[lit-ideas] Re: What Every School Boy Knows
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 29 May 2010 12:53:30 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Sat, 29/5/10, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>Grice...notes that people are STUPID, on the whole.
Cheers Grice. Clever chap.
>Consider 'circle'. Surely if you ask a boy (or a girl) to 'draw a circle' >he
>won't, or she wont'.
Perhaps not, because mummy and daddy have said don't respond to strangers who
ask odd questions when you're in the park.
>And if he does the thing will be so UNLIKE a perfect circle: -- it will be
>thick, for one. The line will have a thickness that a circle should not >have.
Surely the thickness of the "line" has no bearing on its perfection (a perfect
circle could be coloured-in)? The ideal circle may be an unattainable model of
perfection but it is not therefore anorexic.
>-------- McEvoy HAS to admit that, "I went to the house thinking that my
>grandmother would be there. She wasn't. So, I thought I KNEW she was there.
>But she wasn't". It would be odd to say that you KNEW that your granmother was
>there but that she wasn't. Etc.
"McEvoy", as you quaintly express it - as if I were at public school or in the
SCR in the 1940s, admits nothing of the sort. This point is simply a linguistic
sleight-of-hand that relies on its use of the past tense and first person:
Consider first a present tense, first person version:-
(1) "I know as I go to the house that granny is there. I ring the bell, let
myself in, and search - but she is not there."
This makes perfect sense provided we accept a sense of "know" where what we
know may be mistaken - as here it proves. In the sense in which 'to "know"'
means to "know _correctly_", clearly in the result I do not know _correctly_ -
and so, in this sense but only in this sense, the claim to "know correctly" is
contradicted by subsequent events.
The above can be re-expressed in the past tense:-
(2) "I knew as I went to the house that granny was there. I rang the bell, let
myself in, and searched - but she was not there."
This makes perfect sense provided we accept a sense of "knew" where what we
knew may be mistaken - as here it proved.
In the sense in which "knew" means "knew correctly", clearly in the result here
I did not know _correctly_ - and so, in this sense but only in this sense, the
claim at (2) that I "knew correctly" is contradicted by subsequent events.
The sleight-of-hand is that we do not ordinarily use the verb "knew" in the
first-person when referring back to some knowledge we now know to be false: we
would tend to use "I thought..", "I believed.." etc. This usage avoids the
confusion that might arise if it seemed we were saying that we "knew correctly"
something we now recognise as false: a confusion liable to arise because of the
two very different senses in which we may claim to "know", only one of which
has connotations of justified true belief.
And yet, this potential confusion aside, it bears repeating:- the statement at
(2) makes perfect sense provided we accept a sense of "knew" where what we knew
may be mistaken - as here it proved. In this sense, we would naturally construe
the claim "I knew..." at (2) not to mean "I knew correctly" but "I was
convinced at the time" etc.
But the rights and wrongs of a JTB view of knowledge as against the Popperian
view that all knowledge is conjectural, cannot be decided by anything so flimsy
as the ambiguity inherent in our use of "know", still less by assuming only a
JTB usage of "know" is permissible [ordinary language makes room for non-JTB
views of "know" and "knowledge", you know].
The Popperian view is here so called partly for convenience (and partly because
P is perhaps the most important modern exponent of this view; it is not so
called to tire DR): this POV has many precursors, including the striking five
fragments of Xenophanes:-
"The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black
While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw
And could sculpture like men,
Then the horses would draw their gods like horses,
And cattle like cattle,
And each would then shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of its own.
The gods did not reveal, from the beginning, all things to us;
But in the course of time, through seeking, men find that which is better...
These things are, we conjecture, like the truth.
But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor will he know it; neither of the gods,
Nor yet of all the things of which I speak.
And even if by chance he were to utter
The final truth, he would himself not know it:
For all is but a woven web of guesses."
Amen.
D
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