You seem to think you have a stunningly good point - that Smith's belief about the occupier of the roles trouser content rigidly designates Jones.

a) it doesn't — Bartricks

Really?

Are you saying that Smith does not believe that Jones is the person with ten coins in his pocket?

Are you saying that Smith does not believe that Jones is the person who will get the job?

Are you saying that Smith believes someone other than Jones will get the job?

:brow:

Read my replies. No more replies to you apart from 'read my replies' until you do. Read them. Manners, matey - get some.

Quid pro quo...

I'll look if you answer the simple questions I ask.

Well, I've already looked, and this...

Imagine that Smith has justified beliefs that Jones will get the job and that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket. Now imagine that prior to the interview someone pickpockets Jones and steals the 10 coins. Then imagine that, by pure fluke, just after the pickpocketing incident, Jones finds 10 coins in the street and puts them in his pocket. Then Jones gets the job. — Bartricks

I'm not granting the justification out of hand.

Argue for it, and I'll look again. What belief is justified to start with, and which belief is rightfully inferred from that(by the rules of entailment) that amounts to JTB, but not knowledge.

Spell it out.

...for any proposition P, if S is justified in
believing P, and P entails Q, and S deduces Q from P and accepts Q as a result
of this deduction, then S is justified in believing Q.

There's your format.

Manners, matey - get some. — Bartricks

Pots and kettles.

magine that Smith has justified beliefs that Jones will get the job and that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket. Now imagine that prior to the interview someone pickpockets Jones and steals the 10 coins. Then imagine that, by pure fluke, just after the pickpocketing incident, Jones finds 10 coins in the street and puts them in his pocket. Then Jones gets the job. — Bartricks

Looks fine by me. Jones got the job. JTB.

What's the pickpocket bit aside from a red herring? The part about how many coins Jones has in his pocket at the time of his interviewing and getting hired is not justified to begin with. I mean, who in their right mind would think that one was justified in believing that the quantity of coins in one's pocket would remain the same over that timeframe?

So...

Meh.

Like I said, I'm not granting the justification aspect out of hand.

Gettier got the belief aspect wrong, and you've gotten the justification aspect wrong, in this example anyway. Got another one?

You seem to think you have a stunningly good point — Bartricks

I don't think... I know.

:kiss:

You seem to think you have a stunningly good point — Bartricks


I don't think... I know.

What you believe you know is knowledge.

What you think you know is knowledge. — ovdtogt

I think I know that what anyone thinks they know is not knowledge.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...



So, what do you think of my approach to Gettier here... the distinction between the inference(by entailment) as a proposition, and the inference(by entailment) as Smith's belief? Do you agree that those have different truth conditions, and thus meaning? Do you find the point about the rigid designator cogent?

Seems undeniable to me.

I think I know that what anyone thinks they know is not knowledge

Everything we know is what we believe to know. All knowledge is what we believe to be knowledge.
You believe you know that what anyone believes is not knowledge.

Interesting statement. That ought to stir some thinking. :up:

Oh yes, thinking of life as process instead of opposites is beautiful.

Oh yes, thinking of life as process instead of opposites is beautiful. — Athena

You mean like baking a cake?

:lol: Whoo, dude you are way over my head. I don't know if you are agreeing with what I said or disagreeing. This is a wonderful case of knowledge being wasted on the ignorant. :lol: What is knowledge? I don't know. I don't have it.

I speak out of total frustration. I have books on math and quantum physics and read them in a futile effort to understand what is being said. I get some of it, but not well enough to think in the terms of those fields of knowledge. Kind of like diabetes my head isn't sensitive to that insulin. :cry:

I speak out of total frustration. I have books on math and quantum physics and read them in a futile effort to understand what is being said. I get some of it, but not well enough to think in the terms of those fields of knowledge. Kind of like diabetes my head isn't sensitive to that insulin. :cry: — Athena

Totally with you there brother/sister. I just skim over the top with most of it. But I find thinking in opposites gives me great clarity in my understanding of things.

Oh yes, thinking of life as process instead of opposites is beautiful — Athena

I wasn't aware that the goal was to come up with beautiful ideas (which is subjective). I was trying to come up with useful ideas. IMO, useful ideas are beautiful ideas. The theory of evolution by natural selection is a beautiful idea because it solves the dualistic dichotomy of man vs nature by making man part of nature.

Er, no. Now 'that' is inconsistent. I'm not inconsistent, you are. If knowledge is an attitude Reason adopts towards some true beliefs, then people have knowledge when they have a 'true belief' that Reason is adopting that attitude towards. Not when 'they' have the attitude, but when 'Reason' does. Owned.
O.W.N.E.D
It isn't dumb, but it will appear that way to the dumb. If it was dumb, why am I finding it so easy to own you?
I so own you. — Bartricks

What, are you 12 years old?

I was just reiterating what you said, so if I was inconsistent it was really you that is being inconsistent. What is Reason, and what is the thing that has a true belief? What is a true belief? How do you know the belief is true?

Wow, I like that thought. I love that thought! :heart: What a wonderful way of thinking of baking a cake. I don't think I have ever attempted to think of such things as process. It has always been a matter of reading and mixing the ingredients and rotely following directions but not actually thinking about what is happening. I could be wrong, but I think education for technology is more about rotely following steps than actually thinking what is happening.

I see a problem in our language. Spell check guides me to say "thinking about what is happening". That little word "about" separates me from what is happening. Come to think of it, how much can we know without the language to name the concepts? What does language have to do with knowledge and our sense of reality and being part of the spirit/earth or separate from it?

The common definition for a duck specifies the genus which serves to exclude other things that just happen to have a similar appearance or behavioral characteristics. — Andrew M

Ducks are a particular type of species - ones that produce fertile offspring. Ducks are part of the genus we call "birds", because they have wings and feathers. Human actors and robots are of a different category altogether with one of the attributes that defines them is their adaptive abilities and ability to mimic other organisms to a wide degree.

I'm of the view that truth is a condition of (propositional) knowledge which I regard as a thesis about how people ordinarily use those terms. — Andrew M

Bandwagon fallacy. When you can use the term in such a way as, "I know that I know nothing", then something is wrong with our understanding of the term. If we can use terms like, "God" without any clear understanding of what "God" is, then the way most people use words is not good evidence that most people know what they are talking about.

What is it that they are talking about? What is knowledge? What is propositional knowledge vs other kinds of knowledge? Saying that truth is a condition of propositional knowledge is also saying that false is property of propositional knowledge. Doesn't that mean that true beliefs are not a necessary condition of (propositional) knowledge?

What makes one bit of propositional knowledge true and the other false? Some people talk about using truth tables, others talk about justification. How do you know that some knowledge is true or false? What does it mean to know this? How is it that we can turn knowledge on itself - of knowing that I know?

What does language have to do with knowledge and our sense of reality and being part of the spirit/earth or separate from it? — Athena

Language both connects us to, and separates us from, reality. This is the reason we enjoy taking drugs, like magic mushrooms and cannabis. They tend to knock out our abstract thinking and allows us to 'truly' experience our surroundings.

I am loving this sharing of thoughts without judging each other as someone to look up to or look down on. :heart: I think education for technology has brought us to a serious cultural problem of looking up to and down to each other and unpleasant arguments about "the truth".

I find thinking in opposites gives me great clarity in my understanding of things. — ovdtogt

Yes, thinking in opposites gives us clarity. I liked it when males were males and females were females, and what they did in their private lives was private, compare to today when I have to remember which girl wants to male and which male wants to be female, and hey, I want to be 30 years old again and that ain't going to happen in this lifetime. Life can be very confusing without opposites and this old brain is struggling to keep up.

I like the eastern yin and yang and in the I Ching the defines differences of oldest child, the middle child, and youngest child. The same and different.

I have read, the people who think of terms of black and white are less apt to feel crazy than those who are not sure of this division. But I think quantum physics goes beyond this or that, and that Eisenstein just had a hard time accepting the uncertainty factor?

Yes, thinking in opposites gives us clarity. I liked it when males were males and females were females, — Athena

Well you see that is where people go wrong. They don't understand that most things are a combination of what we perceive to be opposite properties and therefor can not be combined. In fact the human body is both male and female. It is merely that the female is more female than male and men are the opposite: they are more male than female. Once you understand this you will understand why all the gender bender issues exist. I remember my biology teacher telling me they can change a chicken into a rooster and back again by feeding it hormones.

I have not experienced drugs beyond sugar, carbs, coffee, and cigarettes, except for some pot and prescribed opioids which I definitely do not like. I don't notice the experience of being in the moment, just the resentment that I am having more trouble thinking than usual. But I am excited by your introduction into the fact that some people are very aware of nature, and that in our past, survival needs made humans very sensitive to what is happening around them. A form of intelligence we loose when we come thinkers, dependent on our knowledge that puts us in our heads and hinders of experience of life.

I have had retarded people in my life who have more of an animal instinct and I have to tell a story to express my appreciation for what they have and my displeasure with how our thinking can make us really stupid.

A friend and I visited someone in a nursing home, and on our way out we were stopped by a gate. It was obvious we were not going to pass that gate without knowing the code to release the lock. That is, that was obvious to me. My friend didn't hesitate to stick his hand through the gate and open it from the outside. I felt really stupid for allowing that gate to stop me, and I wonder about the intelligence of those who thought that gate would prevent a person from leaving.

Is it clear the answer to what is knowledge can be very different and it may have nothing to do with what we learn in school? Knowledge gained through experience is in some ways superior to what we learn from books and in classrooms. In fact, the knowledge we value can make us stupid. I have heard a primitive person will figure out how to create a bridge across the river, but a modern person is less apt to figure out how to build a bridge because we have become so dependent on what is known.

It is more complicated than your science teacher taught the class. Recent DNA studies have revealed some people are YY, some are XXYY, some are XYY and some people are XXXY. Nature gave us more variety than we knew and if we were reverent of nature, the way we judge each other could change.

Personally, I have a big problem with those who believe the Bible is the word of God. I prefer the notion that nature is our source of knowledge and math is the language of God.

Would anyone here argue that math is not very valuable in our quest for knowledge?

I wasn't aware that the goal was to come up with beautiful ideas (which is subjective). I was trying to come up with useful ideas. IMO, useful ideas are beautiful ideas. The theory of evolution by natural selection is a beautiful idea because it solves the dualistic dichotomy of man vs nature by making man part of nature. — Harry Hindu

Oh no, beauty is not just subjective but has a mathematical component as well. We are attracted to symmetry and harmony. That is art and music as well as playing a role in the mating game, getting a job, or being convicted of a crime or found innocent.

Yes, useful ideas are beautiful for the same reason symmetry and harmony are beautiful. OMG, I am loving this exchange of thought! :heart:

Oh, oh can we say man is a part of nature? :wink: The concept of us being part of nature, is very important to our liberty and democracy. Knowing there is a mathematical component to beauty and harmony and that our brains are sensitive this may help us be a little reverent about our place in nature and what we believe is the best form of human organization. That is democracy versus the kingdom.

What does language have to do with knowledge and our sense of reality and being part of the spirit/earth or separate from it? — Athena

That's an excellent question actually. There's much to be said about it.

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
John Keats

Ducks are a particular type of species - ones that produce fertile offspring. Ducks are part of the genus we call "birds", because they have wings and feathers. Human actors and robots are of a different category altogether with one of the attributes that defines them is their adaptive abilities and ability to mimic other organisms to a wide degree. — Harry Hindu

Yes. So a robot could be built that had wings and feathers. In that sense it would be like a bird. But it would not be a bird even if we couldn't easily distinguish them. That's because a bird has other characteristics that it inherits from its genus (such as being a living organism) that serve to exclude robots.

Of course a different usage could arise that does combine bird-like robots and birds, but we're investigating the usage we currently do have.

What is propositional knowledge vs other kinds of knowledge? — Harry Hindu

It is common in epistemology to distinguish among three kinds of knowledge. There's the kind of knowledge you have when it is truly said of you that you know how to do something—say, ride a bicycle. There's the kind of knowledge you have when it is truly said of you that you know a person—say, your best friend. And there's the kind of knowledge you have when it is truly said of you that you know that some fact is true—say, that the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series. Here we will be concerned with the first and last of these kinds. The first is usually called “knowledge-how” and the last is usually called “knowledge-that” or “propositional knowledge.” — Knowledge How - SEP

Saying that truth is a condition of propositional knowledge is also saying that false is property of propositional knowledge. — Harry Hindu

No it isn't. Per the example above, we know that the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series. But no-one can know that they lost it, since they didn't lose it. That's what it means for truth to be a condition of knowledge (and not falsity).

but I gave examples of how knowing how entails a sequence of knowing thats.

I asked how do you know some statement is true when we seemed to agree that observations determine truth, not language use. So truth is a condition of observations, not of language-use.

I also asked how knowledge can be turned on itself to say things like, "I know that I know". Isn't that similar to saying that "I observe that I know"?