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From: sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The nature of knowledge
Message-ID: <57@thirdi.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 10-Jul-87 16:52:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: thirdi.57
Posted: Fri Jul 10 16:52:48 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jul-87 12:52:50 EDT
References: <3587e521.44e6@apollo.uucp> <680@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU>
Reply-To: sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode)
Distribution: world
Organization: Institute for Research in Metapsychology
Lines: 107
Keywords: knowledge, belief, truth
Summary: Semantic problems exist with "knowledge".

In article <9889@duke.cs.duke.edu> mps@duke.UUCP (Michael P. Smith) writes:
>In article <54@thirdi.UUCP> sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) writes:
>>So what you say is quite correct, that I can believe that I have at
>>least one false belief, without [believing any] any of my *specific*
>>beliefs [to be] false, so far as I am concerned.  This doesn't
>>invalidate, however, the equivalence of knowledge and belief, from a
>>subjective viewpoint. 
>[my insertions]
>
>First, your admission above contradicts your motto, which was my main
>point.  Further, it certainly disproves the subjective equivalence of
>knowledge and belief from my viewpoint, since I *do* believe I have
>false beliefs, and I *don't* believe I have false knowledge, and in
>fact I believe I don't have any false knowledge.  If that's not
>subjective non-equivalence, what is? 

I still don't see how my "motto" is violated here.  I defy you to enumerate
*any* false belief that you *currently* hold.  You can entertain the notion
that some of your beliefs are probably wrong, but you can't get down to cases
about it.  Any belief that is currently occupying your attention you must see
as true (or probable).  In other words, you must know it.  This doesn't mean
that, at some later time (maybe even the next minute) a belief you *held*
(perhaps as recently as a minute ago) can turn out to be false.  When you say
that you think some of your beliefs are false, to me that means that you don't
think some of them will stand the test of time.  As I stated in my last reply
to you, the saving grace that keeps us from being pig-headed is the
willingness to reconsider the beliefs that we currently hold to see if they
still hold after reconsideration.  This means we must consider the possibility
that, in general, our beliefs, or some of them, may be false.  This doesn't
mean we think any particular one is false.  So I would say my motto holds for
any belief you would care to mention.

I feel I've somehow failed to communicate my point clearly.  Much of the
problem is, I feel, a semantic one, as I've indicated in other postings.  I'm
mindful of Wittgenstein's warning about the bewitchment of our intelligence by
means of words. For instance, when you say:

>I would say that it was widely *believed* in 14th century Europe that
>tarantula venom produces melancholy best relieved by music and
>dancing, not that it was widely *known*.

[emphasis mine], I think there is a merely semantic problem.  The reason you
don't say it was widely *known* is that you don't currently believe that to be
true.  We generally don't apply the word "known", even to the past, when we
don't agree with the past belief.  But at the time, from the viewpoint of
those who might have believed that stuff about tarantulas, this was known.  In
other words, I'm not saying that it "was known" from our current viewpoint,
but that a person at the time would look at the world and say "It is known
that ...", when describing his belief.  Of course we don't consider that
knowledge now -- because we don't believe, now, that it's the case.  What's
happening, I think, is that our language is not well adapted to consistently
speaking from the viewpoint of an individual at a certain time (i.e. to a
subjective viewpoint), but keeps tricking us into shifting back and forth from
that viewpoint to the viewpoint of a (non-existent) omniscient observer.

You say:

>I know that I am sitting here, by this computer, wearing shorts,
>holding this book in my hands, and so on.  I know that FOL is complete
>and compact, and higher-order logics are not.  I know that whales ...
>...
>... that I might be wrong about any of these things.  But I don't think I am,
>else I wouldn't say that I know them.
>

What if it turned out you *were* wrong about one or all of these things (as,
for instance, if it were a dream)?  From your viewpoint at the time, you
would, truthfully, say "I know these things."  I don't doubt that you know
those things now.  But there is a potential future viewpoint from which you
could say, "I believed those things".  Anyway, I don't want to belabor this
point.  I think it's a semantic problem.

I have no argument with your last paragraph.  If knowledge is a:

1. Well-founded
2. True
3. Belief

then I agree that (1) and (3) are all we *could* ever have to work with.  We
can never know whether our beliefs are "true" in some absolute sense (which
subjectively means that we could never conceive of having to change our minds
about them).  Absent that, the truth of our ideas *is* our belief in them,
from our own present viewpoint.  The truth of others' ideas also *is* our
belief in or agreement with *them*.  For practical purposes, then knowledge
*is* well-founded belief.

But I think we can compress this even further.  By "well-founded", you would
have to mean "sufficient evidence".  Sufficient for what?  Sufficient to
engender belief!  But obviously, if you believe something, then the evidence
must have been sufficient, for you, to engender your belief.  Therefore, we
can drop out (1) also an unnecessary, and we are left with (3), from the
viewpoint of an individual at a specific time.  Therefore, from this viewpoint
(i.e. subjectively), knowledge is belief.

I warned you that this was a Devil's Advocate position, didn't I?  Prove me
wrong!  In other words, change my beliefs!

By the way, Californians aren't *all* weird.  Just most of us.
-- 
"From his own viewpoint, no one ever has false beliefs; he only *had* false
beliefs."

Sarge Gerbode
Institute for Research in Metapsychology
950 Guinda St.
Palo Alto, CA 94301
UUCP:  pyramid!thirdi!sarge