[lit-ideas] Knowing You're Wrong

McCreery googles.com 'knowledge'. Obviously a lot of those associations are  
foreign ones, and should *know* better. I would refer to the Speranza  
Participial,
 
         Etymologically, "I know  that p" _means_ [*** FILL IN WITH ETYM. 
INFO]
 
--- which I'm providing from the OED entry.
 
Grice defined 'knowledge' his own way (WOW). What for me, and Grice, and  
perhaps R. Paul, is philosophically interesting, is not so much relating to the 
 
(i) belief clause -- we all agree knowledge is a kind of belief, more or less  
--, nor the truth clause (iii) we all agree, or would tend to agree that what 
is  known is true. The main issue in some philosophical circles has been the  
_justification_ clause. Surely that's the lead to knowledge.
 
Gettier proved cases which justified Plato's definition,
 
         1. It's true the  compressor shorted to ground.
         2. Geary believes the  compressor shorted to ground
         3. Geary is _justified_ in  believing the compressor shorted to 
ground.
 
However, Geary's only justification is that _God wanted it so_, or worse,  
that it was a matter of detriment in the system maintenance -- he proposed 
three 
 clauses to justify his belief:
 
                      a. I perceive the fan mottor needs oil
                      b. I perceive the cables are loose
                      c. I perceive the coil is dirty.
 
---- However, if it proves that actually the compressor shorted to ground  
because little Sue _shorted_ it *her* wicked *self* then Geary's justification  
-- the epistemological one, not the theological one -- would be _inadequate_.  
The _evidence_ would be inadequate. He would still be _justified_ but his  
*justification* is not referring to the actual _cause_ of the phenomenon  
allegedly known (i.e. that the compressor shorted to ground).
 
Therefore Grice felt we needed to _tighten up_ the 'justification'  clause
 
            via (I)  CAUSAL ANALYSIS.
                            A knows that p iff A believes p; p is true, and 
"p being true" is what _causes_  A believing that p.
 
Grice felt that analyses like these would be correct, even if sometimes we  
use 'know' _loosely_, i.e. disimplicating some clauses.
 
(As when we say that F. P. Ramsey _knew_ that Caesar was _murdered_ -- For  
intuitionists, there's no such thing as _knowledge_ about the remote past).  
Grice was especially irritated by students who _thought_ they knew the answer  
(to say, the date of the Battle of Trafalgar" -- surely there's never adequate  
evidence --.
 
Philosophers (in the Western platonic tradition memorized at Oxford) want  to 
preserve Plato's insight and also the Indo-European common root of knowledge. 
 Personally, I _also_ want to preserve the root, 'vid-' as in Latin, 
'videre', to  see, as in tele-vision, which is cognate to Greek "idea" 
(formerly, 
"widea") and  which to me is _knowledge_ par excellence.
 
I follow the OED below that most usages of English 'know' should better be  
replaced by 'can' (As in German, "Kennst du das Land wo die Zitrone bluehmen?"  
-- a favorite question with Grice, too).
 
Cheers,

JL
 
 
[A Com. Teut. and Com. Aryan vb., now retained in Eng. alone of the Teut.  
languages: OE. (e)cnáwan, pa. tense  (e)cnéow, pa. pple.  (e)cnáwen = OHG.  
-cnâan, -chnâan, -cnâhan, ON. pres. ind. kná, pl.  knegum, Gothic type *knáian, 
*kaiknô, *knáians, a  redupl. vb. not found in existing remains. Outside Teut., 
= OSlav.  <NOBR, Russ. zna-t to know; L.  **-, whence the inceptive  (g)scre, 
perf. (g)vi, pa. pple.  (g)t-us; Gr. *-, whence redupl. and inceptive  --, 2 
aor. --; Skr. <N- know. Generally held to be from  the same root (gen-, gon-, 
gn-) as CAN v., and KEN. Already in early times  the simple vb. had sustained 
various losses; in L. and Gr. the pres. stem  survived only in derived forms; 
in Gothic the word is not recorded; in ON. the  pres. inf. was obs.; in ON. and 
OHG. the orig. strong pa. tense and pa. pple.  were lost; in OHG. and OE. the 
vb. was app. known only in composition, as in OE.  ecnáwan, oncnáwan,  
tócnáwan. The first of these may be considered as the historical ancestor  of 
ME. 
and mod. know, for although it came down in southern ME. as  i-knowen, y-knowe, 
the prefix was regularly dropped in midl. and  north., giving the simple stem 
form cnawen, knawe(n,  knowe(n, which was well-established in all the main 
senses by 1200  (a single instance being known a1100). The verb has since had a 
vigorous  life, having also occupied with its meaning the original territory of 
the vb.  WIT, Ger. wissen, and  that of CAN, so far as this meant to  ‘know’
. Hence Eng. know covers the ground of Ger. wissen,  kennen, erkennen, and (in 
part) können, of Fr.  connaître and savoir, of L. visse, <NOBRscre, and <Nre, 
of Gr.  and  (). But in Sc. the verb KEN has supplanted  knaw, and come to be 
the sense-equivalent of ‘know’ in all its extent of  signification. As 
ecnáwan came down as late as 1400 in  form iknowen YKNOW, the pa. pple in  i-, 
y-, 
in southern ME., may belong to either form.]   
Signification. From the fact  that know now covers the ground formerly 
occupied by several verbs, and  still answers to two verbs in other Teutonic 
and 
Romanic languages, there is  much difficulty in arranging its senses and uses 
satisfactorily. However, as the  word is etymologically related to Gr. , L. 
(g)scere and (g)visse, F. connaître  (:L. <NOBscre) to ‘know by the senses’, 
Ger.  
können and kennen, Eng. can, ken, it appears proper  to start with the uses 
which answer to these words, rather than with those which  belonged to the 
archaic vb. to WIT, Ger. wissen, and  are expressed by L. <Nre and F. savoir, 
to ‘
know by  the mind’. This etymological treatment of the word, and the uses to 
which it has  been put, differs essentially from a logical or philosophical 
analysis of the  notion of ‘knowing’, and the verbal forms and phrases by which 
this is  expressed, in which the word ‘know’ is taken as an existing fact, 
without  reference to the history of its uses.
Know, in its most  general sense, has been defined by some as ‘To hold for 
true or real with  assurance and on (what is held to be) an adequate objective 
foundation’. Mr.  James Ward, in Encycl. Brit. XX. 49 s.v. Psychology, assigns 
to  the word two main meanings: ‘To know may mean either to perceive or  
apprehend, or it may mean to understand or comprehend... Thus a blind man, who  
cannot know about light in the first sense, may know about light  in the 
second, 
if he studies a treatise on optics.’ Others hold that the primary  and only 
proper object of knowing is a fact or facts (as in our sense 10), and  that all 
so-called knowing of things or persons resolves itself, upon analysis,  into 
the knowing of certain facts about these, as their existence, identity,  
nature, attributes, etc., the particular fact being understood from the 
context,  or 
by a consideration of the kind of fact which is usually wanted to be known  
about the thing or person in question. Thus, ‘Do you know Mr. G.?’, ‘Do you 
know  Balliol College?’ have different meanings according to the kind of facts 
about  Mr. G. or Balliol College, which are the objects of inquiry.  
I.  1.    a. trans. To perceive (a thing or person)  as identical with one 
perceived before, or of which one has a previous notion;  to recognize; to 
identify. Sometimes with again; also, later, with  for.  
[Beowulf 2047  Meaht u, min wine, mece ecnawan one in fæder to efeohte bær. 




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