This awareness of your own existence enables you to be conscious of the existence of others in space and time and that is the beginning of being empathetic, that you identify with the world around you and this is the exact opposite of being selfish. — TimeLine

This is our main point of disagreement now. I think that being self-conscious in no way necessitates any degree of empathy. This is why it is necessary to posit the existence of love, to account for the empathy which is observed. If the self-conscious being can establish autonomy by freeing oneself from the conformities of society, and this autonomy is authentic, then the relationship between this being and others is not necessarily respectful or empathetic, unless there is something like love within, which guides the autonomous, self-conscious agent in this direction.

A person who blindly conforms does so because they are selfish, unable to give love and even if they technically do nothing wrong or immoral, their 'good behaviour' is only because they follow rather than actually feel, so you have it the wrong way around. An genuine, autonomous agent and this transcendence is the beginning of love - i.e., moral consciousness. — TimeLine

This cannot be the "beginning" of love, because love must already be inherent within the autonomous agent. Having freed oneself from conformity, to become an autonomous agent, produces a position of no social obligation, or obligation toward any other person or thing including the feelings of empathy and respect. As an authentic, autonomous agent, the guiding principles for that individual can only come from within the individual, not society or anyone else. If the person does not find empathy and respect for others, within, then that person might find hate and disrespect, as my example of the Unabomber. The autonomous agent would be equally likely to turn hateful and disrespectful, as likely to turn empathetic and respectful.

But what we observe is that self-conscious autonomous agents are far more likely to turn empathetic and respectful than hateful and disrespectful. So there must be a reason for this, and that reason is love. Love cannot come to the person as a beginning, because that would imply no love already within, and this "beginning" would necessarily come from an external source, because a beginning consisting of something coming from nothing is impossible. But the autonomous agent has no inclination to accept anything, including love, from any external source, so we must conclude that one finds the love (or at least the kernel of love) as already existing within. That is why the person who turns to hate and disrespect can only do this through the means of a deep self-deception. If the love were not already there within, then any autonomous agent could freely turn to hate and disrespect. Instead, one cannot easily or readily turn to hate and disrespect, but must make an effort, and practise self-deception, suppressing the love within, to do this.

Think of a biblical parable; there is a moral symbol in the story - the story itself is just a story put in words but the symbol is not articulated in the written format - and to understand the symbol is dependent on your own state of mind. If we articulate or put words to this symbol and explain that the parable means 'such and such', it loses the purpose of being a parable so to speak because people can believe that this parable means exactly 'such and such'. It is meaning that is given to them and they have conformed to, thus inauthentic. The purpose of the parable is no longer as it was supposed to be - our interpretation - because what is our interpretation is authentic. — TimeLine

I think that there are two distinct ways of symbolizing things, two distinct forms of intention behind the act of symbolizing. Therefore there are two distinct types of meaning, according to that division. In the one case, the autonomous agent seeks a memory aid, and writes, marks, or takes note of something. This is authentic, because the goal here is to establish a clear, precise, and unchanging relationship between the symbol and the thing symbolized, as the autonomous agent desires a true memory. In the other case, the autonomous agent seeks to communicate something to others. In this case, the meaning is not true, it's inauthentic, because the intent of the agent is other than what is symbolized (meant) by the words. This is what allows for deception, the agent symbolizes what one wants the other to apprehend, not what is truly within the agent's mind. So inauthentic language (communication) works in this way, what is symbolized by the words is not a true meaning, while authentic language attempts to establish a true, precise, and unchanging relation between the symbol and what is in the mind.

Inauthentic language creates ambiguity, as an unavoidable consequence. I believe that the biblical parable makes use of the ambiguity found in inauthentic language, to allow that different people find different meaning in the same words, i.e., different interpretations. This is common in all sorts of artistic expression, like lyric and poetry. What is implied in the nature of the parable is that your interpretation is the true, or authentic interpretation despite the fact that it is different from the interpretations of others, which are also true and authentic interpretations.

They always look parallel, and that's what matters to our intuitions. — andrewk

A line exists by definition, it is a defined thing. You can't see what it looks like, nor can you even imagine it. I think this throws everyone off, you can only know what it is, by its definition. The principles of geometry are definitions which must be adhered to in creating geometric forms. In the case of the parallel postulate we have the definition of "line", and also some defined relations between lines. There is the defined relation of parallel, and the defined relation between parallel lines which intersect another line. The parallel postulate holds, (is valid) only if one respects the various definitions which support it.

The idea of a "plane", and the relationship between planes is something created by definition, it cannot be sensed nor can it be imagined. In common use, "intuited" means directly apprehended by the mind. This is how these principles are understood. The key thing is to "understand" them, because whether or not they are "true", and how they relate to the physical world is irrelevant to understanding them. They just need to be understood to be used in construction in the physical world. But the fact that they are useful in the physical world justifies the claim that there is some sort of "truth" to them.

The parallel postulate does not say what, based on your post, you appear to think it says. — andrewk

Yes, it says just what I thought it says, I looked it up before I posted to make sure. It's all a matter of definition, and non-contradiction.

What I'm telling you is that in order to fulfill the criterion for your notion of "belief", one must think about one's own thought. Doing that requires complex(written) language use. Thus, according to your criterion for "belief", one cannot have belief until and unless one is already fairly affluent in language use. — creativesoul

Right, that's exactly what I am arguing.

As a matter of fact, if what you say here is true, when one first learns that that is(called) a "tree", s/he does not believe - cannot possibly believe - that that is there(whatever and wherever that may be). — creativesoul

Right, I would not call that a belief. When a child learns one's first words, "mommy" and "daddy", for example, I wouldn't say that the child believes these are things called "mommy" and "daddy". The child is just learning how to say things.

For fuck's sake, if what you say is true, then one cannot even believe that they have things called "thought" until they've already begun thinking about their thoughts... — creativesoul

Correct. Why is this a problem for you? It's nonsense to say that a person would believe oneself to have something called "thought" unless one was already thinking about thought. Would you say that a person could believe that there's something called a "tree" without having thought about a tree?

Seems to me that you've no idea what you're talking about. The notion of "belief" your working from is found lacking, wanting, and basically begging for truth. Everyday fact contradicts your notion, and yours isn't the only one...

Misuse of a term is neither determined by nor equivalent to being different from your use. I've just shown some of the issues with yours. All you've done is hand wave... Gratuitous assertions won't do Meta. It does not follow from the fact that you work from a different notion of "belief" that I am misusing the term. Take the semantic quibbling elsewhere... — creativesoul

As I said, you describe "belief" in your way, I describe it in my way. I think mine looks toward what "belief" really is, and yours just looks at common usage of "belief', which is varied and ambiguous. That's why I think mine is better, it provides a clear indication of what a belief is, while you just insist that if something is thinking, it has beliefs.

What seems to be the challenging philosophical issue is, however, the ontological status of the probability field. — Wayfarer

I really don't think that physics has an adequate concept of time. We know that the past consists of events which have already occurred, and the future consists of things which may happen (possibilities), while activity occurs at the present. Physics doesn't seem to have any principles which make sense of these facts.

So I submit, your honour, that the parallel postulate is not intuitive. — andrewk

The parallel postulate is simply true by the law of non-contradiction. Lines which do not meet are parallel lines. Lines which are not parallel meet. Anything else would be contradictory.

Exactly. So, when a person conforms or follows and has yet to transcend to become an autonomous agent, he is incapable of 'true love' because he simply cannot consciously and rationally understand what that actually is. He instead forms symbiotic attachments to people or objects based on his social environment that enables him to be accepted and congratulated as he seeks only to be loved. This 'anxiety' within him is telling him through his feelings that something is wrong with this, but he just doesn't get it. We are loving or moral by our very nature, but it only switches on or is authentic when we become conscious of our own existence and accept our separateness, thus when we become capable of thinking rationally. That is when we become aware of right kind of person and have the courage to go against our family or friends to follow our heart because we see the beauty in goodness and not what we have been taught to think is beautiful that we blindly follow and accept. — TimeLine

I see things differently. What you describe, I apprehend as only a first step toward transcendence. This recognizing oneself as an autonomous agent only puts one into a position of selfishness. The person has distanced oneself from the conforms of society in an effort to find one's true position. But that true position will not be found until the autonomous agent manages to establish a relationship back with society. So this maturing process must consist of both of these two steps, to avoid selfishness. Otherwise the autonomous agent who has broken the ties of conformity, to find one's true authentic being, would not re-establish any connections with society, isolating oneself like the Unabomber.

So the person who has broken these ties of conformity and found one's authentic being as an autonomous agent, must now find love to transcend one's own being and re-establish one's position in society. That's what's described in Plato's "Symposium"; Socrates in his education in love is taught to see the beauty in all the creations of humanity, all the institutions of society. What I described is that one has to find love within oneself, as an integral part of the autonomous agent. Once we recognize that there is such a thing as love, that it is real, within ourselves, and cannot be rationally negated, we see that even though it is inherent within our very being, it came from somewhere else. We can see that it came from our parents, and their love is responsible for our being. So the love which inheres within ourselves, as an integral part of the authentic, autonomous agent, came from somewhere else. I, the autonomous agent, did not create the love which is in me. And by recognizing that this love is real, the autonomous agent must recognize that the ties which one has to others goes far deeper than all the ties of social conformity which one is free to break, and which one actually breaks in becoming, and proving oneself to be an autonomous agent. The autonomous agent is the authentic being, but love as an essential part of the autonomous agent is the manifestation of a deep bond of unity which cannot be broken by the autonomous agent without a contrived and forceful denial of the reality of one's own love, which amounts to a deep self-deception.

Some people think that our memories are recorded and that when we reflect, we are rewinding and playing those moments as they are. This is not true. Our brains are dynamic, improving as we continue to learn and progress and when we reflect, we are reinterpreting, adding to existing gaps, forming connections that were never actually there in the first place. We continuously reconstruct our own memories and history and so, if you really think about it, there is even neuroscientifically an arrow of time that compels us forward as we progress and while our past experiences are embedded in this process, our memories are actually what you are at this very moment. There is no 'past' and 'we' are just symbols of our experiences. — TimeLine

Let's say our memory is like this. Each time one recalls a particular event, the event is reconstructed in the mind. The memory serves the self, so the authentic person has a desire to reconstruct the event exactly as it was, each time, thus preserving the event, in precision. The event is remembered much more clearly and precisely in mental images than it is in symbols like words, because the words can't capture everything, and they introduce ambiguity. So the authentic, autonomous agent, desires to remember things precisely as they were, in images, while the inauthentic puts words to the images, seeking a technique to communicate the event to others, rather than seeking to remember the event precisely as it was. So using words or symbols as a memory aid is an element of inauthenticity, and the inauthenticity is evident from the way that people embellish the events by changing the words in small ways.

Once the words are set to the memory, describing the event, the words are easier to remember than the images, and the authentic mind succumbs to the pressure of the inauthentic, giving up the images and the corresponding precision, allowing the event to be remembered in words. This bears heavily on your statement "There is no 'past' and 'we' are just symbols of our experiences.". If we are just "symbols" of our experience, then are we authentic, or are we inauthentic symbols? Do we symbolize our experience in images or in representations of those images, words? This is why Plato dismissed the narrative as unreal untrustworthy, and something to be avoided, because it is removed from reality by two places.

I would only point out here that Meta is not drawing the crucial distinction between thought, belief, and thinking about thought and belief...

Same problem historically that epistemology has succumbed to...

The logical consequence is either non linguistic agents have no belief or propositions are prior to language. Neither is acceptable. — creativesoul

What I am saying is that what is required to fulfill the conditions of what we understand by "belief", is thinking about thought. This is the only thing which can bring about the conviction required by what we understand as "belief". If this produces the conclusion that non linguistic agents have no belief, then you ought to accept this, instead of trying to characterize some type of thinking which does not suffice to fulfill the conditions of "belief" as belief. Calling that type of thinking "belief" is nothing but a misuse of the word.

Are you saying that this is evidence against what I am saying? Are you suggesting that your kids can't understand me? — unenlightened

No, what I am saying is that the will to be indoctrinated is just as necessary to the process of indoctrination as the actions of the indoctrinators, as an essential part of indoctrination. And that's why justification of the indoctrination, on the part of the indoctrinators is necessary. Without justification the will to be indoctrinated is lost and there is no success for the indoctrinators. If you want to indoctrinate children on language use, then they need to be shown the benefits of language use. You cannot just insist that the benefits are self-evident, because prior to being shown the benefits, the child would not know the benefits. This is what justifies the indoctrination, being shown the benefits of it, and without that justification there would be no success for the indoctrinators, because the will to be indoctrinated would be lost.

I don't think you are free to make up the meaning of words, rather you are obliged to adhere to the meanings assigned by the community. — unenlightened

Hmm, why don't you come and teach that lesson to my kids, then I might start to understand some of their contrary terminology. I think, that just like we are free to act morally or immorally, we are also free to use the words however we like. But consequences follow from our actions, and these consequences define what you'd call our obligations. In reality, the so-called obligations are nothing but a desire for positive consequences.

(2*) The concept of a being that necessarily exists is logically coherent. — PossibleAaran

Actually, it is not all that clear what it means to say "The concept of a being that necessarily exists is logically coherent." I hold the same opinion as you regarding necessary existents: with no constraints on possible worlds other than the rules of logical inference, there should not be any. — SophistiCat

The "constraints on possible worlds" which is referred to here, is nothing more than the assumption of an actual world. As soon as we assume that there is an actual world, then all other possible worlds are constrained in the sense of being other than the supposed actual world. So the assumption of an actual world imposes this necessity on to all possible worlds.

Whether this assumption, that there is one world (the actual world) which has a completely different status from all the other possible worlds is "logically coherent", is highly doubtful. If one possible world is given the status of "actual world", this distinguishes it from the others, and it may be logically incoherent to categorize it as one of the possible worlds. It has been distinguished as other than the possible worlds. So it appears like we're stuck with the option of either accepting that all possible worlds are equally possible worlds, with no actual world, and no such thing as a being which necessarily exists, or else we have a designated actual world, but whatever it is that is made necessary by this designation of "actual world", is irrelevant to all the possible worlds, because of the designated difference between the actual world and the possible worlds.

No. to teach someone a language is not to justify anything to them, it is to indoctrinate them into a community. — unenlightened

So you don't think that the will is free? You believe that we learn by being indoctrinated rather than through the will to understand? If we learn by understanding, then those principles must be justified or else they would not be understood. If we learn by being indoctrinated then the principles are accepted as necessary without being understood.

is self-evident that I am responding to you, and that the language of my response is English. You can see for yourself that it is so, or you will be able to when I have posted my comment. It might not be self-evident to someone who does not speak English, but since I speak English it is evident to me that you speak English, and thus it will be evident to you that I am speaking English. If an infant were to see these posts, it would not be evident that a discourse was going on, they would see a rather dull screen. So in this sense, things only become self-evident in the light of other things of experience. However, the light of experience fully entitles me to conclude that English does not get written by accident, and thus that you speak English and we are not going to argue about that. — unenlightened

So it's self-evident to those who see it as self-evident, and not self-evident to those who do not see it as self-evident. How does that help MindForged with the problem described? This seems to be a description of the same problem. Some people insist that something is self-evident while others do not see it as self-evident. Wouldn't the person claiming self-evidence be required to justify it, to demonstrate self-evidence, rather than just asserting self-evidence? Then this would refute the claim that the self-evident doesn't need to be justified. It doesn't need to be justified only to those who see it as self-evident. But there will always be those children, or speakers of different languages, who do not see it as self-evident, so the self-evident will always need to be justified.

Just because we do not understand what we are saying to ourselves through our feelings does not mean it makes no sense, but it makes no sense only because we are not rational enough to understand ourselves independent from the social conditions. — TimeLine

All right, I can accept this principle. When it appears like love, internal feelings, emotions, and things of the subconscious are illogical and irrational, it is not really the case that they are, what is really the case is that the conscious mind is being irrational by trying to understand them through principles which do not apply. Love is not really contrary to reason at all, it's just that the rational mind hasn't developed the principles required to properly understand it, so it attempts to understand with principles that are not suited. Because love doesn't conform to these principles, it appears to be irrational, when in reality the mind is being irrational.

So for instance, these things in the category of becoming, like matter and potency, which Aristotle demonstrated defy the law of excluded middle, are not really irrational or illogical at all, it's just that the conscious mind would be irrational if trying to understand them with conventional logic. The development of modal logic for example, would render these things intelligible. What about love then? As Plato described, it is derived from this category of becoming, but it has a deeper element which expresses, or displays the beauty of its true essence in creativity. From sexual reproduction through all artistic endeavours, to the creation of mores, social customs and institutions, the beauty of love's creations is there for the rational mind to observe and behold. What kind of principles can the rational mind adopt, to comprehend this seemingly incomprehensible beauty?

That's why Plato turned to "the good", because the good makes all the beauty of creation intelligible. It gives a reason to this creativity, it is good. But by doing this we open up a pitfall for ourselves. Unless we can say what it is good for, then "the good" of all these beautiful creations, i.e. the claim that they are "good", is just deception. Under this guise of deception, love is lost, and all these beautiful things become very ugly.

Love can only be possible under autonomous conditions and so many people believe love is somehow unconditional. If that were so, why - realistically - are there so many examples of how unsuccessful love is, of how miserable people can be in relationships, or how obvious it is that it is not lasting? People form attachments based on false perceptions that they have conformed to from their social environment because they are consistently told that love is irrational or illogical, that it is beyond them in someway, given to them and that they must sacrifice themselves and let things be. — TimeLine

If we allow that true love is not unconditional, then we must give a reason for love. As is evident from what Socrates has learned from Diotima, the reason for love is creation. Where love is evident to us is in the beauty of things which are created. So we can infer that love is behind, as inspiration for the creation of these beautiful things. Love creates. Of course that is most evident in the creation of children, but as Socrates indicated it takes teaching to learn to see the love behind all the other created things, right up to the institutions of humanity. They are all inspired by love.

If people are unsuccessful in love, as you describe, then these people misunderstand love, and are expecting the wrong thing from it. As we said earlier, love is not well taught in our society, so our social environment does not really prepare us for love. If one approaches love without the true perspective, which is the desire to create something beautiful, then that individual has no idea of what they want from love, and could get locked into a relationship of forever searching for what love can give, finding nothing, being miserable and frustrated. If one approaches love with the true perspective, then that individual will judge the potential partner for their merits and capacity for creating that thing of beauty which is desired, just like the artist chooses the palette. The artist knows the right and wrong colours, and if the wrong colour has been chosen, takes measures to correct the mistake immediately. But if the artist has no idea of what is being created on the canvas, how could the artist know whether the colour is the right or wrong colour? Likewise, if the lover has no idea of what is wanted from the relationship, the beautiful thing to be created, how can that lover know if the beloved is the right or wrong person.

You can only give love to the world rationally or appropriately when you have learnt to love and respect yourself, because only then are you even capable of giving love. Otherwise, how you give love is faux, adapting to the social requisites and indoctrinated perceptions given to you. The problem with your view about this whole negation of one's autonomy is that you assume the latter (to love yourself) to be a type of self-conceit or arrogance, probably because you have mistaken the vast majority of people who are conceited to love themselves, that, and moral worthiness to be a type of self-sacrifice or meekness and solitude. — TimeLine

Contrary to what you say here, I perceive that in our society there are virtually no social requisites, no indoctrinated perceptions of love. The perceptions of love in the population are so varied and scattered that there is no convention, no indoctrination. Not only does this leave the autonomous individual with no clear approach to relationships with others, but also no approach to what it means "to love and respect yourself". So it is one thing to say that the lover must learn how to love and respect oneself before being able to give love, but if that person has not been taught what it means to give love, how can that person give it to oneself? Where does the person ever learn this, except from the love which has been given to that person as a child? And in recognizing that the love necessarily came from someone else, the person's autonomy must be surrendered in order that the individual can recognize and understand what love is. The person cannot love oneself without understanding what love is. This requires learning what love is. And learning what love is is to see that my very existence is dependent on the love of others. To understand what love is is to surrender one's autonomy. That is where we have to accept as a rational principle, that which appears to the conscious mind as irrational, making the rational mind conform to love instead of doing the inverse which is impossible. If you fail to surrender your autonomy, then you have failed in learning what love is, and you will fail in any attempt to love yourself.

While love is paradoxical, it is a result of the human condition, of us being capable or being aware of our own existence. — TimeLine

To be aware of one's own being is to be aware of the conditions of becoming. This is to be aware that one's being has come from something else. Our existence is dependent on those who brought us into this world, so when we consider temporal extension, autonomy is an illusion. Our autonomy, our freedom, is a function of the present moment. Descartes misleads us, saying I am at the present moment thinking, therefore "I am". But this "I am", of the present moment is not being at all, it's just a moment of becoming as described by Hegel. Being, existing, is to have temporal extension. To be aware of one's own existence is to be aware of one's place in time, to be aware that one's self is just a moment of becoming in the temporal extension prior to one's self, and posterior to one's self. Phenomenology is very relevant. Descartes misrepresented his own existence. He wanted to be, so he represented "I want to be" with "I am". But saying what you want, doesn't make it so, and that is why some form of phenomenology is more appropriate for understanding the true human condition.

When you are trapped in a mind conformed to social requirements as per your learning, one continues to "love" only specific people or objects and it is usually those who "love" them return (which is really just acceptance or a type of social congratulations for following these unwritten rules), and that gives one that sense of unity because such social acceptance alleviates the anxiety we feel since it enables or justifies our conformism and silences our desire for autonomy. — TimeLine

You seem to be blind to the true role of love in our society, and that is its creative power. Did your mother not love you? Do you not attribute your existence to the love of your parents? How can you deny this biological unity between you and your parents, as if love were nothing more than a social convention? Is this not a real biological unity to you? And is love not an aspect of this biological unity? If love is an aspect of this biological unity, how can you portray it as social convention and unwritten rules? Clearly love cannot be described in terms of "social requirements", "social congratulations", or "social acceptance", because it is a feature of the biology of the organism, not a feature of society. Social institutions are a creation of love.

When you are elevated to a level of autonomous agency and begin identifying with the world independently, you are capable of true love and this is love to all things and not objects. This capacity to give love to all things is really defined as moral consciousness, and so that feeling within is real or authentic. What that means is that when you have learnt to give love rather than want love, you are actually being loving and not falsely. — TimeLine

So I would assume that to elevate oneself to the level of autonomous agency is to apprehend oneself as a biological organism. To truly understand love, is to perceive it as a property of the biological organism. So to be capable of true love is to be capable of loving according to what is appropriate to the biology of the particular organism, and this is regardless of social conformities, and social requirements, etc.. Then all these social conventions ought to conform to true love, otherwise they'll become irrational principles, by which we'll be attempting to understand love through principles which are inapplicable.

An autonomous agent can see or perceive the world correctly and they can see that most people are blindly conforming. This is very isolating. I have always said that no one can see me for this reason. As true love or moral consciousness is to love all things and not something specific, all things are symbolic of the form of Good. — TimeLine

And if I understand you correctly, you are saying we ought to follow love, which is a property of each individual biological organism, rather than blindly conforming to social conventions. It would be this blind conformation, to principles which are not necessarily consistent with the love that the individual has, which causes confusion and anxiety for the person.

This unity is symbolic. — TimeLine

The unity is not really symbolic though, it is a real unity of dependence. The created is dependent on the creator. The relationship between them is love, and it is not merely symbolic. Suppose you desire a relationship of love. This is a desire to create something beautiful, a loving relationship. If it comes about, in the future, that you create this beautiful relationship, then the you of the past is still real as creator of this thing of beauty in a relationship with it, which is more than symbolic. it is a relationship of dependence.

I have said earlier that no one can see me because I have yet to meet a man that is not blindly following in some way, neither have I met a man who has the courage to let go of his past as well as his social conditions to improve himself and epitomise this form of Good - to be capable of giving love through virtue, righteousness, justice - rather than focusing his attention to try and be lovable through power, popularity or money. — TimeLine

Perhaps you should not include letting go of the past, as a condition. There is always a relationship of dependency between the past and the present, as well as the present and the future, and this makes us who we are. It is not to assert determinism, and deny the possibility of change, but to recognize that we are biological organisms. We cannot change the biology of the person to be according to rational principles, so we need to change our rational principles to be in harmony with the biology of the person.

The same beliefs can be framed in different languages. Languages cannot be fallible or infallible they are just tools, just know-how. We cannot frame a belief without a language, but it doesn't follow from this that we cannot believe without a language. — Janus

So the belief is framed by language. I assume then, that know-how is required to frame a belief. With know-how we put a belief into language.

So I don't understand what a belief is then. My beliefs are in language, I believe this, and I believe that, all statements of language. They are formed in language and they exist in language. Never do they exist in any other form, needing to be framed in language, because they are created in language. How do you think that the belief is framed in language, when the belief itself is created out of language?

Your 'operating machinery' example is not relevant; the kinds of failures you are referring to are failures of attention, not failures of know-how. — Janus

Well that's nonsense. A failure in attending to what you are doing, when you are doing it, is obviously a failure in your know-how. What could 'know-how" be, other than the capacity to attend to what you are doing, and get it done? If you can't attend to it and get it done, then clearly you don't have the know-how. Being able to focus your attention on the task at hand is an integral part of know-how.

There is no fallibility in knowing-how, but only in believing that you know-how; if you know-how, then you know-how, end of story. — Janus

OK, that's your assertion then. If someone has the know-how to carry out a particular procedure, then it is impossible that the person will ever make a mistake, and fail in carrying out that procedure. However, evidence demonstrates that this assertion is wrong. People make mistakes and fail in tasks that they have already been successful at numerous times before. And to say that the person's failure is a failure of something other than the person's know-how, like a failure in the person's attention, is just nonsense. Because if in some instance, the person cannot maintain one's attention long enough to get the job done, then that's a failure in the person's capacity to do the job, and therefore a failure in the person's know-how.

In Kant, intuition is something closer to what we mean in common language by perception. — Agustino

Still the same issue, sensation is necessary for perception, so space, as a perception cannot provide the condition for the possibility of sensation. The ;logical order is reversed.

So pure intuition refers to the perception of space and time. — Agustino

"Perception of space and time" implies that there are these things, "space" and "time" which are being perceived. Either they are perceived through the senses (sense objects), or they are perceived directly by the mind (intuitions). If the latter, then the problem I indicated in my last post stands. These intuitions cannot provide the condition for the possibility of sensation because sensation is prior to intuition.

"The pure form of sensibility I shall call pure intuition" — Agustino

So this is meaningless nonsense, it's unintelligible, incomprehensible.

Kant goes through the thought experiment of taking all sensations away, "heavy", "red", etc. and finds that he cannot get rid of space. Even when one imagines nothing, one imagines that nothing in space. — Agustino

This thought experiment is faulty, because he has already had these sensations. So he cannot put himself in a place of never having had these sensations, therefore he cannot make any determinations about the conditions for the possibility of sensations in this way.

We have this form of pure intuition, space, from which we derive the axioms of geometry. — Agustino

Kant talks of space (and time) in the Transcendental Aesthetic, and labels them as forms of the sensibility (as opposed to the matter or content of the sensibility, the sensations themselves), which comes before he goes into the categories of the Understanding. — Agustino

I apprehend some inconsistency here. In the first, you describe space as a "form of pure intuition". In the second you describe space as one of the "forms of sensibility".

As a form of "sensibility", I would assume that space is a condition for the possibility of sensation. But "intuition" I would think only arises from a being which has sensation. So if space is an intuition, then sensation would be prior to space as an "intuition".

Therefore one or the other cannot be correct. Either space is an intuition, in which case it occurs after sensation, or, space is a condition for the possibility of sensation, in which case it is prior to sensation and cannot be an intuition, which only occurs to creatures which already have sensation.

Edit: This is probably why there is such variance in interpretation of Kant on this issue.

Here's the problem creativesoul. You say there must be a "baseline". Sam26 says there must be "hinge-propositions". I think that you guys are just making up names to account for something that you don't understand, so that your names really just indicate misunderstanding.

Suppose I see the sun set in the west in the evening, and rise in the east in the morning, so I claim that a "dragon" carries the sun around from its setting point to its rising point every night. This word, "dragon" refers to my explanation of what happens to the sun every night, just like "baseline" and "hinge-proposition" refer to what is foundational to epistemology. They are nothing but words which refer to non-existent nonsense, indicating that the people using these words misunderstand what is really going on.

We clearly haven't determined what counts as a belief. So what makes you think that anyone has determined what counts as an imbecile?

What is really the case is that we assume that there is such a thing as an "imbecile", that there is such a thing as a "belief", that there is such a thing as a "world view", that there is such a thing as a "baseline", because people use these words. But such assumptions don't make it true that one can say without a doubt, what an "imbecile", a "belief", a "world view", or a "baseline" is. Nor do these assumptions make it true that there even is such things.

One cannot be thinking without drawing correlations... nor believing... nor doubting... nor imagining...

One can be considering while suspending one's judgment. In this case, it is described as thinking. I've no issue with that kind of talk. There is no thought without belief.

All correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content, no matter how it is later qualified(imaginary, real, or otherwise)... — creativesoul

Let's say that thinking is drawing correlations. One can do this without believing. The content is memories. Belief is a certain type of judgement, such that not every judgement is a belief. The judgement which results in an action doesn't necessarily require belief. Knowing-how doesn't necessarily imply belief.

I'm not interested in quibbling over the differences between uses of "thought" and "belief". There are often times that those words mean different things. There are no cases of either that do not consist entirely of correlations. Ultimately, I draw and maintain a distinction between thinking(as just considering) and believing(as already considered and decided).

Memory is re-drawing and/or revisiting past correlations... and is notably error prone. — creativesoul

The issue is to establish some criteria to determine what qualifies as "belief". There is much mental activity, and we need to make some distinctions, to proceed in an analysis or else we just assume that all mental activity requires belief. If we don't want to assume all mental activity involves belief, then we need to make some distinctions.

Memory is a good place to start. I think you would agree that not all memories qualify as beliefs. But if we revisit our memories, dwell on them, correlate them to other memories, and pass a type of judgement, then maybe we have formed a belief.

However, learning the names of things requires believing that something is there... One cannot doubt that that is(called) "a tree", while learning how to use the words... There is no just considering whether or not that is a tree during language acquisition. Rather, one first draws a correlation between the tree and the vocalization(the word)... and it's meaningful as a result. — creativesoul

I don't agree with this use of "believing that something is there". If "believing" in this sense constitutes "belief", then I think all mental activity would require belief. That is because there could be no content without believing that something is there. Consider dreaming for example, there is a form of certitude, of "believing that something is there", which is proper to dreaming. The dreamer is convinced, within the dream, that all these things are really happening. But this type of certitude, whatever it is, is extremely fallible, so I wouldn't class it as "belief".

So I do not believe that learning the names of things requires "believing that something is there". All it requires is the experience, the same type of experience as dreaming, and the same type of certitude, that I am experiencing something, which we have in dreaming. I would not call this belief, it is just a basic aspect of mental activity. The difference though, is that in learning words, we have people demonstrating the use of words. And contrary to your claim, we can and do doubt that that is called a "tree" when learning a language, because we are exposed to many different people using the language in many different ways. So if one person calls it a tree, and another a shrub, there is doubt.

If you doubt that that is a tree, then you simply do not know how to use the words... — creativesoul

Right, there is doubt which precedes the use of words. And the use of words is filled with doubt. Anytime you have to think about what to say, prior to saying it, this is doubt. So the idea that we cannot doubt the "baseline" is just nonsense. There really is no such baseline, or hinge propositions, there is just the shifting sands of language use. It's all shifting because of doubt.

So, the child has lost it's toy. S/he looks here and there. S/he obviously looks where s/he believes it will be found and no place where s/he does not believe it will be. — creativesoul

Again, I do not think that this is a proper use of "believe". The child has memories. The child thinks about where the toy might be, and looks there, behaving according to memories. But the toy is lost to the child. The child has no belief about where the toy is. This is the same thing as your examples of Jack the cat. Jack has memories concerning the food dish, and acts accordingly, but Jack has no belief about this. If we use "belief" in this way, we'll only find that all mental activity requires belief, because all mental activity requires content, and you just refer to all content as belief.

I think that belief requires a high level of stability in the mental content to produce the conviction required for what we call "belief". This stability is only provided for by the use of words, as things which maintain the same appearance time and time again. Prior to the use of words, memory could only consist of mental images, which would be very hard to maintain because of the detail, and differences, therefore very fallible as you say. So I think that "belief" in the proper sense of the word, referring to conviction and certitude with significant temporal extension, can only be understood as a result of the use of words.

As I finish writing this, I now see that the key here is the temporal extension. There is a certitude which accompanies the immediate experience of "now", and this is the certitude found in the dream, the certitude of "believing that something is there". But I think that this is not "belief". Then there is the certitude of a very recent memory, what just happened. And neither is this "belief". "Belief" refers to a certitude or conviction which maintains stability over time. If we dismiss this requirement, of temporal extension, then all the certitude, beginning with the certitude that I am experiencing something right now, is belief, and all mental activity is composed of belief.

Suppose D is true.

That means there are NO truths but...

that means D too is a falsehood.

A contradiction D & ~D — TheMadFool

Evidence that the law of non-contradiction is dubious.

And yet ALL doubt is belief based. Therefore, until one holds some belief doubting is itself humanly impossible. Until one has a baseline of belief to doubt, doubting cannot happen. The baseline is comprised of belief that hasn't been doubted for it cannot be... yet. — creativesoul

I don't agree, but this is only because you and I wouldn't agree on what describes "belief". I think that a living being can think without holding belief. And I think that if we allow a distinction between memory and belief, then a lot of what you describe as belief is actually thinking without belief. I also think that doubting is more closely related to thinking than to believing so that one could be thinking and doubting without believing.

It doesn't follow from the fact that know-how is required to frame beliefs that particular beliefs are reducible to know-how. If you think it does then produce an argument. — Janus

You'll need to clarify what you mean by "frame beliefs". I don't apprehend a difference between a belief and the frame of a belief. What could frame a belief, but another belief. And if this is the case, the framed belief, being supported by the frame, is just as fallible as the frame.

I can say that knowing that, for example knowing that Paris is the capital of France, is reducible to knowing how to speak English, and knowing how to interpret maps, or travel to France or to do whatever I did to acquire the knowledge and represent it to myself. Believing has an extra element, which is the uncertainty inherent in the fallibility of a belief. — Janus

The uncertainty, which you say is an extra element of belief, not found in knowing-how, is actually very evident in knowing-how as well. No matter how many times we've done the same thing over and over again, there is still the possibility we might fail in the next time. That is why those of us who work with machinery must be very careful every day, and never let down our guard, no matter how well we know how to do what we do, lest we be injured.

How can you reduce that uncertainty to know-how when it is on the contrary a not-knowing-how to achieve the certainty of knowledge? — Janus

As I argued earlier, the certainty of knowledge is only produced by separating knowing-that from knowing-how, and allowing that knowing-that obtains levels of certainty not obtained by knowing-how. If you reduce all knowledge to knowing-how, then all knowledge suffers from the fallibility of knowing-how.

Knowing that is reducible to knowing how, but believing is not. — Janus

Tell that to Banno. who says that belief is demonstrated by actions.

Believing that, with sufficient practice, you will be able to acquire the know-how necessary to ride a bike, or speak a language, is not itself know-how; although of course it presupposes other kinds of know-how that are necessary in order to be able to frame the belief. — Janus

The belief you describe here, is itself a know-how, it is just not a knowing how to ride a bike, as you admit when you say "other kinds of know-how that are necessary in order to frame the belief". How could the belief be anything other than these different kinds of know-how?

I don't get your argument, it seems senseless. You claim that all cases of knowing-that are reducible to knowing-how, but belief is not. So do you think that a person can believe without knowing how to believe?

Are you certain of that? — Banno

Definitely not. I've seen you guys go around in circles for weeks before, but I'm thinking maybe this time there will be a break through.

The mistake you are making consists in thinking that hinge propositions are beliefs. As I explain above they are not; they are know-how. "Proposition" is a bad choice of term here. — Janus

Same thing. Haven't you been reading the discussion? Beliefs are know-how.

Soon the rest of you will get to the point of recognizing that no belief, no matter how convicted one is of it, nor the description of one's belief, is beyond doubt. Then you'll have to revisit hinge-propositions and certainty all over again.

Love is not something independent of us and while indeed our will or motivation enables concepts to be authentic or genuine, it returns back to our original discussion about anxiety and the heart. What we feel without words is our 'real' self embedded into our subjective or intuitive emotions that we cannot articulate or describe. I believe that the root of all anxiety lies in our unwillingness to accept or understand our separateness or autonomy and when we start to become conscious of our self-awareness, without the right mechanisms to enable a proper transcendence toward becoming an autonomous agent, anxiety is thus borne. The responsibility of our aloneness is too difficult to accept because that would mean that everything - including how we interpret our experiences - are translations that have been given to us and not 'real' (since our will or motivation enables authenticity). — TimeLine

I think it may be a mistake to describe "love" in this one-sided, subjective way, as if it were a part of one's autonomy. In reality love is always two-sided, the lover and the beloved, and this makes love more like a part of something which negates one's autonomy, it connects us. The lover is always loving another, and this creates a connection with the other. Also, if we ask where did the love that a person has, come from, we look back to see that the individual was borne into this world by the love of others, such that the person's existence, one's very being, is dependent on this giving of love, from others before and after birth. So love cannot be an aspect of our "separateness or autonomy", it ought to be understood as an aspect of our connectedness and unity.

Have you read Plato's "Symposium"? If not, you should, it's very beautifully written with layers of subtleties (as is Plato's style), making it a fine read. The participants are reclined on couches, in a particular order around the room, and after having their lips sufficiently plied with wine they decide to follow this particular order, with each member producing a story to describe Love. The duality of love is quickly exposed, and one person produces a myth about people having been cut in half in ancient times, by the god of Love, so people are now always longing to find their other half. When it comes to Socrates' turn, he says I had a teacher Diotima who taught me about love affairs, so I'm not going to tell you myths or stories, I'm going to tell you the truth about love.

First he describes how love is in the middle between have and have-not. This is important because it demonstrates how love is not derived from the rational mind, it is actually contrary to reason. You can see why it is irrational because it defies the law of excluded middle. Aristotle later categorized as "becoming" all those things which defy the law of excluded middle, and characterized these things with "potency" in his biology, and "matter" in his physics. So "love" refers to a person's position in becoming, between not-having and having, and this describes its relationship with desire.

Moving on, Socrates describes what it is that is desired, and that is the beautiful. So there is a relationship between the lover and the thing loved such that the thing loved is the beautiful. Love lies between the subject and the object which the lover apprehends as beautiful. This is very similar to Plato's later renditions of "the good". But "the beautiful" is the raw form, without the implications of utility or pragmatic concerns of 'the good", so the beautiful is more primitive, and more representative of the irrational nature of love. Further, Socrtaes has been taught by Diotima to recognize beauty itself, as something brought about by the creative act of love. The person apprehends the object of desire as beautiful, and acts to bring that object of beauty into existence through creation. An individual may have a desire to procreate, and this act of bringing to life children, creates something beautiful. Also, an individual may have the desire to make something, produce something, or achieve something, and this also creates beauty. The climax of the story is reached when the student of love recognizes that all these acts of creation produce something beautiful by means of being the same type of act, creating, apprehending that all created things partake in the Idea of the beautiful. Then the beauty of all human products and institutions may be apprehended as partaking in this same beauty, the beauty of creation.

For Plato, this describes the relation between our temporal selves, and the eternal, the desire to create. And we can see three levels of the desire to create (love); to procreate extends one's temporal existence through one's offspring; to be an artificer extends one's temporal existence through the artifact created; and to be a creator of ideas extends one's temporal existence through the social conventions and institutions represented by those ideas. The artificial is the authentic, in the sense that there can be no doubt that it is of the author.

Yet, none of them know how to be loving, to give love - just like how they cannot think for themselves - because to know how to be loving or to give love, one needs to transcend to that level of autonomy - they need to be able to think for themselves and dislocate their attachments to the people in their environment. You need to accept that you are alone. You are separate and no unity is ever really possible - this is rational - and that in our separateness we are only a part of the overall whole and thus symbolically there is unity. Our attachments should thus be to Forms - concepts like goodness, virtue, righteousness - as we endeavour to improve ourselves through the external world and that is how we learn to give love and not to an object. — TimeLine

So I see this in the very opposite way as you. Transcendence is to go beyond that level of autonomy, to find the unity with others, that inheres within each of us, which is implied by the existence of love, art, creation, and all that is artificial. It all appears as irrational and unintelligible to the rational human mind which depends on reason for guidance, because love is of the realm of becoming and cannot be comprehended by the logic of the rational mind. But when we turn to love we gain an approach to artistry, production, and creating, our relationship with temporal existence, and the true unity which love is an aspect of.

If there is unity possible, it is only when you meet someone conscious as you are, who is also independent and autonomous and who understands what this transcendence implies, which is the will or motivation to moral giving. Two such people are capable of giving love and share in this experience of improving themselves through one another. They are not compelled by false or inauthentic drives to conform into society and lose the self along the way. They are both rational, autonomous agents who form a friendship that share the same understanding and this friendship is forever - symbolically - and if they share experiences of sexual, emotional and economical unity together, despite knowing it is fleeting and can end, nevertheless will continue to care for one another because they know how to give love.

They love the other person because they symbolically represent or epitomise those Forms or concepts - goodness, virtue, righteousness - and so you admire them for who they are, just as much as you would feel overjoyed seeing good things happen. — TimeLine

Now society with its laws of conformation is itself a creation, created by love. It is created by autonomous and independent individuals who are driven by love, the apprehension of temporal existence, and the underlying unity which is responsible for the creation of their own being and existence. These laws provide us with a created, rational approach to all which lies around us, the natural world. The autonomous, rational human being adheres to the fixed laws, as one's relationship with the eternal, the eternal laws of nature, in its effort at timeless enterprise. But the natural world is a world of matter, potential, and becoming, so the timeless enterprise of eternal laws is not real, it's an illusion, being itself a creation of human minds. So the rational mind may be drawn into a realm of self-deception, unable to pull out from this false conception of the eternal.

The rational mind thinks according to the laws of logic, in terms of have and have not, is and is not, and deceives itself into thinking that this "must be the case", that all questions of truth are answerable with is or is not. In this way it is in complete ignorance of the truth and reality of temporal existence. In reality, what "must be the case" is only relevant to the past. In relation to the future, there is no such thing as what "must be the case". The rational mind of the autonomous self is lost in contradiction, believing oneself to have freedom, yet at the very same time not believing the principle which allows for freedom, that with respect to the future there is no such thing as what "must be the case".

Now anxiety is manifest because the rational mind is trapped within the self-deception of attempting to determine what cannot be determined. Anxiety is the result of a trap which the rational mind sets for itself, by not having respect for the potency and power of time. The rational mind apprehends time as something to be subdued and rendered rational, under the precepts of timeless principles. But being a falsity, this frustrates the mind to no end. By turning to the irrational "love", the rational mind gets a true glimpse at the irrational nature of time through creation and temporal existence, becoming, thus allowing for a comprehension of temporal existence which otherwise would be incomprehensible as irrational. Ultimately, the irrational "love" must be allowed to overrule the rational autonomous mind of the individual, to rid oneself of the self-deception, and provide a true temporal perspective, if the rational mind has become frustrated by these rational principles which are contrary to the truth. Following logical principles which are untrue is a sign of an unhealthy soul. Turning the mind toward love, though it is irrational, is to turn the mind toward truth.

The problem as I pointed out to Banno, was that the concept belief doesn't get it's meaning from the private mental happening. — Sam26

Judging by the discussion in this thread, there is no such thing as "the concept belief". Doubt is clearly warranted.

But I'm interested to hear from people who defend the rights of racists to speak, to try and understand how they reconcile the apparent paradox, are we presuming people decide mostly on rationality or social influence, and if the latter, how are we deciding what kind of influence de-platforming will have? — Pseudonym

This is a problem with democracy in general, the idea that people might rationally decide who ought to rule them. The real reasons for why individuals choose what they do, are not clear. Plato compared the voting public to children. One cook offers them a healthy meal, the other offers them candy, and they choose the latter. People do not decide "mostly on rationality". Nor do they decide mostly on "social influence". A decision is a confluence of many particulars, from within, and from outside..

Oh, sorry for the misunderstanding. I was trying to be sure of what you were saying so I took dictionary definitions. I suppose you have an idiosyncratic understanding of these words?

A belief is a firm opinion, a conviction. To expect is to regard as likely a future occurrence. A correlation is a mutual relation or dependency of two things.

If I understand you correctly, you say that the cat with its mind, recognizes a relation between two things. Because of this it considers a future occurrence to be likely. This you consider is a firm opinion, a conviction, belief.

How does "doubt" relate to this scheme? When the cat considers as likely, the future occurrence, does it still respect the possibility that the occurrence may not happen? When a person has a belief, a firm opinion or conviction, does that person still accept the possibility that it may be false?

Love is a part of our rational faculty and there are conditions that are necessary before it can transcend to a level of authenticity to be rendered as 'true love' where two people embody all the forms of love through one another. Almost everyone believes that love is spontaneous and that if it were to be rationally applied it must therefore be in contravention of this 'real' but that is just an imagined or delusional way we fool ourselves into forming bonds with people to escape from our loneliness. The 'real' here is that the emotional bond or attachment we have and so conversely when people attach for economic or sexual reasons they actually lack 'love' and when you focus on this latter example, it is lacking in humanity or what makes us human. There is no 'love' in a trophy wife or girlfriend, there is no 'love' for a man who works and brings home the money. The question is how can we form this bond rationally and with authenticity? — TimeLine

I'm inclined to disagree. I don't see how love could be part of the rational faculty. Conventional wisdom tells us love is of the heart, not of the mind. To me, love is an affection which inspires an attitude of giving toward others. In order that it is true love, this goodwill towards another cannot be motivated by any expectation of receiving anything in return. The motivation for the acts of love is the affection, the love itself. So the reason for the occurrence of loving acts is the love itself, but there cannot be a reason for the love because this would imply that the love was motivated by something else. The love cannot be motivated by something else because it would not be true love to expect that the love would bring something in return.

Where I look to find the exemplar of true love is in the love which a parent has for a child. Does a mother love her baby because she thinks that it's rational to do this? One might argue that the mother rationally apprehends that the baby needs love, and is therefore driven by her rational mind to love the baby, but I don't think that this is the case. I think that the mother is driven by the affection itself, the feeling of love, not by the rational faculty telling her that the baby needs love.

So here's the question to ask concerning the relationship between love and the emotional bond. Is it really the case that love causes bonds between us, or do the bonds between us pre-exist causing love within us. If it's not the rational faculty which motivates us to love, then there must be some sort of pre-existing bond which is the cause of love. We can't truthfully say that love causes the bond because then there would be no motivation to love in the first place. So the bond must pre-exist in some manner, as the cause of love.

We begin to choose for ourselves and this autonomy enables us to remove toxic people from our lives despite having emotional attachments to them, it makes us choose people to associate with that are worthy and that you feel good when you are around. — TimeLine

I would say that this is where rationality comes into play. if the bonds which we have toward others pre-exist the love which we have for others, then we would be naturally inclined toward loving every other person as having some type of bond with those people. But the rational mind tells us that this is not good, it tells us that we ought to be discerning in deciding who is worthy of our love.

What makes us human or gives us humanity is our moral substance, this empathy or ability to care for others, so it is about giving love and not specifically to an object but the rational application of being empathetic, caring, desirous to see the negative improve. Love is moral consciousness and this is impossible if one blindly follows the herd, thus being an autonomous agent in order to be rationally self-aware is a pre-condition to this moral consciousness. One cannot love unless they are an autonomous agent and when we authentically and consciously understand how to give love, it reshapes our perceptions of the external world. Which means, we begin to see the world differently that we are no longer what we once were; transcendence from blind conformism. — TimeLine

I would agree that we are autonomous agents, but at some deep internal level, we are already bound to others, and this bond causes use to feel love for others. So we are free, but our freedom is bounded, restricted by love. The need to love is as deep as the freedom itself and it limits our freedom. So the empathy we have toward others, the need to care for others, the love we have for them, is restricting the freedom of the autonomous agent. The conscious, rational, mind is caught in the middle, trying to make sense of all this, trying to strike a balance between the free autonomous agent, and the need to love and care for others.

True love is two autonomous agents who recognise and improve one another by sharing this examination and analysing these perceptual inaccuracies; they form a bond because they are for and respect what is good and right and this bond is an eternal friendship. This love is forever because when two autonomous agents 'connect' they connect rationally and it is rational to accept the entropy of our existence and that nothing is forever. I could meet a man who is also this autonomous agent and we could love one another, share in sexual experiences, even marry, but these experiences will change and eventually end, but the friendship wont (the love itself). — TimeLine

So I would not describe "true love" as a relationship between two individuals. I would describe it as the affection which one individual has toward others. How that person restricts one's loving actions toward others is a function of that person's rational, conscious mind. Each of us must make conscious choices about how we will restrict the love and care which we have for others, using conscious effort to break those bonds that are deep within us, which cause us to love, but also restrict us as autonomous agents.

Notice that knowing how to ride a bike presupposes a bike? Sans the vehicle, the notion of riding a bike is nonsense. — Banno

The presupposition of "a bike", is just that, a presupposition. The presupposition cannot grant truth to that which is presupposed.

That you know how to ride a bike means that there is an activity which we call "ride a bike", and you are judged as knowing how to do it. You are judged to be correctly doing what is called "ride a bike" . The use of the word "bike" to refer to what you are engaged with, doesn't necessitate logically, that there is a bike there. Your fallacious "necessity" is hidden in your presupposition.

Now you seem to think there is a problem here for JTB. Please understand that from my reading, OC shows that it is illegitimate to say that we know hinge propositions. That's because they do not admit to justification, and hence are not subject to the JTB definition, and hence not examples of knowledge. No potential to be wrong, no knowledge. — Banno

Right, the hinge propositions support a knowing-how. I would call this knowing how to use words. The know-how is judged according to the conventional use of words. However, the proper use of words does not guarantee "truth" in any meaningful sense of "truth". As in your example of the bike, truth is "presupposed" by conventional usage. If it is conventional to call the thing a bike, then it is true that it is a bike.

Because hinge propositions are not subject to JTB, the knowledge they support is not JTB knowledge. It is lacking in an essential aspect, real truth. Hinge propositions support 'truth by convention".

While I like the idea of looking for agreement, I can't agree with this. Since the meaning of a word is its use, knowing-that reduces to knowing-how. Language is, after all, a human action. — Banno

We have some agreement on justification, but there's a way of using "know" which indicates that it is believed that the thing known is necessarily true. Those who claim knowledge as justified true belief would assert this. That is what I referred to earlier as "a certainty", in the sense of "it is certain that...". We use "know" in the sense of knowing-that to indicate that the thing known is true. I do not think that knowing-how can account for this type of certainty, as "knowing-how" is only supported by that confidence which I referred to, the attitude of certitude.

So this is the issue. If knowing-that reduces to knowing-how, then that certainty (in the sense of it is certain that...) which is commonly associated with the use of "know" in the sense of knowing-that, cannot be supported. This is to say that "knowledge" as justified true belief cannot be supported, because "true" cannot be verified by knowing-how. This is the certainty which is associated with truth. "It is certain that..." means "it is true that...". Now we have no support for the assumption that what one knows is the truth, because what one knows is how to do something, and any determination of truth would be relative to the method or technique, unless there was some specific justified way of determining "the truth". If this is the case, then I argue that there is nothing which is indubitable.

So really, we agree on everything accept the logical consequences of what we agree on. I agree that knowing-that reduces to knowing-how. But I apprehend as a logical consequence of this, that JTB cannot be supported because the certainty required for truth cannot be provided by knowing-how. So I argue that if we ask of a proposition, is it true, there is no proposition which is beyond doubt.

But a good post, Meta - you have perhaps hit on a basic disagreement. — Banno

Thanks Banno, coming from you, that means a lot.

I didn't watch it. — Michael

Around here, you couldn't avoid hearing that authoritarian voice saying "You're fired!".

I think this is the wrong place to ask that question. You have to direct it at the right people.

A "field" is a mathematical construct. To apply field mathematics to the existence of objects in space and time requires some fundamental assumptions, axioms. Are you familiar with some of the axioms which are employed?

Indeed; not all your beliefs are stated. And yet you persist in replying in English. — Banno

Let's see if we can find a point of agreement. I would agree that when we proceed with conscious actions, we proceed with "confidence". And I also agree that "confidence" implies a "certitude". This certitude is involved with "knowing-how". However, I maintain a separation between the "knowing-how" of human actions, and the "knowing-that" of JTB. Can you agree to this distinction?

If the certitude which is associated with the confidence of human actions is proposed to be a part of knowledge in the sense of JTB, then I would disagree. I believe that the certitude of "knowing-how" must be broken down through doubt, and the request for justification, before any such beliefs become a part of knowledge in the sense of JTB. The only role that the certitude of knowing-how plays in JTB, is in knowing-how to justify.

Therefore I believe that hinge-propositions, which have the certitude of knowing-how, have no part in knowledge as JTB. They must, of necessity be doubted and consequently justified, before they can play any role in knowledge as JTB. It appears like this would create an infinite regress of justification, but what it really does is expose why we need to go beyond words, to "showing" itself, as the basis for justification.

Notice that in science an hypothesis is tested through experimentation. That is "showing". It is not tested by words and logic, it is tested by actions. Those who carry out the actions (test the hypothesis) must have certitude and confidence in relation to the actions of the testing, but doubt in relation to the hypothesis. We must always maintain that separation between the certitude of knowing-how in our actions, and the certainty of knowing-that in JTB knowledge. They are completely distinct.

Why do you think that I need to be certain that I'm having a discussion in English in order for me to have a discussion in English? I've seen children discuss a lot of things in English before they even knew what "English" is.

Sorry, never gave it any thought, because it's irrelevant. So I really doubt that I was certain of it at the time.