Re: dhw--Epistemological Framework (Humans)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 19, 2011, 13:07 (4865 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: We need to progress step by step. It seems when I try to write more comprehensively my style simply leads astray...[...] Perhaps (by your scholarly prodding) I'm confusing terms of truth and knowledge myself...maybe I should start over...
Yes to all of that, and it's what I'm trying to do by pinning you to a definition of knowledge.-MATT: I differentiate between "knowledge" and knowing.
And that's what leads you to make statements like: "Therefore, while knowledge, it is not something we can know. And as such, can never be knowledge." You withdrew this as a "non-deliberate self-contradiction", but in fact it arose out of your attempt to distinguish between knowledge and knowing, which has also led to further contradictions.-MATT: My problem is that I don't know alternative words to express myself.
You then go on to talk about 2+2=5 (Think 1984). The problem as I see it is not that you don't know alternative words, but that you ignore (a) the fact that we must choose a level on which to discuss the topic, and (b) the fact that our knowledge depends on our language. As I've repeated ad nauseam, you can choose an overall level on which we can never know anything, and so put an end to the discussion. Or you can proceed on what I call the common-sense level, at which 2 + 2 = 4. If we want to continue the discussion, we must proceed on that level, and so let's talk about language.-As we all know, language is a system of signs, and each sign represents something but is not the thing itself. As you stressed in one of our discussions on maths, if you lay 1+1+1+1 items together, nothing can alter the number of items. The sign humans have chosen to indicate that number is 4, and the word is four (or vier, or quatre, or cuatro, or quattro....) If you decide to change that sign/word to 5/five, it won't change the number of items, it will just lead to total confusion and will negate the whole purpose of language. On the common-sense level, then, all those who are aware of the information will agree that 2 + 2 = 4. Your other objections are irrelevant: of course you have to understand the signs before you become aware of the information! A one-year-old won't be aware even of the meaning of "2 + 2", let alone "= 4". Awareness is part of my definition.-As for knowledge and truth, again we need to agree on a level. If someone says: "2 + 2 = 4, the sun rises in the east, Spain are the current world champions ... true or false?" I will not hesitate to answer: "True!" On this common-sense level, knowledge and truth can be said to coincide. But if you move to your philosophical level and argue that someone else might use the sign 5 instead of 4, that their word for east is west, that their word for Spain is France, I will have to say that knowledge depends on human agreement (see my definition), whereas truth exists independently of people and cannot be known. On this level, knowledge is the closest we as humans can come to truth, but it is not truth.-My common-sense definition of knowledge ("possession of information that is accepted as being true by all those who are aware of it") is tentative, but so far I see no reason to jettison it. We are still at Step 1, and I suggest we stay here until we've agreed on a definition. So far you have not offered one.