Re: dhw--Epistemological Framework (Humans)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 12, 2011, 20:27 (5063 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: dhw compares the human consciousness to a television. This is a poor analogy, and I will demonstrate why.-Your demonstration refers to experiments showing that "no exterior signal has been deemed present". You've misunderstood my analogy. You argued that "if you harm the brain enough, you cease to be conscious", which you see as evidence that the brain is the sole centre of consciousness. My TV analogy demonstrated that wrecking the receiver doesn't prove there's no transmitter. If the source of consciousness isn't the brain, no-one knows WHERE it's situated. Some call death a release of the "soul" from the body (not from some station in outer space), and the implication of NDEs and OBEs is that it's normally encased in what Shakespeare calls "this muddy vesture of decay".-As regards your categories of knowledge, let me start with a few thoughts of my own. In my view, nobody can draw a clear border between knowledge and belief. If we want to use such terms, we must agree on how and on what level we use them. It could be argued that there is no such thing as knowledge, in which case the discussion ends here. Or we can adopt a commonsense approach and agree that certain things can be known ... but then we must also agree on a criterion. Your list does not provide one, so I'll offer a tentative definition: knowledge is possession of information that is accepted as being true by all those who are aware of it.-And so to your list:
DEF. 1: Transferable knowledge is a final state of information that has been interpreted, and can be verified by an outside source.
I'd question whether there can be a "final" state (it was once universally "known" that the sun went round the Earth), and would suggest: "...has been verified and not contradicted by outside sources". Otherwise that fits into my definition (and encompasses my technological examples under "Inference").
DEF. 2: Tacit knowledge is knowledge unique to an individual; it is something gained by experience [you include dreams and emotions].
I don't like definitions that include the word being defined. Let's substitute "information unique to an individual". The individual may say "I know", but when others become aware of the information, this may be downgraded to belief.
DEF. 3: Knowing is the state in which a being possesses VALID information.
Who validates it?
DEF. 4: Information is created from data [...and] must be placed in its context.
Agreed, but this is not a definition or category of knowledge.
DEF. 5: Data is the lowest possible level of something we can perceive with our 5 senses.
Not a definition, I'm not sure that data have to be sensual (the Battle of Hastings was in 1066...), and sensual perception does not guarantee validity.
DEF. 6: [...] An inference is an extrapolated prediction based on tacit or transferable knowledge. It can only become knowledge if it can be demonstrated to be VALID.
Validated by whom? Not keen on "prediction": Darwin inferred common ancestry from similar structures ... all in the past.
DEF. 8: Intuition is not knowledge. It is information. 
Some might include intuition under DEF. 2.-You then give examples of inferences with which I agree, but the argument seems to lose focus when you get to evolution and consciousness. You'd claimed that "we have no valid explanation for how consciousness could be "outside" of you, therefore it stands to reason that the brain IS you" (see above re the "soul's" unknown location). I wrote that if not having a valid explanation for (a) was reason enough to believe in (b), you could argue that since we don't have a valid explanation for how life and its mechanisms etc. arose by chance, it stands to reason that they were designed. Your answer is that NS was chosen as the best explanation for diversity (a non sequitur, and highly disputable ... see under "Inference"), evidence for non-physical consciousness is "less firm" (degrees of firmness don't alter the nature of belief ... see below), and the tacit knowledge involved in OBEs cannot be verified. "Therefore the comparison between consciousness and evolution ... is a comparison of apples to oranges." -My comparison was between consciousness and abiogenesis (not evolution), and it relates to validation, without which belief cannot become knowledge. There's no universal validation of OBEs or the theory that the mind is non-physical, and there's no universal validation of the theory of abiogenesis. Supporters may invoke "positive evidence", but they need faith to believe in them. I'm not comparing the theories to one another, but am arguing that not having a valid explanation for (a) is no reason to believe in (b). -The self-contradiction that you expunged was due to the fact that you had not distinguished any point at which knowledge becomes belief (or vice versa), and I hope my attempted definition will help clarify this extremely difficult but fascinating area of thought.-The second part of your post boils down to the fact that you won't make a decision unless you have the required knowledge. I can only respond that if you have knowledge as I've defined it, you won't need to make a decision. The inbetween stage is belief.