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From: mps@duke.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The nature of knowledge
Message-ID: <9889@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Date: Thu, 9-Jul-87 00:16:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: duke.9889
Posted: Thu Jul  9 00:16:11 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jul-87 16:12:06 EDT
References: <3587e521.44e6@apollo.uucp> <680@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU>
Reply-To: mps@duke.UUCP (Michael P. Smith)
Distribution: world
Organization: Duke University, Durham NC
Lines: 102
Keywords: knowledge, belief, truth
Summary: No false knowledge

In article <54@thirdi.UUCP> sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) writes:
>In article <9877@duke.cs.duke.edu> mps@duke.UUCP (Michael P. Smith) writes:
>>
>>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.

>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 take it that you too now believe that some of your beliefs are
false.  So if knowledge and belief are still indiscernable to you, it
must be because you believe that you have false knowledge.  Here it's
difficult to know what to say.  For myself, and I should have thought
most people, truth is a necessary condition of knowledge.  (Or at
least of what we might call "propositional" or "theoretical"
knowledge, as opposed to, say, knowing how to wiggle your ears.)  When
I find out that something I believed I knew is false, I don't say
	I knew it, but it was false.
I say
	I thought I knew it, but I was wrong.
(Well, there is a usage for the first.  But its non-literal status is
indicated by the obligatory stress on 'knew'.  Ain't English wonderful?)

>Re: your having knowledge which will never turn out to be false -- 
This section is based on a misinterpretation.  I don't believe
knowledge has to be absolutely certain or 100% probable.  Knowledge
can never be false for the same sort of trivial reason that a native Texan
can't have been born in Rhode Island.  

>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). 

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.  I should be interested to know
if any non-Californians talk like Sarge. 

>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. 

Here's your reasoning as I understand it:
	Consider a man with gun 10 yards from the side of a barn.
	Since virtually any bullet, however well-aimed, might, due to
	unforeseen circumstances, miss the target, we should have to
	say that a hit is impossible or unlikely.
All that follows from the fact that we might be wrong is that we might
be wrong.  How does the mere possibility of error suddenly become the
impossibility of avoiding error?

>Perhaps you could provide an example of something you regard as knowledge, as
>opposed to belief.

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 are
mammals, that Great Britain has a monarch but France does not, that,
ounce-for-ounce, ice cream has more calories that carrots, 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.

Let me suggest a point that you might be trying to make.  Suppose with
the philosophers that knowledge is something like a well-founded true
belief.  It is commonly thought that two out the three can be
subjectively checked, that is, that we can check "from the inside"
whether we believe something, and whether our belief is based on
sufficient evidence.  (Both these claims would be challenged by
current naturalistic epistemologists.) But we have no way of checking
the truth of our beliefs other than by accumulating evidence.  Truth
is not directly checkable.  So well-founded false beliefs and
well-founded true beliefs are subjectively indiscernable in the sense
that we can't tell them apart from the inside.  This doesn't mean that
there is no difference between them, that true belief = false belief,
nor that they are the same from anyone's viewpoint.  It simply means
that when we ask whether or not we know something, we answer three
questions with two answers.  Do we believe it?  Sure.  Do we have
enough evidence?  Yup.  Is it true?  Well, look at all this evidence!

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"All nature actually is nothing but a nexus of appearances according to
rules; and there is nothing at all *without rules*. 	Immanuel Kant

Michael P. Smith	ARPA  mps@duke.cs.duke.edu
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