Zarathustra wrote: ↑Fri Jul 23, 2021 2:18 pm
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Fri Jul 23, 2021 2:10 pm
I'm sorry, I do not know what you are asking. Just being aware of something is not knowledge. The, "news," is full of lies and fictions, and one can call the fact the news says something, if it does, knowledge, only in the sense that one knows it was said. If one
believes what is said, on no other basis then that it was said, that is not knowledge. It is credulity or gullibility like any superstition.
Russell calls it "Derivative Knowledge". You read something, and that the meaning of the print becomes the basis of your knowledge. Same with listening to someone saying to you about something, or listening to the lectures and the news, and the linguistic messages, the contents of the sounds which has meanings in them give you knowledge. Ahh .. you don't rate Russell as a philosopher. I think they are all good philosophers.
Russell thought the meaning of, "Scott," and, "the writer of Waverly," meant the same thing, in the proposition, "Scott is the writer of Waverly," because he believed the absurd notion that something put into correct logical form could be true, even if all the concepts meant nothing and the equally absurd notion (ala Kant) that a concept means its definition. If you think that's good philosophy, well, then you do. But it's that philosophy which makes you able to write:
"You read something, and that the meaning of the print becomes the basis of your knowledge. Same with listening to someone saying to you about something, or listening to the lectures and the news, and the linguistic messages, the contents of the sounds which has meanings in them
give you knowledge." But if what you read or hear in a lecture or the news is a lie or nonsense, and you believe it,
you have not gained knowledge, you have been deceived and filled your mind with anti-knowledge.
Just reading or hearing something does not provide you anything until you have analyzed it, understood it, and made the judgement that it is either cogent and true or absurd nonsense. Russell never made the connection between the necessity of conscious intentional choice in learning. Learning does not happen automatically, it requires conscious intentional effort and mental assent. So much for Russell.
Even Whitehead, Russell's collaborator on
Principia Mathematica didn't agree with Russell's absurd epistemology.