[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you all for your participation in this investigation!!!

[Alamo-Girl]

Your participation will be much appreciated!!!

[jmc813]

self bump for later

[razorback-bert]

hmmm.

[thoughtomator]

Is a logical conclusion really substantially different than a prediction from scientific theory?

For example, you can say that the Pythagorean theorem, a^2+b^2=c^2, can be proven true. However, what is rarely stated is that it is true only for a particular set of assumptions, in this case, flat geometry. If you use a curved surface, then the theorem is no longer true.

Likewise, scientific theory presents us with what we know is true in a particular set of conditions (if it actually does rise to the level of a theory rather than a mere hypothesis). What's the difference between the set of conditions that a scientific theory is based on, and the set of conditions a "logical conclusion" is based on?

[PatrickHenry]

Epistemology Discussion Ping List

An off-beat use of the evolution ping list.

[Lexington Green]

Negalogical Knowledge - when you know you don't know.

[D Edmund Joaquin]

well, we must put down what God says is knowledge:

Proverbs 9:10

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy is understanding

[SpaceBar]

There is statistical knowledge, like knowing the exact nature probabilistically of something that is by nature stochastic and unpredictable in single events but highly predictable when the overall behavior of large numbers of identical systems are considered.

[visualops]

Can't get into this now (at work) but this evening will throw a few cents in.

Great subject!
thanks for the ping, PH.

[cloud8]

I'm sure you've heard this story...

After a ball game, three umpires meet to discuss a controversial call.

The first umpire, an empiricist, says, "Some are balls, some are strikes, I calls 'em as I sees 'em."

The second umpire, a relativist, says, "Some are balls, some are strikes, I calls 'em as they are."

The third umpire is an existentialist. "They ain't nothing till I calls 'em."

So while we are all slightly askew from reality, each perceiving it in an individual way, we have--besides our native intelligence--religion, tradition, education and the law to guide us in interpreting reality. "Knowledge" is the total of all this--our awareness of the world around us plus our intellectual skills that enable us to deal with it.

Does this make sense? I not much of a philosopher, I'm afraid.

[Nick Danger]

The Guru Speaks

[Vicomte13]

Fascinating.

I will give my own view of things, based on the categories that you have provided above, in order of certitude:

(1) Direct personal sensation.
I do not distinguish between that which I SEE (the dog at my feet) and that which I FEEL (the taste of a taco, the smell of coffee, the queasiness of fear, the happiness of love, the heat of lust), because I sense that eyesight, taste, smell, touch and other more subtle emotional states that we identify with the head or the heart are all either senses or emotions. In other words, eyesight is an emotion, and love is a sense. Different organs, different pathways, but not fundamentally different at their root.

(2) Indirect personal sensation.
The reproduction in my senses of the recorded impressions of others' senses. The only two normal vectors for absorbing the recorded sense impressions of others are the eyes and ears - we read or hear the others' impressions. I observe that what happens on hearing this is that my own body and mind create a simulacrum of that described experience, in my "mind's eye", so to speak, and I experience what the other has experienced by a refabrication of the emotion within my own experience.

(3) Judgment.
What I sense directly, in the heart and in the eyes, I know. Indeed, that IS knowledge, as I would define it.
What others tell me is also knowledge, but (when it's important) I hold that described knowledge up against my own experience of the world to determine whether I believe it to be true or not.
In other words, if I were standing in the same place that the person describing the event was standing when it actually happened, would I have experienced the same thing?
If not, then either (a) the other person has misinterpreted sense impressions (I do not much allow that my own senses are inaccurate), or is delusional, or is lying.

All second-hand knowledge, including all science, history and theology that I have not personally been involved in, fall into this third category.

An example: the account of the death of Jesus.
The Bible - someone else's recorded impressions, says that the sky went dark, there was an earthquake, the veil in the Temple was torn in twain and the graves opened and the dead walked around.
Now, suppose I had been standing there on Golgotha. Would I have seen the sky go dark? If yes, and I looked up, would I have seen the stars (and looked towards the sun to see an eclipse) or would I have seen nothing but dark clouds making an overcast? Or would I have seen that it was sunny and didn't go dark to my eyes? If the latter, I might conclude that either (a) the author was writing metaphorically, or (b) the author was lying to try and create a sense impression of something supernatural when, in fact, someone actually standing there would have seen nothing supernatural. Or (c): the author himself was writing from second hand, and repeated what he heard.

If I were standing on Golgotha, I would not have been able to see if the Temple veil was torn in two. But if I had been standing in the Temple at that moment, I would observe to see (a) if there WAS a veil at all, (b) if it tore in two out of thin air, (c) if some person or thing tore it in two, or (d) if nothing happened.

Obviously I would know if there was an earthquake or not. Everyone in the city would feel it.

Now, obviously I know that there is no way that I can go back in time to discover if the mental simulacra created in my own senses were accurate or not, so I have to decide whether I believe the supernatural stories or not based on my own experience with the natural and supernatural. I would call "judgment" the capacity to decide what one believes and what one does not believe.

From my perspective those are the three sorts of knowledge.
And the first is the gold standard for the other two. Note that the first includes instincts and inborn knowledge.

[JWinNC]

bookmark

[lafroste]

Interesting thread. I'll play...

I start by defining a few things. I define REALITY as that which is independent of what I believe it to be. In other words, if it doesn't itself change with my changing opinion of it, then it is real. This also implies that I need not be aware of a particular thing for it to be real.

Next I define TRUTH as the accurate representation of REALITY. Implicit in this arguement is that there is only one TRUTH, not a multiplicity of truths. So when someone says "Well, that's your truth, but its not the same as my truth", they are wrong. What they mean is that the little piece of truth they perceive is a different little piece of truth than what I perceive, but both are little pieces of the TRUTH.

With those in mind, one can define KNOWLEDGE as the set of FACTS that accurately represent the TRUTH, as far as those facts are concerned. Of course, "facts" that do not accurately represent the truth cannot be facts.

The most fundamental point of this philosophy is that reality is never, ever incorrect. If your theory (a defined association of facts) does not accurately represent what happens in reality, there are only two possibilities: First the theory has a flaw in it; second, the observer has an artificially narrow perception of reality.

Of course, the above is just an outline...

[FredZarguna]

It seems to me the distinction (and either elevation or denigration, depending on perspective) between the theological knowledge categories and the others is altogether arbitrary and incorrect. Is there really such a thing as a direct revelation which bypasses either the senses or the logical faculties? Faith is to be informed by reason; fedeism is a heresy.

Paul saw a vision on the road to Damascus. Perhaps it was a revelation, perhaps he was merely insane. But in either case it was a sensual experience. Does anyone know which it was? No. We accept the former or the latter on the basis of various proofs adumbrated in these other categories. And the acceptance of this (or any) knowledge is predicated on a belief in free will--which we cannot even rigorously prove we posses.

As for Platonism, for Jews and Christians (and some Deists, like me) there cannot ever really be any such thing: either these concepts exist in the mind of God, or, they precede him. Since the latter is impossible (for Jews and Christians), ideals have no independent existence not even as concepts. This applies to logic, mathematics, and physics, or course, but also to as metalogic, and metaphysics; and even to the concept of truth itself. For example: I was once asked did the law of the excluded middle (that a proposition must be either true or not true) have an existence independent of God? In other words, in a Godless universe would this concept exist? The answer must be: no. The law of the excluded middle exists because this is the way God's mind works. Independent of Him there is no Truth, and the question about what a "Godless universe" would be like is nonsensical: it would contain no concepts, and would--literally--be unthinkable.

[furball4paws]

Must be a slow day, but this is important stuff.

I think in PH's and js's list there must be a bold and all cap treatment of "provisionally"

I know of Nobel prize winners that have been flat wrong. They have also been "big" enough to admit it. Accepting something from "X", provisionally is an important part of how we build our knowledge bases, because it's just not possible to do or know everything. But, as "X" may not purposely lead you into a dark alley, we should always have our eyes open, even with the most trustworthy sources, and that includes theological sources (maybe even more so since their history is long, and suspect in some cases, and their early oral traditions leave a lot of doors open). Every man is capable of making mistakes. I know I have made many and expect to make many more.

(As you all might guess, I have trouble with authority figures, no matter how BIG they are) 8^)

[hosepipe]

Hosepipe's types of “knowledge” and valuation of certainties:
Types of knowledge..

1) Primates inspecting a Rolex watch trying to determine what it is...positing theorys.
2) Other primates watching the first primates wondering whats so interesting.. listening to their theorys..
3) Me watching both groups being grateful for the time to do it..

Disclaimer;
Any certainies from group one are variable, group two is certain that the first group is very busy with something, group three, well, there is no group three.. its a lonely and thankless job, watching primates..

[StJacques]

For any type of knowledge to exist, there must also exist some correlation to a systemic manner in which propositions or an understanding of phenomena which can be grouped under the heading of that particular "type" of knowledge, can be submitted to "testing" or "proof" of their validity, otherwise it is not "knowledge" because it is not something that can be understood. Knowledge is therefore something distinct from perception in and of itself (I did not say "experience" here), or feeling, or a purely mental construct, or emotion, because knowledge implies comprehension.

So how many types of knowledge are there? The question is essentially subjective, because you cannot separate the perspective of the observer from the answer that is given -- yes, I'm a closet Existentialist coming out on this thread. You could perhaps say there were only two; a priori (knowledge before the fact or of the mind) and a posteriori (knowledge after the fact or of the world). But separating knowledge into these two types, which is mirrored in using the terms intuition (deduction) and experience (induction), implies that one has taken a perspective that knowledge must be defined in terms of whether it relates to the material world or not. Alternatively, you could take Immanuel Kant's approach that you could separate all knowledge into synthetic (new) knowledge in which some experience or idea was synthesized by the rational faculty of the mind and analytical (tautolgoical) knowledge in which it comes from the mind itself. In this perspective you define knowledge by whether it represents the outcome of a process in which the human mind has altered that which was previously known. And as a third example, you could use Sören Kierkegaard's simple distinction of knowledge as the outcome of an approximation process, which groups both deduction and induction together -- and in Kierkegaard's ultimate opinion was not really knowledge at all since truth could never be approximated -- or the outcome of an appropriation process, in which that which is "known" is the result of an act of free will, to "seize" or "appropriate" knowledge in a willful act. But in this perspective you are judging that which is known by whether the human will was exercised in the act of understanding. So; whatever distinctions you make between various types of knowledge, keep in mind that those distinctions are only relevant to your perspective on what is involved in delineating knowledge.

Now; anyone who has paid attention to what I just wrote will note that I have still not yet answered the question, "how many types of knowledge" are there? I agree with Descartes, there are three and from most important to least important they are as follows:

1. Intuition
-- I know that 1 plus 1 equals two because I intuitively grasp the essential relationships between the numbers "1" and "2."

2. Deduction (including scientific demonstration)
-- I know that Q is true because P implies Q and P is a given premise.

or

-- I know that all bodies attract because the thousands of observations I have made of the phenomenon discount the likelihood of any other conclusion.

3. Sensory Experience -- I know that the glass fell from the table because I saw it fall.

Obviously, some of you will ask, "what is StJacques' subjective perspective" in identifying the way StJacques lists the types of knowledge?" Your answer is in my first paragraph, knowledge requires submission of propositions or observations of phenomena to a systemic manner of testing of their "proof" or "validity."

I also believe there is that which is beyond knowledge, by which I refer to faith, because faith is an act of the will and the will, not reason, is primary in human existence.

[Pagey]

bttt

[Physicist]

Let me be the first on the thread to say the word "carnal".

And to think that the semblance of decorum lasted this long. <shakes head>