A Sceptics argument for Dogmatism

[Taffer]

By way of introduction may first say that I am not, in any way, shape or form, very knowledgeable about such things. I am simply a BSc student who decided to take a Philosophy paper started to think.

My first lecture (in fact, the first section of the paper) is regarding Skepticism and Dogmatism. Our lecturer, I must say, seemed to be very critical of Skepticism and in my view argued in an unbiased way for Dogmatism (and against Skepticism), but that is another matter.

He put forth the Justified True Belief account (JTB), which is to truly know something you must, a) Believe it is true, b) It is true, and c) You must have a justification as to your belief. He also put forward the Skeptics argument that we can never truly know something because of the Infinite Regress Argument, that is to say that everything must be justified, which must be justified in turn, which must again be justified, ad infinitum.

Before I ask my question, I'd like it know that I consider myself a Skeptic (as apposed to a Dogmatist), and believe that true knowledge is an impossibility; we can never actually know 100% that we are right...all our data might be a huge coincidence, and the true data is not represented (as unlikely as this could be, it is impossible to prove that it is not the case).

However, my question is thus. Imagine a scenario in which I know A, justified by B, which is Justified by C, which just happens to be Justified by A. We, in my opinion, complete the Infinite Regress Argument (around and around we go ;)), and therefore can it be argued that we know A for curtain?

Again, I am not a Philosopher, but a BSc student, so any failings in logic, knowledge and understanding are open to be pointed out, abused and/or laughed at if you so choose. I simply have had this in my mind, thought that this Forum was a perfect place to discuss it.

Thoughts? Comments? Am I on to something, or should I just shut up and go back to learning about Plasmadesmata?

[Batman Jr.]

I think this would be a case of the circular logic fallacy. Let's simplify your proposal by only using two entities: A and B. B makes sense because of A, and A makes sense because of B. You're proving things using premises which have not yet been proven.

Now, let's expand this to the three entities as you suggested. C makes sense because of A, B makes sense because of C, and A makes sense because of B. Since C is contingent on A, B is also contingent on A, and since B is contingent on A, A itself is contingent on A. We run into the same problem. You simply cannot use things to prove themselves. You end up more in a situation of infinite question begging.

Here is an example of where this logic fails:

A: Anyone who espouses the word of the Bible should be considered an espouser of absolute truth

How do we know this?

B: The Bible is the word of God

Again, how do we know this?

C: My preacher told me, and he speaks the truth

How do you know he speaks the truth?

A: Anyone who espouses the word of the Bible should be considered an espouser of absolute truth

It doesn't get us anyplace, now does it? We just keep coming down to an unsubstantiated premise.

[Taffer]

You are, of course, correct. I did warn that I'm no Philosopher ;).

But you are right, when you put it like that, it does not work. Obviously I hadn't really thought it from that perspective, it was more of a vague musing.

Thanks for clearing the issue up for me mate :)

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Taffer
However, my question is thus. Imagine a scenario in which I know A, justified by B, which is Justified by C, which just happens to be Justified by A. We, in my opinion, complete the Infinite Regress Argument (around and around we go ;)), and therefore can it be argued that we know A for curtain?

As a BSc student, I hope you're getting some sense of how scientists check conclusions they think may be "justified." Unfortunately, many programs fail to convey to science students why they need to do so. "Justified" isn't strong enough. As Batman, Jr. just pointed out, those seemingly justified premises need to be vetted against reality.

How do you know when the pasta is done? You toss a strand up against the wall and see if it sticks. You have to dig into the universe and poke at what you find, a half-dozen ways or more, before you can be confident of a conclusion. And each conclusion along the way is generally tiny, awaiting many more to be amassed before you have anything to say about grander conclusions. Even provisionally.

[drkitten]

Originally posted by Batman Jr.
I think this would be a case of the circular logic fallacy. Let's simplify your proposal by only using two entities: A and B. B makes sense because of A, and A makes sense because of B. You're proving things using premises which have not yet been proven.



I think you're conflating the notion of "justified" with that of "proven." A and B can both be justified in terms of each other without either of the justifications rising to the level of "proof." Even if this were, as you call it, a "fallacy," all that really means is that there is a chance the conclusion drawn might be incorrect.

I believe I know what cinnamon sticks look like because I've seen them in a jar labelled "cinnamon sticks." I also believe that jar contains cinnamon sticks, because that's what it looks like are in the jars. Even if I've only ever seen one jar of cinnamon sticks in my life, I can still draw that conclusion. I might be incorrect -- maybe someone put allspice in that jar. But it's good enough for me to believe.....

Most conclusions drawn, in the real world, might be incorrect.

The real problem with the infinite regress argument is that a justified belief may not be true. In the case of "turtles all the way down," we keep justifying our beliefs in terms of other beliefs and can never achieve a demonstration of "truth." In the case of a finite loop (your Biblical example is a good one), the cycle of mutual justification does not demonstrate the truth of any of th propositions -- they could just as easily all be false. (Although if one were true, and the justification were correct [which I do not believe it is for this example], then they would all be true.)

[Keneke]

Originally posted by Taffer
He put forth the Justified True Belief account (JTB), which is to truly know something you must, a) Believe it is true, b) It is true, and c) You must have a justification as to your belief. He also put forward the Skeptics argument that we can never truly know something because of the Infinite Regress Argument, that is to say that everything must be justified, which must be justified in turn, which must again be justified, ad infinitum.

If people cannot know anything for sure because of Infinite Regress, then premise b) of JTB cannot ever be fulfilled, therefore his theory is based incorrect assumptions. He's building on air.

[drkitten]

Originally posted by Keneke
If people cannot know anything for sure because of Infinite Regress, then premise b) of JTB cannot ever be fulfilled, therefore his theory is based incorrect assumptions. He's building on air.

Premise b)?


To truly know something you must, a) Believe it is true, b) It is true, and c) You must have a justification as to your belief.


Whether or not premise b) is fulfilled does not depend on the justification (or lack) for the statement. Infinite regress does not affect whether the statement is actually true, just whether belief in its truth can be justified (finitely).

I have a red paper clip in my desk drawer. Whether you believe me or not, and whether your belief is justified or not, the contents of my desk drawer are what they are -- including a red paper clip.

[Taffer]

I have a red paper clip in my desk drawer. Whether you believe me or not, and whether your belief is justified or not, the contents of my desk drawer are what they are -- including a red paper clip.

Not relevant, I know, but if you think about this from the skeptics point of view, then you may believe it also so, but you cannot know it to be true. You may think the red clip is still in the drawer, but it might have grown legs and walked off (no an imposibility, however small). Even if you were to open the drawer and see the red paper clip, how can you be sure that your senses are feeding you the right information? You might be hallucinating, and imagining the paper clip. Even if you then go to the doctor and get a checkup, and find a clean bill of health, how can you be sure that the doctor didn't miss something? Or that he is actually an alien, and that hemeroid check was actually an anal probe. Ad infinitum.

Personally I think where the JTB falls down, is not at the justification, but at the "It is true" clause. You can be justified for thinking that there is a red paperclip in your drawer, and can explain exactly why (it might take a while, but it comes down to a base of Logic and Sensory information), but you can never know if it is true. Because you can never prove that it is true (to 100%).

If people cannot know anything for sure because of Infinite Regress, then premise b) of JTB cannot ever be fulfilled, therefore his theory is based incorrect assumptions. He's building on air.

I assume what you are talking about is the argument that how can Skeptics use knowledge to disprove the existance of knowledge. How can you prove that nothing can be proved?

The best way that I have found to think about it is that a builder can use a ladder to reach a high place, then kick the ladder away. Skeptics use the arguments on equal grounds with Dogmatists (and others, of course) to disprove the Dogmatists theory and then, by logical reason, dispove their own. But that doesn't take away from the fact that the Dogmatists argument has just been disproved by it's own reasoning, on it's own terms. Q.E.D

I think you're conflating the notion of "justified" with that of "proven." A and B can both be justified in terms of each other without either of the justifications rising to the level of "proof." Even if this were, as you call it, a "fallacy," all that really means is that there is a chance the conclusion drawn might be incorrect.


I agree, but he was arguing that my Circular Argument does not mean that they have proved something to be true. Which is of course, correct. But you are right, IMHO it does indeed justify itself, but does not prove itself.

I believe I know what cinnamon sticks look like because I've seen them in a jar labelled "cinnamon sticks." I also believe that jar contains cinnamon sticks, because that's what it looks like are in the jars. Even if I've only ever seen one jar of cinnamon sticks in my life, I can still draw that conclusion. I might be incorrect -- maybe someone put allspice in that jar. But it's good enough for me to believe.....


Indeed, I agree. As I said above, I think that (when the twin elements of Logical Reasoning and Sensory Information come into play) there can be cases that you can be justified in your knowledge. This never, however, makes it curtain that it is true.

Most conclusions drawn, in the real world, might be incorrect.


I would argue that this should be revised to "All conclusions drawn, in the real world, could be incorrect".

I would also argue, though, that you can use logic to decide on a course of action, based on which of the two is more likely to be the 'correct' one. For example, if you give a skeptic a sandwedge on a plate, he has two possible courses of action. Either, in his knowledge that, every other time ate a sandwedge he became full, and also he gained sustinance from it, he decides to eat the sandwedge. Else he decides that there is no truth behind that previous statment, as it is equally likely that the plate would sustain him and the sandwedge would not, and thus he tries to eat the plate. Why do we not see this happening? IMHO, I believe that a Skeptic will admit that the chances of the plate sustainging him and the sandwedge not are much lower then the opposite conclusion. He acknowledges the fact that he might be wrong, but he concludes that logically, it is more likely that his knowledge is true and thus he eats the sandwedge. Follow? He does the same as a dogmatists, for the same reasons basically, but he acknowledges that he could be wrong.

EDIT: Please excuse my bad spelling. I have always been a "fonetik" speller, and I no longer have Word on my computer so I am unable to spellcheck my work. :(

[drkitten]

Originally posted by Taffer
Not relevant, I know, but if you think about this from the skeptics point of view, then you may believe it also so, but you cannot know it to be true.



Basically, under the JTB framework, I can have knowledge but I can never know that I have knowledge. Most philosophers are cool with this.

Assuming that the paperclip is still in the drawer, then,

a) I believe it's in the drawer
b) I have justification for believing it's in the drawer (I saw it there ten minutes ago)
c) it's actually in the drawer

... therefore I know that it's in the drawer.



You may think the red clip is still in the drawer, but it might have grown legs and walked off (no an imposibility, however small). Even if you were to open the drawer and see the red paper clip, how can you be sure that your senses are feeding you the right information?


I can't be sure. But that's not relevant, because I don't need to be sure, I merely need to be justified. Even if the paper clip has grown legs and wandered away, I still have a justification for believing it to be in the drawer.

That's one of the differences between justification and proof. Proof, in its strongest form, needs to be absolutely airtight, beyond all possibility of failure. Justification merely needs to be sufficiently convincing that the believer is happy with the conclusion. You even admit this yourself....


Personally I think where the JTB falls down, is not at the justification, but at the "It is true" clause. You can be justified for thinking that there is a red paperclip in your drawer, and can explain exactly why (it might take a while, but it comes down to a base of Logic and Sensory information),[...]


From a JTB perspective, you can demonstrate a belief and you can demonstrate a justification. "Truth," however, as you point out, cannot be demonstrated. Under the JTB framework, you can never know whether what you have is "knowledge" or simply misguided belief.



I would argue that this should be revised to "All conclusions drawn, in the real world, could be incorrect".



No. Tautological conclusions are still "provably" correct -- for example, if I conclude that "all bachelors are unmarried," that's a real-world conclusion that's true by the definition of "bachelor." Disproofs by contradiction are also usually "provably" correct; I can't fit a straight sixteen foot board into a one foot by one foot by one foot box -- and that's a provably correct conclusion. (in either case, ignoring sophomoric definition games.)

[Keneke]

Originally posted by Taffer

Personally I think where the JTB falls down, is not at the justification, but at the "It is true" clause. You can be justified for thinking that there is a red paperclip in your drawer, and can explain exactly why (it might take a while, but it comes down to a base of Logic and Sensory information), but you can never know if it is true. Because you can never prove that it is true (to 100%).



That's pretty much what I was saying, but better put.

[Keneke]

Originally posted by drkitten
ignoring sophomoric definition games.

Pretty much. In the original argument, does the teacher mean "know" as in proof, or "know" as in belief, or some shade of gray in between?

[Eleatic Stranger]

If it helps the main reason that truth is taking as part of the criteria for knowledge is to preserve the following sort of inference:

A knows that P
Therefore: P

This may or may not seem intuitive, but consider the following two dialogues:

1)

A: I know P
B: But (insert conclusive proof) not-P
A: Ah, I knew that P, but now I know that not-P

2)

A: I know P
B: But (insert conclusive proof) not-P
A: Ah, I thought I knew P, but was mistaken. Now, however, I know not-P

The second dialogue is generally taken to express the way in which we tend to express knowledge. At any rate, I'm not sure I've ever heard anything similar enough to the first dialogue. Knowledge is mainly distinguished from belief (or justified belief - which is in most (though not all ) cases perfectly defeasible) by virtue of the fact that if one knows some proposition, then that proposition must be true. This does, as pointed out above, tend to cast doubt on the fact that when we know something we always know that we know it - but when carefully considered I think thats perfectly accurate.

Another thing to remember is that when people who hold JTB talk of justification they're normally talking of beliefs being justified. This seems trivial - but what it amounts to is the point that a belief is justified by other propositions one believes, and not necessarily (though of course optimally) other propositions one knows. This does lend some credence to skeptical doubts - since (skeptics assert, though there are arguments to the contrary) it could be possible to have a consistent set of entirely false beliefs which justify each other.

There are problems with holding that knowledge amounts to justified true belief. However, they probably don't relate significantly to the issue you're working with (it turns out, effectively, that while the JTB criteria provides necessary conditions for knowledge it doesn't provide sufficient criteria - there are examples of justified true beliefs that don't count as knowledge).

[Keneke]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
there are examples of justified true beliefs that don't count as knowledge).

Like what? Where's the line between JTB and truth drawn, anyway?

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Keneke
Like what? Where's the line between JTB and truth drawn, anyway?

That line is drawn over a five-century stack of tomes that define the quest of science. Philosophy began to catch up with this with the Epistemogical movement. That group of philosophical renegades were uncomfortable with philosophical fashion, began to stir out of their easy chairs and ask, "how is it we know what we know, and how well?"

[Taffer]

See, I believe that we can be perfectly justified to think I know something and, to me, I do know that thing until I am shown that it is false. However, the thing in which I believe can never be shown to be true, as there is always the posibility that it isn't.

Basically, I think what I'm trying to say is that you can be Justified in your knowledge that the red paper clip is in the drawer, and to you that knowledge is perfectly satisfactory, until you are shown otherwise (or else logic dictates that you are wrong, etc etc). This doesn't mean, however, that the red paper clip is in the drawer, even if you are perfectly happy with your knowledge.

I think that makes sense, and I'm justified in believing that it does, but does it really? :P

Epistemogical movement

I have to admit that I have only been to two Phil lectures, and I have no idea what this is. Would you mind explaining it to me...please?
I mean, sure, I could get off my ass and look it up, but where would the fun in that be?

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Taffer
See, I believe that we can be perfectly justified to think I know something and, to me, I do know that thing until I am shown that it is false. However, the thing in which I believe can never be shown to be true, as there is always the posibility that it isn't.
It depends upon how you "know" it. On what basis? With what reason, logic, and independent confirmation.

Basically, I think what I'm trying to say is that you can be Justified in your knowledge that the red paper clip is in the drawer, and to you that knowledge is perfectly satisfactory, until you are shown otherwise (or else logic dictates that you are wrong, etc etc). This doesn't mean, however, that the red paper clip is in the drawer, even if you are perfectly happy with your knowledge.
Yes, if you put the clip there yourself, you can have a high degree of confidence it is there. Higher, if it is a locking drawer and you habitually lock it. But this type of knowledge is very specific. There is little abstraction or interpretation. It is a memory of your own action. It may still be faulty. There may be a hole in the drawer you're not yet aware of. You may have removed it and forgotten about that. Someone else may have removed it without your knowledge. You may have never place it there to begin with.

I have to admit that I have only been to two Phil lectures, and I have no idea what this is. Would you mind explaining it to me...please?
I mean, sure, I could get off my ass and look it up, but where would the fun in that be?
Well, if I had spelled it right to begin with, that might have helped. The Epistemology school of philosophy developed the "philosophy of knowledge" : how we know what we know.

[drkitten]

Originally posted by Taffer
See, I believe that we can be perfectly justified to think I know something and, to me, I do know that thing until I am shown that it is false. However, the thing in which I believe can never be shown to be true, as there is always the posibility that it isn't.



Ah, yes, the magic of philosophical terminology. What you describe is perfectly acceptable as the lay-person's version of JTB. The problem is that it allows a linguistic confusion between the notions of "knowledge" as a belief that a person holds, and "knowledge" as a belief that a person holds that accurately expresses the state of the world.

Much of philosophy over the past zillion years has simply been a refinement of the terms used, in order to identify and isolate possible confusions and work past them. Philosophers don't like using the term "knowledge" to describe something that might be untrue, and hence have arrived at the standard JTB definition to help distinguish between "justified beliefs" and "justified true beliefs."

[drkitten]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger

Another thing to remember is that when people who hold JTB talk of justification they're normally talking of beliefs being justified. This seems trivial - but what it amounts to is the point that a belief is justified by other propositions one believes, and not necessarily (though of course optimally) other propositions one knows. This does lend some credence to skeptical doubts - since (skeptics assert, though there are arguments to the contrary) it could be possible to have a consistent set of entirely false beliefs which justify each other.



Easily possible. Would you like me to sell you a graviton detector? You can tell that it works because it detects gravitons. And you know that gravitons exists because the detector finds them.

The "graviton" detector problem is actually one of the great unsolved problems in modern physics.....

[Eleatic Stranger]

That isn't precisely the problem, since in the case of serious skeptical doubts the circularity is much, much bigger. And by that, I mean the circle is taken to include all the beliefs a subject possesses. It would, after all, be hard to have an entirely consistent set of false beliefs that were consistent with the rest of one's true beliefs. (Justification, after all, isn't easily subject-specific.)


Well, if I had spelled it right to begin with, that might have helped. The Epistemology school of philosophy developed the "philosophy of knowledge" : how we know what we know.

Also, there is no Epistemology school of philosophy - Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. Likewise, Metaphysics is the study of what is and how it is, Logic is the study of reasoning, and so on. These are general subject matters of philosophy, but they aren't schools - practically everyone since Plato has done some epistemology.

Where's the line between JTB and truth drawn, anyway?

Finally, I'm not sure what could be meant by drawing a line between justified true beliefs(which on this theory are the beliefs that count as knowledge), and truth. Truth is, after all, part of the criteria....

The counter-examples, though, are beautiful pieces of philosophy. Edmund Gettier (in a 3 page essay, of all things) proposed two of them, and rather conclusively demonstrated that the JTB criteria wasn't sufficient.

One of them is (roughly, as I'm doing this from memory) as follows:

Suppose John arrives at the Chicago airport and knows he is going to be picked up by his friend Steve. John also remembers clearly that Steven has a truck, and really likes trucks. In fact, John knows that Steven will always pick a truck over a car if he has the option. So, John concludes, Steve will be driving a truck when he comes to the airport. John also has a friend Bob, that he plans to meet back at Steve's house.

Now, at this point it's easy to set out some of John's beliefs. He believes that:
1) Steve will be driving a Truck.

By a straightforward use of disjunctive addition, John also believes - and is justified in believing - that"
2) Steve will be driving a Truck, or Bob will have flown to Ankara just 2 hours before.

(The fact that John believes only the first of the disjuncts to be true is irrelevant to the truth of the overall sentence.)

At this point belief (2) is both a belief held by John, and justified. However, as it turns out, Steve's truck broke down the day before, so belief (1) turns out false - though John does not know this. It also turns out that Bob suddenly had a family emergency, and has had to fly to Ankara.

At this point belief (2) is both Justified, and True - yet it doesn't seem to count as something John knows.

[Taffer]

I think the issue I have with JTB is that I don't think anything can be known to be true or not.

Yes, if you put the clip there yourself, you can have a high degree of confidence it is there. Higher, if it is a locking drawer and you habitually lock it. But this type of knowledge is very specific. There is little abstraction or interpretation. It is a memory of your own action. It may still be faulty. There may be a hole in the drawer you're not yet aware of. You may have removed it and forgotten about that. Someone else may have removed it without your knowledge. You may have never place it there to begin with.


Which was sort of what I was getting at. You may believe it, and to you you know it to be true, but universally it may be false. Thus, we can never know (in the sense of universal knowledge) anything, but we can 'know' things (in the sense of a justified knowledge, true or not).

I think the problem is with the terms. Lets call 'universal knowledge' (as in, knowledge that is true in our universe, to a degree of 100%) knowledge, and call 'personal knowledge' (as in, the knowledge we derive from logic, or from the sense, that we believe to be true for all accounts and perposes until we are proven wrong) as 'pknowledge'. Thus, the everyday person can have pknowledge, and believe it is knowledge. However, a skeptic will realise that pknowledge is actually irrelevant, and that knowledge can not be held. I'm not really explaining myself very well, but I am trying.

Oh, and yeah I guess you could describe me as a 'layman', but even 'laymen' are allowed to think, are they not ;).

[Eleatic Stranger]

I think the problem is with the terms. Lets call 'universal knowledge' (as in, knowledge that is true in our universe, to a degree of 100%) knowledge, and call 'personal knowledge' (as in, the knowledge we derive from logic, or from the sense, that we believe to be true for all accounts and perposes until we are proven wrong) as 'pknowledge'.


Do we really need to coin a term like 'pknowledge'? After all, something that one believes to be true is.... a belief. Something that one believes to be true and has significant (logical or empirical) justification for is.... a justified belief.

The point of the JTB criteria is simply that not all justified beliefs count as knowledge - in order to know of some particular sentence that it is true is to believe that it is true, to be justified in believing that it is true, and furthermore for it actually to be true. You don't have to have some sort of special access to its truth, though, above believing in it and being justified in believing in it.

There's a common distinction drawn between belief and knowledge that comes down to it feeling different when one believes something as opposed to when one knows something. However, that distinction isn't as revealing as it looks at first - as (1) it isn't a clear distinction but rather a gradation, and (2) it isn't that we have degrees of knowledge, so to speak (though we do have degrees of justification), but rather degrees of certainty. The fact that one can be certain of something and still impressively wrong, however, should come as no surprise to anyone.

The thing that often seems unintuitive about the JTB criteria, I find, is the way in which one could know something, and yet not know that one knows it (and, indeed, that is the root of the problem I pointed out above). However, treating knowledge as something entirely internal (some sort of inner state similar to but different from belief) leaves out anything that would distinguish knowing some fact from believing with a fairly large degree of certainty that that fact is the case.

(Additional note added)
Also, on the JTB model at any rate, it's entirely possible to know that one knows something. It's just not as immediate and reflexive as believing that one believes something. If, however, you know some proposition P, believe that you know some proposition P, and also are justified in your belief that you know some proposition P, then you do know P. It seems odd and recursive - but think through what would count as justifying one's knowledge of a proposition, and then what would count as justifying one's knowledge of one's knowledge of a proposition and it may seem to make a little more sense.

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
Also, there is no Epistemology school of philosophy - Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. Likewise, Metaphysics is the study of what is and how it is, Logic is the study of reasoning, and so on. These are general subject matters of philosophy, but they aren't schools - practically everyone since Plato has done some epistemology.
I meant to write "Epistemology branch of philosophy." Thank you for the correction. More important to what I was trying to get at, though, is the development of epistemology over the past few centuries. These shifts began with Galileo, Copernicus and Newton, and eventually spawned Natural Philosophy, which we now know as Science. While there is still a contingent of "madness" (as Russell puts it) in modern philosophy, most philosophy recognize the authority of science and its epistemological privilege.
Finally, I'm not sure what could be meant by drawing a line between justified true beliefs(which on this theory are the beliefs that count as knowledge), and truth. Truth is, after all, part of the criteria....
It all depends on whether the definition of JTB is in the hands of Russell's "madness" schools of philosophy, where it is contorted beyond all belief or not. If JTB is defined on the same intersubjectively vetted epistemological grounds as solid science is, then there is no distinction. The more we dance into the subjective, however, the more we dance into the madness.

The counter-examples, though, are beautiful pieces of philosophy. Edmund Gettier (in a 3 page essay, of all things) proposed two of them, and rather conclusively demonstrated that the JTB criteria wasn't sufficient.

One of them is (roughly, as I'm doing this from memory) as follows:

Suppose John arrives at the Chicago airport and knows he is going to be picked up by his friend Steve. John also remembers clearly that Steven has a truck, and really likes trucks. In fact, John knows that Steven will always pick a truck over a car if he has the option. So, John concludes, Steve will be driving a truck when he comes to the airport. John also has a friend Bob, that he plans to meet back at Steve's house.

Now, at this point it's easy to set out some of John's beliefs. He believes that:
1) Steve will be driving a Truck.

By a straightforward use of disjunctive addition, John also believes - and is justified in believing - that"
2) Steve will be driving a Truck, or Bob will have flown to Ankara just 2 hours before.

(The fact that John believes only the first of the disjuncts to be true is irrelevant to the truth of the overall sentence.)

At this point belief (2) is both a belief held by John, and justified. However, as it turns out, Steve's truck broke down the day before, so belief (1) turns out false - though John does not know this. It also turns out that Bob suddenly had a family emergency, and has had to fly to Ankara.

At this point belief (2) is both Justified, and True - yet it doesn't seem to count as something John knows.
I agree that this example is correct. And I think the statiscally modeled scientific answer deals with reality better than this JTB/knowledge demarcation conundrum can ever hope to. John has not really lost knowledge, especially if he views that knowledge statistically. 99% of the time, Steve will be driving a Truck is still a correct statement. It still makes a correct prediction 99% of the time, despite the breakdown.

[Taffer]

Ok, point taken Eleatic Stranger. I wasn't really suggesting that we invent a new term, I was just using it for example.

Let me ask this, then. Can we know anything 100%? I think we can believe something 100%, and maybe even justify that belief, but the problem is clause 2. How can you know if the thing you believe is true or not?

For example, in my Phil lecture, someone said "I know, 100%, that I came from my mothers womb." To which I replied "How, do you remember it?" To which came the reply "no, but my mother does". And at this point I said "How do you know she remembers correctly?"

I can be believe that the red paper clip is in the desk, and I can justify that belief, but can I know it is in the desk? IMHO, no, I cannot. Even if I open the desk and look, who's to say that I'm not just imagining the paper clip in there?

[Eleatic Stranger]

It all depends on whether the definition of JTB is in the hands of Russell's "madness" schools of philosophy, where it is contorted beyond all belief or not. If JTB is defined on the same intersubjectively vetted epistemological grounds as solid science is, then there is no distinction. The more we dance into the subjective, however, the more we dance into the madness.

I'm still not sure exactly what you're trying to say here - when JTB is referred to the justificatory aspect of the belief is certainly (in most cases at any rate) an intersubjective affair. The means by which empirical justification (to whatever degree) is determined is hopefully an intersubjective one - or at any rate partakes of intersubjectively determined criteria. There are cases in principle where your justification for some belief (say, the belief that one is in pain) is necessarily subjective (that one feels pain) - but even then I suppose it could be argued that there is an intersubjective aspect to determining what cases fall under the catagory of being capable of being justified entirely subjectively. I suppose the main problem is that I don't know exactly what part of JTB you're talking about - truth is generally taken to be a fairly objective matter, and having a belief is a reasonably good example of something subjective, so I can only assume that when you say JTB you're referring to the justification.

Taffer: as far as knowing something "100%" - which I take to mean "with 100% certainty", then I don't see any problem with saying that we certainly can know something with 100% certainty. The sticking point I think you're hitting is that the certainty and the knowledge are not necessarily always present together. It's possible to know something one is not entirely certain of (if one feels the need to compulsively engage in philosophical skepticism, at any rate), and possible to be certain of something one doesn't know, and even possible to be certain that one knows something when one does not know it. I'm not sure that this is a problem, though, as much as a rather obvious - though perhaps unfortunate - aspect of certainty, belief, and knowledge.

As far as knowing whether some justified belief is true or not the same criteria applies to that knowledge as any other sort - to which you've given a good example. Take the two knowledge claims you've given: (1) that someone knows (with 100% certainty) that they came from their mother's womb, and (2) and that this same person knows that they know (with 100% certainty) that they came from their mother's womb.

The justification for the first belief might be that their mother told them so, that humans reproduce in a way that involves gestating in wombs, and that 'mother' refers to the woman who's womb one gestated in (making "I came from my mother's womb" almost analytic).

Their justification for the second belief might be that their mother is a reliable witness to such events and is given to sincerity in most things, that all available evidence suggests that they are a human being, that they have looked the word "mother" up in a reliable dictionary, and that like their mother their high school biology teacher is similarly reliable and sincere.

Part of the problem here, I suspect, is that beliefs in general seem to have a certain reflexive quality to them - if one believes some proposition P, then one will also (generally) assert that one believes that one believes some proposition P, and that one believes that one believes that one believes some proposition P, and so on. However, it is not necessarily the case that knowledge claims do so - or at any rate each step does require justification (and truth, but that should go without saying).

Am I right in suggesting that the real problem hiding behind this is that, given this reflexive tendency in beliefs, the fact that at some point one may know something but not have the justification required to assert that one knows that one knows it? This is often a point raised by skeptics, historically, but I honestly am not entirely sure it's a valid one - after all, I don't particularly see a problem with asserting that one can know something without knowing that one knows that one knows that one knows that one knows that one knows that....etc.

[Taffer]

Wow. Why arn't you my lecturer again?

Seriously though, you hit the 'head right on the nail'. Thank you ever so much for the clarification! I owe you one!

When you put it like that, it seems perfectly reasonable that someone can be certain that they know something, without that thing being true.

So, I may believe that I came from my mothers womb, which is fine, but it might not be true that I came from my mothers womb. To coin the term 'knowledge', then I don't, according to JTB, 'know' that I came from my mothers womb. But I can be certain in my belief, because my justification for it holds, etc etc.

However, if I truely believe that I cam from my mothers womb, then I can know that I believe that I came from my mothers womb, and that I believe that I believe that I came from my mothers womb, ad infinitum.

Arg, I think I'm still horribly confused after all.

To try to explain, I believe that there is no way to know if something is true, with 100% certainty, or not. However, I am happy to accept things like "knowing that I believe", etc, as things that I can 'know' (in the JTB sense). I, personally, think that a fact (like that the earth orbits the sun) can not be known to be 100% true. Just like, every bit of evidence points that there are no such things a psychic powers or any other such 'woowoo' stuff, but we can't be 100% certain if that is correct, because it is based on a fact that we can never know to be 100% correct. Do you see what I'm getting at?

It is perfectally sensable that I can know that I know, or other such things, as they are simply products of our language. But to know, for example, that my name is Taffer (actually, it isn't, but it'll do for the example) is not something that can be 100% certain.

Arg, dang this language of ours!

Help?

[Eleatic Stranger]

I think the most confusing aspect of this centers around the fact that certainty, belief, justification, truth, and knowledge all interact to form an awful lot of combinations. Just for my own aid I drew up a small Venn diagram to get it all straight in my head, and then realized that I had diagrammed out a good 8 distinct catagories, which was more than I'd expected at first.

I don't have a website to link to or anything, though, so you'll just have to imagine what it looked like. Essentially - three interlocked circles (all possible combinations represented) surrounded by a fourth, larger circle. The larger circle represents the complete set of beliefs. The three inner circles represent - respectively - true beliefs, certain beliefs, and justified beliefs. The space where the circle of true beliefs overlaps the circle of justified beliefs (the intersection of the set of justified beliefs and the set of true beliefs) is the set of beliefs that count as knowledge. Some of those (probably most) are also contained within the set of certain beliefs - also note that for the purposes of simplicity I'm avoiding degrees of certainty, which really don't have much to do with this anyway - it would be nice if those degrees corresponded to degrees of justification, but honestly I don't see that they do very often.

There also is a set of certain, true beliefs that are not justified, a set of certain, justified beliefs that are not true, a set of certain beliefs that are neither true nor justified (politeness alone prevents me from articulating what I take many of these to be), a set of true beliefs that are neither certain nor justified, and a set of justified beliefs that are neither certain nor true. Where any particular belief goes in all these various sets may not always be entirely clear - what counts as enough justification to claim knowledge, whether there are cases in which certainty is justification, and so on are all interesting problems in epistemology. However, the real key to all this is to note that certainty, while interesting, really doesn't play much role as far as knowledge goes, and that knowledge - as such - isn't any more than a subset of beliefs in general. (Ie, when one says of something that one 'knows' it as opposed to 'believing' it, the only difference is that one is basically adding "and I can justifiy it." (After all - it's impossible to hold a belief you think is false.)) As an interesting note, though, 'certainty' as a phenomenon has become more interesting in later analytic philosophy due to its use in defusing radical skepticism (cf, if you really like punishment, Wittgenstein's On Certainty).



As a sidenote, one good way to think about beliefs in this context - which might help to clear up some confusion (though you seem to have this pretty much down) - is as attitudes toward sentences. (This sounds vaguely opaque, I know, but I think it will help.)

Take as an example the following (number) sentences:

1. I believe the earth rests on the back of a turtle.
2. I hold as true the sentence: "The earth rests on the back of a turtle.".
3. I believe I believe the earth rests on the back of a turtle.
4. I hold as true the sentence: "I hold as true the sentence: 'The earth rests on the back of a turtle.'.".
5. I know the earth rests on the back of a turtle.
6. I hold as true the sentence: "The earth rests on the back of a turtle." and I possess overwhelming justification for it.
7. I hold as true the sentence: "The earth rests on the back of a turtle." and I possess overwhelming justification for it. [And it turns out that it's the case]
8. I know that I believe the earth rests on the back of a turtle.
9. I hold as true the sentence: "I hold as true the sentence: 'The earth rests on the back of a turtle.'." and I possess overwhelming justification for it.

Sentences 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 5 and 7 are saying essentially the same thing, under this account. Note that sentence 6 is not the same as 5 and 7, for obvious reasons. Also note, because it's the most interesting facet, that there is no equivalent of sentence 7 for sentence 8 - what would the justification for the sentence that sentence 9 claims I hold as true amount to? (As far as I can tell it would amount to saying "No, really! I do" and perhaps listing some occasions on when I've acted like I did. In general, though, sentences like 9 and 4 are taken to be rather automatically justified - if I say I hold something is true with sincerity, then they are justified just by virtue of being said. Translating them into "I hold as true the following sentence:...." terms tends to make more sense of this, in my opinion. )

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
I'm still not sure exactly what you're trying to say here - when JTB is referred to the justificatory aspect of the belief is certainly (in most cases at any rate) an intersubjective affair. The means by which empirical justification (to whatever degree) is determined is hopefully an intersubjective one - or at any rate partakes of intersubjectively determined criteria. There are cases in principle where your justification for some belief (say, the belief that one is in pain) is necessarily subjective (that one feels pain) - but even then I suppose it could be argued that there is an intersubjective aspect to determining what cases fall under the catagory of being capable of being justified entirely subjectively. I suppose the main problem is that I don't know exactly what part of JTB you're talking about - truth is generally taken to be a fairly objective matter, and having a belief is a reasonably good example of something subjective, so I can only assume that when you say JTB you're referring to the justification.
The key rests in the little bit that must always be slipped into JTB = knowledge discussions. In your other post, it appeared as :

[And it turns out that it's the case]
This is the essential bit, and all else is simply philosophical shucking and jiving.

[Eleatic Stranger]

Are you trying to say that truth is an intersubjective affair?

Alternatively, are you saying that the only significantly important part of the JTB criteria is that truth part? Because, that doesn't sound particularly reasonable either. I guess I'm still not sure what you were saying.

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
Are you trying to say that truth is an intersubjective affair?

Alternatively, are you saying that the only significantly important part of the JTB criteria is that truth part? Because, that doesn't sound particularly reasonable either. I guess I'm still not sure what you were saying.
No, I'm arguing against the looseness of the JTB = knowledge argument. The key is what turns out to be the truth, which means the epistemological key is the evidence.

The certainty is not merely interesting, it is all-important. I don't mean the individual's claimed certainty about an assertion, but the aggregate certainty provided by the research evidence. I alluded to this in a previous post when I wrote:
And I think the statiscally modeled scientific answer deals with reality better than this JTB/knowledge demarcation conundrum can ever hope to. John has not really lost knowledge, especially if he views that knowledge statistically. 99% of the time, Steve will be driving a Truck is still a correct statement. It still makes a correct prediction 99% of the time, despite the breakdown.

The knowledge that, 99% of the time, Steve will be driving a truck is knowledge even when one observes the non-truck-driving event. It is both a statement of the past (the evidence to date) and a prediction for the future.

[Eleatic Stranger]

So you're saying that the JTB criteria is to strict, since it doesn't allow for knowing the truth of false statements?

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
So you're saying that the JTB criteria is to strict, since it doesn't allow for knowing the truth of false statements?
No, I'm saying the crux of the JTB criterion comes down to the actual veracity of the assertion. It comes down to the evidence. Any attempts to make it otherwise become philosophical shucking and jiving.

I am also saying that we can't play dodgeball games with the actual assertion to make it appear as if it isn't knowledge. If Steve comes home in a truck 99% of the time, that is how the scientist would frame the assertion. When Steve's truck breaks down, it now is not cause to scrub that as knowledge. It is still true that Steve comes home in a truck 99% of the time.

[Eleatic Stranger]

But knowing that Steve drives a truck 99% of the time is entirely different than knowing in some particular case that Steve will be driving a truck. The first bit of knowledge provides justification for the second, but they are far from identical.

[Keneke]

Originally posted by BillHoyt
That line is drawn over a five-century stack of tomes that define the quest of science. Philosophy began to catch up with this with the Epistemogical movement. That group of philosophical renegades were uncomfortable with philosophical fashion, began to stir out of their easy chairs and ask, "how is it we know what we know, and how well?"

Sorry for the late reply.

You are pointing to epistemology, for sure that is where this discussion lies, but I am still wondering about the original definition of JTB. It is: 1. You believe, 2. It is true, and 3. You have justification. But this is circular! (Or rather, almost a circle) We cannot check #2 off our list ever, we can only have JTB toward an issue, and that is as close as we can get to being true. Therefore, JTB is defined by something that cannot be proven, therefore, it is built on air.

Of course, if the definition of #2 is "It is as true as we can perceive it to be", then I can go with that.

[Keneke]

Jeez, never mind, the conversation has gone way beyond me. :P

[Eleatic Stranger]

On your account, what is Gettier's view about John's belief in the disjunct? On the one hand, we are told that John believes BOTH that Steve will be driving a truck AND that Steve will be driving a truck or Bill will have flown to Ankara.On the other hand, we are told that "the fact that John believes only the first of these disjuncts is irrelevant to the truth of the overall sentence".
As I see it, we have to consider the following assertions:
1. Steve will arrive in a truck
2. Steve will arrive in a truck, or Bill will have flown to Ankara
3. 2 follows from 1 ( disjunctive addition)
4. John believes 1
5. John believes 2
6. 5 follows from 4 ( or from 4 and 3 together)

I take 6 to be false: notoriously, people may be blind to, or indeed flatly deny, the logical consequences of their beliefs.In fact, 6 exemplifies a fallacy related to the Masked Man fallacy.
Without taking sides between JTB and Gettier, let me voice a suspicion. Using disjunctive addition ( or truth-functional logic in general) in the context of belief is bound to lead to trouble.Let's go back to step 2. John ( or we , or Gettier) could just as well have used disjunctive addition to get :
2'. Steve will arrive in a truck, or Bill will NOT have flown to Ankara.
If it occurs to John to apply dis. add. to 1, how is he to choose between 2 and 2'? And how good is his reason, then, for moving from 1 to 2?

Well, this is where I think the best reply is simply to point to the fact that it's a hypothetical example (we're just told that John believes the disjunctive addition - perhaps he's a logic professor who enjoys believing in odd and silly things at times). The point is essentially that despite the various and complicated debates over what counts as justifying beliefs and so on it would seem silly do deny that valid logical (deductive, of course) inferences from justified beliefs count as justification. Gettier is just using the strongest sort of justification he can find, and showing that even using that sort of justification there are cases where someone can be said to have a justified true belief that doesn't really seem to count as knowledge. I'd actually advise anyone interested to read the actual article - titled (as I may or may not accurately recall) "Knowledge is not Justifed True Belief". It's a very easy quick read, being written simply and straightforwardly, and being about 3 pages long.


I request a more complete response before I answer this post. I was disappointed to see you overlook an essential part of my post. To underscore: the interpretation of JTB you proffer excludes science as knowledge. I am quite curious as to why you did not address this at all, but chose instead to anchor on an argumentum ad verecundium.


Ok, first off when you say something like "What is rotten is that JTB abandons epistemelogical progress made over the past centuries and reverts to the archaic notion of Truth. and I reply that it does no such thing by calling your attention to the fact that the people doing epistemology up to about 1967 or so (estimated date, as I can't recall of hand when Gettier published that article) held JTB what I'm doing is pointing out that JTB simply isn't an abandonement of epistemological progress.

I'm saying you're wrong about those authorities and their work. Appealing to, oh, those authorities and their work is perfectly reasonable and in no way an argumentum as verecundium. If I'd said that JTB holds and is a perfect account of knowledge, and then cited those people then I would be doing that - but as I've said several times I don't even think that myself, and I've presented Gettier's argument as to it's insufficiency to back that up. Please be more careful about ascribing logical fallacies.

Secondly, as again I think I've said, the JTB criteria in no way undermines science. All that something needs in order to count as knowledge is that it be something that one believes, that that belief be justified - and let me point out again that scientific evidence for something is a pretty hefty chunk of justification as far as empirical matters go[i], and that it turn out to be true. The only sort of scientific statements that don't turn out to be knowledge on the JTB account are ones that are [i]false, and this only amounts to saying that while we may have thought we knew there was such a thing as phlogiston, it turns out we didn't.

The point, and indeed the beauty, of the JTB account is that it does let you claim as knowledge scientific truths, and so forth. It just doesn't let you say that you can claim false statements as thing you know.

Now, if you want to talk about claiming you know something on a JTB account - as I pointed out very early on here - thats different than having knowledge of that thing. Again - knowing x and knowing that you know x are two different bits of knowledge. Have the first does not require having the second (though of course having the second does require having the first). When you say something like "knowing something with such-and-such percent certainty" I assume you're talking about the second bit, though I could easily be mistaken here as to your intentions.

In other words, if P is a scientific prediction that you believe that is justified by a decently large set of evidence behind it and will (in the future) turn out to be true then P counts as something you know.

Also take a second belief: M-P, which is the belief that you know P. (The brackets {} are being used to demonstrate the scope that the "know" predicate is being applied to) When you say "I know { P}", you aren't expressing the belief P, you are expressing the belief M-P.

Also take a further belief: M-P'. When you say "I know {P} with 80% certainty" you're saying that you believe you know P, but are not entirely sure of your belief that you know P - you think you could be wrong about the fact that you know P.

When you say, on the other hand, "I know {P with 80% certainty}" you're saying that you know that (whatever P says) will be true 80% of the time. But this is different than the above bit. Let's call this M-P''. That was my point about the scope ambiguity (they're tricky nasty things that English isn't well designed to deal with - look at sentences like "I thought your boat was longer than it is.")

Now, when it comes to assessing scientific knowledge based on various experiments we often say things like "well, we know theory S with 90 % certainty." This is an expression like M-P' and not like M-P'' - it says "We know that {S} with 90% certainty."

There are also times when science seems to deal with irreduceably statistical phenomena (note: not being a scientist I won't try to elaborate on any of them, other than note that whether or not there are such things is still a good question - though I am told that quantum mechanics is said to provide such things). In those cases it might turn out that some prediction comes with a particular likelyhood all on it's own, say, 80%. In that case you could say something like M-P''. Note also that we might not be entirely sure of something like that, and might end up with something really ungodly to parse out in complete english (M-P''') like "I know {P with 80% certainty} with 77% certainty." or the like.

However, all that doesn't reflect one way or the other on the JTB account. Each one of those beliefs - P, M-P, M-P', M-P'', and M-P''' - can be justified (though in varying ways depending on whether it's a belief, and belief about a belief, etc). And, if it's a justified belief then it could turn out to be knowledge if it is true.

Now, if you're trying to zone in on what would or would not make a statistical statement about a particular event true ("This coin, right now, in the one flip I'm going to make here has a 50% chance of coming up heads.") then you've zoned in on an interesting and really confusing debate about those sorts of things. But I don't know that it's any more relevant to JTB and epistemology in general than anything else in philosophy.

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
Ok, first off when you say something like "What is rotten is that JTB abandons epistemelogical progress made over the past centuries and reverts to the archaic notion of Truth. and I reply that it does no such thing by calling your attention to the fact that the people doing epistemology up to about 1967 or so (estimated date, as I can't recall of hand when Gettier published that article) held JTB what I'm doing is pointing out that JTB simply isn't an abandonement of epistemological progress.
I disagree, but let us move on to the crux.

Secondly, as again I think I've said, the JTB criteria in no way undermines science.
This is the crux.
All that something needs in order to count as knowledge is that it be something that one believes, that that belief be justified - and let me point out again that scientific evidence for something is a pretty hefty chunk of justification as far as empirical matters go[i], and that it turn out to be true.
All scientific facts are provisional. No scientific facts are proven true. Your description of JTB now forces one to adopt the strange stance that no science is knowledge. To assert that JTB does not undermine science one must not agree with this core defintion from the philosophy of science.

Thiis, then, is the reductio ad absurdum of JTB. Something must go: either the JTB is wrong because it disagrees with the philosophy of science, or the philosophy of science must go because of JTB.

So, how do you propose that be resolved?

The only sort of scientific statements that don't turn out to be knowledge on the JTB account are ones that are [i]false, and this only amounts to saying that while we may have thought we knew there was such a thing as phlogiston, it turns out we didn't.
You previously said JTB demands it be true, not that it not be false. The distinction is critical, because science proves nothing true.

I don't mean to ignore the rest of what you posted. I just think this bit needs to be digested first.

[BillHoyt]

duplicate post. sorry.

[Eleatic Stranger]

All scientific facts are provisional. No scientific facts are proven true. Your description of JTB now forces one to adopt the strange stance that no science is knowledge. To assert that JTB does not undermine science one must not agree with this core defintion from the philosophy of science.

Thiis, then, is the reductio ad absurdum of JTB. Something must go: either the JTB is wrong because it disagrees with the philosophy of science, or the philosophy of science must go because of JTB.

So, how do you propose that be resolved?


I must be making an incoherent mess of my posts here, because I could have sworn I've answered this question in depth and repeatedly.

You know, all that stuff about P and M-P was actually a direct answer to where you're going wrong here.

Yes. Scientific facts are provisional. This amounts to saying that we always hold it open that they may turn out false. This is a good thing. It's entirely and completely irrelevant to JTB. Look - I've said repeatedly that JTB requires that the belief be true. NOT that you know the belief to be true. NOT that you are certain the belief is true. NOT that the belief be proven to be true(though some justification is required). ONLY that the belief, itself, be true.

Scientific statements can be true or false right there along with the rest of meaningful empirical statements.

Why? Because you can't know that P if P is false.

This has no effect, whatsoever, on the validity of science, or the status of scientific knowledge.

Also I am entirely confused about what you mean when you talk of epistemology and epistemological progress because saying that the prevalent starting point of pretty much all (again, there were of course exceptions - so if you want to count Nietzsche as epistemological progress you may have a point) epistemology qua subdivision of academic philosophy is an abandonment of that progress just sounds nuts. When you say 'epistemology' and 'epistemological progress', what exactly are you talking about?

Finally, again, there is no 'archaic' notion of truth in play here. The correspondence view of truth (which is how, being the most intuitive, I've phrased my points) is still very much in fashion, despite having competitors, these days.

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
I must be making an incoherent mess of my posts here, because I could have sworn I've answered this question in depth and repeatedly.

You know, all that stuff about P and M-P was actually a direct answer to where you're going wrong here.

Yes. Scientific facts are provisional. This amounts to saying that we always hold it open that they may turn out false. This is a good thing. It's entirely and completely irrelevant to JTB. Look - I've said repeatedly that JTB requires that the belief be true. NOT that you know the belief to be true. NOT that you are certain the belief is true. NOT that the belief be proven to be true(though some justification is required). ONLY that the belief, itself, be true.

Scientific statements can be true or false right there along with the rest of meaningful empirical statements.

Why? Because you can't know that P if P is false.

This has no effect, whatsoever, on the validity of science, or the status of scientific knowledge.

Also I am entirely confused about what you mean when you talk of epistemology and epistemological progress because saying that the prevalent starting point of pretty much all (again, there were of course exceptions - so if you want to count Nietzsche as epistemological progress you may have a point) epistemology qua subdivision of academic philosophy is an abandonment of that progress just sounds nuts. When you say 'epistemology' and 'epistemological progress', what exactly are you talking about?

Finally, again, there is no 'archaic' notion of truth in play here. The correspondence view of truth (which is how, being the most intuitive, I've phrased my points) is still very much in fashion, despite having competitors, these days.

You previously stated: "it needs to turn out that that sentence is true. " That was a necessary condition for JTB. If you cannot know the state of the scientific fact, you cannot satisfy this condition, and cannot declare anything in science to be knowledge. Now you attempt to draw a distinction between the belief being true and the assertion being true. You are disappearing into an abstract, subjective position to reconcile JTB and the philosophy of science.

[Eleatic Stranger]

You previously stated: "it needs to turn out that that sentence is true. " That was a necessary condition for JTB. If you cannot know the state of the scientific fact, you cannot satisfy this condition, and cannot declare anything in science to be knowledge.

No, no no.

A sentence can be true without you knowing it to be true.

In God's name, Bill, why do you think I keep going on and on about the distinction between knowing something and knowing that you know it?

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
No, no no.

A sentence can be true without you knowing it to be true.

In God's name, Bill, why do you think I keep going on and on about the distinction between knowing something and knowing that you know it?
Well, we've got a problem, then, with your description of JTB. It demands that the assertion be true, but gives us now way to verify that. Yet you used Steve and his truck. You cited the occasion of him returning home without the truck as a disconfirming instance. Furthermore, you then asserted that, because of this disconfirming instance, there was no knowledge.

Now we've also discussed a bit of the philosophy of science and we seem to agree that all of science's assertions are provisional. If we were to use any of science's assertions in the same way you used Steve and his truck, we are forced to conclude that JTB declares no knowledge in science. I am hoping you can show me clearly how this conclusion is not inescapable.

In the most recent part of this exchange, you've begun to drift away from the concrete Steve/Truck example, hedging toward a JTB conception disconnected from reality. So, I must ask: why do you feel at liberty to cite Steve and his truck as an example of verifying JTB as knowledge, but back away when I point out the glaring flaw vis-a-vis science?

No matter how many meta-layers of knowing you know that you know you know you know, you still must peel off all these russian dolls to get to the veracity of the assertion. Period. Either it is true or it ain't. Now the philosophy of science says science is provisional. And the philosophy of science scopes science as knowledge of our material universe. To me, it is clear that JTB is at odds with this. JTB requires the assertion to be true. Science can never know this. Therefore, when it comes to any question about the material universe, JTB must conclude there is no knowledge.

I'm not sure, now, whether you need to retract the Steve example or change your definition of JTB, but they are not consonant in light of the reductio ad absurdum.

[Eleatic Stranger]

Well, we've got a problem, then, with your description of JTB. It demands that the assertion be true, but gives us now way to verify that. Yet you used Steve and his truck. You cited the occasion of him returning home without the truck as a disconfirming instance. Furthermore, you then asserted that, because of this disconfirming instance, there was no knowledge.

Did you actually read that post, carefully?

The reason it's not knowledge is that the (final)sentence is true for a different reason than it is believed to be true (in a dramatic sense, since it's the disjunct that is taken to be false that turns out true, and vice versa). The point of the counter example is to show precisely that the JTB criteria is insufficient for knowledge. In other words, it lets in cases that don't count as knowledge. The presence of a disconfirming instance for a claim like "Steve will arrive in his truck" makes the claim "Steve will arrive in his truck" false, or at least any assertion to the contrary had better have some pretty amazing argument behind it. The fact that the belief that Steve would arrive with his truck was justified is, well, unfortunate. Sometimes justified beliefs turn out to be false.

Now we've also discussed a bit of the philosophy of science and we seem to agree that all of science's assertions are provisional. If we were to use any of science's assertions in the same way you used Steve and his truck, we are forced to conclude that JTB declares no knowledge in science. I am hoping you can show me clearly how this conclusion is not inescapable.

The conclusion is quite escapable, as it is completely insane. You aren't seriously suggesting that any statement that possibly could turn out false can't count as knowledge, right? Because that would deny any knowledge that is not logically necessary. The fact that scientific statements could turn out false is part of their nature - and the ones that do don't count as knowledge (because of their falsity). The ones that don't turn out false, on the other hand, certainly count as knowledge (being justified, true, and believed). If a statement broadly applied (all x, every time y, etc) turns out to be accurate 99% of the time, then it's false. Of course, a corresponding statement that adds "99% of the time" would be true. Again, I don't see a problem with this. If you say "All cars have four wheels" and then a three wheeled car drives by what you said is false - even if it's the only three wheeled car in the world.

In the most recent part of this exchange, you've begun to drift away from the concrete Steve/Truck example, hedging toward a JTB conception disconnected from reality. So, I must ask: why do you feel at liberty to cite Steve and his truck as an example of verifying JTB as knowledge, but back away when I point out the glaring flaw vis-a-vis science?

Seriously, is the problem here that you didn't read the example closely enough to see that I was presenting it as a counter example?

Secondly, again, the fact is that when it comes to empirical statements they can be fully justified (all of the knowledge about Steve and his love of trucks, etc) and yet justify beliefs that are not true (that Steve will pick him up in a truck). John knows that (say - though this is slightly altered from the counter example) 99 percent of the time Steve picks people up in a truck, and infers that this time Steve will pick him up in a truck. This is a valid inference, as far as empirical justification goes (though not strictly logically valid). It's also false, as Steve arrives in a car. I still don't see how this leads to the claim that science can't be accounted for on the JTB criteria.

No matter how many meta-layers of knowing you know that you know you know you know, you still must peel off all these russian dolls to get to the veracity of the assertion. Period. Either it is true or it ain't. Now the philosophy of science says science is provisional. And the philosophy of science scopes science as knowledge of our material universe. To me, it is clear that JTB is at odds with this. JTB requires the assertion to be true. Science can never know this. Therefore, when it comes to any question about the material universe, JTB must conclude there is no knowledge.

You are yet again missing the point of the meta levels. Beliefs are statements held to be true - as such they have certain truth conditions. Beliefs about beliefs are also statements held to be true - but their truth conditions are entirely different than the beliefs they are statements about. A belief that the liver works as the result of divine spirits would be utterly false (divine spirits are in fact bad for the liver, and can cause cirrhosis). A belief that one believed that the liver works as the result of divine spirits could be true, if one believed that. In both cases the liver doesn't work as the result of divine spirits, but one is true and the other false.

JTB requires the assertion to be true, but JTB does not require you to have the separate bit of knowledge that would be knowledge that you know it is true. Science may never be able to know that some particular sentence is true - but it will still be perfectly able to adduce justification for it. And if it can do that then belief in that statement would be a justified belief. And if the statement is true, then that belief would be a justified, true belief.

When you try to go from the provisional nature of science to asserting that it couldn't count as knowledge you are making two mistakes. Firstly you are confusing the truth requirement - it requires the statement to be true, and nothing about one's knowledge if this is involved. This is, secondly, a result of confusing the distinction between knowing something and knowing that you know it. When you say that science's provisional nature precludes it from the JTB criteria you are trying to go from the fact that for some scientific theory T you may never know that you know T (in other words, you may never be fully justified in asserting of some scientific theory that it is true) to the ridiculous statement that you can not know T. Again - this is going from a statement about a statement to a statement proper, and the two have radically different meanings. For heaven's sakes - you wouldn't say that the sentence "The sentence "The cat is on the mat." has sixteen letters" has the same meaning as the sentence "The cat is on the mat" would you? And knowing that the cat is on the mat and that "the cat is on the mat" are far from similar bits of knowledge.

Finally, it's not even prima facie impossible to have knowledge of the "know that I know P" sense. Bear in mind, justification for a belief is precisely support for the claim that the statement in question is true. In other words, if you claim that you know that you know P, you would be right under the following conditions: 1) you believe that P, 2) you are justified in knowing P, 3) you believe that you know P, 4) and you are justified in believing that you know P. What might count justification for the belief that you know something? Well, anything that you could adduce in support of the claim that you know P - in other words, the justification for P and the justification for what justified P. Of course, if P turns out false then you didn't know it, and you didn't know that you knew it. But this is again perfectly in line with the way we generally use the term knowledge.

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
The reason it's not knowledge is that the (final)sentence is true for a different reason than it is believed to be true (in a dramatic sense, since it's the disjunct that is taken to be false that turns out true, and vice versa). The point of the counter example is to show precisely that the JTB criteria is insufficient for knowledge.
I understand that.
In other words, it lets in cases that don't count as knowledge. The presence of a disconfirming instance for a claim like "Steve will arrive in his truck" makes the claim "Steve will arrive in his truck" false, or at least any assertion to the contrary had better have some pretty amazing argument behind it. The fact that the belief that Steve would arrive with his truck was justified is, well, unfortunate. Sometimes justified beliefs turn out to be false.
I understand all of this as well. I'm not sure where the disconnect here is, but let us drop back to something you wrote earlier:

Also, on the JTB model at any rate, it's entirely possible to know that one knows something.
You've asserted that JTB is a necessary but insufficient definition of knowledge. You've further given the Steve example as a concrete example of JTB failing as knowledge. You've also further refuted my introduction of statistical thinking into (at least) portions of JTB.

This leaves out science, ES. Totally. JTB cannot be contorted into criteria for knowledge. If you define the condition needed to convert JTB into knowledge as "the assertion must be true," then nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing about the material universe is ever, ever, ever, ever accepted as knowledge. The defintion utterly excludes it.

This is not a matter of being necessary, but insufficient. This is a matter of JTB reverting to the archaic notion of Truth. In the philosophy of science, we postulate that there is Truth, but we know we don't know how to get to it. We don't. We believe we can get closer to it, in an arduous process of converging passes, but we will never know that we got to it.

Science is both the process of developing, and the body of knowledge about, the universe. The JTB-as-knowledge defintion excludes this entire body of knowledge because science cannot assert it is True, only that it is provisionally true.

If science is the best we've got for verifying the truth-value of an assertion about the universe, and if JTB-as-knowledge demands better, then JTB-as-knowledge demands an utter agnosticism about science. And an utter agnosticism about anything at all to do with the universe.

JTB-as-knowledge is not merely "necessary, but insufficient." It is useless. No propostion ever meets it archaic definition of knowledge. No person has it. No system has it. The tiniest bit of a speck of an inkling information we have is non-knowledge.

The conclusion is quite escapable, as it is completely insane. You aren't seriously suggesting that any statement that possibly could turn out false can't count as knowledge, right?
That is your definition. You asserted that defintion with the "Steve's truck" example. You declared it non-knowledge the moment the truck broke down. You denied JTB-as-knowledge accepts provisional knowledge with the break down.

I then tried to correct the assertion to a more scientific statement of probability. You then disallowed it several times, maintaining the Truth interpretation. I'm letting you call the shots with this definitionl. So, call away or correct away.

Because that would deny any knowledge that is not logically necessary. The fact that scientific statements could turn out false is part of their nature - and the ones that do don't count as knowledge (because of their falsity). The ones that don't turn out false, on the other hand, certainly count as knowledge (being justified, true, and believed). If a statement broadly applied (all x, every time y, etc) turns out to be accurate 99% of the time, then it's false. Of course, a corresponding statement that adds "99% of the time" would be true. Again, I don't see a problem with this. If you say "All cars have four wheels" and then a three wheeled car drives by what you said is false - even if it's the only three wheeled car in the world.
So, tell me how exactly we run this definition operationally. Tell me how we get to knowledge under this definition? We have to wait for the universe to end? It appears so, but then we would end and never be able to declare it.

This is not an operational definition of knowledge. It must include provisional knowledge. It must also allow for probabilistic knowledge. Otherwise, it says "I know nothing, you know nothing, and neither of us ever will."

Seriously, is the problem here that you didn't read the example closely enough to see that I was presenting it as a counter example?
Present the example, please, not the counter example. Present the example of JTB-as-knowledge. Tell me how it is vetted.

Secondly, again, the fact is that when it comes to empirical statements they can be fully justified (all of the knowledge about Steve and his love of trucks, etc) and yet justify beliefs that are not true (that Steve will pick him up in a truck). John knows that (say - though this is slightly altered from the counter example) 99 percent of the time Steve picks people up in a truck, and infers that this time Steve will pick him up in a truck. This is a valid inference, as far as empirical justification goes (though not strictly logically valid). It's also false, as Steve arrives in a car. I still don't see how this leads to the claim that science can't be accounted for on the JTB criteria.
I'm sorry, but we had an earlier exchange in which you denied this. Did I misunderstand your posts about the "99% of the time" and your comment about "'iffy' knowledge?"

JTB-as-knowledge is not successful. It is not operational. Until you can give me an example in the real world that works and holds, or until you permit provisional and probabilistic truth, it is not operational.



You are yet again missing the point of the meta levels. Beliefs are statements held to be true - as such they have certain truth conditions. Beliefs about beliefs are also statements held to be true - but their truth conditions are entirely different than the beliefs they are statements about. A belief that the liver works as the result of divine spirits would be utterly false (divine spirits are in fact bad for the liver, and can cause cirrhosis). A belief that one believed that the liver works as the result of divine spirits could be true, if one believed that. In both cases the liver doesn't work as the result of divine spirits, but one is true and the other false.

JTB requires the assertion to be true, but JTB does not require you to have the separate bit of knowledge that would be knowledge that you know it is true. Science may never be able to know that some particular sentence is true - but it will still be perfectly able to adduce justification for it. And if it can do that then belief in that statement would be a justified belief. And if the statement is true, then that belief would be a justified, true belief.

When you try to go from the provisional nature of science to asserting that it couldn't count as knowledge you are making two mistakes. Firstly you are confusing the truth requirement - it requires the statement to be true, and nothing about one's knowledge if this is involved. This is, secondly, a result of confusing the distinction between knowing something and knowing that you know it. When you say that science's provisional nature precludes it from the JTB criteria you are trying to go from the fact that for some scientific theory T you may never know that you know T (in other words, you may never be fully justified in asserting of some scientific theory that it is true) to the ridiculous statement that you can not know T. Again - this is going from a statement about a statement to a statement proper, and the two have radically different meanings. For heaven's sakes - you wouldn't say that the sentence "The sentence "The cat is on the mat." has sixteen letters" has the same meaning as the sentence "The cat is on the mat" would you? And knowing that the cat is on the mat and that "the cat is on the mat" are far from similar bits of knowledge.

Finally, it's not even prima facie impossible to have knowledge of the "know that I know P" sense. Bear in mind, justification for a belief is precisely support for the claim that the statement in question is true. In other words, if you claim that you know that you know P, you would be right under the following conditions: 1) you believe that P, 2) you are justified in knowing P, 3) you believe that you know P, 4) and you are justified in believing that you know P. What might count justification for the belief that you know something? Well, anything that you could adduce in support of the claim that you know P - in other words, the justification for P and the justification for what justified P. Of course, if P turns out false then you didn't know it, and you didn't know that you knew it. But this is again perfectly in line with the way we generally use the term knowledge. [/B][/QUOTE]

[Eleatic Stranger]

You've asserted that JTB is a necessary but insufficient definition of knowledge. You've further given the Steve example as a concrete example of JTB failing as knowledge. You've also further refuted my introduction of statistical thinking into (at least) portions of JTB.

Ok, first off this may seem nit picky but the example shows that JTB doesn't adequately capture knowledge, not that it fails as knowledge.

This leaves out science, ES. Totally. JTB cannot be contorted into criteria for knowledge. If you define the condition needed to convert JTB into knowledge as "the assertion must be true," then nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing about the material universe is ever, ever, ever, ever accepted as knowledge. The defintion utterly excludes it.

So, you're saying that no statement, ever, is true? Because, well, that's just plain ludicrous.

This is not a matter of being necessary, but insufficient. This is a matter of JTB reverting to the archaic notion of Truth. In the philosophy of science, we postulate that there is Truth, but we know we don't know how to get to it. We don't. We believe we can get closer to it, in an arduous process of converging passes, but we will never know that we got to it.

What archaic notion of truth are you talking about here? The one that says things are either true or false? Aside from certain logical intuitionists (Dummett, for example) everyone believes this. Bivalence isn't exactly the most ludicrously outdated theory you know.

And, again I'll point out that knowing you got to it with a particular belief is knowledge about that belief. This is why I have pointed out the meta levels involved in practically every post on this thread.

Science is both the process of developing, and the body of knowledge about, the universe. The JTB-as-knowledge defintion excludes this entire body of knowledge because science cannot assert it is True, only that it is provisionally true.

Look, I don't know where you're getting this idea that the truth requirement requires that science be able to assert the truth of some claim for it to be knowledge, but it's just plain not in the criteria, and any attempt to put it in is a blatant misrepresentation. At least, it isn't in the criteria beyond the completely trivial sense of requiring one believe something(which, hopefully, involves some willingness to assert it) as a condition for knowing it.

If science is the best we've got for verifying the truth-value of an assertion about the universe, and if JTB-as-knowledge demands better, then JTB-as-knowledge demands an utter agnosticism about science. And an utter agnosticism about anything at all to do with the universe.

JTB-as-knowledge is not merely "necessary, but insufficient." It is useless. No propostion ever meets it archaic definition of knowledge. No person has it. No system has it. The tiniest bit of a speck of an inkling information we have is non-knowledge.

Are there propositions that people believe?

Are there propositions that people believe that they are justified in believing?

Are there some propositions people believe that they are justified in believing that are also true?

Congratulations, you have a set of propositions that count as knowledge under the JTB criteria. Are you even reading these posts that I'm making?

You continually claim that the JTB criteria requires that one be able to justifiably assert that some proposition is true without error. This is mistaken. I have pointed out that it is mistaken repeated and yet you have yet to grasp this. What is the problem?


That is your definition. You asserted that defintion with the "Steve's truck" example. You declared it non-knowledge the moment the truck broke down. You denied JTB-as-knowledge accepts provisional knowledge with the break down.

Actually, it was never knowledge to begin with. Why? Because it was false. Look, if you say something like "Steve will pick me up in his truck." and then Steve does not pick you up in his truck you said something false. Is this unintuitive?

I don't care how many times you try to carve out a space where a falsehod counts as a truth, it just isn't going to happen. Your provisional knowledge is nothing more than something that might count as knowledge, but of which you are willing to accept the possibility of it not doing so. Thats it.

I then tried to correct the assertion to a more scientific statement of probability. You then disallowed it several times, maintaining the Truth interpretation. I'm letting you call the shots with this definitionl. So, call away or correct away.

And again, I'm going to point out that probabilistic statements also pose no problem. Why? Because probabilistic statements can be true or false, and if they're true, justified, and believed then you know them. Statements that are not probabilistic - "Steve will pick me up in his truck" - are not probabilistic. Why not? Because they don't say anything about probability - the one in questions says only that Steve will pick me up in his truck.


So, tell me how exactly we run this definition operationally. Tell me how we get to knowledge under this definition? We have to wait for the universe to end? It appears so, but then we would end and never be able to declare it.

Given the sheer number of times I've repeated over and over that knowing something and knowing you know it are different things, I'm starting to wonder if you're not just putting me on. We run this operationally as I've described above, for any particular belief in question, if it's justified, there's a (decent) chance it could count as knowledge. Any statement to the effect that it does or does not do so is a separate meta-statement. You don't need to know that you know something in order to know it.

Secondly, again, the fact is that when it comes to empirical statements they can be fully justified (all of the knowledge about Steve and his love of trucks, etc) and yet justify beliefs that are not true (that Steve will pick him up in a truck). John knows that (say - though this is slightly altered from the counter example) 99 percent of the time Steve picks people up in a truck, and infers that this time Steve will pick him up in a truck. This is a valid inference, as far as empirical justification goes (though not strictly logically valid). It's also false, as Steve arrives in a car. I still don't see how this leads to the claim that science can't be accounted for on the JTB criteria.


I'm sorry, but we had an earlier exchange in which you denied this. Did I misunderstand your posts about the "99% of the time" and your comment about "'iffy' knowledge?"

In a word, yes. Look, "Steve will pick me up in his truck" is a statement that involves no probabilistic hedging whatsoever - in fact it couldn't involve any as it's a statement about a single event. The fact that it's justified by the knowledge that Steve prefers trucks, only buys trucks, hates driving cars, and so on means that it's a justified belief. It's just a justified false belief. What I denied was precisely that that the belief "Steve will pick me up in his truck" counts as knowledge at all. It's just plain false, no matter how many times in the past he picked me up his truck, or what the chances are that he will this time. He doesn't do it, and the statement is false.

Here's the earliest exchange on this:


I am also saying that we can't play dodgeball games with the actual assertion to make it appear as if it isn't knowledge. If Steve comes home in a truck 99% of the time, that is how the scientist would frame the assertion. When Steve's truck breaks down, it now is not cause to scrub that as knowledge. It is still true that Steve comes home in a truck 99% of the time.

But knowing that Steve drives a truck 99% of the time is entirely different than knowing in some particular case that Steve will be driving a truck. The first bit of knowledge provides justification for the second, but they are far from identical.

Look, John is still perfectly fine in holding that Steve will usually pick people up in trucks - that was what justified his belief that in that particular instance steve would pick him up in the truck. The belief that it justified, though, is false, and so isn't and never was knowledge.

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
Ok, first off this may seem nit picky but the example shows that JTB doesn't adequately capture knowledge, not that it fails as knowledge.
Would it help you to know I know what "eleatic" means?

[Eleatic Stranger]

From Elea?

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
From Elea?
Has the game been called on account of sophistry? Already?

Science, despite the Eleatic school's philosophy, is grounded in my Italian grandma's kitchen technique. You want to know if the pasta's done? Toss it against the wall and see if it sticks.

The JTB knowledge criterion leaves us all hanging, because science's pasta is never done. Therefore, we can never "know" any scientific assertion is true. Now if you accept science as knowledge under JTB, you must do so by saying "that's ok, we don't really need to know if it is true." When you relax this crtiterion, though, you now allow in all manner of paranormal, theological or nearly any assertion one wants. (All one needs to see this is so is look at the herds of christian apologists succesfully applying this interpretation of JTB to claim they know there is a god or that they know bible is true.)

Something is rotten in Denmark. And that is that the vetting is now absent. It has reverted to a totally subjectivitist criterion. I'm sure the Eleatic school philosophers would love this, of course, but it gives us no knowledge about knowledge. Moreover, it sets up contradictions. The same JTB-as-knowledge says science is knowledge and that a god-who-works-miracles is knowledge. And, yet, accepting science means, at best, a Deistic god. Something has got to go, and we have no way of deciding which.

To salvage JTB-as-knowledge, it must fully embrace the epistemology of science, and accept percentage knowledge, and accept certainty as essential parts of the definition. Now we can throw the pasta against the wall, rather than being lamely agnostic about the haves and have-nots of knowledge. Plato might be upset, but grandma would be proud.

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by BillHoyt
You want to know if the pasta's done? Toss it against the wall and see if it sticks.



If you cook 2-minute noodles for 22 minutes, it makes excellent wall filling. I know this personally. It resulted in me doing the cooking from then on.

[Eleatic Stranger]

Has the game been called on account of sophistry? Already?

Science, despite the Eleatic school's philosophy, is grounded in my Italian grandma's kitchen technique. You want to know if the pasta's done? Toss it against the wall and see if it sticks.

Of course, had you looked more closely you'd realize that the Eleatic Stranger is a character in the later dialogues of Plato (including, of course, The Sophist in which sophistry is attacked at length), and in fact doesn't represent the Eleatic school of philosophy beyond what Plato thought was valuable in it.

The JTB knowledge criterion leaves us all hanging, because science's pasta is never done. Therefore, we can never "know" any scientific assertion is true. Now if you accept science as knowledge under JTB, you must do so by saying "that's ok, we don't really need to know if it is true." When you relax this crtiterion, though, you now allow in all manner of paranormal, theological or nearly any assertion one wants. (All one needs to see this is so is look at the herds of christian apologists succesfully applying this interpretation of JTB to claim they know there is a god or that they know bible is true.)

Ok, seriously. Have you even read any of my lengthy posts here? Do you understand the point of including Justification in the criteria?

Also: are you seriously asserting that the JTB criteria can be successfully applied to beliefs that do not have sufficient justification to yield knowledge claims?

If not, how can you rationally assert something as ludicrous as this?

Something is rotten in Denmark. And that is that the vetting is now absent. It has reverted to a totally subjectivitist criterion. I'm sure the Eleatic school philosophers would love this, of course, but it gives us no knowledge about knowledge. Moreover, it sets up contradictions. The same JTB-as-knowledge says science is knowledge and that a god-who-works-miracles is knowledge. And, yet, accepting science means, at best, a Deistic god. Something has got to go, and we have no way of deciding which.

To salvage JTB-as-knowledge, it must fully embrace the epistemology of science, and accept percentage knowledge, and accept certainty as essential parts of the definition. Now we can throw the pasta against the wall, rather than being lamely agnostic about the haves and have-nots of knowledge. Plato might be upset, but grandma would be proud.

Look, Bill, you have yet to respond to a single point I've made. All you have done is repeat the same incorrect statements over and over again. Is this considered a valid argumentative technique here?

The "epistemology of science" is the JTB criteria for heaven's sakes - what do you think the word 'justification' means?

Look, the point of the JTB criteria is that to know something you have to believe it. You can't know something you think is false.

Also to know something you have to be justified in believing it. You can't claim as knowledge something that just popped into your head for no reason whatsoever.

Also, just being justified in believing something isn't enough to count as knowledge, because if it was you could be said to know something that was false. The belief has to be true.

Now, where in all that does science somehow magically become impossible? Also, where does randomly asserting something become sufficient for knowledge?

If you don't show some basic understanding of the points I've repeatedly made in this thread I'm just going to assume you're putting me on here.

[BillHoyt]

Eleatic Stranger,

Stop claiming I am not reading. I am. Stop claiming I am putting you on. I am not. Let us get down to the brass tack:

You rejected my scientific re-framing of the Steve example. If we can correct that, we may get somewhere. If I have studied Steve's behavior over many instances and found he comes home in his truck 99% of the time, then that is the scientific proposition. "Steve will come home in his truck 99% of the time." The instance where the truck broke down is a confirming instance of this. The instance where the truck broked down does not render the assertion false and does not refute our having knowledge of this.

[DrMatt]

I'd just like to point out that most philosophers consider Justified True Belief a MINIMUM set of criteria WITHOUT WHICH a sentence can't possibly be knowledge. Attempts to reverse the situation don't work. For instance, I could believe the moon is not made of green cheese because green cheese spoils, and my belief might be true and my justification might be logically valid but inapplicable or not logically sound (how long would it take green cheese to spoil frozen in a vaccuum?).

[drkitten]

Originally posted by BillHoyt


All scientific facts are provisional. No scientific facts are proven true. Your description of JTB now forces one to adopt the strange stance that no science is knowledge. To assert that JTB does not undermine science one must not agree with this core defintion from the philosophy of science.



So? For a scientific fact to be "justified," it is not necessary for
it to be proven true.

For a scientific fact to be "knowledge" under the JTB framework,
it is necessary for the fact to be a) justified, b) true, and c) believed.

It is specifically not necessary for the justification to be
justified. Any belief that I hold to be true and for which I can cite
evidence is true if that belief happens to be true.

My belief that such-and-such a fact is "provisional" neither
negates my belief in it nor negates the justification. It's still a belief that I hold to be true and for which I have justification.

The trick is that scientific knowledge can never (under the JTB
framework) be known to be knowledge, but that's different from
it not being able to be knowledge.

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by drkitten
So? For a scientific fact to be "justified," it is not necessary for
it to be proven true.

For a scientific fact to be "knowledge" under the JTB framework,
it is necessary for the fact to be a) justified, b) true, and c) believed.

It is specifically not necessary for the justification to be
justified. Any belief that I hold to be true and for which I can cite
evidence is true if that belief happens to be true.

My belief that such-and-such a fact is "provisional" neither
negates my belief in it nor negates the justification. It's still a belief that I hold to be true and for which I have justification.

The trick is that scientific knowledge can never (under the JTB
framework) be known to be knowledge, but that's different from
it not being able to be knowledge.
As a theoretical matter, the difference between "being knowledge" and "known to be knowlege" is important. As a pragmatic matter, the difference means nothing less than that:

o JTB must remain agnostic toward all scientific knowledge, and therefore,
o JTB places scientific knowledge on a level playing field with specious claims.

Do you not see this?

[Eleatic Stranger]

Are you seriously suggesting that a specious claim can be as equally justified as a serious scientific one?

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
Are you seriously suggesting that a specious claim can be as equally justified as a serious scientific one?

In your view, can or cannot the assertion "Steve comes home in a truck 99% of the time" be a JTB?

In your view, is the instance of Steve's truck breaking down and his arrival home in a mini cooper a refutation of the above assertino?

In your view, does this instance declare the assertion to be non-knowledge?

[Eleatic Stranger]

As I've said multiple times: can, no, no.

[BillHoyt]

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
As I've said multiple times: can, no, no.
We seem to have had a serious miscommunication, then, while talking about th 99% proposition previously. I had said that "Steve comes home in a truck" and "99% of the time, Steve comes home in a truck" are the same 99% of the time. In reply, you wrote:

I can hardly think of a better test to determine if two sentences have the same meaning than to check and see if there's a single state of affairs which makes one of the sentences true and the other of the sentences false

Now I never said they had the same meaning. I said that 99% of the time, they were the same. Alternatively, on can say that they are 99% the same in meaning.

[Eleatic Stranger]

But Bill, if they have different meanings then knowing them would equate to knowing two different things (according to whatever criteria you pick). If that is the case then bringing up probabilistic of statistical knowledge is a non-starter. It doesn't affect the JTB criteria one way or the other - it's not different than taking the same steve/truck example and saying "Ah, but what about the knowledge that one is in pain?". Certainly the justifications might be different, the implications different, and the confirming instances different - but that is because they are different beliefs entirely. The criteria for knowledge is left untouched.

Nevertheless, you have presented this view as differing from the JTB criteria:

I agree that this example is correct [ the example arguing for the insufficiency of the JTB criteria. -- ES]. And I think the statiscally modeled scientific answer deals with reality better than this JTB/knowledge demarcation conundrum can ever hope to. John has not really lost knowledge, especially if he views that knowledge statistically. 99% of the time, Steve will be driving a Truck is still a correct statement. It still makes a correct prediction 99% of the time, despite the breakdown.
If this isn't an attempt to claim that the knowledge claim that 'steve will arrive in a truck' should be viewed in a different way than the JTB criteria treats it - in a way that interprets in some obscurely statistical manner that doesn't admit that it is falsified by the instance in question and so allows that John still has knowledge - then I'm really not sure what you're up to at all.

Is all you're arguing that if John had had a different belief than the one he did have in the example he might not have been wrong? If so, what bearing does that have on anything whatsoever?

[BillHoyt]

I hope you're going to correct an impression I've had throughout this discussion. Whenever I attempt to discuss how JTB leaves us in what appears to be a level playing field between the knowledge of science and specious claims of credophiles, you make quips. You avoid direct answers. Sometimes you simply assert JTB accepts science, but then continue to resist discussing how JTB rules science in and wooness out. I hope you can correct this disconcerting impression.

Originally posted by Eleatic Stranger
But Bill, if they have different meanings then knowing them would equate to knowing two different things (according to whatever criteria you pick). If that is the case then bringing up probabilistic of statistical knowledge is a non-starter.
It is certainly not a non-starter. How many times must I say they are 99% the same before you acknowledge that is what I said and not this straw man you try to build. The point I am trying to get across is critical to the issue I raised, yet again, above.

It doesn't affect the JTB criteria one way or the other - it's not different than taking the same steve/truck example and saying "Ah, but what about the knowledge that one is in pain?". Certainly the justifications might be different, the implications different, and the confirming instances different - but that is because they are different beliefs entirely. The criteria for knowledge is left untouched.
Left untouched in this bifurcated form. Left untouched in this drive-a-mack-woo-truck right through form. Science is statistical knowledge. It is provisional knowledge. The JTB criteria forces agnosticism for all of scientific knowledge. It equally forces agnosticism for all specious claims. Unless and until it admits likelihood in some form.


If this isn't an attempt to claim that the knowledge claim that 'steve will arrive in a truck' should be viewed in a different way than the JTB criteria treats it - in a way that interprets in some obscurely statistical manner that doesn't admit that it is falsified by the instance in question and so allows that John still has knowledge - then I'm really not sure what you're up to at all.

Is all you're arguing that if John had had a different belief than the one he did have in the example he might not have been wrong? If so, what bearing does that have on anything whatsoever?
I am trying to repair this failed notion of knowledge. This lame, agnostic notion of knowledge. Can we at long last discuss how JTB can possibly uphold science against the woo?

[drkitten]

Originally posted by BillHoyt
I hope you're going to correct an impression I've had throughout this discussion. Whenever I attempt to discuss how JTB leaves us in what appears to be a level playing field between the knowledge of science and specious claims of credophiles, ...


To some extent, I suspect because this claim that you are attempting to "discuss" is so wrong, and so naively wrong-headed, that I'm embarassed to be seen on the same web page with it.

JTB distinguishes between the knowledge of science and the pseudo-knowledge ("specious claims") of credophiles by the justification criterion.

Science : "I believe giving this pill will cure pneumonia." "How do you know that it's not just an example of the placebo effect?" "Because it works in a double-blind study."

Pseudo-science : "I believe chanting this mantra will cure pneumonia." "How do you know that it's not just an example of the placebo effect?" "Because,... um, well, I don't. But that doesn't matter because I believe it works."

The scientific belief is simply better justified than the pseudoscientific belief. The scientific belief, if true, is genuine knowledge. The pseudoscientific belief cannot be knowledge, even if true, because there's no valid justification for it.

I'm simplifying a bit, of course. Quality of justification is of course a continuous variable, not a simple "yes/no." This is where the "statistical" aspect of science comes in. No statement can be 99% true, any more than someone can be 99% pregnant. No statement can be 99% believed. However, a statement can be justified more or less strongly. Science is simply a search for the strongest possible justifications.

[Kevin_Lowe]

Originally posted by BillHoyt
I hope you're going to correct an impression I've had throughout this discussion. Whenever I attempt to discuss how JTB leaves us in what appears to be a level playing field between the knowledge of science and specious claims of credophiles, you make quips. You avoid direct answers. Sometimes you simply assert JTB accepts science, but then continue to resist discussing how JTB rules science in and wooness out. I hope you can correct this disconcerting impression.

I'll lean in here since this is kind of my area.

The JTB description of knowledge rules wooness out and science in with its J. Woo beliefs are, by definition, not properly justified. Scientific beliefs, by and large, are properly justified. (There are of course exceptions, but let's leave them alone for the moment).

What counts as justification is to a very, very limited extent up for grabs. Double blind, replicated testing counts for just about everyone who is rational in just about every case though.

I'll also take a shot at clearing up a persistent confusion you have. The JTB description of knowledge is perfectly compatible with provisional, probabilistic, scientific theories. All the JTB says is that you cannot know that a given belief is actually "knowledge". You can have all the scientific knowledge you like under the JTB description. All it says is that you never know for sure which of your provisional beliefs are actually "knowledge", and that no one can ever know.

I'm sure you'd agree with that claim in a flash if I sheared off the evil three letter acronym and put it in lay terms. How does this claim strike you: "We don't know which of our current set of accepted scientific theories will be disproven in the future"? That's all the JTB story requires.

I think the problem might be that you want to be able to refer to our current set of accepted scientific theories as a whole as "knowledge", and the JTB definition doesn't let you do that. If so, well, you need to cook up a definition of knowledge that makes it possible to know something that isn't true.

I don't think that's a good idea though, because the JTB framework is a handy stick to have when a woowoo makes a claim of the form "I know there's a me