Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.
You are not being asked to intervene, you are being asked to participate. Your participation is entirely voluntary.
By the way, when you advocate for truth you are doing the Lord’s work. God loves those who love truth. 🙂
Or to even want to try.
And this makes it sound like your friend must be visibly present in order for them to tell you something. But surely you don’t mean that.
Does knowledge need to be justified, or did you mean justifying the possibility of knowledge?
How do you know?
Fair enough. You’re right that I don’t need others to be corporeally present in order for me to communicate with them. But at least with other human beings there’s always some empirically detectable causal mechanism whereby they can communicate with me when we’re not corporeally present to one another. I have sufficient reason to believe that I’m not talking to myself.
As an aside: one of the most interesting moments in Descartes’s Meditations occurs when he poses the question: people who are insane have systematically distorted sensory experiences, and how do I know that I’m not like that? Because he’s engaged in solitary contemplation, he’s not able to give the correct response: because I can engage in meaningful conversation with other people about a shared perceptually accessible world. Yet the presence of the Other isn’t fully erased in the text, since Descartes needs a way to overcome the threat of solipsism. Hence the very interesting attempt to prove the existence of God.
If knowledge is already a justified claim, I don’t see why we would need a further justification that what one has is knowledge. I suppose it depends on whether one takes skepticism seriously — and also what kind of skepticism one takes seriously. I find it impossible to take Cartesian skepticism seriously. But Pyrrhonian skepticism is fascinating.
I do think there’s an interesting question here to how to explain knowledge in naturalistic terms. That’s what a lot of cognitive scientists and neuroscientists are actively doing. But it doesn’t make sense to me for someone to say that if one is a naturalist, then one isn’t entitled to assert that one has knowledge unless one can provide an adequate naturalistic explanation of what knowledge is.
That’s what FMM has been saying for the past few years, and it doesn’t make sense to me — because FMM’s demand is exactly like saying that you’re not entitled to say that you know how to cook unless you can give a scientific explanation of how heat and acid affect the chemical structure of proteins and fats.
You can’t say you know stuff unless you can also say that it’s possible for you to know stuff.
Problems arise when you claim to know stuff without having any reason to believe that it’s possible to know stuff.
peace
revelation,
Folks reveal that they are not willing to try by refusing to do anything that could be construed as an effort to try.
peace
Who says that God’s revelation is not empirically detectable? I certainly did not.
God is a person!!!
I also find it impossible to take Cartesian skepticism seriously. What I ask you to do is consider why that is the case.
Don’t you think that it is strange that given the probability of BB’s and all the other legitimate reasons to doubt our senses and reasoning we can’t actually do it?
When I ponder the reason why that is I am filled with awe and thankfulness.
peace
No that is incorrect, my “demand” is like saying that you’re not entitled to say that you know how to cook unless you can show that what you are doing when you claim to cook is actually cooking rather than just playing with play-dough in a locked room with no stove.
peace
Personally I don’t see how it could be possible that I could know nothing. Others no doubt disagree with me. 🙂
That was Descartes position of course.
I think it assumes way more than is apparent at first glance.
For example it presumes you are an “I” rather than an “it” or a “We”.
peace
In that case , you know you are doing something. Knowledge is possible.
peace
The analogy is comparing cooking to knowledge.
It was not comparing “knowledge of cooking” to any knowledge whatsoever.
We could extend the analogy to say my “demand” is like saying that you’re not entitled to say that you know how to cook unless you can show that what you are doing when you claim to cook is actually cooking rather than dreaming about playing with play-dough in a locked room with no stove.
peace
Imagine you live in a universe with out truth where the laws of logic don’t apply.
In that case what feels like doing something might actually be doing nothing at all and vice versa .
So we could extend the analogy even futher to say my “demand” is like saying that you’re not entitled to say that you know how to cook unless you can show that what you are doing when you claim to cook is actually cooking rather than sleeping dreamlessly while believing that you are dreaming about playing with play-dough in a locked room with no stove.
😉
peace
“Three baked potatoes.”
The Borg but with vegetables
peace
faded_Glory, to fifth:
What’s even more amazing is that he’s been repeating the same mistakes at TSZ since at least September of 2015.
Glad to see keiths chiming in here.
I will be happy to address him once he posts a summary of the tenets of his newly adopted faith or admits that he made it all up out of desperation. Mimicking Christianity because he had no suitable justification for knowledge of his own to offer here. 😉
peace
And how would one show that it is “actually cooking” ?
Oh well what the heck
quote:
To deny circularity when it comes to an ultimate authority is to subject oneself to an infinite regress of reasons. If a person holds to a certain view, A , then when A is challenged he appeals to reasons B and C . But, of course, B and C will certainly be challenged as to why they should be accepted, and then the person would have to offer D, E, F, and G as arguments for B and C. And the process goes on and on.
Obviously it has to stop somewhere because an infinite regress of arguments cannot demonstrate the truth of one’s conclusions. Thus, every worldview (and every argument) must have an ultimate, unquestioned, self-authenticating starting point.
Another example: imagine someone asking you whether the meter stick in your house was actually a meter long. How would you demonstrate such a thing? You could take it to your next-door neighbor and compare it to his meter stick and say, “See, it’s a meter.” However, the next question is obvious, “How do we know your neighbor’s meter stick is really a meter?” This process would go on and on infinitely unless there were an ultimate meter stick (which, if I am not mistaken, actually existed at one time and was measured by two fine lines marked on a bar of platinum-iridium alloy). It is this ultimate meter stick that defines a meter. When asked how one knows whether the ultimate meter stick is a meter, the answer is obviously circular: the ultimate meter stick is a meter because it is a meter.
end quote;
Michael Kruger
peace
You could start by showing that it’s “possibly” cooking.
Perhaps by pointing to the hot prepared food and the stove.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Hahaha. Show that it’s possibly cooking. Excellent.
Actually it was about knowledge , the knowledge of how to cook, rather than the knowledge of how to know.
How to cook. That one didn’t need to justify the existence of the chicken to know how to make an omelette. Likewise you don’t need to justify all knowledge to know something. Maybe KN will provide the knowledge of what he meant. Knowledge is possible.
I think you are entitled to say whatever you choose about your ability to know how to cook and in most circumstances you are under no obligation to demonstrate to someone’s else’s satisfaction or meet their definition of what actually constitutes knowing how to cook.
But we can gain knowledge even from unsupported claims. I know what they claim.
The claim may be wrong but certainty is not required, correct?
If they know they are dreaming, if the know what they are dreaming about ,knowledge is possible. Just not whether they know how to cook.
Ok, would I know that was the state of the Universe?
That occurs in this universe ,watching YouTube videos ,for instance.
Three is the charm.
Without logic the whole idea of justification is moot ,as is entitlement, cooking and stoves.
peace
Provisional cooking?
peace
fifthmonarchyman, I’d just like to point out that the metre is not circular!
No, knowledge is justified true belief
In a universe with out truth you could not know anything at all.
See,, it is more likely that you are mistaken than that you actually know something.
Correct,
Why should be expect logic to be universal in your world view?
In mine logic is always self-evidently present because the Logos (Logic) was with God and was God (John 1)
peace
Kruger thinks that one must accept some self-evident truths as axiomatic in order to avoid circularity and infinite regress. But this grasping Agrippa’s trilemma by this horn cannot work because of Sellars’s argument against the coherence of anything being given in the way that would be required for there to be self-evident first principles. Hence what is needed is an epistemology that rejects all three horns of Agrippa’s trilemma, not accepting any one of them. And that is what we find in anti-foundationalists like Hegel and Peirce.
The really important move is to not have a “worldview” but rather to maintain an open dialectical relation with reality in which (to quote Sellars) “empirical knowledge, like its sophisticated extension, science, is rational not because it has a foundation but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy, though not all at once.”
And that’s going to be my last word on this subject.
Remarkably, it makes sense to a non-philosopher.
But it seems like the appeal to self-correction is a first principle. 😉
Not exactly,
It’s not about cooking being tentative it’s about it being possible.
If I tell you I’m cooking but I’m in a locked room with no food and no stove then my claim is not justified.
peace
Thou shalt keep an open dialectical relation with reality is the first commandment of KN’s worldview.
The second commandment of KN’s worldview is
Thou shall not acknowledge that one has a worldview. 😉
peace
Knowledge is more than possible it’s actual. We all know stuff.
The question is ” How is knowledge possible given your worldview?”
peace
Worldview proceeds from knowledge, it can’t precede it.
No, what is needed is an epistemology that completely transcends Agrippa’s trilemma by making knowledge not dependent ultimately on the knower but on the reveler who makes reality known.
peace
In vino veritas! 🙂
Cooking is more than possible, it’s actual. We all cook stuff. The question is, how is cooking possible given your worldview?
walto,
Revelling. That’s how you do it! We should all do more revelling!
If I tell you it’s raining outside but I’ve been n a locked windowless room for two days with no access to anything or anybody outside it, then my claim is not justified.
In neither case does it have anything to do with knowing what is or is not possible. Someone can know it’s raining while lacking both the concept of knowledge and the concept of possibility.
Actually neither worldview nor knowledge are foundational. They are instead concerted or should be at least.
All kinds of problems arise when they don’t cohere but we won’t slowdown enough to notice.
peace
Agreed.
Well, since you’re unable to argue in good faith, I’m putting you back on Ignore.
Have fun trolling the others.
Makes sense.
Yes of course, you can know stuff with out knowing how you know it. I’ve said as much more times that I care to remember.
What you can’t do is claim that you know stuff if you if don’t have any reason to believe that knowledge is possible.
Right!!!!!!
So in order for you to be justified in claiming that it’s raining outside you need to demonstrate that you have reason to believe you aren’t locked in a windowless room for two days with no access to anything or anybody outside it.
peace
You just claimed to not have a worldview while at the very same time articulating the tenets of your worldview.
I just pointed out the glaringly obvious.
peace
It is, in a sense — but in another sense, it isn’t. The claim that knowledge is a self-correcting enterprise rather than based on indubitable foundations is itself based on the past failures of epistemological foundationalism — the whole history of modern Western thought from Descartes to Hegel. So there’s no demarcation between epistemology and the history of epistemology — rather, the history of epistemology is itself epistemologically significant. For foundationalists, the failure of every attempted foundation (whether rationalist or empiricist) is an embarrassment — but for anti-foundationalists the history of failures at foundationalism is itself part of the historical narrative that justifies anti-foundationalism.
What has muddied the waters considerably is the thought that if one gives up on foundationalism in epistemology, one also has to give up on objectivity as a regulative ideal of inquiry and on truth as a constitutive norm of assertion. This can make it seem as though the only options are foundationalism or postmodernism. And that in turn feeds into the culture war polemics of reactionaries vs progressives, etc.
Actually lots of us don’t cook at all and even more of us don’t cook well
peace
Yes, Rorty draws extensively on Sellars, so it’s not a surprise you’d find Sellars congenial. But I disagree with Rorty’s criticisms of Sellars, and that’s the subject of the article I’m working on now.
Seems reasonable
Bread is made for laughter, and wine gladdens life, and money answers everything.
(Ecc 10:19)
😉
peace