true' and exempt from criticism. For this reason, my question to CR.
... those who claim that all beliefs, acts of reasoning, etc., are nonveracious are positing a closed circle in which no beliefs are produced by the proper methods by which beliefs can be said to be veracious or rational. Yet at the same time, they are arrogating to themselves a position outside of this circle by which they can judge the beliefs of others, a move they deny to their opponents. Since the raison d’être of their thesis is that there is no outside of the circle, they do not have the epistemic right to assume a position independent of it, and so their beliefs about the nonveracity of beliefs or reasoning are just as nonveracious as those they criticize. If all of the beliefs inside the circle are suspect, we cannot judge between truth and falsity, since any such judgment would be just as suspect as what it seeks to adjudicate. We would have to seek another argument, another chain of reasoning, another set of beliefs, by which we can judge the judgment—and a third set to judge the judgment of the judgment, ad infinitum. At no point can they step out of the circle to a transcendent standpoint that would allow them to reject some beliefs as tainted while remaining untainted themselves. [Slagle, 'The Epistemological Skyhook']
Origenes_{November 26, 2017
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KF, Yes, this is a fundamental concept that must be clearly understood in order to have a serious conversation on any subject. Thanks for bringing it up.Dionisio_{November 26, 2017
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D, yes, what is knowledge is one of the biggest q's out there, and it is at the pivot of the issues that surround the design theory debates, as well as what is happening in our civlisation. Therefore, I thought we needed to ponder it. KFkairosfocus_{November 26, 2017
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What a question!Dionisio_{November 26, 2017
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Back to basics: what is knowledge?kairosfocus_{November 26, 2017
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