Consul wrote:Sorry, I can't follow you here.Fcacciola wrote: (Nested quote removed.)
The intention of the truth-condition better not be abandoned. But the expectation of it is a different story.
I meant that of course we want to know The Truth, not just decide what is it, but that itself is an unrealistic pretension. That is, we intend for the truth but we can't really expect to get it (except in the subset of non-empirical knowledge)
PRECISELY.Consul wrote:To empirically "discover that a belief is true" is to discover empirical evidence which confirms its truth and thus justifies the belief. However, the confirmational relationship between evidence E and a belief or a hypothesis H is complicated when the conditional probability of H given E is <1, i.e. when the truth of H is not logically entailed by E, in which case it is possible that E & ~H.
So, you yourself see how there are instances in which "prob(H/e)<1" entailing "prob(E & ~H)>0", which is the core of my point.
In these instances, do we still "know"?
I think you might respond that "yes" because in your view, "to know P entail P is __true__" in which __true__ there bares no objective relation to, let's say, prob(H/e) EXACTLY_EQUAL to 1.
But then, that __true__ in there is nothing but an attribution, which as I said, is a valid view of knowledge but not very useful.
Exactly. They "decide" (i.e. attribute __true__, don't objectively find it to be there).Consul wrote:On the basis of the available evidence scientists attribute truth-values or probabilities to propositions, and so they decide whether or not a corresponding belief is justified to such a degree that it may be called knowledge.
And what is more important: "to such a degree that it may be called knowledge": hence, knowledge requires only a degree of justification (such as prob(H/e)>.5 for example, as you mentioned elsewhere), therefore, if an H for which e is only partial is labeled knowledge, the only "true" it can entail is an attributed classification that bares only a probable relation with The Truth.
That is a valid classification (though not one I share), but it needs proper qualification of what "true" there really is.... no belief is knowledge unless it is true.
Consul wrote:Of course, the only way to find out whether a belief is true and is knowledge is to consult the evidence for it.
But we still deem it knowledge even when the evidence is only partial, as you yourself recognized above.
So I think that insisting in that "what we know is true, just not necessarily the Truth", is not very useful.
How it doesn't? What else would that expression mean??Fcacciola wrote:If "false knowledge" meant "mistaken certainty", then there would be states of false knowledge; but it doesn't
Really? how is it not?The state of knowledge is not the same as the state of (subjective) certainty.
The statement "I (claim to) know that p but I am not certain that p" sounds incoherent, doesn't it?
Not to me.
In fact, the statement "I know that p becasue I'm certain that p" sounds applicable only onto a subset of propositons, rather pretentious on the subset of empirical facts, and straight delusional in many others.
Except that knowledge is a type of belief, so, a subset of belief (which is knowledge) does entail (any given degree of) certainty.(But there's nothing wrong with saying "I believe that p but I am not certain that p": belief does not entail certainty.)
So we "know", but also "really know"... and is not the same.When I say "I know that p", it doesn't follow that I really know that p....
OK, that is not just a pun.. I understand what you're saying (specially because I study it and is not just you saying it), I just don't think is a useful why of thinking becuase it traps you into having to say for example that.
If we insist that knowledge entails true, on the (no pun intended) "evidence" that we can't get to the truth, we either
(a) restrict the instance of knowledge to propositions such as "X is either X or Y", "n != -n", "red is a color", or, in fact "to know P entails P is true" (which is in fact true if we choose so adjusting all the proper meanings)
(b) or we end up having to clarify that "we know, but not really know", etc...
That is quite correct, and I agree with it, but there is a problem:there is a difference between the (inter)subjective attribution of truth to a proposition or a belief and the (objective) possession of truth by it. That is, a proposition's or belief's being true is a matter of objective fact, and it is irreducibly different from its being taken or regarded as true, from its being thought, believed, assumed, or considered to be true.
Propositions (say, "God exist") do posses an objective value of truth, which is different from our attribution of it, but, "to know", which is something we, subjects, do, is it really to get a hold of that objective truth??
I claim that when it comes to facts, no, is not, and we are left with nothing but the attribution of truth, since there is no actual mechanism that puts the truth of reality directly inside our heads.
Not even when we "see", the objetive reality of the objects in our field of vision directly gets into our heads. What we see is the synthetic re-construction of the reality out there, and with the construction of knowledge is no different.
And I agree with Frege in that distinction between "The Truth" (as I've been calling it), and the "truth" we attribute to propositions.Frege is right:"Mr B. Erdmann equates truth with general validity, grounding the latter on general certainty regarding the object judged, and this in turn on general consensus amongst those judging. And so, in the end, truth is reduced to being taken to be true by individuals. In opposition to this, I can only say: being true is different from being taken to be true, be it by one, be it by many, be it by all, and is in no way reducible to it. It is not contradiction that something is true that is universally held to be false."
However, the correctness of that distinction does not show or imply that when we know, is that Truth, instead of the other "truth", what the knowing entails.
I might share the sentiment (though I really don't), yet, whether he likes it or not, "to know" is a thing we do and as such is inescapably subjective."Can the sense of the word 'true' be subjected to a more damaging corruption than by the attempt to incorporate a relation to the judging subject!"
The Truth is not knowledge, is just the truth.
Knowledge is just a (justified) labeling on our believes based on how we decide it relates to the Truth.