Well, sure, or else I suppose we wouldn’t be talking about it.
I don’t know, but then, I don’t know why he hasn’t just said “fuck it” and thrown in the towel.
That’s a good point. After all, we certainly don’t want any facts in GD.
Your argument is completely ad hoc. As a result, you’ve exhonerated President Bush’s invasion of Iraq. After all, it doesn’t matter, according to you, whether his beliefs were “truth, factual, or even complete”. He knew — knew, mind you — that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that those weapons were intended for use against us. As President, he had no choice but to use his alleged knowledge to act on our behalf.
And unfortunately, that is not the strangest part of your take on all this. Your confirmation of the antecedant with respect to experience and knowledge, which is tantamount to declaring that all rats are rodents, so confuses experience with knowledge that the person you wish to question already unquestionably knows what happened to him. After all, again… it doesn’t matter, according to you, whether his beliefs are “truth, factual, or even complete”. So why you even care to hear about his experience is a mystery. You already have an incomplete understanding of it, and so you already know about it. Your knowledge is as valid as his, apparently even if they contradict.
You’ve made the term “knowledge” perfectly useless.
Hating tomndebb is all the rage. If you don’t hate tomndebb, you hate America. Take your pick.
As Charles Barkley would say, I misquoted myself. That should read “…that all rodents are rats”. 
What frikkin world do you live in? A person’s belief that they were acting based upon the best knowledge they had always factors in when determining if their actions were correct. Do you throw the cop in jail because he mistakenly thinks that the plastic toy gun the kid has in his hand is an actual gun and he defends himself accordingly? You expect omniscience in people as well as your god. I’m glad that all your knowledge is perfect. Again maybe you should ask your god to shuffle over on his seat.
Tom is very level-headed and placid.
I think it’s the drugs. Either the use of or lack of, I’m not sure which.
Ok, is this sarcasm? I’m asking a serious question, not being ironic or anything.
You’ll have to ask Uzi. She’s the one who insists that “knowledge” doesn’t need to be true, justified, reliable, or even complete. It’s her definition, not mine, that gives Bush a pass.
This one.
. . . or fanastical imagination and paranoid delusions? Does that count?
Interesting. Obviously there are a number of opinions on that page about what ‘knowledge’ is.
Let me ask you if you see a dog in front of you do you assume it is a Japanese toy dog or it is a real dog? And if the ‘dog’ has great big teeth and is looking at you like you are its next chew toy, do you still assume that it is a Japanese toy dog and you are part of an experiment to test how accurate they can make these dogs, or do you just sit there because you have no way to ‘know’ whether the dog is real or not. And when this ‘dog’ is chewing on your neck do you still think that is some damn fine Japanese workmanship?
Or is it more realistic to suggest that you act upon your knowledge of what a dog bearing its teeth at you means and take actions to avoid being eaten? Does it matter whether the dog is fake or not?
If you are driving down the road at night and some jokers put up a facade of large truck in your lane around a sharp corner such that you only see it at the last moment. Do you assume it isn’t a truck and continue to drive towards it? Or do you attempt to stop and swerve out of the way? And if while swerving you hit one of the jokers hiding in a bush on the side of the road, would you expect that you should be at fault for doing so?
Quite a while ago when people thought they world was the center of the universe that was the extent of their knowledge. It was true from their point of view, but we know it isn’t true now. The same as the knowledge you have now may be proven to be false tomorrow or a hundred years from now. Yet today you base your life and actions upon that knowledge as it if was true. I don’t see how the page you linked to addresses this, but I just went over it quickly. I’ll give it a closer look later on in more detail. I like to learn new things and am willing to admit it when I am wrong. If I’m wrong.
I base my interpretation of what ‘knowledge’ is based upon a more common usage. Knowledge
Yes, indeed. It has been a topic of philosophical study for thousands of years. And as you can see, none of the opinions stipulate that knowledge may be false, unjustified, unreliable, or incomplete. Otherwise, knoweldge and ignorance would be synonyms.
Those are very much like the example I gave to you early on about hearing footsteps in your house, and not knowing whether they portended good or evil. As I explained then, it is perfectly reasonable to act on what you believe about the sounds you hear based on your life experience. Same same here. If you do not know whether the dog or the truck is real, then it is perfectly reasonable for you to behave as though they are. But that doesn’t mean that you know they are real; merely that you believe they might be.
You’re to be commended for that. I greatly admire the mind that is willing to investigate and expand without loyalty to preconceptions or bias.
Speaking of knowledge about the universe, you might be interested to learn that many people assign to science certain qualities that give it an almost mystical nature, sometimes so much so that science becomes indistinguishable from religion. If you’re interested in the topic of what science does well and what it does poorly, I’ll be happy to discuss that with you. But for now, it is important to understand, at the very least, that science is not about truth at all. You cannot determine, by scientific inquiry, whether anything is true. You can determine only whether something is false.
And you may ask whether proving one thing false proves its opposite true, and the answer is yes, but not in science. For that to happen, a system would have to be “bivalent”, meaning that a statement has one and only one of two and only two truth values: true or false. But science isn’t like that. Just because your hypothesis is false doesn’t mean its opposite is true. There may be an intermediate or third hypothesis that you had not considered that will apply.
In order to prove the truth value of any statement, we need to use an analytical tool, like logic. As opposed to an empirical tool, like science. First order predicate logic (the ordinary everyday variety familiar to almost everyone) is perfect for such a task. That system of logic is bivalent. (Some other systems of logic are not.) If we prove that statement A is false, then we have proved that its opposite, statement Not A, is true.
What’s that all about? Well, for one example, take the question of whether 1 + 1 equals 2. Attempting to investigate that question scientifically would entail observation. You might, for example, combine one stone with another and count them. Barring error, you will count two stones. You can repeat this experiment many times until you are confident in the statement that 1 + 1 = 2. So why is it that you have not proved the truth of the statement? Because all you have done is record observations of the past. You have not shown that the next time and EVERY time you add 1 + 1, you will always get 2 no matter whether it is with stones, knives, or packs of cigarettes. Using five axioms, we can actually prove that 1 + 1 = 2 in general and that it always will for adding together any objects.
But even that usage differentiates between knowledge and mere belief. In the interpretive notes at the bottom of your page, there is this statement about all the synonyms (note that “belief” is not among them): “These nouns refer to what is known, as through study or experience”. That’s what I meant about knoweldge is a part of experience, but not all experience is knowledge. As it says, knowledge refers to what we actually know. And if we check your same source for the definition of “know”, we find this as the first definition: “to perceive or understand as fact or truth”. Knowledge simply isn’t knowledge without truth.
Ugh, we’ve had this conversation before, you and I. While I agree that after counting something a million times there is a very small chance that it might not be true for the million and first time you count them. But for all intents and purposes it is a safe bet to make that the next time you physically count 1+1 it will still equal 2.
I think this is where we differ. I do not need complete and utter proof that a duck, is in fact, a duck.
But truth is in the eye of the beholder. If we perceive and understand it to be true, then for that person it is. From your link it talks about Newtonian physics as being false. But for many years it was not false. It was taken as being true. We know better now, but at the time we did not. Those things you consider true and factual today may not be true and factual tomorrow. Are you willing to say all your knowledge isn’t knowledge because of this? I’m not. I’m willing to say in this place and time the things that I know to be true probably are, but things may change in the future. Do you understand what I’m saying here?
The only time I have ever received a “cool it” post from a mod was from Tom. As I recall, in his typical manner, his admonition had a cruel, ferocious impact that would not have bruised a baby’s lips.
Tom is cool. He’s one of the good guys.
If safe bets satisfy you, that’s fine. And frankly, I don’t care what convinces you of what. But a safe bet is not proof.
No one does, because that’s a tautology. All tautologies are true by definition.
Indeed, there are relativist theories of truth, but they usually are applied to ethics rather than to nature. If you really believe that truth is relative generally, then you should stop arguing with me this instant because what I’m saying is just as true for me as what you’re saying is for you. And there’s nothing wrong with a creationist’s statments. They too are true.
Newtonian physics was never true. It is impossible to make any true empirical statement.
I do understand what you’re saying. I’m not disagreeing because I don’t understand you; I’m disagreeing because I know you’re wrong. What you’re describing isn’t knowledge; it’s belief. See whether this page is more helpful.
Another point in his favor. Sure beats being a Muslim-hater. Go tom~!
That reminds me of Renée Zellweger’s great line from Cold Mountain except hers was dramatic and yours is funny. Both are accurate though.