Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

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Fcacciola
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Fcacciola »

Consul wrote:
Fcacciola wrote: (Nested quote removed.)

The intention of the truth-condition better not be abandoned. But the expectation of it is a different story.
Sorry, I can't follow you here.


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)
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.
PRECISELY.

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.


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.
Exactly. They "decide" (i.e. attribute __true__, don't objectively find it to be there).
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.
... no belief is knowledge unless it is true.
That is a valid classification (though not one I share), but it needs proper qualification of what "true" there really is.
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.
Fcacciola wrote:If "false knowledge" meant "mistaken certainty", then there would be states of false knowledge; but it doesn't
How it doesn't? What else would that expression mean??
The state of knowledge is not the same as the state of (subjective) certainty.
Really? how is it not?
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.
(But there's nothing wrong with saying "I believe that p but I am not certain that p": belief does not entail certainty.)
Except that knowledge is a type of belief, so, a subset of belief (which is knowledge) does entail (any given degree of) certainty.


When I say "I know that p", it doesn't follow that I really know that p....
So we "know", but also "really know"... and is not the same.

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...

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.
That is quite correct, and I agree with it, but there is a problem:

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.
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."
And I agree with Frege in that distinction between "The Truth" (as I've been calling it), and the "truth" we attribute to propositions.
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.
"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!"
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.
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.
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Consul
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Consul »

Consul wrote:"In its two main variants, fallibilism claims that scientific theories are either uncertain-but-probably-true or false-but-truthlike hypotheses."

(Niiniluoto, Ilkka. Critical Scientific Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. p. 13)
Can false-but-truthlike belief properly be called knowledge? I think what his account can give us at most is what might be called knowledgelike belief or quasi-knowledge.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Fooloso4
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Cuthbert:
Knowledge entails truth, because 'Jim knows it's ten o'clock' and 'It's half past nine' entails a contradiction. However justification does not entail infallibility - Jim consulted his watch and his watch is ok, but watches sometimes are wrong.
What is determined to be true is not independent of what we hold to be known. 'Is true' is often an assertion of what is thought to be true and it is thought to be true based on what is held to be known.

Now it is true that if I say “I know X” and it turns out that X is false then I do not know X, but if we look at how the term ‘know’ is used we see that it is not used exclusively in that sense. If I ask Jim what time it is and he says “ten o’clock” I might ask if he knows that or is guessing. I am not asking if it is apodictically, indubitably the case that it ten o’clock. In science what is known is established by probability and is subject to revision. If you ask how do we know how old the universe is the answer will be an explanation of how its age is calculated. There is, however, no way to determine whether it is true that the universe is 13.8 billion years old independent of the assumptions, factors, and tools used to calculate its age. We do not know if we have a complete picture. We know means given what we do know we can say that it is this old. But some of what we “do know” may, as the history of science shows, undergo change. We might say that we did not know this or that after all, but again, that is not how the term is used. We might say ‘presumed known’ and ‘presumed true’ to qualify our statements and that would not be wrong, but if we accept that the physical sciences has abandoned the kind of certainty found in mathematics in favor of probabilities, then presumed known and presumed true are redundant except in cases where the probability is not very high.
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Consul
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Consul »

By the way, David Lewis introduced the following definition of "to know", which is a version of "epistemic/epistemological contextualism" (see the corresponding SEP and IEP entries!):

"S knows that P iff S's evidence eliminates every possibility in which not-P – Psst! – except for those possibilities that we are properly ignoring."

(Lewis, David. "Elusive Knowledge." 1996. In Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, 418-445. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 425)

In this definition the infallibility-principle is relativized. For an explanation of his definition and the conditions of "proper ignorance", see this PDF of his paper!

Note that one of those conditions is "the Rule of Actuality":

"The possibility that actually obtains is never properly ignored; actuality is always a relevant alternative; nothing false may properly be presupposed. It follows that only what is true is known, wherefore we did not have to include truth in our definition of knowledge."
("Elusive Knowledge", pp. 426-7)

So he too accepts the classical truth-condition of knowledge!

As for truth and truthlikeness:

"As we already know, truth is a major component of knowledge—you cannot know that p unless p is true. In fact, truth is what we aim at in any legitimate inquiry. We inquire as to the truth of matters. Truth is what we aim at, but we do not always hit our target. Interestingly, we do not always miss our mark by the same amount. For example, if Jill says '5 + 7 = 13' and Jack says '5 + 7 = 879', both are clearly mistaken. Still, it seems that even though both Jill and Jack have missed the truth, Jill is much closer to it than Jack. It seems that Jill's claim '5 + 7 = 13' has more verisimilitude, or truthlikeness, than Jack's.

It is not very surprising that some false claims such as Jill's are closer to the truth than others like Jack's. More surprising is the fact that some true claims are closer to the whole truth about an issue than others. The ultimate goal of our inquiry into any topic is not merely truth, but rather, the whole truth of the matter. Some truths are closer to the whole truth than others. For example, suppose that Billy's hitting a baseball through the window is why it broke. If we are inquiring into the cause of the window's breaking, it is true that <either a rock broke the window or a rock did not break the window>. However, <either a rock broke the window or a rock did not break the window>, while true, is farther from the truth than <a baseball broke the window> is. Notice though, both of these propositions are in fact true. This shows that some truths are closer to the full story than others—they have more verisimilitude to the whole truth of the matter.

More suprising still, it seems that sometimes a false claim can be closer to the whole truth about an issue than a true claim. Graham Oppy asserts that it may be that a truth such as <either electrons are fundamental particles or they are not> is farther from the whole truth than the falsehood that <electrons, protons, and neutrons are fundamental components of atoms>. The reason that this latter claim seems closer to the whole truth is that it is providing more information about the topic under consideration even though some of that information is not correct. While the total information provided is not exactly correct, it does seem to be getting us closer to the whole truth than the vacuously true claim that <either electrons are fundamental particles or they are not>. If this is correct, then it appears that sometimes falsehoods can be more verisimilitudinous than truths.

At this point we have seen a variety of things about verisimilitude. Some falsehoods are closer to the whole truth than other falsehoods. Some truths are closer to the whole truth than other truths. Some falsehoods seem closer to the whole truth than some truths. These facts about verisimilitude relate to our purpose of better understanding the truth component of knowledge in at least two ways.

First, recognizing that various truths (and falsehoods) can be closer to the whole truth than others helps to deepen our understanding of the nature of truth. Second, appreciation of verisimilitude and recognition of the fact that knowledge requires truth, not truthlikeness but truth full stop, may give us reason to think that the proper focus when understanding NOS [the nature of science] (and other issues of particular importance to science education) is not really knowledge in the strict sense at all. It seems that recognizing these facts about knowledge and verisimilitude gives us some reason to think that what really matters for scientific inquiry is the evidence we have in support of particular claims and theories rather than knowledge. Fortunately, for our purposes we can continue to speak in terms of knowledge, but we are all well served by keeping in mind that perhaps what we are really talking about is evidence for claims and whether we are justified in believing those claims."


(McCain, Kevin. The Nature of Scientific Knowledge: An Explanatory Approach. Cham, CH: Springer, 2016. pp. 52-3)

"The serious business of science has to do not with knowledge per se; but, rather, with the elimination of possibilities through the evidence of perception, memory, etc., and with the changes that one's belief system would (or might or should) undergo under the impact of such eliminations."

(Lewis, David. "Elusive Knowledge." 1996. In Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, 418-445. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 440)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Fcacciola
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Fcacciola »

No, I do not "consider truth and knowledge to be one and the same," because they are not. To say that a proposition's being known entails or includes its being true is not to say that its being known is the same as its being true. The concept of an unknown or even unknowable truth is perfectly consistent. A proposition can be true without being known, but it cannot be known without being true.


OK, I phrased that all wrong. I meant to say that you consider that "truth is contained within knowledge", not that is the same (from a set theory POV)
Being justified in believing that p doesn't depend on p's being true.
Right. But I never said that.. I said that justification supports (not depends on) p's being true.
It is, especially as it is not easy to understand how fallibly justified true belief could really be knowledge.
But "fallibly" means that the true belief might turned out to be false, that is, it was never objectively, externally, really True.. only true by no other virtue of being a thing that is known (i.e, by direct attribution).

Then, I stand by the claim that this meaning of "is true" isn't helpful, even misleading, if one thinks it refers to being "objectively, externally, really True"
Isn't it bleeding obvious that you can't know what ain't so?
But I find it equally bleeding obvious that I can't know that what I know is so instead of being not so.

Then what we do?

If I were to adopt your position, I would have to get rid of half the scientific knowledge. Granted, I still can hold to know a lot (like the examples you shown below), but, what do I do with all the things I "know, but with no certainty" such as pretty much all of physics?

Like I said, I find that valid, just not really useful, and so I propose something else, much simpler: accept that what we know is NOT really true, just "decided to be true" (I call that "certified") by virtue of being a thing we claim to know.
* Again, no one is saying that knowledge is the same as truth. That's a misinterpretation of the axiom if p is known then p (is true).
And I totally get that even if some of my statements may have implied otherwise.

And that is precisely the core of my point: "if p is true is not the same as p is True", then, what is the purpose or value in posing the condition that P is true.
Furthermore, how is that even a condition? how is the fulfillment of the condition evaluated?

The usual answer to that boils down to a Bayesian calculation on justification (such as evidence) out of which we come with a judgment labeled "true" even if is not the same as a completely certain determination of being actually, really, true.

So, why keep saying that this judgment produces "P is true"?
* There cannot be false knowledge simply because it would be false true belief, and no belief can be both false and true.
Exactly. IF one considers knowledge to be "true" belief, you end up with the impossibility of false (true) belief.
But that doesn't logically imply that there cannot be false knowledge, only that, is either that, or knowledge should not be considered "true" belief.
Both solutions to the contradiction are valid.
* It is not the case that "knowledge is that what we say is true," since there is a clear difference between being true and being said to be true.

Here I completely, deeply disagree.

Not with the clear difference, that's about right, but with the statement that knowledge entails the "actual truth that any proposition has in itself" instead of "a true that we decide upon" (based on justification, authority, delusion, or whatever)


Note that fallibilism keeps the truth-condition of knowledge!
Fair enough. I re-read my material and "Knowledge does not require certainty.[4]" is not really the same as relaxing "P is true".
I still think it was that, but let's just say I got it wrong.
Consul wrote:
Fcacciola wrote: (Nested quote removed.)

Of course I can. That's a perfectly valid expression for the recognition that I thought something was true (so I knew it) but then I knew better (so I had a false knowledge)
If it's "a perfectly valid expression," why doesn't anybody use it?
Who says nobody uses it?

A quick google search provides many hits, from a quote of Bernard Show
"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance."

to this epistemology essay in which the author claims there IS such a thing as false knowledge:

https://ianbarton.wordpress.com/2013/03 ... owledge-2/


Note that I've been defending the truth-condition rather than then infallibility-condition, and that to reject the latter is not necessarily to reject the former!
I know.

And I'll repeat it again: I agree the truth-condition makes a *valid* definition of knowledge, yet I think it is misleading, precisely, in that it is so easy to get it confused with an infallibility-condition (even though, contrary to what you would think, *I* am not confused by it)
Speaking of "relaxing" the truth-condition, I just happened to recall Ilkka Niiniluoto's (he's Finnish) "strongly fallibilistic" theory that substitutes a weaker truthlikeness-condition for the truth-condition (the latter of which is affirmed by "weak fallibilism").
....
Therefore, (b) should be replaced by a condition that requires h to be truthlike or approximately true (.).
That's close to what I've been trying to say all along.

So, it appears that I *am* a (strong) fallabilist after all.
Then the first condition can also be changed, since the strong fallibilist does not believe that even his best hypotheses are strictly true. Thus, the strong fallibilist suggests that the classical definition (1) is replaced by

(2) X knows that h iff
(a') X believes that h is truthlike
(b') h is truthlike
(c') X has reason to claim that h is more truthlike than its rivals on available evidence.
Interesting. I said that's a step forward.

On the other hand, soon as we accept to challenge the truth-conditon (as I do), other possibilities (besides this one) appear.

Mine would be one of them:

(2) X knows that h iff
(a') X believes that h is certified (to be true)
(b') h is is certified (to be true)
(c') .. whatever best form of justification...

Unlike the condition of "P is true", which I claim cannot be realistically determined for all propositions (and Niiniluoto did as well based on what you wrote), or even, truthlike, which I'm not sure how it could be determined, the condition "P is certified (to be true)" can, as it just refers to the attribution of truth that it was made (based on whatever justification)
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Consul »

Fcacciola wrote: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).
Do you mean to say that experience (perception, introspection, recollection) is not a reliable, truth-conducive source of knowledge?
Fcacciola wrote:
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.
PRECISELY. 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.
P(H/E) is a measure of the degree of confirmation or justification. If (and only if) P(H/E) = 1, then the degree is 100% and H is conclusively, infallibly confirmed/justified and it is 100% certain that H is true. Do we have knowledge only if this is the case? The majority of epistemologists says no, accepting the concept of fallible, uncertain (less-than-100%-certain) knowledge. So do I; but, again, to do so is not to also accept the concept of false knowledge. Fallibility qua merely possible falsity is not to be confused with actual falsity! Fallible knowledge is possibly but not actually false, since if it were actually false it wouldn't be knowledge at all.
What is known fallibly is true or the case, but it(s being true or the case) is not known for certain or with (objective) certainty.
Fcacciola wrote:
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.
Exactly. They "decide" (i.e. attribute __true__, don't objectively find it to be there).
I don't mean to say that scientific truths are made true by the scientists. They are made true by facts in the world. (By "fact" I don't mean a true proposition but an actual, obtaining state of affairs.) The literal etymological meaning of "to verify" is "to make true", but in the philosophically relevant sense verifying isn't truth-making but truth-ascertaining. Truth is independent of verification!

That said, I don't dispute that what counts or is "canonized" as scientific knowledge is a matter of social acknowledgment in the scientific community.
Fcacciola wrote: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.
Yes, in the case of fallible/fallibly justified knowledge there is only a probabilistic relation (<1) between the belief-justifying evidence and the truth of the belief (deemed knowledge). But if the belief is to be knowledge at all, it must be true.
Infallibilists object that in the case of one's fallibly knowing that p (is true) one doesn't know whether one (really) knows that p (is true), precisely because the possibility of p being false is still there. And if that possibility is an actuality, then we don't have fallible knowledge but merely false knowledge-belief, which is no knowledge at all.

By the way, an epistemologically important distinction is explained in the IEP entry on fallibilism. See §9!

There are "two significantly different kinds of question. The first asks whether a particular belief, given the justification supporting it, is true (and thereby fallible knowledge). The other question asks whether, given that belief’s being true, there is enough supporting justification in order for it to be (fallible) knowledge. The former question is raised from “within” a particular inquiry into the truth of a particular belief. The latter question arises from “outside” that inquiry into that belief’s being true (even if this question is arising within another inquiry, perhaps an epistemological one). There is no epistemologically standard way of designating the relevant difference between those kinds of question. Perhaps the following is a helpful way to clarify that difference.…"
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:... no belief is knowledge unless it is true.
That is a valid classification (though not one I share), but it needs proper qualification of what "true" there really is.
I don't understand the phrase "what 'true' there really is".
Fcacciola wrote:
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.
I don't understand your distinction between being true and being the Truth.
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:If "false knowledge" meant "mistaken certainty", then there would be states of false knowledge; but it doesn't
How it doesn't? What else would that expression mean??
"I knew that p" (or simply "I knew it") is often used in the sense of "I was certain that p", but (subjective) certainty isn't the same as knowledge; so erroneous certainty had better not be called "false knowledge"
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:The state of knowledge is not the same as the state of (subjective) certainty.
Really? how is it not?
First of all, there is a difference between subjective certainty (in the psychological sense) and objective certainty (in the epistemological sense). The former is the absence of doubt, while the latter is the absence of possible error.

* Belief entails neither subjective nor objective certainty.
* Subjective certainty entails belief.
* Subjective certainty doesn't entail knowledge.
* Claims to knowledge entail subjective certainty.
* Objective certainty entails knowledge.
* Infallible knowledge entails objective certainty.
* Fallible knowledge doesn't entail objective certainty.
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote: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.
Of course, knowledge isn't entailed or guaranteed by subjective certainty. Nobody knows that p just because he is certain that p, or just in virtue of being certain that p. My point has been another one: Rationally, logically thinking persons abstain from claiming to know that p unless they are certain that p.
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:(But there's nothing wrong with saying "I believe that p but I am not certain that p": belief does not entail certainty.)
Except that knowledge is a type of belief, so, a subset of belief (which is knowledge) does entail (any given degree of) certainty.
Knowledge does entail a high degree of objective certainty. In the case of infallible knowledge it's the maximum degree: 100%. In the case of fallible knowledge it's, say, >75% but <100%.
I was saying something different, namely that belief doesn't entail subjective certainty. That is, belief is compatible with the presence of some degree of doubt.
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:When I say "I know that p", it doesn't follow that I really know that p....
So we "know", but also "really know"... and is not the same.
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...
There's a misunderstanding on your part. Of course, if it is true or the case that I know that p, then I really know that p; but from my saying or asserting that I know that p, it doesn't follow that I really know that p. For instance, the statement or assertion can be a lie!
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:…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.
That is quite correct, and I agree with it, but there is a problem:
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.
There is a difference between being true or the case and being known to be true or the case. We desire to know the truth about reality, but "it is always by the grace of Nature that one knows something." (Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §505) [Theists would say: "by the grace of God"] We have our natural but imperfect and fallible sources of belief-justification and knowledge (experience [sense-perception+introspection], reason, and memory), and that's it. Perceptions can be illusions, intuitions can be delusions, and subjective appearances needn't correspond to or represent objective realities.
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote: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."
And I agree with Frege in that distinction between "The Truth" (as I've been calling it), and the "truth" we attribute to propositions.
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 still don't know what's the difference between "the truth" and "the Truth". There's only one concept of truth, and it's part of the concept of knowledge.

"The most striking difference between knowledge and belief is that knowledge entails truth while belief does not. There is false belief but no false knowledge. Some people believe that Africa is a single country, but since it is false that it is a single country, they do not know that it is a single country. They just believe falsely that they know that Africa is a single country. In this sense, all knowledge but not all belief is successful."

(Williamson, Timothy. "Knowledge First Epistemology." In The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, edited by Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard, 208-218. New York: Routledge, 2011. p. 208)
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:"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!"
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.
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.
Well, knowledge is "deluxe belief" (or belief de luxe), so to speak; but if knowledge isn't infallible, it is never 100% certain that a belief believed to be knowledge really is knowledge (rather than a false knowledge-belief). Nevertheless, if we accept a distinction between "simply knowing" and "knowing for certain", we can rest content with the concept of fallible knowledge.

Knowledge is not an activity but a (dispositional) mental state—only the pursuit of knowledge is. "To know" is not a dynamic verb; it is unlike "to walk".

The statement that knowledge "is inescapably subjective" is ambiguous, because there is a distinction between epistemological subjectivity (or objectivity) and ontological subjectivity (or objectivity). Beliefs which are knowledge are epistemically objective by definition. Dispositional beliefs are ontically objective, while occurrent beliefs, i.e. conscious believings, are ontically subjective. (See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/#2.1)
There is a corresponding distinction between knowledge as a nonconscious mental disposition and knowledge as a conscious mental occurrence (an "event of knowing").

"There are two quite distinct senses of the distinction between objective and subjective. In one sense, which I will call the epistemological sense, there is a distinction between objective knowledge, and subjective matters of opinion. If I say, for example, 'Rembrandt was born in 1606', that statement is epistemically objective in the sense that it can be established as true or false independently of the attitudes, feelings, opinions or prejudices of the agents investigating the question. If I say 'Rembrandt was a better painter than Rubens', that claim is not a matter of objective knowledge, but is a matter of subjective opinion. But in addition to the distinction between epistemically objective and subjective claims, there is a distinction between entities in the world that have an objective existence, such as mountains and molecules, and entities that have a subjective existence, such as pains and tickles. I call this distinction in modes of existence, the ontological sense of the objective/subjective distinction.
Science is indeed epistemically objective in the sense that scientists attempt to establish truths which can be verified independently of the attitudes and prejudices of the scientists. But epistemic objectivity of method does not preclude ontological subjectivity of subject matter. Thus there is no objection in principle to having an epistemically objective science of an ontologically subjective domain, such as human consciousness."


(Searle, John R. "The Future of Philosophy." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B354 (1999): 2069-2080. p. 2074)

Finally, as for basic distinctions that are relevant to our discussion:

"…The skeptical argument that comes to mind here is based on what I will call the infallibility claim about knowledge: if you know, you cannot be wrong. If we simply add the premise that you can be wrong in holding a given introspective belief, say that you are thinking about skepticism, it would seem to follow that such beliefs do not represent knowledge. This kind of argument from fallibility, as we might call it, can be applied to just about every sort of proposition we tend to think we know.

If, however, we look closely, we find that the infallibility claim is multiply ambiguous. There are at least three quite different things it might mean, and hence really three different infallibility principles.

The claim, ‘If you know, you can’t be wrong’, might have the meaning of:

1. It must be the case that if you know that something is true, then it is true (i.e., you cannot know something that is false).

Call (1) the verity principle, since it says simply that knowledge must be of truths (verities). Knowledge can never have a falsehood as its object. The claim might, on the other hand, have the meaning of:

2. If you know that something is true, then it must be true, that is, the proposition you know is necessarily true (i.e., you can know only necessary truths).

Call (2) the necessity principle, since it says simply that knowledge is of necessary truths. Knowledge never has among its objects any propositions that could possibly fail to hold. The claim ‘If you know, you can’t be wrong’ might also have the meaning of:

3. If you know that something is true, then your belief of it must be true, in the sense that your believing it (the fact that you believe it) entails[345]or guarantees its truth (i.e., only beliefs that cannot be false constitute knowledge).

Call (3) the infallibility principle proper, since in saying that only infallible beliefs constitute knowledge it connects with skepticism more closely than (1) or (2). Knowledge, it says, is never constituted by fallible beliefs, those that can have falsehoods among their objects.

Unlike (2), (3) implies nothing about the propositional or other objects of knowledge; instead, it restricts the kind of belief that can constitute knowledge. And by contrast with (2), (3) also allows for knowledge of contingent (non-necessary) truths, such as that I exist. This proposition can be false (that I exist is not a necessary truth); but my belief of it is infallible and therefore cannot be false. If I now believe that I exist, then it follows that I do now exist."


(Audi, Robert. Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2011. pp. 345-5)

The verity principle is true and the necessity principle is false. Whether the infallibility principle proper is true depends on whether infallibility is a necessary condition of knowledge.
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Fcacciola »

I feel that we're running around in circles, so maybe is about time to agree to disagree.
Consul wrote:
Fcacciola wrote: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).
Do you mean to say that experience (perception, introspection, recollection) is not a reliable, truth-conducive source of knowledge?
I'm saying that is not conclusive. Reliability is just a degree.
Then I'm asking, what is "P is true" is supposed to mean in this case.
Consul wrote: If (and only if) P(H/E) = 1, then the degree is 100% and H is conclusively, infallibly confirmed/justified and it is 100% certain that H is true. Do we have knowledge only if this is the case? The majority of epistemologists says no, accepting the concept of fallible, uncertain (less-than-100%-certain) knowledge.
Precisely.
And my point is that, for (less-than-100%-certain) knowledge, you can't say "P is true". And if you do, you ought to qualify what "is true" there is suppose to mean.

Consul wrote:Yes, in the case of fallible/fallibly justified knowledge there is only a probabilistic relation (<1) between the belief-justifying evidence and the truth of the belief (deemed knowledge). But if the belief is to be knowledge at all, it must be true.


That's what I can't follow: how can you demand "must be true" on something that bares only a probabilistic relation with the truth?
Consul wrote: Infallibilists object that in the case of one's fallibly knowing that p (is true) one doesn't know whether one (really) knows that p (is true), precisely because the possibility of p being false is still there. And if that possibility is an actuality, then we don't have fallible knowledge but merely false knowledge-belief, which is no knowledge at all.


Exactly!

And I proposed a way for having knowledge all the same, by challenging the impossible (on so many occasions) to satisfy truth-condition.
Consul wrote:I don't understand your distinction between being true and being the Truth.


Suppose there is a box containing certain items: A and B.

Now, consider the propositions

H1: "A is in the box"
H2: "C is in the box"

Both H1 and H2 have an "ontologically objetive" truth value:

OTV1: H1 is true
OTV2: H2 is false

Now, suppose subject S looks into the box in order to determine the truth of the hypoteses, gathering evidences e1 and e1 for H1 and H2 resp.
From that evidence, S infers:

STV1: H1 is true
STV2: H2 is true (because it just so happened that B looks a lot like C)

Now, is "OTV1/2 and STV1/2" one and the same? of course not. The only reason OTV1/2 are even listed here is because I constructed that synthetic reality (the box with A and B), so I know the objetive true value of any proposition on it. But the actual reality we live in is like that box, and we are not the ones that constructed it, so, the objetive truth values of any propositions about reality exist, just like OTV1/2, but we don't have any means to get to it.

Propositions are true or false all by themselves (OTV1/2 above), regardless of the inquiry of any subject, but, subjects never really obtain *that* truth value (named the "Truth" in my comments) because there is no mental mechanism for that, so, all we can hope to get is "STV1/2".

There is the ontologically objective Truth value of propositions (OTV1/2), and the subjective truth value of propositions (STV1/2)
If knowledge requires "P is true", then at most, it can never require a true that refers to OTV1/2 above, only STV1/2-
Consul wrote:First of all, there is a difference between subjective certainty (in the psychological sense) and objective certainty (in the epistemological sense). The former is the absence of doubt, while the latter is the absence of possible error.


Agreed. Though, objective certainty naturally carries subjective certainty along (not so the other way around), and that's what I meant: the state of (proper) knowledge entails objetive certainty, but that in turn carries subjective certainty with it.

Also, certainty of any kind, objetive or not, is ultimately itself subjective, for it is subjects that are in such a state of mind.
Even the the absence of possible error (which should be rephrased, unlikelihood rather than absence), is itself a subjective, human evaluated, measure. There is no error in facts, only in our the process of knowing them.
Consul wrote:There's a misunderstanding on your part. Of course, if it is true or the case that I know that p, then I really know that p; but from my saying or asserting that I know that p, it doesn't follow that I really know that p. For instance, the statement or assertion can be a lie!
Fair enough. Now I see what you meant to say.
In any case, the point of discussion remains: how does the truth-condition is satisfied, or rather, what does it even mean if it is, in the case of fallible knowledge??
Consul wrote:"The most striking difference between knowledge and belief is that knowledge entails truth while belief does not.


But that difference can only be evaluated (to classify belief as knowledge) to a degree with an arbitrary threshold. So, that synthetic binarization is in my opinion more problematic than useful.

Consul wrote: Nevertheless, if we accept a distinction between "simply knowing" and "knowing for certain", we can rest content with the concept of fallible knowledge.



Except that this distinction turns the binarization I mentioned above (belief or knowledge) into a triad (belief or simple knowledge or certain knowledge), but then the triad falls short on the boundaries, like any other synthetic compartmentalization. Do we extend that? "simply know", "know with low certainty", "know with high certainty", "know for sure", etc... ?

Under the hood, there is just a continuum spectrum of probabilities. We can keep compartmentalizing but I argue all that comes from insisting with "P is true", and there is better way be relaxing the truth-condition.

Consul wrote:The statement that knowledge "is inescapably subjective" is ambiguous



I meant that knowledge exist within, and is constructed by, subjects.
Knowledge, on itself, isn't out there. Only facts are.

Consul wrote:There are two quite distinct senses of the distinction between objective and subjective. In one sense, which I will call the epistemological sense, there is a distinction between objective knowledge, and subjective matters of opinion. If I say, for example, 'Rembrandt was born in 1606', that statement is epistemically objective in the sense that it can be established as true or false independently of the attitudes, feelings, opinions or prejudices of the agents investigating the question. If I say 'Rembrandt was a better painter than Rubens', that claim is not a matter of objective knowledge, but is a matter of subjective opinion. But in addition to the distinction between epistemically objective and subjective claims, there is a distinction between entities in the world that have an objective existence, such as mountains and molecules, and entities that have a subjective existence, such as pains and tickles. I call this distinction in modes of existence, the ontological sense of the objective/subjective distinction.


I almost agree with this analysis of objective vs subjective.

That 'Rembrandt was born in 1606' can be determined independently of that particular list of traits of the agents, does not mean that it can be determined independently of the agents.

So, like I mentioned above, on top of that epistemically objective truth (the human made determination of said fact), it is the ontologically objective truth (the fact itself) which really is independent of any agents.
Problem is, we can't confuse one with the other... agents can determine the facts, always limited by their cognitive faculties, to any degree of certainty, but the facts never speak for themselves. The truth of a fact (ontologically objective) is never the same as the truth we can determine about it (epistemically objective)

Consul wrote: 1. It must be the case that if you know that something is true, then it is true (i.e., you cannot know something that is false).
2. If you know that something is true, then it must be true, that is, the proposition you know is necessarily true (i.e., you can know only necessary truths).
3. If you know that something is true, then your belief of it must be true, in the sense that your believing it (the fact that you believe it) entails or guarantees its truth (i.e., only beliefs that cannot be false constitute knowledge).


I'm not sure I properly see the difference between "is true" and "must be true" here.

As for (3), I read that sentence as saying that "the believe in it simply attributes truth to the proposition" (which is what I've been saying we effectively do), but your comments below seem to imply otherwise, so, I don't get (3) it seems.
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

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Fcacciola wrote:Or, going even further.. is "P is true" really a proper requirement for knowledge?
No, and I don't think the "justified" part of the philosophical definition of knowledge ('true, justified belief') makes sense either, since our knowledge is largely a reflection of our particular, biologically-given cognitive structures. As a result, all our claims to knowledge ultimately reflects the nature of our minds. As such, one can raise serious doubts about our ability to literally know the world’s “true” character. Consequently, there is no guarantee that any of our “knowledge” (including our mathematical and scientific knowledge) will conform to the “real” properties of the world. Thus, one could argue that our various systems of knowledge and belief will not resemble the “real” properties of the world, in any sense of the word, any more than our physical organs reflect our environment. It then follows that as N. Chomsky has argued that,
Our knowledge...even in science and mathematics is not derived by induction, by applying reliable procedures, and so on; it is not grounded or based on ‘good reasons’ in any sense of these notions. Rather, it grows in the mind, on the basis of our biological nature, triggered by appropriate experience, and in a limited way shaped by experience that settles options left open by the innate structure of mind. The result is an elaborate structure of cognitive systems of knowledge and belief, that reflects the very nature of the human mind, a biological organ like others with its scope and limits...If I had been differently constituted, with a different structure of mind-brain...I would come to know and follow different rules (or none) on the basis of the same experience, or I might have constructed different experience from the same physical events in my environment
Even evolutionary arguments that try to show that our innate cognitive structures would have to have a considerable degree of correspondence to external reality, (either because they are a product of natural law or for reasons of ‘natural selection’), are not very compelling. For as S. Pinker points out,
We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness.
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Consul »

@Bohm2:

Some philosophers regard the justification-condition as non-necessary for knowledge. For example, David Lewis writes in his paper "Elusive Knowledge" that "[t]he link between knowledge and justification must be broken." But if you also break the link between knowledge and truth, you give up the very concept of knowledge, because then knowledge is no different from mere belief. Lewis is aware of that, and so he doesn't demand that the link between knowledge and truth be broken too.

As for the Pinker quote, the having of true (correct/accurate) beliefs does enhance an animal's fitness and facilitates its problem-solving.

"[T]here is I perfectly plausible way for truth to be a property that, although irreducible, is nevertheless favored by a process of natural selection. Indeed, since some naturalists characterize beliefs as the 'maps by which we steer', a slight modification of our earlier example shows us exactly how this would work. Suppose we have ten creatures competing for a scarce resource such as food, and suppose that only one of these creatures (Bob) possesses accurate beliefs concerning the whereabouts of the food. If all we want is an explanation of Bob's immediate motor behavior, then we needn't appeal to the truth or falsehood of any of his beliefs. But if we want to know why Bob's behavior proves successful while his cohorts die out, then it clearly does matter that his behavior is generated by true beliefs. In a narrow and somewhat mechanistic sense, the truth value of a belief is indeed epiphenomenal, since it can vary without effecting the causal powers of the cognitive mechanisms that generate behavior. But in another broader sense, it clearly is not epiphenomenal, since variance in a beliefs truth value an alter the broader consequences of the behavior, making it either successful or unsuccessful (from an evolutionary perspective). To adapt a recent slogan: truth doesn't make the behavior, it makes the behavior better. Hence, truth and reliability are exactly the sort of features for which there can indeed be considerable selection pressure.

So the naturalist has a very plausible and compelling account of the relation between beliefs and behavior which makes truth (1) a causally relevant feature of beliefs and (2) causally relevant in a way that enhances reproductive fitness. If we add to this the further claim that a preponderance of true beliefs is, in fact, something that our cognitive mechanisms have been selected to produce, then we have the basic idea behind evolutionary reliabilism. Putting things very roughly (and, no doubt, too simplistically), evolutionary reliabilism claims that cognitive mechanisms come to be adaptive, in part, by generating desires that correspond with reproductive fitness (e.g., a desire to reproduce, a desire to stay alive, etc.) and accurate representations that enable the organism to get around and satisfy those desires. On this view, the truthfulness of our beliefs actually helps explain their adaptiveness. While belief-producing mechanisms cannot be altered to produce adaptive cognitive states directly, they can be altered to produce more accurate cognitive states. The accuracy of those states, in turn, makes them more inclined to generate fitness-enhancing behavior."


(Ramsey, William. "Naturalism Defended." In Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism, edited by James Beilby, 15-29. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002. pp. 18-9)
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Fcacciola »

Bohm2 wrote:
Fcacciola wrote:Or, going even further.. is "P is true" really a proper requirement for knowledge?
No, and I don't think the "justified" part of the philosophical definition of knowledge ('true, justified belief') makes sense either, since our knowledge is largely a reflection of our particular, biologically-given cognitive structures. As a result, all our claims to knowledge ultimately reflects the nature of our minds. As such, one can raise serious doubts about our ability to literally know the world’s “true” character. Consequently, there is no guarantee that any of our “knowledge” (including our mathematical and scientific knowledge) will conform to the “real” properties of the world. Thus, one could argue that our various systems of knowledge and belief will not resemble the “real” properties of the world, in any sense of the word, any more than our physical organs reflect our environment.
That, along with the Chomsky and Pinker quotes, reflects exactly the views I tried to present.
And it is based on this view that I proposed to consider knowledge as "Dependable Certified Belief"

Dependable because in my opinion, the most important condition to promote a belief as knowledge is that the attribution of truth allows us to justifiably depend on it.
It is that dependability, in my opinion, the better judgment of the validity of the truth attribution, more than just the level of correlation with external reality.
Of course, said dependability is directly based on the veracity of the proposition (the correlation with external reality) [and Consul addressed this in this response quoting from Pinker], but the point is that is not the correlation on and by itself what ultimately matters.

Certified because at the end of the day, we just decide what we considered to be true. "To know" is a state of mind and not an action as Consul explained, but that state of mind comes from an action, the action of deciding that a belief is to be granted the status of knowledge.

If you read my earlier posts, you will see how this concept of certification plays in my view a fundamental role in the transmission of knowledge. When people is taught about, for instance, science, they do no engage on any evidence based justification process, not at all. They just take the instance of knowledge because it is certified.
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Bohm2 »

Consul wrote:As for the Pinker quote, the having of true (correct/accurate) beliefs does enhance an animal's fitness and facilitates its problem-solving.
There are studies that argue against this view and favour Pinker's quote:
Does natural selection favor veridical perceptions, those that more accurately depict the objective environment? Students of perception often claim that it does. But this claim, though influential, has not been adequately tested. Here we formalize the claim and a few alternatives. To test them, we introduce “interface games,” a class of evolutionary games in which perceptual strategies compete. We explore, in closed-form solutions and Monte Carlo simulations, some simpler games that assume frequency-dependent selection and complete mixing in infinite populations. We find that veridical perceptions can be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality. This suggests that natural selection need not favor veridical perceptions, and that the effects of selection on sensory perception deserve further study.
Does Evolution Favor True Perceptions?
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... erceptions

Natural selection and veridical perceptions
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 9310003772[/quote]

Having said that I don't agree with Pinker on the importance of natural selection with respect to the evolution of many of our mental systems. I tend to favour the ideas of Gould and scientists like Lewontin, Chomsky, etc. who have suggested that many of our mental systems (e.g. language) may have evolved for reasons due to physical/chemical laws/constraints that have little to do with adaptation. They warn against "naive adaptationism," or the inappropriate use of adaptive theorizing to explain traits that may have emerged for other reasons. From my understanding, it's like why Helium came after Hydrogen during the evolution of our universe: there are serious constraints based on physical laws that shape evolution that often don't have much to do with natural selection/adaptation.
The human brain is the most complicated device for reasoning and calculating, and for expressing emotion, ever evolved on earth. Natural selection made the human brain big, but most of our mental properties and potentials may be spandrels—that is, nonadaptive side consequences of building a device with such structural complexity. If I put a small computer (no match for a brain) in my factory, my adaptive reasons for so doing (to keep accounts and issue paychecks) represent a tiny subset of what the computer, by virtue of inherent structure, can do (factor-analyze my data on land snails, beat or tie anyone perpetually in tic-tac-toe). In pure numbers, the spandrels overwhelm the adaptations. The human brain must be bursting with spandrels that are essential to human nature and vital to our self-understanding but that arose as nonadaptations, and are therefore outside the compass of evolutionary psychology, or any other ultra-Darwinian theory.
Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/reviews/ ... alism.html[/quote]

I also think that a lot of philosophy of language and meaning, Putman's twin earth, etc. that try to take an externalist perspective with respect to meaning are on the wrong track:

Language and Meaning
http://www.jrg3.net/mind/language.html

Compare this with internalism:
...the internalist denies the assumption that in giving the content of an expression, we are primarily specifying something about that expression's relation to things in the world which that expression might be used to say things about. According to the internalist, expressions as such don't bear any semantically interesting relations to things in the world; names don't, for example, refer to the objects with which one might take them to be associated. Sentences are not true or false, and do not express propositions which are true or false; the idea that we can understand natural languages using a theory of reference as a guide is mistaken. On this sort of view, we occasionally use sentences to say true or false things about the world, and occasionally use names to refer to things; but this is just one we can do with names and sentences, and is not a claim about the meanings of those expressions.
Chomsky, who is arguably the leading figure in this area and is often considered by many as the leading figure that gave birth to the "cognitive revolution" (although he denies it), summarizes it this way:
...we find that human language appears to have no reference relation, in the sense stipulated in the study of formal systems, and presupposed – mistakenly I think – in contemporary theories of reference for language in philosophy and psychology, which take for granted some kind of word–object relation, where the objects are extra-mental. What we understand to be a house, a river, a person, a tree, water, and so on, consistently turns out to be a creation of what seventeenth-century investigators called the ‘‘cognoscitive powers,’’ which provide us with rich means to refer to the outside world from certain perspectives. The objects of thought they construct are individuated by mental operations that cannot be reduced to a ‘‘peculiar nature belonging’’ to the thing we are talking about, as David Hume summarized a century of inquiry. There need be no mind-independent entity to which these objects of thought bear some relation akin to reference, and apparently there is none in many simple cases (probably all). In this regard, internal conceptual symbols are like the phonetic units of mental representations, such as the syllable /ba/; every particular act externalizing this mental entity yields a mind-independent entity, but it is idle to seek a mind-independent construct that corresponds to the syllable. Communication is not a matter of producing some mind-external entity that the hearer picks out of the world, the way a physicist could. Rather, communication is a more-or-less affair, in which the speaker produces external events and hearers seek to match them as best they can to their own internal resources. Words and concepts appear to be similar in this regard, even the simplest of them. Communication relies on shared cognoscitive powers, and succeeds insofar as shared mental constructs, background, concerns, presuppositions, etc. allow for common perspectives to be (more or less) attained. These semantic properties of lexical items seem to be unique to human language and thought, and have to be accounted for somehow in the study of their evolution.
In symbolic systems of other animals, symbols appear to be linked directly to mind-independent events. The symbols of human language are sharply different. Even in the simplest cases, there is no word-object relation where words are mind-independent entities. There is no reference relation, in the technical sense familiar from Frege and Peirce to contemporary externalists. Much of Chomsky’s scepticism about externalist semantics is a scepticism about the possibility of making any scientific use of truth and reference in linguistic semantics. His scepticism about truth and reference in turn seems to stem from some deep metaphysical puzzles that he likes to raise about the existence of things in the world for words to refer to. In several places, Chomsky argues that names of cities, e.g., 'London' can refer both to something concrete and abstract, animate and inanimate. He provides a number of examples to prove his point, if you read his stuff; convincingly, in my opinion. If you want to read a PhD thesis paper that summarizes why only an internalist perspective can ever hope to begin a scientific study of mind:

Language And Scientific Explanation: Where Does Semantics Fit In?
http://www.unsworks.unsw.edu.au/primo_l ... orks_10230
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Consul »

Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:Do you mean to say that experience (perception, introspection, recollection) is not a reliable, truth-conducive source of knowledge?
I'm saying that is not conclusive. Reliability is just a degree.
Then I'm asking, what is "P is true" is supposed to mean in this case.
In which case? In that case in which the empirical evidence doesn't necessitate but only probabilify the truth of the proposition (and of the corresponding belief) in question?
Well, again, in any case it's not possible for knowledge to be independent of truth (in the correspondence-theoretic sense of the term).
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote: If (and only if) P(H/E) = 1, then the degree is 100% and H is conclusively, infallibly confirmed/justified and it is 100% certain that H is true. Do we have knowledge only if this is the case? The majority of epistemologists says no, accepting the concept of fallible, uncertain (less-than-100%-certain) knowledge.
Precisely. And my point is that, for (less-than-100%-certain) knowledge, you can't say "P is true". And if you do, you ought to qualify what "is true" there is suppose to mean.
Being true is one thing, and being justifiedly said (believed/asserted) to be true is another.
In the case of fallible knowledge, your belief is true, since the truth-condition applies equally to fallible and infallible knowledge; but you're not justified in saying that its truth is known for certain or with (100%) certainty. Fallible knowledge is blemished by some (degree of) epistemic (objective) uncertainty or insecurity. It's imperfect knowledge.
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:Yes, in the case of fallible/fallibly justified knowledge there is only a probabilistic relation (<1) between the belief-justifying evidence and the truth of the belief (deemed knowledge). But if the belief is to be knowledge at all, it must be true.
That's what I can't follow: how can you demand "must be true" on something that bares only a probabilistic relation with the truth?
To say that is it not necessary that given the evidence for it, the belief is true is not to say that it is not necessary that if the belief is knowledge, it is true.

Like belief, knowledge has a mind-to-world direction of fit (to use Searle's terms); but unlike belief, it is always successful by always hitting its target.
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:Infallibilists object that in the case of one's fallibly knowing that p (is true) one doesn't know whether one (really) knows that p (is true), precisely because the possibility of p being false is still there. And if that possibility is an actuality, then we don't have fallible knowledge but merely false knowledge-belief, which is no knowledge at all.
Exactly! And I proposed a way for having knowledge all the same, by challenging the impossible (on so many occasions) to satisfy truth-condition.
That way is a dead end! For "the word ['knowledge'] has a demand for truth built into its meaning." (D. M. Armstrong) So unless you're prepared to give up the very concept of knowledge, the truth-condition is "ungiveupable" in principle. What is "giveupable" is the conclusive-evidence condition, which is given up by fallibilism.
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:I don't understand your distinction between being true and being the Truth.
Suppose there is a box containing certain items: A and B.

Now, consider the propositions

H1: "A is in the box"
H2: "C is in the box"

Both H1 and H2 have an "ontologically objetive" truth value:

OTV1: H1 is true
OTV2: H2 is false

Now, suppose subject S looks into the box in order to determine the truth of the hypoteses, gathering evidences e1 and e1 for H1 and H2 resp.
From that evidence, S infers:

STV1: H1 is true
STV2: H2 is true (because it just so happened that B looks a lot like C)

Now, is "OTV1/2 and STV1/2" one and the same? of course not. The only reason OTV1/2 are even listed here is because I constructed that synthetic reality (the box with A and B), so I know the objetive true value of any proposition on it. But the actual reality we live in is like that box, and we are not the ones that constructed it, so, the objetive truth values of any propositions about reality exist, just like OTV1/2, but we don't have any means to get to it.

Propositions are true or false all by themselves (OTV1/2 above), regardless of the inquiry of any subject, but, subjects never really obtain *that* truth value (named the "Truth" in my comments) because there is no mental mechanism for that, so, all we can hope to get is "STV1/2".

There is the ontologically objective Truth value of propositions (OTV1/2), and the subjective truth value of propositions (STV1/2)
If knowledge requires "P is true", then at most, it can never require a true that refers to OTV1/2 above, only STV1/2-
There aren't two different concepts of truth but only two different levels:

1. the psychological (representational, intentional) level of perception, thought, belief, knowledge (where propositions are thought to be true or states of affairs are thought to be the case, where truth-values are attributed/ascribed to propositions).
2. the ontological level of being, existence, reality (where propositions are true or states of affairs are the case, where truth-values are had simpliciter by propositions).

What you call "the subjective truth value" is simply the truth-value a proposition is thought/believed to have in the light of the evidence (perceptual evidence in your example); and being thought/believed to be true/false is not the same as being true/false. What you think is true needn't be true just because of your thinking so; and if your evidence or your reasons for thinking that p (is true) are inconclusive, then you cannot be objectively certain that p (is true). That's our epistemic situation or predicament in the case of fallible knowledge.
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:First of all, there is a difference between subjective certainty (in the psychological sense) and objective certainty (in the epistemological sense). The former is the absence of doubt, while the latter is the absence of possible error.
Agreed. Though, objective certainty naturally carries subjective certainty along (not so the other way around), and that's what I meant: the state of (proper) knowledge entails objetive certainty, but that in turn carries subjective certainty with it.

Also, certainty of any kind, objetive or not, is ultimately itself subjective, for it is subjects that are in such a state of mind.
Even the the absence of possible error (which should be rephrased, unlikelihood rather than absence), is itself a subjective, human evaluated, measure. There is no error in facts, only in our the process of knowing them.
* Subjective certainty doesn't entail objective certainty, and the latter doesn't entail the former either. For even if it is objectively certain that p, I can believe that p without being subjectively certain that p.

"Epistemic certainty is often accompanied by psychological certainty, but it need not be. It is possible that a subject may have a belief that enjoys the highest possible epistemic status and yet be unaware that it does. …In such a case, the subject may feel less than the full confidence that her epistemic position warrants."

(https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/certainty/)

* If you think "the state of (proper) knowledge entails objective certainty," then you affirm infallibilism. And in the case of infallible, objectively certain knowledge the likelihood of possible error, of being wrong or mistaken is zero, because objective certainty is truth-guaranteeing.

Of course, this presupposes the definition of objective certainty as the absence of possible error, according to which there are no degrees or only two degrees (0 and 1) of objective certainty, as opposed to (non-binary) degrees of subjective certainty. However, if degrees of objective certainty are defined in terms of degrees of objective evidential confirmation/justification, then there are degrees of objective certainty other than 0 and 1. But such a degree of objective certainty < 1 is not truth-guaranteeing.
Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:"The most striking difference between knowledge and belief is that knowledge entails truth while belief does not.

But that difference can only be evaluated (to classify belief as knowledge) to a degree with an arbitrary threshold. So, that synthetic binarization is in my opinion more problematic than useful.


There are degrees of probability, but there aren't degrees of truth. (Nor are there degrees of knowledge.)
The truth-condition says nothing about how to ascertain truths, and it isn't meant to do so.

Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote: Nevertheless, if we accept a distinction between "simply knowing" and "knowing for certain", we can rest content with the concept of fallible knowledge.

Except that this distinction turns the binarization I mentioned above (belief or knowledge) into a triad (belief or simple knowledge or certain knowledge), but then the triad falls short on the boundaries, like any other synthetic compartmentalization. Do we extend that? "simply know", "know with low certainty", "know with high certainty", "know for sure", etc... ?

Under the hood, there is just a continuum spectrum of probabilities. We can keep compartmentalizing but I argue all that comes from insisting with "P is true", and there is better way be relaxing the truth-condition.


Whatever conceptual problems we have with "belief", "knowledge", and "certainty", they are not solvable through a relaxation of the truth-condition. For without it, belief is never elevated to knowledge.

You can believe with low objective certainty, but you cannot know with low objective certainty, not even fallibly. For if we introduce (non-binary) degrees of objective certainty (in addition to ones of subjective certainty), then to know fallibly that p is to know it with a very high degree of objective certainty, which is different from but close to the maximum degree = 1/100%. What is known fallibly is almost known for certain, so to speak,

Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote:The statement that knowledge "is inescapably subjective" is ambiguous

I meant that knowledge exist within, and is constructed by, subjects.
Knowledge, on itself, isn't out there. Only facts are.


Knowledge as a mental state is "in here" and ontically subjective (but not epistemically subjective). However, knowledge qua information (content) is socially communicable and objectifiable in material form (e.g. scientific textbooks).

Fcacciola wrote:I almost agree with this analysis of objective vs subjective.
That 'Rembrandt was born in 1606' can be determined independently of that particular list of traits of the agents, does not mean that it can be determined independently of the agents.


If "determining the truth" means "truth-making" (in the metaphysical/ontological sense), then the scientists don't make truths true by verifying, ascertaining, or discovering them; but, of course, it if means verifying, ascertaining, or discovering the truth/truths, then this is something done by and dependent on thinking agents.

Fcacciola wrote:So, like I mentioned above, on top of that epistemically objective truth (the human made determination of said fact), it is the ontologically objective truth (the fact itself) which really is independent of any agents.
Problem is, we can't confuse one with the other... agents can determine the facts, always limited by their cognitive faculties, to any degree of certainty, but the facts never speak for themselves. The truth of a fact (ontologically objective) is never the same as the truth we can determine about it (epistemically objective)


In my ontological understanding, "truth" and "fact" aren't synonyms; that is, I don't regard facts as true propositions but as actual, obtaining states of affairs (which cannot have a truth-value). So your phrase "the truth of a fact" implies a category mistake in my view.

Moreover, I don't regard truth-bearers such as propositions as abstract entities existing eternally and necessarily in a Platonic heaven. I think all truth-bearers depend for their existence on thought or/and language and thus on minds. So I think a mindless world is a truthless world; but a truthless world is not a factless world (provided truths ≠ facts).

Note that to say that "all truth-bearers depend for their existence on thought or/and language and thus on minds" is not to say that they depend for their truth on thoughts, beliefs, opinions, judgments, or knowledge (about their truth).

There aren't two different kinds of truth; there is only a difference between being true and being known (to be true), between being true and ascertaining/being ascertained as true.

The truth-condition of knowledge is totally neutral with regard to the question of the possibility of (certain) knowledge. It is perfectly compatible both with epistemic optimism and with epistemic pessimism (skepticism), since all it states is that necessarily, if a proposition is known, it is true. It is silent on whether (certain) knowledge is possible at all, and if it is, on how to achieve it.

Fcacciola wrote:
Consul wrote: 1. It must be the case that if you know that something is true, then it is true (i.e., you cannot know something that is false).
2. If you know that something is true, then it must be true, that is, the proposition you know is necessarily true (i.e., you can know only necessary truths).
3. If you know that something is true, then your belief of it must be true, in the sense that your believing it (the fact that you believe it) entails or guarantees its truth (i.e., only beliefs that cannot be false constitute knowledge).

I'm not sure I properly see the difference between "is true" and "must be true" here.
As for (3), I read that sentence as saying that "the believe in it simply attributes truth to the proposition" (which is what I've been saying we effectively do), but your comments below seem to imply otherwise, so, I don't get (3) it seems.


3 is simply a description of infallibilism, according to which it is not known that p unless it is objectively certain that p.

-- Updated February 28th, 2017, 10:22 pm to add the following --

"'Know' is the preeminent 'success term' in epistemology; and the most basic kind of success it involves consists in truth."

(Alston, William P. A Realistic Conception of Truth. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. p. 248)

-- Updated March 1st, 2017, 12:18 am to add the following --

Recommended:

* Hannon, Michael. "'Knows' Entails Truth." [PDF] Journal of Philosophical Research 38 (2013): 349–366.

"ABSTRACT: It is almost universally presumed that knowledge is factive: in order to know that p it must be the case that p is true. This idea is often justified by appealing to knowledge ascriptions and related linguistic phenomena; i.e., an utterance of the form ‘S knows that p, but not-p’ sounds contradictory. In a recent article, Allan Hazlett argues that our ordinary concept of knowledge is not factive. From this it seems to follow that epistemologists cannot appeal to ordinary language to justify the truth condition of knowledge. More significantly, Hazlett claims that epistemologists theorizing about knowledge should not concern themselves with the ordinary concept of knowledge as revealed by knowledge ascriptions and related linguistic phenomena. My paper has two goals: first, to defend the orthodox view that the ordinary concept of knowledge is factive; second, to undermine Hazlett’s claim that epistemologists should not theorize about knowledge on the basis of how ‘knows’ is used in everyday speech."

-- Updated March 1st, 2017, 1:47 pm to add the following --

Consul wrote:You can believe with low objective certainty, but you cannot know with low objective certainty, not even fallibly. For if we introduce (non-binary) degrees of objective certainty (in addition to ones of subjective certainty), then to know fallibly that p is to know it with a very high degree of objective certainty, which is different from but close to the maximum degree = 1/100%. What is known fallibly is almost known for certain, so to speak.


The big problem fallibilists have is to determine some threshold 50% < T < 100% below which we have mere belief and above which we have knowledge, i.e. to determine exactly how high "very high" has to be in order to elevate belief to knowledge. Infallibilists have argued that there is no non-arbitrary way of doing so. Why should a 95%-justified belief suddenly be knowledge when a 94%-justified belief is not?

"Given the account so far of the weak [fallibilist] conception of knowledge and how it is dialectally arrived at, the immediate and urgent question should be: what then is this specific level of justification, the attaining of which transforms what is up till then at best merely increasingly probable or likely true belief into the exalted state of knowledge?

Here it is perhaps unreasonable to demand a precise numerical specification of a level of probability and perhaps not even entirely clear that numerical probabilities are the right way to think of degrees of justification. But if we are to suppose that there is a definite concept of knowledge which when satisfied yields the exalted cognitive state in question, it is surely not good enough to say merely, as is commonly said, that the level of justification in question is “strong” or “high” or “adequate” or enough to make it “highly likely” that the belief in question is true, for nothing this vague is enough to specify a definite level of justification and a corresponding definite concept of knowledge. And yet the striking fact is that philosophical discussions that either explicitly invoke or tacitly presuppose the weak conception of knowledge almost never have anything much more helpful than this to say about what this “magic” level of justification, as I will somewhat tendentiously refer to it, might be—or, even more important, about why it has this very special status. Indeed, it is fair to say that nothing like a precise specification of the “magic” level has ever been seriously suggested, let alone more widely accepted.

This failure on the part of those who either espouse or presuppose the weak conception of knowledge to offer anything like a clear specification of the “magic” level of justification or even to give any reasons for thinking that such a specification might in some way be possible seems to me to constitute in itself a very serious objection to that conception. But an even more serious objection is that it is very difficult or, I believe, impossible to see what could give any level of justification that is short of being conclusive the kind of special significance that the weak conception requires it to have."


(BonJour, Laurence. "The Myth of Knowledge." Philosophical Perspectives 24 (2010): 57–83. pp. 60-1)

-- Updated March 1st, 2017, 3:58 pm to add the following --

"One thing that sometimes makes people balk at accepting the truth condition is that someone can, of course, think that he knows something when in fact it is not true. Thus in the case just given, I may still think that I know that my car is in the parking lot. Similarly, many people living prior to the exploits of Columbus believed that the earth was flat and thought that this was something that they knew. And many scientists and others living prior the work of Einstein believed that Newtonian mechanics was an exactly correct description of the behavior of material bodies and again thought that this was a case of knowledge, indeed an exceptionally clear one. Moreover, in describing cases of this kind, it is sometimes tempting, and perhaps even useful in some ways, to temporarily take the point of view of the people in question and thus describe the situation by saying that they knew the claim in question—that is, that from their perspective it clearly seemed that they knew. According to all versions of the traditional conception of knowledge, however, such ascriptions of knowledge where the proposition in question is false are always mistaken, however reasonable and obvious they may have seemed to the people in question.

Here we have a somewhat more subtle example of the appeal to intuitive or common-sense judgments. In general, it seems intuitively wrong to ascribe knowledge where the claim in question is not in fact true. This is why a person who claims to know something will normally withdraw that claim when it is demonstrated in some way that the claim in question is mistaken and will concede that he or she did not know after all. But there are also certain cases, such as that of beliefs about the shape of the earth prior to Columbus, where there seems to be something right about saying that the people in question knew something that wasn’t so. This conflict is resolved by pointing out that the ascription of knowledge in such cases in effect reflects the point of view of the people in question, from which the proposition seemed true; thus this ascription can still be said to be mistaken from a more objective standpoint in which the falsity of the claim is acknowledged.

A related problem that you may perhaps have with the truth condition arises from worrying about how you could ever tell that it is satisfied. As we will see further below, a person does in a way have to determine that the proposition is true, according to the traditional conception at least—something that is accomplished by appeal to the reasons or justification for it. But it is tempting to make the mistake of thinking of the truth condition as one whose satisfaction has to be somehow determined by the would-be knower independently of the satisfaction of the other two conditions, and the problem is then that there is no apparent way to do this. As the point is sometimes put, you cannot just “step outside” of your own subjective perspective and observe independently that the claim that you believe and for which you perhaps have good reasons or justification is also true—there is just no way to occupy such a “God’s-eye” perspective. But a proponent of the traditional conception will reply that what this shows is not that the truth condition is mistaken, but rather that it is a mistake to think of it as a condition that a person must determine independently to be satisfied in order to have knowledge; instead, it is just a condition that must in fact be satisfied (something that is in fact true of all of the conditions in question).

A useful way in which this point is sometimes put is to say that the concept of knowledge is a “success” concept, that is, that it describes the successful outcome of a certain kind of endeavor. The aim of the cognitive enterprise is truth: we want our beliefs to correctly describe the world. And, according to the traditional account of knowledge, we attempt to accomplish this by seeking beliefs for which we have good reasons or strong justification. When this endeavor is successful, that is, when the justified beliefs thus arrived at are in fact also true, then we have knowledge; when it fails, when the resulting strongly justified beliefs are not in fact true, we have only what might be described as “attempted knowledge.” But the distinction between genuine and merely attempted knowledge is not one that we have to, or indeed in the short run could, independently draw. (A crude but still helpful comparison: When shooting an arrow at a target, the aim is to hit the target, and this is something that we attempt to achieve by aiming carefully. But whether or not we succeed depends on whether the arrow does in fact hit the target, and this may be so, in which case we have succeeded, even if we have no independent way to establish that it is so—even if the target is only briefly visible and cannot, for some reason, be examined later.)"


(BonJour, Laurence. Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. pp. 29-30)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Cuthbert
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Cuthbert »

In everyday speech my car knows when to change gear and the bloody rain knows when to fall which is just when I'm leaving the house. We can't derive epistemology from colloquialism. But if we ignore the sense of words then we have lost the philosophical plot. And words have an amazing depth and breadth of sense even in everyday speech. We only need technical terms in extreme circumstances.
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Consul »

Fcacciola wrote:Indeed. It's a good idea to think of levels of truth. And I also agree with the pragmatic approach to knowledge.
I fact, I'm reading (a lot) on the subject (and posted here some thoughts) because I'm exploring the idea that knowledge might be said to be "Dependable Certified Belief". That is:

(i) P is a Belief.
(ii) P is Certified as True, meaning that a certain group of subjects agree on the truth of the proposition, even if this attribute is actually undecidable. And like all certifications is context dependent and provisional.
(iii) P is Dependable, meaning that we can safely function under the assumption that the belief is in fact true.

Condition (iii) is pretty much what you said.
In this account, Justification (and Undefeatability as some philosophers proposed) would build in the dependability requirement, whereas Certification serves as "P is true" but in a more "realistic" way.
In my account, certification is central because it serves to explain how knowledge is effectively shared by a community in which *only* a very few are directly justified, while all the rest just follow. Think of Science: we're all *just* taught scientific theories but statistically none of us do (or care about) any verification whatsoever, because we trust that "the scientists" did the right thing and followed through the scientific method. I.e, scientific knowledge is *certified* and so we accept it
(and I put it like this completely on purpose to empathize the similarities with religious believes)
* (ii) is an expression of the consensus theory of truth, according to which "true" means "socially accepted/approved". Peirce endorses a scientific-consensus theory when he says that truth is the "final agreement" or "final opinion" at the end of scientific inquiry.
But even a unanimous consensus among scientists isn't truth-entailing or -guaranteeing, since being believed to be true by all scientists just isn't the same as being true. They all might be wrong! "General agreement" or "catholic consent" (Peirce) [with "catholic" meaning "universal"] among scientists is a supreme reason for or ground of belief, but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of truth.

It is true that scientific testimony is a major source of belief-justification and knowledge, since most people aren't themselves doing scientific research. For example, I know that water consists of H2O molecules, but I know this solely on the basis of scientific testimony, because I've never chemically analyzed water myself.
(For the general question of the reliability of testimony, see: Epistemological Problems of Testimony!)

* (iii) is very vague. What does "to function safely" mean? That the belief doesn't prevent us from surviving, that it doesn't harm or kill us?
That reminds me of William James' "account of truth as working":

"I say ‘working’ is what the ‘truth’ of our ideas means, and call it a definition. …When I call a belief true, and define its truth to mean its workings…."

(in The Meaning of Truth, ch. xiv: Two English Critics)

I fail to see how "is true" can adequately be replaced by "works", because the concept of truth is really different from the concepts of usefulness, helpfulness and beneficialness: "is true" just doesn't mean "works" or "is/has proved useful".
Moreover, a belief may have positive practical effects, but this alone doesn't epistemically justify you in holding it, let alone in regarding it as knowledge. For example, a religious belief may prevent a depressed person from committing suicide (because he thinks he'd be punished by God for doing so), but this certainly doesn't justify that belief epistemically.

-- Updated March 2nd, 2017, 1:51 pm to add the following --
Cuthbert wrote:In everyday speech my car knows when to change gear and the bloody rain knows when to fall which is just when I'm leaving the house. We can't derive epistemology from colloquialism. But if we ignore the sense of words then we have lost the philosophical plot. And words have an amazing depth and breadth of sense even in everyday speech. We only need technical terms in extreme circumstances.
We're talking about propositional knowledge, knowledge-that here, and not about knowledge-how or non-propositional knowledge (by acquaintance) of objects or persons (as in "I know him"). In ordinary language, "to know (that)" sometimes means "to be certain/sure" (as in "I knew that Germany would win the soccer world championship"), and sometimes "to know (that)" is used metaphorically, with propositional knowledge being ascribed to mindless machines (computers, robots). But even in ordinary language, "to know (that)" is basically a factive verb, with knowledge(-that) correspondingly being a factive propositional attitude, as opposed to belief, desire, hope, and fear. A nonactual, nonobtaining state of affairs can be believed, desired, hoped, and feared, but it cannot be known.
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Re: Is "Truth" really a valid requirement for Knowledge?

Post by Fcacciola »

Consul wrote: Being true is one thing, and being justifiedly said (believed/asserted) to be true is another.
In the case of fallible knowledge, your belief is true, since the truth-condition applies equally to fallible and infallible knowledge; but you're not justified in saying that its truth is known for certain or with (100%) certainty. Fallible knowledge is blemished by some (degree of) epistemic (objective) uncertainty or insecurity. It's imperfect knowledge.
I still don't understand what can possibly mean that something "is true" and at the same time "you're not justified in saying that its truth is known for certain or with (100%) certainty", other than "is decided to be true",

but, we're now just repeating ourselves in my opinion, so is best stop that sub-part of the digression I think.
What you call "the subjective truth value" is simply the truth-value a proposition is thought/believed to have in the light of the evidence (perceptual evidence in your example); and being thought/believed to be true/false is not the same as being true/false. What you think is true needn't be true just because of your thinking so; and if your evidence or your reasons for thinking that p (is true) are inconclusive, then you cannot be objectively certain that p (is true). That's our epistemic situation or predicament in the case of fallible knowledge.
Exacty. And I can't see how "P is true" is a condition (which is required to be satisfied) when "you cannot be objectively certain that p (is true)"

But you tried to respond to that already I think. I just still don't get it, and I don't think I will.
"Epistemic certainty is often accompanied by psychological certainty, but it need not be. It is possible that a subject may have a belief that enjoys the highest possible epistemic status and yet be unaware that it does.
Really? how so?

The truth-condition says nothing about how to ascertain truths, and it isn't meant to do so.
Which is why I fail to see how is that a "condition". We are to satisfy the truth-condition, but not to ascertain the truth... what can that possibly mean...
Consul wrote: Whatever conceptual problems we have with "belief", "knowledge", and "certainty", they are not solvable through a relaxation of the truth-condition. For without it, belief is never elevated to knowledge.


I think what I proposed does just that.
Consul wrote:You can believe with low objective certainty, but you cannot know with low objective certainty, not even fallibly.


Right. It needs to be high, not low, objective certainty.
Consul wrote: For if we introduce (non-binary) degrees of objective certainty (in addition to ones of subjective certainty), then to know fallibly that p is to know it with a very high degree of objective certainty, which is different from but close to the maximum degree = 1/100%. What is known fallibly is almost known for certain, so to speak,
Precisely.
In my ontological understanding, "truth" and "fact" aren't synonyms; that is, I don't regard facts as true propositions but as actual, obtaining states of affairs (which cannot have a truth-value). So your phrase "the truth of a fact" implies a category mistake in my view.


Let me rephrase that. "the truth (of a proposition) *about* a fact" that is independent of any empirical observation of said fact.

The "A is in the box <- true" in my example above.

But if you prefer: God either does exist or doesn't. We don't know that, but any of those two propositions is true on itself.
Moreover, I don't regard truth-bearers such as propositions as abstract entities existing eternally and necessarily in a Platonic heaven. I think all truth-bearers depend for their existence on thought or/and language and thus on minds. So I think a mindless world is a truthless world; but a truthless world is not a factless world (provided truths ≠ facts).
Agreed

But: "the first star we would find at this very second that happens to be located at more than 10 million light years is a red dwarf" is a proposition even if there is nothing we can currently do to determine its value of truth (yet, it has one of its own: that is either true or false even if we don't know it)
Note that to say that "all truth-bearers depend for their existence on thought or/and language and thus on minds" is not to say that they depend for their truth on thoughts, beliefs, opinions, judgments, or knowledge (about their truth).


Exactly what I illustrated above.
There aren't two different kinds of truth; there is only a difference between (A) being true and (B)being known (to be true), between being true and ascertaining/being ascertained as true.
Exactly! Which is why I keep failing to see the sense in demanding that (B) requires as a condition (A), being these two different, for fallible knowledge without at the same time simply disqualifying pretty much all fallible knowledge as actually such (and demoting it to the degree of belief)
The truth-condition of knowledge is totally neutral with regard to the question of the possibility of (certain) knowledge. It is perfectly compatible both with epistemic optimism and with epistemic pessimism (skepticism), since all it states is that necessarily, if a proposition is known, it is true. It is silent on whether (certain) knowledge is possible at all, and if it is, on how to achieve it.


Indeed. Which is why I think the truth-condition is has the effect of limiting the proper instances of knowledge.
... "From this it seems to follow that epistemologists cannot appeal to ordinary language to justify the truth condition of knowledge"...
I'll read Hannon, but I can already see that I totally agree with Hazlett on that quoted line (so I will disagree with Hannon).

-- Updated March 1st, 2017, 1:47 pm to add the following --
The big problem fallibilists have is to determine some threshold 50% < T < 100% below which we have mere belief and above which we have knowledge, i.e. to determine exactly how high "very high" has to be in order to elevate belief to knowledge. Infallibilists have argued that there is no non-arbitrary way of doing so. Why should a 95%-justified belief suddenly be knowledge when a 94%-justified belief is not?
Precisely. So I propose to regard knowledge itself as "Dependable Certified Belief" on the one hand, then push the problems of certainty (such as the one you mentioned above) as a condition on the process of knowledge construction, not on knowledge itself.

Similarly to how I can put conditions on the way I build a house, which are not the same as the conditions on the built house.
"Given the account so far of the weak [fallibilist] conception of knowledge and how it is dialectally arrived at, the immediate and urgent question should be: what then is this specific level of justification, the attaining of which transforms what is up till then at best merely increasingly probable or likely true belief into the exalted state of knowledge?

Here it is perhaps unreasonable to demand a precise numerical specification of a level of probability and perhaps not even entirely clear that numerical probabilities are the right way to think of degrees of justification. But if we are to suppose that there is a definite concept of knowledge which when satisfied yields the exalted cognitive state in question, it is surely not good enough to say merely, as is commonly said, that the level of justification in question is “strong” or “high” or “adequate” or enough to make it “highly likely” that the belief in question is true, for nothing this vague is enough to specify a definite level of justification and a corresponding definite concept of knowledge. And yet the striking fact is that philosophical discussions that either explicitly invoke or tacitly presuppose the weak conception of knowledge almost never have anything much more helpful than this to say about what this “magic” level of justification, as I will somewhat tendentiously refer to it, might be—or, even more important, about why it has this very special status. Indeed, it is fair to say that nothing like a precise specification of the “magic” level has ever been seriously suggested, let alone more widely accepted.

This failure on the part of those who either espouse or presuppose the weak conception of knowledge to offer anything like a clear specification of the “magic” level of justification or even to give any reasons for thinking that such a specification might in some way be possible seems to me to constitute in itself a very serious objection to that conception. But an even more serious objection is that it is very difficult or, I believe, impossible to see what could give any level of justification that is short of being conclusive the kind of special significance that the weak conception requires it to have."
I agree with that analysis, and I propose that (part of) the solution is to separate knowledge from knowledge construction, specially, since as I mentioned in other parts of this thread, knowledge as a "possession" people have (the mental state you mentioned) is for the most part unrelated to any such justifications (and all the associated problems you mentioned above) since that pertains to the ones "constructing" the knowledge (say, the scientists), not the ones "possessing" it (say, lay people)

-- Updated March 3rd, 2017, 2:25 pm to add the following --
Consul wrote: * (ii) is an expression of the consensus theory of truth, according to which "true" means "socially accepted/approved". Peirce endorses a scientific-consensus theory when he says that truth is the "final agreement" or "final opinion" at the end of scientific inquiry.
But even a unanimous consensus among scientists isn't truth-entailing or -guaranteeing, since being believed to be true by all scientists just isn't the same as being true.
Agreed. Is not, but it formalizes the (temporary) attribution or consideration that is understood to be true.

It is important to connect this with what I mentioned in the previous post.
There is a fundamental difference between constructing knowledge and having it (IMO).
This account refers to knowledge as we have it, such that the conditions related to its veracity is pushed as conditions on the process of knowledge construction, but not on knowledge acquisition.
Consul wrote: * (iii) is very vague. What does "to function safely" mean? That the belief doesn't prevent us from surviving, that it doesn't harm or kill us?
That reminds me of William James' "account of truth as working":

"I say ‘working’ is what the ‘truth’ of our ideas means, and call it a definition. …When I call a belief true, and define its truth to mean its workings…."

(in The Meaning of Truth, ch. xiv: Two English Critics)
I agree I didn't fully complete what I meant by dependable to make it more precise. I had read Pierce, but not James, so I will.

Consul wrote: I fail to see how "is true" can adequately be replaced by "works"
Indeed it doesn't.

While I maintain that "is true" is not a valid requirement *if stated as that*, that's not to mean that knowledge construction is not required to do it's best to approach truth as close as possible.
But then, I consider this requirement to correspond to the process of knowledge construction, not to knowledge itself, as I said before.

I never got in this thread to elaborate on this distinction (and their different conditions) I draw between knowledge construction and acquisition.

Consul wrote:...because the concept of truth is really different from the concepts of usefulness, helpfulness and beneficialness: "is true" just doesn't mean "works" or "is/has proved useful".

Right.
Consul wrote: Moreover, a belief may have positive practical effects, but this alone doesn't epistemically justify you in holding it, let alone in regarding it as knowledge. For example, a religious belief may prevent a depressed person from committing suicide (because he thinks he'd be punished by God for doing so), but this certainly doesn't justify that belief epistemically.

If we distinguish between holding and constructing knowledge, these have different epistemic justifications.

My stance is that dependability is the epistemic justification to hold knowledge, as in, "I'm told electricity run through wires (yet I don't care if that is really true, how it does it, what is electricity to begin with, etc...)"
While a valid measure of evidential veracity is the epistemic justification to construct knowledge, as in, "I think it is electricity what is causing this effect on this coil, so I set out to see if I'm right."
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