Thanks for answering and yes, I agree. Certainty within the human observer cannot determine true from false in a sense transcending that observer.
So my essential question is: What can?
If you answer ‘evidence’, I will ask you whose judgment of that evidence.
If you answer ‘truth’, I will ask you whose opinion of the truth.
Well, I am happy to examine the issue. I would not say that truth, knowledge and belief are equal. They are useful words. Sometimes I think that people can become quite confused by them, but they can be useful. (You should try writing a book about doubt, to see what a problem it can be to dance among them.)
You mean that my unwillingness to stamp my knowledge as ‘true’ somehow weakens my knowledge?
As I’ve said, I see no difference between my best guess yet and your knowledge.
Just zero. Precisely the same things.
But maybe you disagree. What does your truth and knowledge contain which my best guess yet does not? (Other than a claim of T, I mean.)
I’m not following. First, of course, I have no such belief that ignorance and knowledge are equivalent, so whatever logic pushed you there is foreign to me. The same with truth and falsehood. Those two words try to point at opposites.
Second, I can behave exactly as a knower can behave, even without attaching ‘true’ and ‘false’ to my beliefs or behaviors.
Meanwhile, the attachment of those words, out in the meat world, does very much damage. Only the true warrior of God can slay the heathens with a clear conscience.
Well, I understand that is the JTB position, but I find it incoherent.
Why? Well because the T is unavailable to us apes. That’s all.
It’s fine for lab work—that T thing—but in the real world, the guy who owns the T is a guy whom I see as more often dangerous than not. Not just dangerous but often quite confused.
Once you own the T, everything you observe must conform to it.
I like it the other way around. The boulder is shaped by the sandstorm… always.
Yes. We’ve agreed that certainty cannot determine truth.
Right. That’s why it’s so dangerous.
Right. Or wrong. I could argue it either way.
I can call my certainty truth. Most of us do. Same with knowledge.
But if you are saying there is some kind of truth outside of our certainty and knowledge, well, I would have a question.
If—from their individual points of view—Smith has certain knowledge of the lion, while Jones has certain knowledge of no lion, which one of them owns the truth about the lion?
Well, not for long. If I see that I might be wrong, I start switching my psychological certainty to the other side.
But, of course, how would I ever know if I am right or wrong? The Magical T is unavailable to me. I can only make my best guesses.
OK, OK, I will admit that I have never read the fallibilist rulebook. I have a bad attitude toward most rulebooks.
But I don’t really follow you. What is true is unavailable to me. I assume there are likely many places where my beliefs and cosmic truth diverge. How could they not?
Yep. As stipulated, the lion is either there or else ain’t. (I feel like I’ve had to say that again and again.)
And if you’re talking about ‘truths’ as in ‘other guy’s truths’, same deal. Very independent of what I believe.
And I suspect there are grains of sand and stellar masses with which I am unfamiliar.
I’ve answered several of your direct questions, so your use of “Maybe just try one…” treats the situation as if I’ve not yet. I’m beginning to believe that you’re not arguing in good faith. There seems to be some insincerity present.
Some of your questions make no sense. You’re asking to distinguish between things that do not exist or presenting an impossible scenario.
We can know(sometimes) if A is true or false. In other words, we can sometimes distinguish belief that is congruent to reality with belief that is not.
It is incoherent to me. I have no idea how to determine the truth of my knowledge in some cosmic way. (I wish you would tell me.)
My knowledge can absolutely be false. I know that because I’ve had knowledge of contrary things. I once knew that Jews want to convert the world, for example, but now I know that they are insular and don’t even want converts much.
My knowledge had to be false in one of those instances, didn’t it?
So it just perplexes me when you claim that knowledge cannot be false.
I have to say, it is most curious to me that you seem literally unable to see knowledge except as you see it. It’s like you’ve deleted all the other possible meanings from your dictionary and they are just no longer available to you.
Not trying to offend you. Just saying. It strikes me as curious.
There’s been no engagement with responses from multiple sources that point out the error that permeates the thread. There’s nothing here except a refusal to learn that negates the premise of the thread itself.
There’s nothing of philosophical interest in this thread. The curiosity is in the psychology of arrogant denial of intellectual discourse, the rejection of erudition. But we see enough of that in public life generally.
Another definition of truth is the stuff that doesn’t care what you believe. This sort of truth inevitably catches up with those who deny it.
Well, BGY… scattered throughout the thread you’ve said condescending things about others and have not at all read charitably. Sometimes we see in others what we cannot see in ourselves.
I’ve not judged your sincerity yet. The comment was just to inform you that I was beginning to question whether or not you were arguing in good faith. Perhaps it was better left unspoken. Perhaps not. I don’t know.