epistemology is

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Skepdick
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Skepdick »

Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:35 pm Calling it Theory of Knowledge lets it be just about anything. It's clearly more specific than that.
It's not about anything. It's specifically about knowledge.
Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:35 pm Do you have an actual refutation?
The default refutation to all epistemology is The Munchhausen trillemma.

My personal solution to this problem is to precisely to pull myself up by my bootstraps. This solves the bootstrapping problem by ignoring the fact that everything I call "knowledge" I learned from others.

Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:35 pm In what sense is epistemology Not the metaphysics of certainty?
Certainty is a property of knowledge.
Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:35 pm In what way is understanding it as the metaphysics of certainty not sufficient for all epistemological tasks? All the questions you pose above are compatible with my own definition as well as your own.
Trivially: do you know that you are uncertain?
Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:35 pm Are you seeking to refute or bolster my point?
Neither.

Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:35 pm a) Knowledge is justified belief. It cannot be justified True belief because the ultimate truth of a proposition is what knowledge is a pointer toward, and ultimately unknowable. A word must have a useful meaning and tying it to future hypothetical verification makes it a guess rather than a level of certainty.
Infinite regress: justify your justifications.
Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:35 pm b) Through experience. That experience may be of direct relations of entities in reality or it may be by experiencing the attributes of expertise in others and then trusting their judgement further on subjects you have no direct knowledge of. Ultimately all versions of knowledge amount to replication. If the same thing keeps happening from the same input, all else being equal, that's something you can be most certain of.
If your experience/perception is in some way jaded or skewed - does this mean your knowledge is incorrect?
Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:35 pm c) Your intent is not a universal problem with a universal solution, but the answer (framework of understanding) but in generic terms, all knowledge is put to the task of changing the world. In what way is a contingent question.
Fuck universals.
Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:35 pm d) Bayes Theorum (the non-mathematical version) is a good expression of how that works. Whether people understand the value of evidence and how to update their prior effectively are again contingent.
I know. I use the Bayes theorem. It's a great instrument, but I am not a Bayesian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFv5DvrLDCg
Skepdick
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Skepdick »

attofishpi wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:43 pm ..you are contradicting yourself - if it is ignorance on the one hand - then next you are stating it is KNOWLEDGE
Knowing that I am ignorant is knowledge, not ignorance.
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attofishpi
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Re: epistemology is

Post by attofishpi »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:47 pm
attofishpi wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:43 pm ..you are contradicting yourself - if it is ignorance on the one hand - then next you are stating it is KNOWLEDGE
Knowing that I am ignorant is knowledge, not ignorance.
I wasn't addressing U, but if that's the point that Advocate was making, then ok.
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Advocate »

[quote=attofishpi post_id=493785 time=1612194180 user_id=6293]
[quote=Advocate post_id=493783 time=1612194008 user_id=15238]
[quote=Skepdick post_id=493774 time=1612193561 user_id=17350]

It is all we got. Still. Nobody knows what it means to "measure" in quantum physics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_problem
[/quote]

Everything they're talking about there is ignorance, not knowledge - how and how much they don't know. Knowing how little you don't know is an answer - a framework for understanding. It can never be a solution (action plan). Quantum physics is literally the cutting edge of our knowledge and to believe we should have any degree of actionable certainty there is absurd.
[/quote]

..you are contradicting yourself - if it is ignorance on the one hand - then next you are stating it is KNOWLEDGE
[/quote]

Knowledge is additive - increasing certainty by increasing information. Narrowing down the limit of uncertainty is not the same thing - it's the polar opposite, removing from consideration uncertainty which isn't compatible with the positive knowledge portion of your formula.
Skepdick
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Skepdick »

Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:50 pm Knowledge is additive - increasing certainty by increasing information. Narrowing down the limit of uncertainty is not the same thing - it's the polar opposite.
It's the exact same thing. Maximum uncertainty is represented as a probability distribution. All possible outcomes in the state-space are equally probable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle ... um_entropy

New information results in a Bayesian update.
Last edited by Skepdick on Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Terrapin Station »

Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 11:12 am Epistemology is the metaphysics of actionable certainty.
Say what?
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Advocate »

>It's not about anything. It's specifically about knowledge.

Knowledge is a subset of certainty. Epistemology is about producing certainty. Whatever you call knowledge and whatever evidence counts as knowledge are questions Within the understanding of certainty. Epistemology also includes understanding Uncertainty, guesses, illusions, none of which is inherently linked to producing knowledge. In other words, there is an additive side, which you represent, and a subtractive one.

>The Munchhausen trillemma.

This is a non-problem. The universe is recursive. Knowledge must be certain Enough, bound by purpose. It cannot be an ultimate thing. All words that reference ultimates, whether certainty, scale, whatever, are placeholders for the unknown. They are not elements of knowledge, they are an answer - a framework for understanding that which falls Within that ultimately unknown limit. All that's doing is pointing out what i'm saying, that there is no ultimate certainty.

>My personal solution to this problem is to precisely to pull myself up by my bootstraps. This solves the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping]bootstrapping problem[/url] by ignoring the fact that everything I call "knowledge" I learned from others.

You must accept the cogito then.

>Certainty is a property of knowledge.

Information only becomes knowledge if the certainty is there first.
Certainty can exist without knowledge but knowledge cannot exist without certainty.

>Trivially: do you know that you are uncertain?

It looks like everyone but me isn't cognizant of the distinction of gathering information v. logically organizing that information. One is an additive process, the other is subtractive. In the former case you gather. In the latter case you eliminate. That both require integration isn't sufficient cause to blend them for epistemological purposes. Quite the contrary, we need to make these distinctions in order to render our understanding of epistemology actionable.

>>Are you seeking to refute or bolster my point?
>Neither.

Then i disagree!

>Infinite regress: justify your justifications.

Back to Munchausen. Because we are temporally limited creatures we cannot obtain ultimate certainty. That's utterly irrelevant. My intent here is to produce a better framework for understanding epistemology. The evidence is sufficient to that purpose, not any hypothetical and/or ultimate one you can devise on the spot. My larger contention is that this understanding is sufficient, whether or not necessary, to clarify all questions in epistemology. It adds understanding, not knowledge.

>If your experience/perception is in some way jaded or skewed - does this mean your knowledge is incorrect?

No. You're judging the knowledge content of immediate understandings by the standard of future hypothetical data. Stop it.

>>I know. I use the Bayes theorem. It's a great instrument, but I am not a Bayesian.

That you don't use it explicitly or intentionally doesn't imply that you don't use it. Of course it's a technical theory and i don't mean the technical understanding of it, just the simple pragmatic one.

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFv5DvrLDCg

Ahh Julia Galef. I haven't listened to her podcast in.. hours. I'm super-glad Massimo went away. He has epistemological problems. But anyway, to not be Explicitely Bayesian is referencing a technical matter which is beyond what i'm discussing here, and Julia isn't exactly the best at epistemology, however expert she is in understanding the technical intricacies of critical thinking theory.
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Advocate »

[quote=Skepdick post_id=493792 time=1612194828 user_id=17350]
[quote=Advocate post_id=493791 time=1612194623 user_id=15238]
Knowledge is additive - increasing certainty by increasing information. Narrowing down the limit of uncertainty is not the same thing - it's the polar opposite.
[/quote]
It's the exact same thing. Maximum uncertainty is represented as a probability distribution. All possible outcomes in the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_space]state-space[/url] are equally probable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle ... um_entropy

New information results in a Bayesian update.
[/quote]

They come to the same point, but they are opposing processes. How is additive/subtractive not obvious?
In the former case, you don't have enough information, in the latter you have too much; for a given intent. Gathering/vetting.
Last edited by Advocate on Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Advocate »

[quote="Terrapin Station" post_id=493794 time=1612195340 user_id=12582]
[quote=Advocate post_id=493733 time=1612174325 user_id=15238]
Epistemology is the metaphysics of actionable certainty.
[/quote]

Say what?
[/quote]

The purpose of all knowledge, wisdom, and understanding is actionable certainty. Epistemology is the groundwork for obtaining certainty. Metaphysics is the most fundamental understandings we can find for what IS, on the most basic levels we can access/contemplate. How we know what we know is dependent upon what IS. It IS that replication produces certainty, for example.
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Skepdick »

Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:11 pm Knowledge is a subset of certainty.
How do you know?
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Advocate »

[quote=Skepdick post_id=493799 time=1612197547 user_id=17350]
[quote=Advocate post_id=493795 time=1612195866 user_id=15238]
Knowledge is a subset of certainty.
[/quote]
How do you know?
[/quote]

This topic is meta, not epistemology itself.
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Skepdick »

Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:44 pm This topic is meta, not epistemology itself.
So is meta-knowledge about epistemology not knowledge?

Fucking recursion! How does it work?
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Re: epistemology is

Post by attofishpi »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:45 pm
Advocate wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:44 pm This topic is meta, not epistemology itself.
So is meta-knowledge about epistemology not knowledge?
an attribute about a theory about knowledge?
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Re: epistemology is

Post by Skepdick »

attofishpi wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:46 pm an attribute about a theory about knowledge?
I know that I don't know.

Is that knowledge?
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Re: epistemology is

Post by attofishpi »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:47 pm
attofishpi wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:46 pm an attribute about a theory about knowledge?
I know that I don't know.

Is that knowledge?
..a forever loop?
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