Posted on 04/06/2005 11:36:46 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
Freepers began a most engaging dialogue at the end of another thread! It is not only a fascinating subject - it also presents us with an opportunity to clarify ourselves and hopefully help us appreciate our differences and thus relieve some of the contention on various threads (most especially science and philosophy threads).
The subject is knowledge - which, as it turns out, means different things to different people. Moreover, we each have our own style of classifying “knowledge” – and valuing the certainty of that “knowledge”. Those differences account for much of the differences in our views on all kinds of topics – and the contentiousness which may derive from them.
Below are examples. First is PatrickHenry’s offering of his classification and valuation followed by mine – so that the correspondents here can see the difference. Below mine is js1138’s offering.
Please review these and let us know how you classify and value “knowledge”! We’d appreciate very much your following the same format so it’ll be easier for us to make comparisons and understand differences.
PatrickHenry’s types of “knowledge” and valuation of certainties:
1. Revelation: Spiritual understanding divinely communicated.
Alamo-Girl’s types of “knowledge” and valuation of certainties:
js1138’s types of “knowledge” and valuation of certainties
2. Prediction from scientific theory: I calculate there will be a partial solar eclipse this week.
3. Conclusion from evidence: I conclude from the verifiable evidence that ...
4. Sensory perception of something external to me: I see my dog is lying at my feet.
5. Acceptance of another's opinion: I provisionally accept the opinion of X (an individual or group) as knowledge because (a) I haven't worked it out for myself; and (b) I have what I regard as good reason for confidence in X.
6. Personal memory: I recall I had breakfast this morning.
7. Internal emotional state: I feel I'm happy, or I have empathy, compassion or sympathy for you.
Separate List for theological knowledge:
2. Faith: Belief in a revelation experienced by another.
2. Theological knowledge, indirect revelation: I believe in a revelation experienced by another, i.e. Scripture is confirmed to me by the indwelling Spirit.
4. Evidence/Historical fact, uninterpreted: I have verifiable evidence Reagan was once President.
5. Sensory perception of something external to me: I see my dog is lying at my feet.
6. Personal memory: I recall I had breakfast this morning.
7. Prediction from scientific theory: I calculate there will be a partial solar eclipse this week.
8. Trust in a Mentor: I trust this particular person to always tell me the truth, therefore I know …
9. Internal emotional state: I feel I'm happy, or I have empathy, compassion or sympathy for you.
10. Evidence/Historical fact, interpreted: I conclude from the fossil evidence in the geologic record that …
11. Determined facts: I accept this as fact because of a consensus or veto determination by others, i.e. I trust that these experts or fact finders know what they are talking about.
12. Imaginings: I imagine how things ought to have been in the Schiavo case.
2. Sensory perception of something external to me: I see my dog is lying at my feet. I am aware that this has limitations, but what choices do I have? I learn the limitations and live with them.
3. Personal memory: I recall I had breakfast this morning. Same limitations apply, except that they are more frequent and serious.
4. Logical conclusion: I can prove the Pythagorean theorem is valid and true. The trueness may be unassailable, but the conclusions of axiomatic reasoning are only as true as the axioms, which may be arbitrary. Outside of pure logic and pure mathematics, axiomatic reasoning drops quickly in my estimation of usefulness. People who argue politics and religion from a "rational" perspective are low on my list of useful sources.
5. Prediction from scientific theory: I calculate there will be a partial solar eclipse this week. I am not aware of any scientific theory that I understand which has failed in a major way. Some theories, of course, make sharper predictions than others. Eclipses are pretty certain.
6. Conclusion from evidence: I conclude from the verifiable evidence that ... Oddly enough, "facts" are less certain in my view than theories.
7. Acceptance of another's opinion: I provisionally accept the opinion of X (an individual or group) as knowledge because (a) I haven't worked it out for myself; and (b) I have what I regard as good reason for confidence in X.
In any case, there are two types of knowledge (and knowledge is knowledge; it is not revelation, etc.):
1) empirical knowledge: What we have directly observed.
2) inferential knowledge: What logically follows.
The degree of certainty is based upon the reliability of the observation and the soundness of the logic.
I'm sure your classmates were impressed. Intelligence is one of those wonderful things that's hard to define without going circular.
Q: What is intelligence?
Psychologist: It's what my test measures.
Q: So what does your test measure?
Psychologist: Intelligence.
Thanks. I was hoping someone would see through my muddle and clarify it for others.
But here's a thought based on a lifetime of scientific observation. The 'empirical knowledge', based on direct sensory input, that so many people on this thread seem to value, is anything but direct. As a birder, I've noticed that making accurate observations of a bird one has recognized is easy. One has a mental picture of a species, and one's brain naturally sorts the 'field-marks' in accord with that mental picture. On the other hand, observations of a bird one hasn't yet identified are harder, more uncertain and generally (when one compares, say, with photographs ) less reliable. Regardless of how objective one thinks one's direct observations are, they aren't. They are hopelessly contaminated by one's expectations.
In my research, more and more, I tend to rely on instrumental measurements and statistical tests of certainty.
PS. And rest assured we had numerous other theories of intelligence to ponder and consider since intelligence was a major sub-section of the course. We were hardly restricted to the false dilemma of either (a) Gardner's "multiple intelligences" theory; or (b) circular reasoning.
Herein lies another fallacy, this time one of linguistics. The terms "incorrect" and "correct" (as I use them) refer to statements of fact. 2 + 2 = 5 is incorrect.
Right and wrong refer to moral judgements. Therefore we can say both that murdering a man to steal is money is wrong (bad morals) and correct if in fact it happens (factually correct). Your argument would fall into the "artifially narrow perception of reality" error mode in my first post. Reality does not equate to matter or dimension or the science thereof. All that is a subset of reality, but there is more to reality than just that. For example, if a spiritual plane exists, then it is part of reality as well. Just because you cannot prove it or do not believe it is irrelevant to whether it is or not.
Sadly, this post will not help anyone else since no one else exists.
I do this because it pleases me to pretend that others exist. But I know all experience is really only the manifestation of my sense.
I do get sad that things cease to exists when I do not experience them, but then I get happy because they appear to exist when I return my attention on this.
I look forward to seeing how I respond to this when I see your name on the post.
(/silopsism)
It's a favorite gripe of mine. People who don't really have too many experts on their side--their basic thesis being that the whole body of modern scholarship on the current topic is just wrong--will reach for support anywhere they can. Thus, they favor obviously inappropriate authorities over the only appropriate ones.
I know you were being sarcastic, but the best humor is 90% truth.
Now here's a thread worthy of FR. This is going to be fun. Thanks AG.
I think one of the curiosities in this thread is that we have not even been able to agree on definitions yet. That's why I started out with some. The entire notion of having experts on one side or another does not speak to knowledge at all. It speaks to belief. That line of reasoning is not dedicated to the discovery of truth but to the bending of others to your will. So many people think that is thought, and they could not be more wrong.
BTW: I am having too much fun on this thread.
If you're going to tell me that biologists have biology all wrong, geologists have geology all wrong, and/or paleontologists have paleontology all wrong, have an argument other than "Dr. Walt Brown has an engineering degree from Emmm ... Eye ... Teeee!!!!"
But Patrick, you continue to evade the very point I'm trying to make. The revelation, the "spiritual nature," is trying to tell you about the very shape of nature itself, of the Universe. Or more specifically, the relations that obtain between God and man and nature and society, the whole and part, humanity and the Universe -- in all their variegated mutual, synergistic relations.
And if you have the eyes to observe what is around you in nature, and the ears to "hear" what that means, then you can rationally, "objectively verify" the dual account we have from God Himself, revealed in the Book of Scripture (revelation by Creator), and the Book of Nature (revelation by Creation). Both accounts accord beautifully.
If you think there is an ounce of "religiosity" or "sectarianism" in that view, I would think you are mistaken. My love is philosophy (after God only), but my very next loves are human history and culture. I consider mathematics the "queen" of human inquiry, and science her "handmaiden." And based on all the things that I have worked at and studied and lived through in my life so far, my center of Truth is to be found in Revelation and Creation, as attested to by millennia of human experience and insight, as confirmed by me by means of reflection on my own personal experience.
As a student of human cultures, I think I can say with some confidence that the central problems/insights of human existential experience are the same across all human cultures. Different cultures articulate their experiences differently. But at the end of the day, all cultures manifest the same concerns, and answer them in remarkably similar ways.
The shorthand description of how humans have historically managed to do this is they simply acknowledged: God is Truth. There is no truth without God. I don't care whether you're a Greek or a Christian or a Viking or an American Indian or a Hindu or Buddhist or Taoist -- the cross-cultural, central insight of the human race has never varied from the acknowledgement of God as the foundation of Truth -- until very recent times.
Even the most primitive cultures extant in our own time acknowledge this central truth, and we can observe this in their living traditions and institutions.
FWIW dear, huggable Patrick.
Intelligence is a complicated one, no doubt, and a debate well beyond the purview of this thread, at least so far as I'm concerned. ;^)
Whoever said anything about "all wrong". Surely they must have gotten something right, even if just by random chance (just kidding). Are you going to tell me they've got it "all right"? No errors anywhere and perfect understanding of all phenomena in those respective subsets?
My point was that in the quest for knowledge persuasion of any sort is a false objective. If you intend to persuade me, then you are not seeking knowledge, you are seeking control.
When did I say I was seeking knowledge? I've spent 55 years accumulating all the knowledge that can be known just now. I just need to persuade people that I have it.
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