LOL. Burn.
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.
understand your "if"
If everybody understands what you say, then you are saying nothing new. If nobody understands, maybe it is time to write a book.
But RightWhale, that book has already been written, and I suspect you've read it: The Federalist. What i don't understand is why you think the Framers would approve of the way our modern state is developing. They were interested in promulgating a system based on individual Liberty under a rule of equal justice under law. But that's the very system that the modern state is working overtime to overthrow. Why do you think that Madison, Hamilton, Jay, and the other Framers would approve of such a thing?
Some people astonish me with their "faith" in what they refer to as "laws of nature" (i.e., physics, chemistry) yet resist acknowledging "Natural Law" (i.e., moral absolutism). Moreover, they assume that they can verify or prove naural laws by themselves initiating experiments or demonstrations, but decline to accept that there was no identifiable entity that initiated the laws themselves.
LOL. Burn.
bttt
Bird-in-Hand
Intercourse
Paradise
To make matters worse, they are in proximity to Amish territory.
And if you make a wrong turn on your way to Intercourse, you don't make it to Paradise, you wind up in Blue Ball. Link
I apologize for that, it is late. Now, please, everyone, go back to discussing epistemology and quantum car crashes.
Touches upon issues of the dual of the problem,..p-problems, hard p- problems, np-problems and np-hard problems.
P problems being those described wherein their solution is a member of a set of potential solutions where that set has a cardinality of a polynomial,....np=problems, same but the descriptor is a non-polynomial, and np-hard where the number of desciptors of the solution are a nonpolynomial.
I will tell you what Hamilton and Jay would be doing now. They would be looking around, seeing what they can of what is going on, and trying to figure out what is going on. They would not be claiming that their biweekly pieces are the last word.
Something is going on. Some real serious eggheads are conducting a worldwide revolution and here we sit mourning the impending loss of our great idea. It will take much more to counterbalance these eggheads than weeping, wailing, and hurling insults. One advantage, they haven't read much either. There is no textbook for what is happening. Be glib, point to this or that social, political, or economic text of a dead century ago. Be wrong just like them, or actually read the material.
Good point. Rousseau's "general will" of the people did precisely view "the people" as an abstraction, almost like a force of nature. And while their "will" was supposed to reign supreme, he made it clear that it was entirely possible for individuals to be alienated from knowing their true will, in which case the ruler would have to act in their true interest, even against their will.
"The people", for Rousseau, was a philosophical concept, not any living person or collection of people necessarily.
This is very different from Locke and Jefferson, for whom the people were, as you say, flesh and blood individual people.
Excellent! Justice. What is that? All sides claim justice. Are they talking about the same thing, or do we need to dig deeper?
Of course, if one were to walk into a card room in Las Vegas, and redelivered a five card hand from one player to another before they looked at the cards and one won while the other lost, there are many 'rational' card players who would bitterly view you as having spoiled their 'luck'. Go figure...
Interesting that the attack on Jefferson is growing in intensity and is moving down into the school system. He would have been one of the most moral practical men of his day when it was the fashion to be moral and practical, and for that reason alone would have to be destroyed now if the idea of America is to be deconstructed. We will have to gear up if we expect to counter.
That is as he said in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self evident...." There are many things that are self evident. The rest of my self derived knowledge is deduced from the self evident using the principles of logic.
But knowledge is also things told me by people whose own knowledge I trust. Knowledge is also information gleaned from publications I trust to contain the truth.
But little of what we deal with is certain. For example I can not know that my car will start in the morning. This car has never failed to start but others I have owned have failed upon occasion. But I am not going to purchase a spare car on the chance mine may not start tomorrow.
I vote for candidates not knowing exactly what they will do if elected. It is not possible to have knowledge of what others will do in all situations. I have some knowledge of what people will do.. but it is no where certain knowledge. As Rummy is won't to say, Many things are not knowable. What someone will do in all situations is not knowable.
We do not live in a world of certainty. We live in a world of unccertainty.. we live in a world of variable probability.
I guess my belief system could be explained by something I once did. I once painted the transmitter room at one of my radio stations black and white. I wanted one place in my life where everything was black or white. My experience is nearly everything I deal with is some shade of changing Grey.
Successful human beings are do not need to be good at knowing, they need to be good at predicting probabilities.
Hey...I'm just catching up. I liked the Euroweenie comment.
Here's my take on some of this.
Some people's position here on FR is that "Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes". I think Chief Justice Vinson said that.
The problem is that this form of relativism says that there is no truth, and no absolute right or wrong. This pragmatic and positivistic perspective is anti-Christian.
Comte, the supposed "father of sociology" said the quest for meaning and knowledge represents the theological and metaphysical stages of history. Now, in the scientific stage, man moves not in terms of myth and meaning, not in terms of knowledge, but in terms of utility. The real question, we are told, is not "What does this mean?" but, "How can I use it?"
Man must renounce meaning and knowledge for the pragmatic use of things. The goal of learning therefore is not knowledge but the power to manipulate.
Marxism's influence on education is seen in it's relativistic philosphy. Education is hostile to knowledge and we see it in the cynicism in the media or educrats when they talk about family, patriotism, religion, philosophy, theology, etc. History is no longer treated as history, the knowledge of the past, but it is now social science. Philosophy is no longer the love of wisdom or knowledge, but a tool for power. People now study logical analysis and the study of words so they can manipulate and use this as an instrument of power. The goal of philosophy is now seen as pre-scientific.
I believe our founders believed like me...they believed that knowledge was from God. They believed that to deny that there is any absolute truth and absolute knowledge is to deny that there is a God who is the creator and lord over all things, and whose order and truth governs all things and is the source of all truth and knowledge. If there is no absolute knowledge of God and from God in his revelation, then the only absolute in any man's life is himself. Every man is his own god, his own law, and his own source of knowledge.
One of my oft repeated appeals around here is to remember political progress is made in baby steps (the grey area).
You're right, and that worries me. As a part of trying to discredit the american system, the schools are going after Jefferson as a man rather than presenting, and debating, his ideas.
Obviously, who he was as a man should be studied as a way of giving context to the things he wrote, but they are doing it as a way of discrediting ideas which less and less do they bother to present.
His personal flaws only remind me that history is made by flesh and blood men, flawed though they may be, who either do great things or fail to do them. I am less obviously flawed than Jefferson, but I'm doing good to get up off the sofa to find the remote.
I particulary like your summary:
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