[lit-ideas] Re: knowledge and belief briefly revisited
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2013 18:10:38 -0800 (PST)
Hard to follow, as I said before, due to both email problems and the abstract
and repetitive character of this debate. Admittedly, the late hour and alcohol
intake don't help either. Tomorrow, maybe.
O.K.
On Sunday, December 22, 2013 2:57 AM, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
wrote:
O.K., please see my replies to RP on these matters. I believe I address your
concerns in those replies. Let us know if not.
Cheers, Walter
Quoting Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Well, this reasoning seems circular in the sense that, if one a priori
> defines knowledge so that it necessarily entails belief (JTP), then the
> conclusion that there can be no knowledge without belief is tautologically
> true. True opinions that are not accompanied by full-fledged belief are then
> excluded from our conceptions of 'knowledge'. But this seems to make the
> existence of knowledge unverifiable, since it is based on subjective inner
> Â 'belief' which is nearly impossible to ascertain. Do we have to establish
> that Copernicus (and Aristarchus of Samos, who also claimed it 2000 years
> earlier) believed that the Earth revolves around the Sun in order to grant
> that they 'knew' it ?
>
> O.K.
>
>
>
> On Saturday, December 21, 2013 7:37 PM, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> Please see specific replies below --------->
>
>
> Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:
>
> >Â 11:26 AM (12 hours ago)
> >
> > [image: https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif]
> >
> >
> >
> > [image: https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif]
> >
> > [image: https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif]
> >
> > to lit-ideas,
> >
> >Â Â *Walter (?) wrote
> >
> > I would have thought that any cogent / justifiable attribution of
> > "knowing-that" would logically or conceptually (I'm not finicky here)
> > involve an attribution of "believing-that."
> >
> ----> Yes, Walter did write that.
> >
> > *I think I know by now, baroque and frivolous claims made in journal
> > articles aside, that I *know* that
> >
> >
> >
> > 2 + 3 = 5
> >
> >
> >
> > and that
> >
> >
> >
> > If I touch my nose with my forefinger, my elbow will be bent.
> >
> --> Agreed. And we attribute "knowledge that P" to you only because we assume
> that you believe that P and you are able to provide relevant justification
> for
> your belief. Or: We ourselves have met those 2 necessary conditions of
> propositional knowledge.
> >
> > and that, like Moore…
> >
> >
> >
> > …(wait—what did Moore believe?)
>
> -----> He believed, falsely, as Witters and I correctly claim, that he *knew*
> something in claiming that "Here is one hand, here is another, therefore an
> external world exists and I'm justified in so claiming." Witters never
> thought
> very highly of Moore's philosophical abilities, not least because he failed
> to
> recognize the difference between a genuine knowledge-claim and an expression
> of
> a "hinge-proposition" or a "river-bed proposition."Â The latter is not an
> epistemic claim, pace G.E.. Fortunately, Witters is not buried for eternity
> next to Moore. Rather is heburied next to John Wisdom, at a cemetery just
> north
> of Cambridge proper.
>
>
> > *I was taught in grammar school, by Elizabeth Gill, that 2Â + 3 = 5, and
> > that was the end of it. I wasn’t first taught to *believe* that this
> > equation was correct. An attempt to do that, it seems to me, would have
> > been in bad faith:
>
> Here, RP oddly conflates logical/conceptual presupposition with
> genetic/empirical matters. The idea that "knowledge-that" presupposes
> "belief-that" is not an empirical claim. We don't need to hire empirical
> sociologists to gather evidence confirming that truth; as if that truth could
> be controverted by a majority of respondents avowing that while they know
> that
> P, they really don't believe that P. Such presuppositions are
> logical/conceptual in that one can validly infer she "believes that P" from
> Alice's claim that she "knows that P."
>
>
> >I wasn’t shown the numerals and symbols necessary for
> > the expression of this equation and asked if I *believed* it; no—it
> > happened all in a flash. Well, not in a flash, maybe: apparently I
> > *first*had to believe that 2 + 3 = 5, and
> > *then* be shown how I could come to know it. Having come to know it, I
> > didn’t want to part with my belief, so I rolled it up in a rug and put it
> > in the attic.
>
> -> Again, empirical matters concerning the acquisition of belief are separate
> from logical/conceptual matters. I'm not quite clear on how a rational agent
> could first believe that P and then come to know that P. Isn't that an
> example
> of an indoctrinated mind (however snug in a rug one may be) educators and
> philosophers want to identify and treat?
> >
> >
> >
> > *[I’m not sure who wrote the following; Walter, I think.]
> >
> >Â As in: "Suma knows that whales are mammals" logically presupposes that
> > "Suma
> > believes that whales are mammals." To claim "I know that P" while denying
> "I
> > believe that P" is a speech act the udderrance of which requires at least 5
> > Hail Marys. (Yes, it's bovine all the way down.) But that's only if you ask
> > me.
>
>
> --------> Da, Walter indeed wrote that too.
>
>
> Walter O
>
> MUN
> =============================================================================
>
> > *’Logically presupposes’…Well, it certainly isn’t a logical truth
> that
> > e.g. ‘Robert knows his name is Robert so, Robert believes his name is
> > Robert. R believes his name is R is something that might come from his
> > having been struck on the head by getting too close to one of Galileo’s
> > experiments, and afterward forgetting, for a time, who he was. He believed
> > his name was R, and then—*suddenly*—knew it was. ‘So, first the
> belief,
> > then the knowledge.’ This is meant to show that if one knows something
> one
> > first believed it and therefore if one knows something one also believes
> > it, for belief is something on the road to knowledge (as in *Meno*). Yet it
> > would only show this if belief were *essential* to knowledge, in some
> > strange way. My suggestion is that it isn’t—that one can know outright,
> > i.e., without passing Go.
> >
> >
> >
> > *The notion that if one knows something one must also believe it (so that
> > one cannot claim to know something without also claiming (?) to believe it,
> > any more than someone who’s just run 10 kilometers can avoid saying that
> > she also ran 5 kilometers) is, I think, based on a mistake—the belief
> that
> > knowledge is JTB, so that wherever there’s knowledge there must be belief
> > sleeping inside.
> >
> >
> >
> > *It’s been claimed that if one knows something, one must believe it also,
> > so that it would be a mistake for someone to say she knew something, but
> > did not believe it. (I’m not sure just what sort of mistake it would
> > be—language is funny.) If she were to say she knew something but didn’t
> > also believe it, she would, on the JTB view be contradicting (?) herself.
> > But of course if she meant simply that she no longer merely believed it
> > (the belief had dissolved, as it were), what she said would be what she
> > should have said. ‘Where there is knowledge there must also be belief
> > also,’ comes from the acceptance of knowledge as JTB. And there’s no
> reason
> > to accept that.
> >
> >
> >
> > Robert Paul
> >
> > ————————————————
> >
> > *The philosophical supposition that knowledge is true belief (which we have
> > by meandering inheritance from *Theatetus* and *Meno*), is not the only
> > account of knowledge there is. It’s been called into question for some
> time
> > by clever men like Edmund Gettier, and Colin Radford.
> >
> >
> >
> > *(See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/).
> >
>
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