The KK-thesis

[time2pwn]

From whence does truth come?

How can there be knowledge a priori?

[BrainGlutton]

And what is "KK"?

[tomndebb]

Klux Klan, at an educated guess.

[hajario]

I looked it up. The KK thesis: In order to know something, you have to know that you know it.

[Ale]

Originally Posted by hajario

I looked it up. The KK thesis: In order to know something, you have to know that you know it.

Ahh, I knew it as the Dho!-Thesis.

[Colibri]

Originally Posted by hajario

I looked it up. The KK thesis: In order to know something, you have to know that you know it.

I didn't know that!

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by hajario

I looked it up. The KK thesis: In order to know something, you have to know that you know it.

Know. Know. KNOOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!

[Stealth Potato]

Originally Posted by hajario

I looked it up. The KK thesis: In order to know something, you have to know that you know it.

But then it follows that in order to know that you know something, you must know that you know that you know it. Inductively, knowledge of any given thing requires infinite memory, and is therefore impossible. Through universal instantiation, we can see that it quite naturally follows that the OP doesn't know nothin' about nothin'.

[Frylock]

Regarding the KK-thesis specifically, I think there are counterexamples. For example, it's plausible to think that a snail knows there is food less than an inch away, but it's implausible to think that the snail knows it knows this.

A gifted natural comedian might know that things arranged in threes are funny, yet not know that he knows this.

-FrL-

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by Stealth Potato

But then it follows that in order to know that you know something, you must know that you know that you know it. Inductively, knowledge of any given thing requires infinite memory,

Not if we allow for something like dispositional knowledge. You know, and have known for a long time, that a breadbox is smaller than the planet Jupiter, but probably that thought was never wholly tokened in your head until just now. You've always counted as "knowing" this fact about breadboxes because you've always (since early childhood anyway) been disposed, in a particular way, to affirm this fact when necessary. So a proponent of the KK-thesis can say that you're disposed to affirm that you know that you know anything that you do in fact know.

-FrL-

[smiling bandit]

Hmmmm...

That thesis would seem to be wrong at the most basic level, at any rate. It's possible to not realize you do know something of value. Not knowing you have that knowledge/capability/skill/talent might prevent you from using it, or at least using it effectively, but it doesn't mean you don't know it.

I might have the ability to perfectly recall the entire script from Star Wars: A New Hope (I can't), but I might not realize how good my knowledge of it is, for instance.

[Simplicio]

I was at a party a few nights ago and my friend had an NES with the first Mario game, which I must've played a million times when I was a kid but haven't touched since. Anyways, I start playing and find that it actually comes back pretty fast, I know when to jump to hit the enemies, etc.

Anyways, I get to a point and I'm running along and just from pure muscle memory I hit the jump button and uncover an invisible block with one of those green 1-up mushrooms. I didn't consciously know it was there, but I'd played that level so many hundreds of times back in grade-school that my fingers remembered to jump at that point.

In other words, I knew the 1-up was there but didn't know that I knew it.

[Stealth Potato]

Originally Posted by Frylock

Not if we allow for something like dispositional knowledge...

Which assumption would, when taken to be true, naturally falsify the KK thesis.

The KK thesis (more succinctly stated as the implication Kp->KKp¹) simply states that any knowledge requires knowledge of that knowledge. If we make the sensible presuppositions that it is possible to distinguish the knowledge or non-knowledge of facts distinctly, it follows that every instance of specific knowledge requires a positive amount of memory, and by assuming the KK thesis we are drawn by simple induction to the conclusion that any particular piece of knowledge must require infinite memory. Human beings have finite memory, ergo it is impossible for humans to know things. Any other conclusion requires that the KK thesis be false.

¹I know this. I know this because I read it on Wikipedia.

[Ale]

Originally Posted by Stealth Potato

it follows that every instance of specific knowledge requires a positive amount of memory, and by assuming the KK thesis we are drawn by simple induction to the conclusion that any particular piece of knowledge must require infinite memory.

Well, not necessarily; I know that 6928690023y6782827936 is an even number even though I´m quite sure I haven´t seen it before and most surely it´s not stored in my memory, but I know that any number divisible by 2 is even, therefore I know that 6928690023y6782827936 is an even number without having known the number before.

[Stealth Potato]

Originally Posted by Ale

Well, not necessarily; I know that 6928690023y6782827936 is an even number even though I´m quite sure I haven´t seen it before and most surely it´s not stored in my memory, but I know that any number divisible by 2 is even, therefore I know that 6928690023y6782827936 is an even number without having known the number before.

6928690023y6782827936 is an even number?

My posts were almost entirely tongue-in-cheek (how could they be anything else, given the OP? ), but in more seriousness, what you're bringing up seems to be more the validity of the KK thesis, not my conclusion from it. Whether the KK thesis can be said to be true depends entirely on what you think it means to "know" something, but irrespective of that, if you assume Kp->KKp, I think the infinite memory thing is a valid, if useless, conclusion.

[Ale]

Originally Posted by Stealth Potato

what you're bringing up seems to be more the validity of the KK thesis, not my conclusion from it

Hey, but your conclusion is geared towards the validity of the thesis. Don´t confuse me.

And that "y" in there was totally not a mistake, I put it there to check if people where paying attention, yeah, that´s the ticket...

[ASAKMOTSD]

and here I thought this was from the mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick and his notion that the truth only comes from whatever law team will keep you out of jail.

[Marley23]

Since the OP has been banned and didn't lay out any points to really argue here, I'm locking this.