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How Do You Define Knowledge?

Brian-M said:
I wonder if the knowledge of a teenage movie fan who "knows" that Spiderman got his powers from being bitten by a genetically engineered spider should be considered any less valid than the knowledge of a baby-boomer comic-book fan who "knows" that Spiderman got his powers from being bitten by a radioactive spider.
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No. Shared narratives are not necessarily consistent, which means that two contradictory propositions can both be true.

For that matter, unshared narratives are not necessarily consistent (tell me again about where Dr. Watson's war wound was?)
 
SnakeTongue said:
To know is just to know.

A living being can know that do not know.

We are looking for a definition of knowledge if you still did not get it.

We are not trying to sort out if a certain knowledge can be useful for a specific context.

Yes, it is possible to have knowledge of false propositions. What do you think crazy people debate? The truth about the universe?

How do you KNOW that your definition is not a FALSE PROPOSITION?

Yes, mere awareness yield knowledge. Just try to answer this post while you are sleeping...

About your last sentence: we are here to debate universal subjects, not your personal feelings. Keep your emotional burst to yourself and your cats.
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It is not an "emotional burst" to note that there is not a single correct sentence in the post above, and that most of the sentences above are mutually inconsistent. It is similarly not an emotional burst to note that many of them are not only merely untrue, but actively meaningless.

I.e. it's gibberish from beginning to end.
 
SnakeTongue said:
But still is knowledge...

If I invite a old fan of comic books to a interview in a radio show, what I will ask him:

- Hi Peter, I heard that you have a great knowledge about Spiderman comic books. Do you mind if I do some questions about interesting facts in the Spidermand storyline?

or

- Hi Peter, I heard that you have great false propositions about Spiderman comic books. Do you mind if I do some questions about interesting facts in the Spiderman storyline?
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Yup. All you have is knowledge about a story and descriptions of characters as written in a story. Nothing more.
 
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drkitten said:
It is not an "emotional burst" to note that there is not a single correct sentence in the post above, and that most of the sentences above are mutually inconsistent. It is similarly not an emotional burst to note that many of them are not only merely untrue, but actively meaningless.

I.e. it's gibberish from beginning to end.
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Another emotional outburst...

:eusa_wall:

Note: English is not my mother language.
 
paximperium said:
Because you can know things that are completely wrong.
Are you claiming automatic knowledge for anything you claim to know? Sorry. Doesn't work that way.
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Yes, can be wrong, right, half-true, bla, bla, bla...

Still is knowledge.

Remember, we are looking for a definition of knowledge, not if the content of the knowledge of a specific person can be true or not in a specific context.

If you tell me that I cannot claim have automatic knowledge of something which can be just validate by a scientific model, you are right in your definition.

So, we can agree that certain kind of knowledge should be useful only in certain context.

Example:

A person study the whole bible.

The content of the bible cannot be validate as historical facts by our present scientific models.

If this person goes to a church, he will be respect as someone with great knowledge of the bible. (Appropriate context to use the knowledge)

If this person goes to lecture in an history workshop about Ancient Roman Empire, he will be respect as a complete ignorant. (Not appropriate context to use the knowledge)
 
drkitten said:
Evidently not, since you're not using "emotional" correctly for English writing.
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Collins Minigem

English Dictionary

1981

emo'tion n. excited state of feeling, as joy, fear, etc. - emo'tional a.




My dictionary is out of date or I still did not notice where I am wrong?
 
SnakeTongue said:
My dictionary is out of date or I still did not notice where I am wrong?
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I guess you still didn't notice. There's nothing "emotional" about classifying writing as gibberish. Actually, reading gibberish isn't very exciting at all -- ask any teacher.
 
drkitten said:
I guess you still didn't notice. There's nothing "emotional" about classifying writing as gibberish. Actually, reading gibberish isn't very exciting at all -- ask any teacher.
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Finally.

You made your point.

Thank you by your philosophy of nothing.

Next time, if you did not notice, I am not here asking a classification about my definitions, but to debate the thread's subject.

If you cannot address the point with arguments... Ignore the thread or the post.

It is easy. Ask any teacher.

:i:
 
Malerin said:
In Gettier's clock example, the person has an unjusitifed true belief (a stopped clock that just happens to be right). Why can't the opposite be true: a normally reliable watch that happens to be a second off? You can be justified in believing it to be accurate, but you don't have a true belief about the time. Justification just deals with why we have a particular belief.
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If justification just dealt with why we have a belief, then "A psychic octupus told me" might be considered justification.
Think of a scientist who arrives at a belief that a coin is loaded after carefully flipping it 20 times in a row and getting heads each time. Whether the coin is loaded or not, the scientist has a justified belief. To say otherwise is to claim that we ought not come to conclusions based on overwhelming evidence on the slim chance we could be wrong.
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No, it is to say that if we have what we think is overwhelming evidence and subsequently find that it misled us, we ought to conclude that maybe the evidence wasn't quite so overwhemling as we first supposed.
 
drkitten said:
No, because justification isn't proof
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And neither is evidence necessarily justification.

Fingerprints on the murder weapon are evidence in favour of a guilty verdict. But, taken singly, they do not justify a guilty verdict.
For an example, if I roll a die six times and it comes up an ace each time, I can justify a belief that the die is loaded and will always roll aces. Even if it isn't, that's where the current evidence points.
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Well let's plug your example into what I said.

I roll a die and get six consecutive aces - I form the belief that the die is loaded.

Subsequently I discover I am wrong - the die was perfectly fair.

Then, some time later and with a different die, I roll another six consecutive aces.

Do I then say that I know this die is loaded? Obviously not.

Having previously reached the same conclusion on the same evidence and been wrong, I would be more cautious this time.

But if I don't regard this evidence as justification this time, why would I conclude that it was justification last time, when I didn't know better?

I wouldn't. I would have to conclude that I was wrong in thinking it justified my belief.
Similarly, I can have an unjustified belief that is nevertheless true.
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Well of course you can - but it is hardly relevant, is it?
Well, that's just plain silly. You didn't know that the die was loaded before you started rolling it. You might not even have known the concept of a loaded die.
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It is not under contention that you could start rolling the die without having a concept of a loaded die.

What is under contention is that you could justify the conclusion that the die was loaded without having a concept of a loaded die.
 
Malerin said:
Nice plagiarism Doc.
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OK, but my answer was to drkitten and I would be interested in your comment.

If I use some evidence as justification for a belief and turn out to be wrong, would I regard the same evidence as justification for the same belief in the future. See the example above.

(It is interesting that given my premiss "the belief turns out to be wrong", you both chose examples where it would be implausibly unlikely that the belief would turn out to be wrong - subtly loading the die in your favour. Your example, in particular, was more improbable than drkitten's by a factor of about 20.

But if a particular belief does turn out to be wrong, then it must not be so improbable that it cannot happen.)
 
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Malerin said:
In Gettier's clock example, the person has an unjusitifed true belief (a stopped clock that just happens to be right).
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By the way, I think you misunderstand Gettier, this is not an unjustified true belief, it is a justified true belief.

The belief is that it is 8 o'clock.

The justification is that the clock read 8 o'clock.

And it is true that it is 8 o'clock.

So we have a justified true belief and under the definition the person knows that it is 8 o'clock.

But if the clock didn't work and it was only right by co-incidence, then it would not be true that the person knew that it was 8 o'clock.

It is an example of how this definition does not work. Gettier has many others besides

Kripke's "False Barn Country" argument is an illustration that even if you try to beef up the definition it still does not work.
 
Roboramma said:
It's just something which is false, I don't know if anyone happens to believe it or not.
It's false because Spiderman doesn't exist.
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It would only be false if the person saying "Spiderman got his powers from a radioactive spider" was saying that Spiderman exists as a flesh and blood person.

In general they are not, the staement is usually made in the context of knowing he is fictional, so the question still stands.
 
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Robin said:
It would only be false if the person saying "Spiderman got his powers from a radioactive spider" was saying that Spiderman exists as a flesh and blood person.

In general they are not, the staement is usually made in the context of knowing he is fictional, so the question still stands.
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And in that context, it's true, so I don't really understand the issue.

People are capable of communicating in context.
 
Roboramma said:
And in that context, it's true, so I don't really understand the issue.

People are capable of communicating in context.
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But I thought we had already established that the statement was not true.

Stories are not true. But they aren't false either because there is no intention that they communicate the fact of any matter.
 
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