1. Logical conclusion: I can prove the Pythagorean theorem is valid and true.
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. Some clarification is probably in order here. I'm entirely certain that I have a feeling, so there is no doubt at all regarding knowledge of the feeling's existence. But as for what it is that the feeling may be telling me -- that is, the quality of the "knowledge" involved -- there's not much to recommend this as a great source of information. Example: I very often feel that I'm going to win the lottery. Because I'm so often being misled by my feelings, I've listed them dead last on my certainty index
Separate List for theological knowledge:
1. Revelation: Spiritual understanding divinely communicated [to souls open to such experiences].
2. Faith: Belief in a revelation experienced by another [e.g., in the testimony of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and saints].
* * * * * * *
Hello Alamo-Girl and Patrick! You see I thought to use Patrick’s list as the focus of my own thinking in this matter of grades of ascertainable (more or less) knowledge. I notice that Patrick has segregated forms of theological knowledge to a sub-class, a ghetto as it were, inferior to the main body of relative (un)certainties.
I have no objection to the hierarchy given at points 1 through 7 above. Seems a valid order, and happens to reflect my own views.
Just a couple observations: It has only been in the recent few (post-modern) centuries that theological knowledge, a/k/a/ spiritual understanding of types (1) and (2), has been relegated to an intellectual ghetto. In former times, (1) and (2) were understood to be the very ground or foundation of the Patrick’s 1 through 7. It was because (1) and (2) were valid that humans had any confidence at all in the first 7. And because of that confidence, science became possible.
Because in the pre- post-modern world, God and Truth were synonymous. And humans beings understood, or used to, that without a foundation in Truth, everything that human beings do is in vain.
Which observation, for some strange reason, recalls a potent sonnet to mind:
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said – “two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
n -- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
But I think it was Hegel who first turned the ensouled understandings of countless generations of humanity on its head. And it’s all been downhill from there….
Cases in point: Marx and his epigones Hitler and Stalin et al. to the present day followed Hegel.
JMHO, FWIW.
Hugs to both of you!
In the thread where this "knowledge" topic originated, Alamo-Girl also questioned my segregation of theological items (direct revelation and faith in another's revelation). The reason I gave her was this:
As for revelation, how would we decide if it goes, say, before or after the calculation of an eclipse? And where do we rank (on our scale of "certainty") the faith of the person who reads about a revelation and decides to believe it? I don't want to start a knife fight over this, but you asked why I listed the theological items separately. That's why.She wasn't pleased, but like the sweetheart she is, she let me have my own list, and she made hers. That's how we ended up with two separate lists.
I can elaborate a bit further. Purely theological matters, which are the subject of revelation, being of a spiritual nature, are not objectively verifiable in this world. (We've discussed the limitations of science many times in the past). Therefore knowledge of such matters is, at least to me, of a different nature than the knowledge discussed in the earlier part of my list. It can't be observed, etc. So to me, it deserves a separate treatment. I don't think of it as a ghetto. To me, it's a separate domain of knowledge.
Yet, as you suggest, since Hegel it has become unfashionable to "do" science without metaphysical blinders on. And the metaphysical naturalists would have the same blinders applied universally - from schools to currency.
Everybody blames Hegel. Everybody has read analyses of Hegel. Who has read Hegel? Schopenhauer was exceedingly bitter about the adulation heaped on Hegel, called him many things except philosopher. Hegel was of course talking about some things that most philosophers haven't got around to, namely the origin of the state and of rights. Very difficult and ill-defined topic to this day.
God has revealed to me that PatrickHenry is correct to do so.
Just a couple observations: It has only been in the recent few (post-modern) centuries that theological knowledge, a/k/a/ spiritual understanding of types (1) and (2), has been relegated to an intellectual ghetto.
...because in the recent few centuries, it has been found to be a strikingly unreliable way of acquiring reliable knowledge about the universe.
In former times, (1) and (2) were understood to be the very ground or foundation of the Patrick’s 1 through 7. It was because (1) and (2) were valid that humans had any confidence at all in the first 7. And because of that confidence, science became possible.
This is a remarkably inaccurate description of the history of science in particular, or epistemology in general.
If anything, "(1) and (2) [faith and revelation]" were obstacles to real learning for millennia (just as they continue to be in the Muslim world to this day). Furthermore, faith and evelation" led primarily not to "confidence" in the reliability of "the first 7", but to doubt in them -- both because "the first 7" sometimes led to conclusions contrary to the "accepted wisdom" arrived at via "faith and revelation", and because belief in the results of "faith and revelation" pointed towards a conclusion that the universe was *capricious* (i.e., operated at the whims of god), and was not *predictable* (i.e. mechanistic/deterministic enough for constant physical laws and processes to be discovered).
When lightning bolts are hurled weapons of god's wrath, who's going to bother to examine them for regularities and the constant laws by which they invariably behave?
Because in the pre- post-modern world, God and Truth were synonymous.
Tell that to Galileo.
And humans beings understood, or used to, that without a foundation in Truth, everything that human beings do is in vain.
They still do understand that. It's just that they've come to understand that Truth exists and can be found apart from consulting what Odin and Allah allegedly said about it. Thus began the Enlightenment.