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From: sarge@thirdi.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The nature of knowledge
Message-ID: <54@thirdi.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Jul-87 13:48:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: thirdi.54
Posted: Wed Jul  8 13:48:31 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jul-87 13:52:47 EDT
References: <3587e521.44e6@apollo.uucp> <680@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU> <1022@water.UUCP> <51@thirdi.UUCP> <9877@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Reply-To: sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode)
Distribution: world
Organization: Third Eye Software, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 58
Keywords: knowledge belief truth probability
Summary: A consideration of probabilities and reconsideration may help.

In article <9877@duke.cs.duke.edu> mps@duke.UUCP (Michael P. Smith) writes:
>>false beliefs."
>
>Each of my beliefs I believe to be true, naturally.  But I do not
>"here-and-now" believe that all my beliefs are true.  Such optimism
>would be epistemically irrational.  "From my own viewpoint," not only
>have I *had* false beliefs, I surely *have* some now.  I have never
>had any false knowledge, however, nor do I now.
>

I think a couple of points will help, here.  The first is that belief (and
knowledge) is often not absolute, but admits of degrees.  One operates in
terms of probabilities, from complete impossibility through various degrees of
unlikelihood through various degrees of likelihood to complete certainty.
Probably most of the things I know (or believe), I know (or believe) without
complete certainty.  If I have beliefs a, b, c, ... , n, with an average
probability of 99%, the probability of all of them being true may be
vanishingly small (multiplying together the separate probabilities). So what
you say is quite correct, that I can believe that I have at least one false
beliefs, without any of my *specific* beliefs being false, so far as I am
concerned.  This doesn't invalidate, however, the equivalence of knowledge and
belief, from a subjective viewpoint.  This is also a way of looking at Jim
Laycock's question whether you could believe A, believe B, but not believe A &
B.  I think you can do so without inconsistency by looking at it in terms of
probabilities.

Re: your having knowledge which will never turn out to be false -- This would
have to mean that you have assigned a 100% probability to that item -- i.e.
complete certainty -- or it could mean that it's a fixed belief that you are
unwilling ever to reconsider.  So in this sense, "knowledge" would be a belief
that one will never change a certain belief.  I don't know whether one could
have something of which one is absolutely certain and yet reconsider it.  This
seems to be the method of Hume, the Cartesian Reduction and also Husserl's
phenomenological reduction.  Certainly, things that were at one time regarded
as absolutely certain (such as the Newtonian universe) are now considered
fallacious.  I think one should say that these items *were* knowledge (or
beliefs) at the time and are now not knowledge (or beliefs).  Otherwise, since
virtually any opinion, however certain (excepting, perhaps, tautologies and
some mathematical truths), can turn out later, in the light of further data,
to be false, we would have to say that knowledge (in the sense of something
that will always be true) is impossible or unlikely.

Of course, once one has reconsidered a belief, one has entered into a new
moment in time, and the original premise of "from an individual viewpoint at a
given time" is violated.

Perhaps you could provide an example of something you regard as knowledge, as
opposed to belief.  That might bring things down to a more concrete and
understandable level.
-- 
"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