• _db
    3.6k
    This question is both metaphysical and epistemological - that is to say, it's a metaphysical question about epistemology, or a meta-epistemic question.

    Of course, this question also will depend on what you see knowledge as being. This not only includes the necessary and sufficient conditions (or lack thereof) for knowledge to be knowledge (i.e. epistemic essentialism), such as JTB+ or pick-your-favorite-epistemology, or but also how knowledge is. Why does knowledge exist?

    So we have Socrates, in Plato's Theaetetus, debating the aforementioned philosopher on what knowledge is. Socrates pushes Theaetetus to accept that knowledge must be something more than just true belief - it must be justified true belief. And so this concept reigned for a while until other epistemologies started to crop up, culminating in the Gettier cases. But this is primarily epistemology proper - what knowledge is. What about knowledge's place in nature? Why does knowledge exist, and how?

    Kornblith, for example, argues that knowledge is a natural kind, and thus suitable for empirical analysis and not conceptual analysis.

    Then we have Plantinga with his Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism. In short: evolution is true, we have knowledge that evolution is true (in addition to other knowledge), naturalistic evolution would not select for true beliefs, therefore naturalism is false and God must have intervened sometime in the process of human evolution.

    I have a number of issues with this argument. First, Plantinga assumes that naturalistic evolution cannot account for knowledge - but this is not entirely obvious. Second, Plantinga assumes that humans are in fact rational - his argument is meant to show that God exists because humans are rational - when in reality, humans are very much so irrational creatures, and you have to wonder (among other things) why God would make irrationality such a pervasive feature in his creations.

    So Plantinga's argument for theism fails, but his argument in general does bring to light some interesting ideas: namely, why humans have knowledge, and more broadly speaking, why knowledge even exists. By knowledge I am loosely referring to any JTB+-like definition, as well as correspondence theory. Any other theory does not count as knowledge, in this case, because it's not relevant to the situation. And by and far, philosophy is the search for truth, and overwhelmingly truth is seen as correspondence theory and not some social construct or Rortian pragmatic choose-your-favorite-theory theory.

    An obvious answer to why humans have knowledge, or why knowledge even exists, is that it was useful to us to have. But we need not be conscious to make use of stimuli. What use is conscious knowledge to the organism?

    I think the thought of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker has some relevance here:

    A key point in a child's development is the recognition that other people have minds. Other people hold information just as the child does. Other people communicate and share this knowledge with each other, including with the child. But most importantly, other people withhold information. Other people deceive each other. The key moment in which a child learns that other people have minds is when the child learns that other people practice deception.

    Thus, knowledge would be a very useful commodity in the social sphere.

    Furthermore, as Heidegger noted, anxiety is a fundamental aspect of being a human. This anxiety is from not-knowing: just as we would have felt anxious when we didn't know what caused the stick in the forest to crack, we feel anxious when we don't know what happens after death, or where the universe came from, or why we're here, etc. In addition to pragmatic knowledge being sourced from a recognition of deception in the social sphere, it seems as though curious attempts at genuine correspondence truth is almost accidental, like a by-product of a hyperactive mind.

    More needs to be said, though. Do our logical thoughts have a teleological nature - i.e. "aimed" at truth? Where does logic come from? Is knowledge a purely mental phenomenon, or is it an ontological relationship between things? How is that we are able to reflexively analyze our own beliefs? What use would philosophical thoughts have in the wild? Are they, as mentioned before, simply accidental features of a human being? Is there anything "special" about humanity's ability to reason, such as the Scholastic concept of the Intellect?

    A point that I think might be important is that we probably shouldn't create this inseparable boundary between human minds and the rest of the world. If the world is logical, and humans are part of the world, then humans will be logical. This still has to account for the existence of illogical and irrational thoughts, though.
  • Mongrel
    3k
    Are you thinking that knowledge necessarily has some use? If so, why do you assume that?
  • _db
    3.6k
    Usually a complex system in biology does not survive or even evolve unless there is a way this benefits the organism.
  • Nils Loc
    1.3k
    Usually a complex system in biology does not survive or even evolve unless there is a way this benefits the organism.darthbarracuda

    You're including any type of evolution (change) that doesn't harm the organism in this statement, which is to say that some heritable changes are neutral with regard to replication but not to other future states of being.

    The "benefit of the organism" is dubious phrase here because we're left wondering who or what benefits like a self-aware human does, that a creature is able to register in some way the benefits of natural selection, (we have to frame the question, who or what benefits).

    What if for instance there is a situation in which our behavior is determined by a vastly greater mind, ie. an Artificial Intelligence, always to "our" benefit?

    Or take the domesticated cow for a different example.

    Cows replicate with the help of humans, we use their milk meat and in exchange provide them food, shelter, healthcare and protection from the elements for a while. However, many would hesitate to proclaim that this particular model of mutalism (if that) benefits the cow. Further we may even argue whether a surplus of beef benefits us humans due to our tendency to overeat, or green house waste or other issues.
  • Mongrel
    3k
    Is knowledge a complex biological system? Or just a byproduct of one?
  • _db
    3.6k
    The capacity to hold knowledge is a complex biological system.
  • Mongrel
    3k
    A biological system may support a capacity.... I wouldn't equate a capacity with a system... would you?
  • Janus
    15.4k
    Usually a complex system in biology does not survive or even evolve unless there is a way this benefits the organism.darthbarracuda

    Haven't you answered your own question in your assumption that this is true, and that you know that it is true?
  • _db
    3.6k
    Sure, but why is abstract thinking on the level that we have necessary for a human being's survival?
  • Nils Loc
    1.3k
    I think the errors (variants) of thought ( via cultural evolution) can be some way compared with the errors (variants) required for natural selection.

    One might think of an error on the part of natural selection as a genetic variant that cannot pass on its genes.

    Compare it with an error of thought (an irrational belief) that is selected for by a group. Just because the belief might be false doesn't mean it doesn't have a useful effect with regard to some larger perspective.

    There are nigh countless reasons why a thought, idea or belief might be selected for.
  • Janus
    15.4k


    By "abstract thinking" do you mean thinking generalities? I mean, we can only think about particulars in so far as we can think generalities. We could survive like animals without the capacity to think generalities, but civilization, culture, science, religion, philosophy and the arts would obviously be impossible.
  • mcdoodle
    1.1k
    Socrates pushes Theaetetus to accept that knowledge must be something more than just true belief - it must be justified true belief. And so this concept reigned for a while until other epistemologies started to crop up, culminating in the Gettier cases.darthbarracuda

    This is the opposite of what Plato says. He stands at the beginning of an entirely different tradition, that 'belief' and 'knowledge' are of different kinds and can't be intermingled.

    'Justified true belief' is largely a 20th century development.

    One alternative is that knowledge is not usefully analyzable, as Timothy Williamson argues..
    Furthermore, as Heidegger noted, anxiety is a fundamental aspect of being a human. This anxiety is from not-knowingdarthbarracuda

    Surely this is the opposite of what Heidegger says too? i.e. on the contrary that anxiety comes from knowing?
    Anxiety brings Dasein face-to-face with its Being-free-for the authenticity of its Being... — Being and Time 188
  • Cavacava
    2.4k
    Justified true belief as knowledge appeals to universals of truth, belief and judgement are all Enlightenment ideals. We live in an age of communication mediums, where these related but separate ideals have given way to how humanity consumes and transmit knowledge. The performative ability of knowledge has become the new ideal.

    The student teacher relationship is now based on money, exchange value, not on ability or insight. The ability to successfully transmit useful information takes over the role of justification. The sheer amount of information that is available is astonishing. Truth has become statistically rendered, as most likely. Ya'all can find the answer to almost anything on the internet, this new medium has taken over much of what is transmitted and it is radically democratic.

    Anyway some sort of translation has got it going on.
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