This is where I think things stand. RP
I'd hope for some examples of fallible knowledge and some support for the claim that 'all knowledge is fallible' that doesn't collapse to the Pyrrhic notion that nobody can know anything.
Donal
These hopes/requests are entirely fair, and take us to the heart the of the matter imo. But the issues are not without difficulty (of course). A good place to start, I think, may actually be 'logic' and not 'empirical claims': because though Popper did not initially claim this, Popper came round - spurred by his pupil's Lakatos' early work - to the view that even logic and maths are merely forms of 'guesswork'. Once this is seen, it is much, much easier to see how - _a fortiori_ - 'empirical claims' must be forms of 'guesswork'.
Now Palma has stepped in with an example of incorrigible or infallible knowledge from mathematics.
So there are three of us trying to discuss or untangle certain philosophical (and I would have thought ordinary) epistemological notions. Long, unsorted lists of 'definitions' of the _word_ 'knowledge,' although interesting, don't strike me as contributions that will further this discussion.
It's been implied here that anything philosophical is frivolous to begin with, and the work of 'linguistic' philosophers especially so. As neither Donal, Palma, nor myself are 'linguistic' philosophers, this is a bit unfair, and the implication that philosophy has no place on phil-lit is disturbing. Laugh at us if you will, but let us, and anyone else who cares to, go on talking.
Robert Paul ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
