[lit-ideas] Re: Disimplicatures of "Know"
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 19:15:57 -0800 (PST)
Honestly I was somewhat surprised by R.P. reply, might we expect some serious
commentary, instead of being referred to a short paper published several
decades ago, which contained a couple of themselves dubious examples ?
O.K.
On Thursday, January 16, 2014 2:49 AM, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx"
<Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
The calculus here is easy:
K -- know
B -- belief
T -- true
J -- justified
Grice's example:
The pupil answered that the date of the Battle of Waterloo was June 18
1815.
We should grant it that he KNEW this.
I.e. he _BELIEVED_ it, and on top of that, it was true: the Battle of
Waterloo WAS fought on that date.
While the pupil may not have had conclusive evidence that the Battle was
fought on that date, neither did Popper.
INTERLUDE: Excerpts from Popper's British Academy Lecture on knowledge and
ignorance: The "Times" example:
Popper writes:
"First of all, most of our assertions are not based upon observations, but
upon all kinds of other sources. ‘I read it in The Times’ or perhaps ‘I
read it in the Encyclopaedia Britannica’ is a more likely and a more
definite answer to the question ‘How do you know?’ than ‘I have observed it’
or’
I know it from an observation I made last year’" [more in ps]---
---
In a message dated 1/15/2014 4:17:16 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
gearyservice@xxxxxxxxx writes that stuff can be
>amusing to me, but I seldom am able to follow
[some of the list]s]
>argumentation -- logic is definitely not my strong suit and
>especially not logic that looks more like calculus than language.
Well -- but the points should be clear enough.
R. Paul something. R. Henninge responded to the effect: "at least you did
not end with "or not".
R. Paul uses 'disimplication'; I prefer 'disimplicature'.
As in
"He was implicated in the matter".
Similarly, he was DISimplicated in the matter.
----
The point we are discussing is whether Gettier KNEW what he was doing.
We think he did.
As R. Paul notes, there is even a Wiki Entry for him.
McEvoy seems to agree with Gettier.
McEvoy thinks that
"He knows."
does NOT entail
"What HE knows is true".
His favourite example: Newton: his "Philosophia Naturalis" fills volumes in
libraries, and this, "surely, is knowledge", McEvoy claims -- "however
false".
In this case, the argument would be that the SENSE of 'know' indeed ENTAILS
the truth of what is alleged to be known. But this 'entailment' is
sometimes dropped.
Grice says: "When you mean MORE than you say, you IMPLICATE".
In further work, he goes, logically, further: "When you mean LESS than you
say, you DISIMPLICATE".
He concluded, "Implicature happens" -- and for that matter, disimplicature.
Or not.
Gettier was read by Grice, and Gettier should have read Grice.
Grice replaces the CONTROVERSIAL clause in Gettier's target of criticism:
'knowledge' is 'justified true belief'.
Grice agrees with the 'true' and 'belief' parts but claims that 'justified'
needs 'justification'. So he proposes a 'weaker' notion of 'know' where
you don't really need 'conclusive evidence' for what you allege to know, but
just 'this or that condition' (he could be vague at times).
Or not.
Geary has expressed in this forum his views on this quest for knowledge:
it's all radiomagnetic transmission.
In "Remarks on Grice's disimplicated analysis of 'know'", Geary writes:
"[O]ur knowledge of the world is through electromagnetic radiation."
This sounds more drastic in the Latin of Aquinas.
Geary continues:
"Problem is 99.99% of the electromagnetic spectrum is beyond our ability to
sense."
Odd Geary should mention sense. Today, I came across an ad that related
'belief' to 'taste' -- and it dawned on me that in the Romance languages, one
sense of 'know' is indeed related to 'taste', which is a bit like 'sense',
only different.
----
Latin 'sapientia', for example.
sapient (adj.) "wise," late 15c. (early 15c. as a surname), from Old French
sapient, from Latin sapientem (nominative sapiens), present participle of
sapere "to taste, have taste, be wise," from PIE root *sep- "to taste,
perceive" (cf. Old Saxon an-sebban "to perceive, remark," Old High German
antseffen, Old English sefa "mind, understanding, insight").
------ In the Romance languages, indeed, one can say, ironically:
"This tastes good"
which, in a pretty far-fetched way, may be translated (and mis-translated,
even) as
"This knows good".
Or not.
Geary continues:
"That means that we have knowledge of less than 1% of the full range of
reality. Now I ask you, is such a tiny smidgen of knowledge really worth all
this argument? Of course not. But hey! there's dancing tonight at Alchemy
in Overton Square."
The clause after 'but hey!' seems to implicate one "or not".
To rephrase?
Is this tiny smidgen of so-called 'knowledge' really worth this argument
by Gettier? Of course not. Or not.
Or not?
Cheers,
Speranza
ps. Popper, op. cit. continuation:
"‘But’, the empiricist will reply, ‘how do you think that The Times or
the Encyclopaedia Britannica got their information? Surely, if you only carry
on your inquiry long enough, you will end up with reports of the
observa­tions of eyewitnesses (sometimes called “protocol sentences” or-by
yourself-Hbasic statements”). Admittedly’, the empiricist will con­tinue, ‘
books are largely made from other books. Admittedly, a histor­ian, for
example, will work from documents. But ultimately, in the last analysis,
these other books, or these documents, must have been based upon
observations. Otherwise they would have to be described as poetry, or
invention, or
lies, but not as testimony. It is in this sense that we empiricists assert
that observation must be the ultimate source of our knowledge.’"
"Here we have the empiricist’s case, as it is still put by some of my
positivist friends."
"I shall try to show that this case is as little valid as Bacon’s; that the
answer to the question of the sources of knowledge goes against the
empiricist; and, finally, that this whole question of ultimate
sources­sources to which one may appeal, as one might to a higher court or
a higher
authority-must be rejected as based upon a mistake."
"First I want to show that if you actually went on questioning The Times
and its correspondents about the sources of their knowledge, you would in
fact never arrive at all those observations by eyewitnesses in the existence
of which the empiricist believes. You would find, rather, that with every
single step you take, the need for further steps increases in snowball-like
fashion."
"Take as an example the sort of assertion for which reasonable people might
simply accept as sufficient the answer ‘I read it in The Times’; let us
say the assertion ‘The Prime Minister has decided to return to London
several days ahead of schedule’. Now assume for a moment that somebody doubts
this assertion, or feels the need to investigate its truth. What shall he do?
If he has a friend in the Prime Minister’s office, the simplest and most
direct way would be to ring him up; and if this friend corroborates the
message, then that is that."
"In other words, the investigator will, if possible, try to check, or to
examine, the asserted fact itself, rather than trace the source of the
informa­tion. But according to the empiricist theory, the assertion ‘I have
read it in The Times’ is merely a first step in a justification procedure
consisting in tracing the ultimate source. What is the next step?"
"There are at least two next steps. One would be to reflect that ‘I have
read it in The Times’ is also an assertion, and that we might ask ‘What is
the source of your knowledge that you read it in The Times and not, say, in
a paper looking very similar to The Times?’ The other is to ask The Times
for the sources of its knowledge. The answer to the first question may be ‘
But we have only The Times on order and we always get it in the morn­ing’
which gives rise to a host of further questions about sources which we
shall not pursue. The second question may elicit from the editor of The Times
the answer: ‘We had a telephone call from the Prime Minister’s Office.’
Now according to the empiricist procedure, we should at this stage ask next:
‘Who is the gentleman who received the telephone call?’ and then get his
observation report; but we should also have to ask that gentleman: ‘What is
the source of your knowledge that the voice you heard came from an
official in the Prime Minister’s office’, and so on."
"There is a simple reason why this tedious sequence of questions never
comes to a satisfactory conclusion. It is this. Every witness must always make
ample use, in his report, of his knowledge of persons, places, things,
linguistic usages, social conventions, and so on. He can­not rely merely
upon his eyes or ears, especially if his report is to be of use in justifying
any assertion worth justifying. But this fact must of course always raise
new questions as to the sources of those elements of his knowledge which
are not immediately observational."
"This is why the programme of tracing back all knowledge to its ultimate
source in observation is logically impossible to carry through: it leads to
an infinite regress. (The doctrine that truth is manifest cuts off the
regress. This is interesting because it may help to explain the attractiveness
of that doctrine.)"
"I wish to mention, in parenthesis, that this argument is closely related
to another-that all observation involves interpretation in the light of our
theoretical knowledge, [8. See my Logic of Scientific Discovery, last
paragraph of section 25, and new appendix *x, (2). For an anticipation by Mark
Twain of my Times argument, see p. 557 below.] or that pure observational
know­ledge, unadulterated by theory, would, if at all possible, be
utterly barren and futile."
"The most striking thing about the observationalist programme of asking for
sources-apart from its tediousness-is its stark violation of common sense.
For if we are doubtful about an assertion, then the normal procedure is to
test it, rather than to ask for its sources; and if we find independent
corroboration, then we shall often accept the assertion without bothering at
all about sources.
Of course there are cases in which the situation is different. Testing an
historical assertion always means going back to sources; but not, as a
rule, to the reports of eyewitnesses."
"Clearly, no historian will accept the evidence of documents
uncriti­cally. There are problems of genuineness, there are problems of
bias, and
there are also such problems as the reconstruction of earlier sources. There
are, of course, also problems such as: was the writer present when these
events happened? But this is not one of the charac­teristic problems of
the historian. He may worry about the reliability of a report, but he will
rarely worry about whether or not the writer of a document was an eyewitness
of the event in question, even assuming that this event was of the nature
of an observable event. A letter saying ‘I changed my mind yesterday on this
question’ may be most valuable historical evidence, even though changes of
mind are unobservable (and even though we may conjecture, in view of other
evidence, that the writer was lying)."
"As to eyewitnesses, they are important almost exclusively in a court of
law where they can be cross-examined. As most lawyers know, eye­witnesses
often err. This has been experimentally investigated, with the most
striking results. Witnesses most anxious to describe an event as it happened
are
liable to make scores of mistakes, especially if some exciting things
happen in a hurry; and if an event suggests some tempt­ing interpretation,
then this interpretation, more often than not, is allowed to distort what
has actually been seen."
"Hume’s view of historical knowledge was different: ‘ … we believe’, he
writes in the Treatise (Book T, Part III, Section iv; Selby-Bigge, p. 83), ‘
that Caesar was kill’d in the Senate-house on the ides of March … because
this fact is establish’d on the unanimous testimony of histor­ians, who
agree to assign this precise time and place to that event. Here are
certain characters and letters present either to our memory or senses; which
characters we likewise remember to have been us’d as the signs of certain
ideas; and these ideas were either in the minds of such as were immediately
present at that action, and receiv’d the ideas directly from its existence; or
they were deriv’d from the testimony of others, and that again from another
testimony … ’till we arrive at those who were eye-witnesses and
spectators of the event.’ (See also Enquiry, Section x; Selby-Bigge, pp. 111
ff.)"
"It seems to me that this view must lead to the infinite regress described
above. For the problem is, of course, whether ‘the unani­mous testimony
of historians’ is to be accepted, or whether it is, per­haps, to be
rejected as the result of their reliance on a common yet spurious source. The
appeal to ‘letters present to our memory or our senses’ cannot have any
bearing on this or on any other relevant pro blem of historiography."
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