[lit-ideas] Re: things we know
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:03:07 -0230
Hmmmm .... : "a substantial amount of trained philosophers ..."
I will grant "an amount of money," but not an "amount of trained philosophers."
Truth conditions for that expression are highly ambiguous, thus rendering the
expression itself quite meaningless. Similarly, we can cogently speak of a
"number" of trained philosophers, but not of a gaggle, herd, pride, school of
trained philosophers. (Well, maybe "school" if they're from Oxford or
Freiburg).
Thus do I aver .... that philosophers - be they trained or not - do not come in
"amounts" - though many may well have been mounted on their own petards and/or
have been mounted by certain significant or generalized others (or both). Such
latter circumstances will not be pursued further here.
These things - like a walk in the park - are hard to know, of course. The
question may not be an empirical one, at the end of the day. Transcendental
analysis may amount to a significant discovery here.
Walter O
MUN
Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:
> This arrived today on the list philosop, where the people from
> Eindhoven University of Technology, whose names appear at the end of
> this, had earlier invited list members to test their intuitions about
> whether the content of certain propositions counted as knowledge.
>
> ---------------------------------
>
> Dear [members of philosop]
>
> We have closed our online survey regarding the concept of knowledge.
>
> 817 (!) list members have completed our questionnaire. We would like
> to thank all respondents!
>
> We promised to post a summary of our findings. Now, we found that:
> 1. a substantial amount of trained philosophers intuit that one can
> know that p, without this being an instance of knowledge, in
> particular when p, although justified and true, has no (or limited)
> informational content;
> 2. the epistemic intuitions of trained philosophers are highly
> dependent on their mother tongue; and
> 3. these effects apply even if only philosophers with a doctoral
> degree are considered.
>
> An example: we asked the following two questions:
>
> Q.1 Let us suppose the following: Jonas knows that water is H20.
> Do you think that what Jonas knows qualifies as knowledge? (Yes or No)
>
> Q.2 Let us suppose the following: Karl knows that water is water.
> Do you think that what Karl knows qualifies as knowledge? (Yes or No)
>
>
> Now if every instance of "S knows that p" is an instance of knowledge,
> one could expect philosophers to answer yes to both questions above
> (that is, irrespective of the content of the proposition being known).
>
> What we found, however, was that responses to these questions differ
> significantly. 92% of the respondents agree that Q.1 is an instance of
> knowledge, whereas only 64% think that the proposition in Q.2
> qualifies as knowledge. (Similar results were obtained for the other
> propositions in the questionnaire).
>
> It appears, thus, that some propositions, in virtue of their content,
> are more likely to be qualified as knowledge than others (e.g.
> analytic or logical truths as "water is water", or "Osama bin Laden's
> eyes were on 9/11 either pink or some other color").
>
> We are currently trying to distill a paper out all of this. If you
> want to find out more, we will post drafts on:
> http://home.ieis.tue.nl/kvaesen/
>
> [snip]
>
> Krist Vaesen & Martin Peterson
> Eindhoven University of Technology
> The Netherlands
> ---------------------------------
> Forwarded by R. Paul,
> who agrees with Socrates about what it's most important to know.
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