Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

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Iwannaplato
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by Iwannaplato »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 9:51 am Agreed. And your point has a bearing on the truth-value of the claim that there's no absolute truth. The intellectual contortion and hypocrisy is similar. I'm inclined to say they're two sides of the same counterfeit coin.
The adjective 'absolute' seems to be added to hedge bets. I am not weighing in on whether the word can be useful, but I notice that when challenged on a point, some posters will add the adjective to give an extra trench one has to cross.

But yes, fruits of the poison tree.
Last edited by Iwannaplato on Fri Jun 10, 2022 1:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Skepdick
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by Skepdick »

Iwannaplato wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 11:24 am The adjective 'absolute' seems to be adds to hedge bets. I am not weighing in on whether the word can be useful.
All adjectives hedge bets. Including the adjective "useful". And the adjective "justified". And the adjective "true".

The deflationists are right in this regard.
popeye1945
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by popeye1945 »

A justified true belief can be a positive or negative proposition but in order to be true it must agree with our sensed experience whether directly or indirectly by means of propositions.
Peter Holmes
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by Peter Holmes »

popeye1945 wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 12:25 pm A justified true belief can be a positive or negative proposition but in order to be true it must agree with our sensed experience whether directly or indirectly by means of propositions.
A belief that something is or isn't - or was or wasn't - the case has nothing to do with a proposition, let alone its truth-value. And that's one reason why the JTB definition of knowledge as justified true belief is a conceptual mess. And, meanwhile, Russell's knowledge by description is nothing more than knowledge by acquaintance with a description.
Iwannaplato
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by Iwannaplato »

double
popeye1945
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by popeye1945 »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 1:11 pm
popeye1945 wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 12:25 pm A justified true belief can be a positive or negative proposition but in order to be true it must agree with our sensed experience whether directly or indirectly by means of propositions.
A belief that something is or isn't - or was or wasn't - the case has nothing to do with a proposition, let alone its truth-value. And that's one reason why the JTB definition of knowledge as justified true belief is a conceptual mess. And, meanwhile, Russell's knowledge by description is nothing more than knowledge by acquaintance with a description.
Justified truth is first true to the biology that experiences it. this not being infallible truth must be confirmed to agree with physical reality. If that particular biology was in error it cannot be confirmed by that same biology but by another or group agreement. What can a truth proposition express but this elemental circumstance?
Peter Holmes
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by Peter Holmes »

popeye1945 wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 2:52 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 1:11 pm
popeye1945 wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 12:25 pm A justified true belief can be a positive or negative proposition but in order to be true it must agree with our sensed experience whether directly or indirectly by means of propositions.
A belief that something is or isn't - or was or wasn't - the case has nothing to do with a proposition, let alone its truth-value. And that's one reason why the JTB definition of knowledge as justified true belief is a conceptual mess. And, meanwhile, Russell's knowledge by description is nothing more than knowledge by acquaintance with a description.
Justified truth is first true to the biology that experiences it. this not being infallible truth must be confirmed to agree with physical reality. If that particular biology was in error it cannot be confirmed by that same biology but by another or group agreement. What can a truth proposition express but this elemental circumstance?
To experience something is not to experience truth or a truth. That idea comes from mistaking what we say about things for the way things are. Outside language, reality is not linguistic. It doesn't consist of truths or falsehoods that we experience. Reality isn't the set of all true propositions.

And the consensus theory of truth is patently incorrect: this assertion is true simply because we agree that it's true. Example: if we agree that the earth is flat, then the earth is flat. (After all, a 'biology' (?) - and so all 'biologies' may experience the earth as flat.)

And anyway. What reason is there to think that the abstract noun truth is the name of a thing - like gravity or evolution - that needs a theory to explain it? Where does that delusion come from?
popeye1945
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by popeye1945 »

Truth or falsehood are both meanings and meaning is the sole property of a conscious subject, regardless of the medium of the message. It will necessarily be the interpretation of a conscious subject that determines the relation between subject and object. Perception in the instant is always taken as truth whether negative or positive, only when some element of doubt arises does that process of the understanding then kick into gear to question that first perception. Propositions are just a medium, not the message the message will be judged by a conscious subject as to weather the proposition is valid or no. Again, all meaning is the property of a conscious subject never the property of the object until meaning is bestowed upon it by a conscious subject. The physical world is utterly meaningless in the absence of biological consciousness and as science now tells us, ultimate reality is a place of no things, which I take to mean, objects are cognitively/biologically dependent.
Peter Holmes
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by Peter Holmes »

popeye1945 wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 6:43 pm Truth or falsehood are both meanings and meaning is the sole property of a conscious subject, regardless of the medium of the message. It will necessarily be the interpretation of a conscious subject that determines the relation between subject and object. Perception in the instant is always taken as truth whether negative or positive, only when some element of doubt arises does that process of the understanding then kick into gear to question that first perception. Propositions are just a medium, not the message the message will be judged by a conscious subject as to weather the proposition is valid or no. Again, all meaning is the property of a conscious subject never the property of the object until meaning is bestowed upon it by a conscious subject. The physical world is utterly meaningless in the absence of biological consciousness and as science now tells us, ultimate reality is a place of no things, which I take to mean, objects are cognitively/biologically dependent.
Reading this kind of mystical claptrap is like woo-wandering in a no-visibility fog, from which weird cries - words such as 'truth', 'falsehood', 'meaning', 'biological consciousness', 'ultimate reality', 'subject' and 'object' - emerge, swirl around each other and fade away.
Skepdick
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 7:49 pm Reading this kind of mystical claptrap is like woo-wandering in a no-visibility fog, from which weird cries - words such as 'truth', 'falsehood', 'meaning', 'biological consciousness', 'ultimate reality', 'subject' and 'object' - emerge, swirl around each other and fade away.
And yet the mysitcal claptrap about reality; existence; the existence of reality; or the realness of existence somehow doesn't bother you.
Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 11:49 am Do you think that, before humans appeared, what we call reality did not exist?

Do you think that, after humans have disappeared, what we call reality will not exist?

Do you think that, if there were no humans, what we call reality would not exist?
Could you be any less subtle while you are busy bullshitting?
popeye1945
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by popeye1945 »

Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 7:49 pm
popeye1945 wrote: Mon Jun 13, 2022 6:43 pm Truth or falsehood are both meanings and meaning is the sole property of a conscious subject, regardless of the medium of the message. It will necessarily be the interpretation of a conscious subject that determines the relation between subject and object. Perception in the instant is always taken as truth whether negative or positive, only when some element of doubt arises does that process of the understanding then kick into gear to question that first perception. Propositions are just a medium, not the message the message will be judged by a conscious subject as to weather the proposition is valid or no. Again, all meaning is the property of a conscious subject never the property of the object until meaning is bestowed upon it by a conscious subject. The physical world is utterly meaningless in the absence of biological consciousness and as science now tells us, ultimate reality is a place of no things, which I take to mean, objects are cognitively/biologically dependent.
Reading this kind of mystical claptrap is like woo-wandering in a no-visibility fog, from which weird cries - words such as 'truth', 'falsehood', 'meaning', 'biological consciousness', 'ultimate reality', 'subject' and 'object' - emerge, swirl around each other and fade away.
Your understanding is quite profound -----DUH!!

This might help -----https://www.merriam-webster.com/diction ... losophical https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza-attributes/

https://philosophynow.org/issues/61/Wha ... Of_Reality
Peter Holmes
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by Peter Holmes »

It looks like more than one of us could do with answering the following questions with yes or no.

1 Before humans appeared, did what we call reality exist?
2 After humans have gone, will what we call reality exist?
3 Does what we call reality exist independently from humans?

With minor reservations, VA agrees that, speaking conventionally, in an ordinary, everyday, naive sort of way, the answer to these questions is yes. Does anyone wish to disagree? If so, please explain why.
popeye1945
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by popeye1945 »

Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Jun 14, 2022 7:23 am It looks like more than one of us could do with answering the following questions with yes or no.

1 Before humans appeared, did what we call reality exist?
2 After humans have gone, will what we call reality exist?
3 Does what we call reality exist independently from humans?

With minor reservations, VA agrees that, speaking conventionally, in an ordinary, everyday, naive sort of way, the answer to these questions is yes. Does anyone wish to disagree? If so, please explain why.
1- Before life existed/consciousness what is called apparent reality/one's everyday reality did not exist. Apparent reality is a biological readout a reactionary emergent manifestation entirely dependent upon life/consciousness.
2- The most obvious answer to this is of course we only know apparent reality cognitively, no cognition no apparent anything. It has long been understood in philosophy that subject and object stand or falls together, meaning take one away and the other ceases to be, so again there is nothing.
3- Apparent reality is dependent upon life not just human life for apparent reality for other creatures must also be a biological readout, a reactive emergent manifestation call apparent reality/one's everyday experience. The state of physics today states that there is no objective reality for it is entirely energy, a place of no things or as Einstein stated, "Apparent reality is an illusion, a persistent one." A case in point, if you wish to experience a different apparent reality, change your biological state. This can be done intentionally or simply through illness or accident, the meanings you derive is your apparent reality, and the experience will be true to the state of your changed biology.
Peter Holmes
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by Peter Holmes »

popeye1945 wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 9:55 am
Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Jun 14, 2022 7:23 am It looks like more than one of us could do with answering the following questions with yes or no.

1 Before humans appeared, did what we call reality exist?
2 After humans have gone, will what we call reality exist?
3 Does what we call reality exist independently from humans?

With minor reservations, VA agrees that, speaking conventionally, in an ordinary, everyday, naive sort of way, the answer to these questions is yes. Does anyone wish to disagree? If so, please explain why.
1- Before life existed/consciousness what is called apparent reality/one's everyday reality did not exist. Apparent reality is a biological readout a reactionary emergent manifestation entirely dependent upon life/consciousness.
2- The most obvious answer to this is of course we only know apparent reality cognitively, no cognition no apparent anything. It has long been understood in philosophy that subject and object stand or falls together, meaning take one away and the other ceases to be, so again there is nothing.
3- Apparent reality is dependent upon life not just human life for apparent reality for other creatures must also be a biological readout, a reactive emergent manifestation call apparent reality/one's everyday experience. The state of physics today states that there is no objective reality for it is entirely energy, a place of no things or as Einstein stated, "Apparent reality is an illusion, a persistent one." A case in point, if you wish to experience a different apparent reality, change your biological state. This can be done intentionally or simply through illness or accident, the meanings you derive is your apparent reality, and the experience will be true to the state of your changed biology.
1 Does this mean your answer to my three questions is 'no'?

2 Relativity and quantum mechanics don't demonstrate that 'there is no objective reality'. They merely explain more accurately and objectively what the thing we call reality consists of. There's no reason to say atoms are more real than the things they constitute. Are the bricks 'real', whereas the house is only 'apparent' or an 'illusion'?

3 I think your position amounts to little more than old-fashioned idealism - with a modern twist.
Iwannaplato
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Re: Justified true belief: knowledge and the myth of propositions

Post by Iwannaplato »

Peter Holmes wrote: Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:13 pm A woman sees a group of people and mistakes one of them, a stranger, for her friend. So she believes her friend is there. And as it happens, her friend really is there, but hidden. So what she believes is the case. But does she know her friend is there?
We find out later that she didn't know. The J, in this case, trust in her observation, was off than she realized or considered at that moment.
The point is, what happens in the story has nothing to do with propositions. The woman’s mistake does not come from a false premise. She just believes the stranger is her friend, which is not the case.
I agree that it wasn't a premise, but it seems like it could be represented as one.
And her belief that her friend is there is not propositional. Propositional belief is as muddled an idea as propositional knowledge. There are just beliefs and knowledge-claims expressed by means of propositions.
I think I agree.
, b
We want to say that what she believes is true, because her friend really is there.
What she believes is a couple of things. She saw her friend is in there also. She did not see her friend. or 'that is my friend'. Her friend was near to where she thought her friend was, but not 'there' where she thought she saw him. He was in the group. But that's not exactly what she believed.
But that is the myth of propositions at work. What she mistakenly believes to be the case is a feature of reality, which is not a proposition. When we believe or know a feature of reality is the case, we do not believe or know a proposition. So we do not believe or know something that is true or false.
What would you call it then? I do think animals know things and also mistakenly believe things (can on occasion). So, yes, I don't they need have formed propositions to know and humans can be without them.
The woman does not know her friend is there because she lacks objective knowledge of that feature of reality. And afterwards, apprised of the situation and her mistake, she would not say she knew her friend was there. That is not how we use the word 'know'. She would say she believed the stranger was her friend, but was mistaken.
We wouldn't use know that way. But we, generally, do think that some of our knowledge may be incorrect. I am not necessarily disagreeing, in fact I don't know if I am.
We say we know a feature of reality is the case only if it is, or we think it is, the case. And if it turns out not to be the case, we don’t say we have stopped knowing it. We just say we were mistaken. For example, we don’t say we stopped knowing the earth is flat.
So, in that future time, we realize that it wasn't knowledge, it was mere belief.
Gettier-cases recycle the JTB definition's concentration on: subjective knowledge - what an individual knows - effectively ignoring objective knowledge and its justification; propositional knowledge - S knows that p - as though what we know is propositions rather than features of reality; and the truth condition - S knows that p only if p is true - which gets things back to front. Our knowing that p doesn't come from the truth of p. It comes from our knowing the feature of reality that p asserts.
So, if we go back to the original scene with the two friends and the others. What is an example of objective knowledge?
There are features of reality; there is what we believe or know about them, such as that they are the case.
; and there is what we say about them, which may be true or false. To muddle these things up is a mistake.
so, the first sentence before the semicolon. We could add 'or such that they are not the case'. Or? Is believing something is not the case different from having a false belief about something. I assume the idea is that only propositions can be true or false, but I think false (and true) are more flexible than that. But is the big difference between your proposal and JTB that we consider beliefs, like hers, to not be the case or mistaken, rather than false?
But Gettier-cases also contain the solution to the Gettier problem. The protagonists believe things for reasons that don't objectively justify their beliefs, which is why their beliefs don't amount to knowledge. Objective knowledge of features of reality, which may be expressed by means of true factual assertions, frees us from subjective, epistemic isolation. It's the objective knowledge that we Gettier-spectators have.
We do because it is a story and one with a presumed omniscient narrator. It's a hidden assumption in the story. In actual fact an observer in that situation could also turn out to be mistaken later. They mixed up the stranger and the friend also.

I feel like I am missing something and even that it is obvious, but I am not quite sure what it is. Yes, our knowledge can be revised so some things that we were justified in saying we knew we now realize were false. I don't see any way to avoid this unless we never say we know something. Perhaps it'll all turn out to be a simulation or our brain is in a vat.
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