Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
The tribunal of evidence.
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Atheism does not exist
- Thread starter Sha'irullah
- Start date
The tribunal of evidence.
Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
You've yet to say why knowledge must be immune to error. This is a strawman you've built. As I've stressed repeatedly, and the empirical sciences clearly provide a model for, knowledge is defeasible, fallible, and open-ended. Knowledge and truth consist in the best possible (or, more accurately, the least bad) explanation for a body of evidence.
Knowledge and truth are objective. Your saying truth is like the definition of theory but its more like a law.
A tribunal of evidence isn't required to know that I just ate dinner.
However, if sometime down the road, in light of further information I could discover that I never really knew that I "just ate dinner," what is the nature of the claim I hold right now? Is it just something resembling knowledge?
AmbiguousGuy
Well-Known Member
Unless you can find the courage to answer my oft-repeated question, I'm afraid I can only see you as a sideline player.
Anyone can preach. But show me a preacher who will take any question from the congregation and answer it with direct, simple words. There's a preacher who actually knows what he believes.
Not trying to offend. Just saying.
adi2d
Active Member
If neither are lying they are both correct
The theist,by definition, believes in a God. So s/he is correct
The atheist,by definition,has no belief in a God. So s/he is correct
You've said that last line before. Can you share what that knowledge showing theism is false? I asked before but maybe you missed it or I missed your reply
Thanks
That's right: if it's not true, then you only think you know.
They often do, but we're not talking about claiming belief; we're talking about belief itself.
But it may or may not be actually justified.
For instance, if a person thinks that electronic devices stop working when they smoke because smoke is what makes them work, then their belief is not knowledge: while they've coincidentally arrived at the correct conclusion (i.e. that electronics stop working when they start smoking), it was for bad reasons, so the belief was unjustified.
You can't distinguish between belief and knowledge? I think you're putting me on.
It doesn't assert that at all. Why would you think this?
According to both views. I have no idea why you've decided to ignore the possibility that people can think they know something but be mistaken.
The part that I've highlighted was the correct answer.
We can be sure to a high degree of certainty, but not with perfect certainty, no.
There's a big difference. It's just that we aren't in a position to tell which one's the case with absolute certainty; most of the time, we have to rely on an assessment of the balance of probabilities. Sometimes, we aren't in a position to distinguish at all.
I'd put my money on myself, because based on your arguments in this thread, I trust my reasoning more than I trust yours.
The number of people who believe a proposition doesn't dictate the truth of or falsehood of the proposition. Believing that it does dictate this is a logical fallacy called argumentum ad populum.
There is no final authority.
Here's how it works, IMO:
We all construct mental models of how we think the world works. We then put these models to the test by trying to live as if they're true. Sometimes, our expectations (i.e. the predictions of our models) are satisfied; other times, they're violated.
The more our mental models are tested and found to work, the more reliable we can take them to be. We can't ever reach perfect certainty, but we can compare competing beliefs and see which one agrees better with observations.
Rather, if it's not true, then you only believe.
Degrees of certainty contain inherent uncertainty. We justify believing so that we don't have to rely on accidentally being right. If we cannot be certain, we rely on accidentally being right.
That was the same problem with the inference, earlier.
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AmbiguousGuy
Well-Known Member
Thank you, thank you, thank you for answering my simple question.
So here's what I know about your position on determining truth:
1) Human consensus does not determine truth.
2) There is no final authority to say what is true and what isn't true.
Therefore I conclude that you and I agree that each human decides for himself what is true and what is false.
Yes? Please stop me if you disagree.
But if that is the case -- that each person decides for himself what is true -- then all knowledge is equally legitimate according to the JTB definition. Necessarily so. Every person knows those things for which he has justifed true belief.
And if I insist that you don't really know what you claim to know, I'm just being arrogant and confused. I'm insisting that you actually have no right to judge truth for yourself. I myself am the ultimate judge of truth, and I have judged that your knowledge is based on an untrue belief.
A humble truth-lover would not exclaim, "You don't really know that! You only think that you know that!" A humble truth-lover would say, "Well, I disagree with you that your known thing is true. But we all have our opinions about truth."
How could they be mistaken? Think it through all the way to the end. If there is no final authority as to what is true, then Penguin can never know that the other guy has false knowledge (is mistaken). The other guy's knowledge can never 'turn out to be false'... as another JTB champ has phrased it.
When you assume that the other guy's knowledge has turned out to be false knowledge, or is 'mistaken knowledge', you are declaring yourself to be the final judge of what is true/false. Aren't you?
That seems entirely reasonable and well-expressed. I have no problem with it. I just have a problem with the 'justified true belief' definition of knowledge -- continuing to believe that its adherents must believe in magic. The magic power of a human brain to distinguish between truth and falsity.
My more elegant and accurate definition says that belief and knowledge are the very same things -- psychological certainty than our mental image matches external reality -- with 'knowledge' often or usually being a stronger claim of mental certainty than 'belief.'
We make our own judgements about what we think is true and false. These judgements are either correct or incorrect, reasonable or unreasonable. Not all beliefs are equally reasonable.
No. Making a judgement about whether a thing is true does not do anything to actually make it true or false.
I have no idea where you're coming from here. If you get offended at the fact that humans are fallible, I'm not sure what I can say to help you, but your offense doesn't magically make all of your judgements correct.
And frankly, your arguments in this thread are coming off as confused.
The logical fallacy you're committing here is called "poisoning the well".
That depends on how you do it.
We can't speak with ultimate certainty, but we can recognize the preponderance of evidence for and against the idea. Sometimes, that balance tips so far over to one side that it becomes unreasonable to argue for the other side.
It doesn't imply that. It just makes the definition not particularly useful. However, things that aren't useful aren't necessarily logically incoherent.
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It's not "elegant" to make up your own personal definition for a word and use it with others as if they're supposed to know what you mean and accept it.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
You do that.
Even better. I already have.
Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
Knowledge and truth are objective in the sense that they are subject-invariant; they don't vary from person to person. That isn't to say that they aren't open-ended.
Consider a pretty uncontroversial example- I know that the sun will rise tomorrow. However, it is quite possible that it does not; indeed, there is no logical necessity that the sun rise tomorrow. But my belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is based on sufficient evidence for this belief- the fact that the sun has hitherto risen every day.
Thus, my this belief constitutes knowledge, if anything does, and is yet fallible and open-ended.
If knowledge and truth must be absolutely immune to the possibility of error, then knowledge and truth cannot exist. But knowledge and truth do exist, this the impossibility of error cannot be the criteria, but is a mere chimera we're chasing.
***
Of course it is; your full stomach, your memory of eating dinner, and so on.
Without such evidence, you could not say you knew you just ate dinner.
Evidence is what distinguishes knowledge from belief.
***
Just because you don't like the answer doesn't mean you haven't been given one. We don't have access to a bird's, or God's, eye view of things, so yes, we're limited to our own judgment, our own perspective; but this doesn't entail, at all, that all beliefs are then equal. Beliefs are differentiated on the basis of evidence- and sufficient evidence distinguishes knowledge from belief.
Besides, you can hardly criticize anyone here since you still have yet to spit out the criticism or counter-argument you have in mind; you are haplessly trying to play the Socratic interlocutor, yet you've failed to address any of the pertinent issues or raise any real objections. You haven't even said what this "magic" supposedly consists in.
Hints and allusions do not a counter-argument make. When you want to get in the game, grow a pair and say what it is you have in mind.
Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
No. That's impossible. That's like saying that the person who believes the cat is on the couch and the person who believes it is not could both be correct- depending on where the cat actually is, one of them must be wrong.
That's how contradictions work.
No. It depends- like with the cat- whether God actually exists or not; obviously, if God does not exist, the theist can not be correct, and visa versa.
NP- that was actually the intended topic, but we've had a few posters wishing to muddy the water by raising non-existence objections to the uncontroversial and obvious characterization of knowledge as justified and true belief.
But the knowledge that theism is false can be obtained by analyzing the concept of transcendence, and finding it be incoherent- God must be a non-being, and must exist in a manner unique to himself, which is equivalent to not-existing at all. Furthermore, the conception of the Christian God is no less contradictory than that of a being that is all white and all red all over- it is impossible that such a thing could exist.
Add to this the fact that every deity falls the simple test of necessary evidence, and that we find, without exception, that humans author deities and not the other way around, and the belief that theism is false is arguably as justified and true as any other belief that counts as knowledge.
Enai de a lukal
Well-Known Member
Well said. Good to see there are some posters here with at least a rudimentary knowledge of basic logic, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion.
Fair enough. That would be knowledge as "justified, sufficiently evidenced belief."
AmbiguousGuy
Well-Known Member
Yes, but you left out the most important part: AmbiguousGuy.
Knowledge is any belief which is justified and sufficiently evidenced in the judgment of AmbiguousGuy. No one can know anything unless it passes my muster.
If someone will build me a throne now, I am ready to ascend it and settle in as Ultimate Decider of Knowledge.
(I would also like a fancy robe, but a crown of gold and diamonds might constrict my truth-deciding apparatus, so let's forego that.)
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AmbiguousGuy
Well-Known Member
Everytime I read that answer I giggle. Sometimes I snork.
The tribunal of evidence. Goodness.
Yeah, there's some disembodied tribunal floating around out in space with no humans manning the chairs, no humans listening to the evidence. And this tribunal (with no human voice) somehow informs its chosen spokesmen (you, of course, its prophet) to declare that Mr. Smith doesn't really know a thing but only thinks that he knows that thing.
Magic believers. Feh.
I've bolded the most pertinent claims.
You have claimed that your belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is knowledge since it is based upon sufficient evidence-- despite the fact that it may not be true. You have stated that knowledge does not need to be immune to error. And you have said that it is sufficient evidence that distinguishes knowledge from belief.
It seems to me that "sufficient evidence"-- the justified part of the definintion-- is therefore the only relevant part of the definition. The "true" part of the definition, by your own admission, really doesn't play a part, and in fact, cannot play a part since we have no "bird's eye view" to determine what is true and what is not.
If the knowledge must be true in order to be considered knowledge, then your belief that the sun will rise tomorrow cannot be considered knowledge, regardless of how well justified it may be-- if it turns out to be false.
If knowledge must be true to be considered knowledge, then this does in fact mean that knowledge must be immune to error.
Are you okay with dropping the "true" part of the "justified true belief" definition of knowledge? If not, then you need to rethink your above positions.
Personally, I think it makes a whole lot more sense to drop the true part, as your examples above argued so well.
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