Interesting, as always.
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Tue Jan 14, 2020 5:07 pm
You may certainly identify all those others things you describe as, "thinking," (most people do)...So you see, what you mean by thinking and knowledge are not what I mean by those very same words. If we are going to discuss either of those concepts we're going to have specify which we mean, I think.
Yes, I think this is so. The definition of "knowledge" with which you are inclined to work excludes pre-linguistic "knowledge." So babies can't "know" anything, if that's true. There remains two difficulties with this. One is that your definition, then, is stipulative rather than normal, for as you say, "most people do" include the sorts of operations babies perform under the definition of "knowledge." But the second is more serious: that without the ability to think, babies could never acquire language at all, so "knowledge" (so defined) would be impossible to us all.
Your explanation is not terribly satisfactory. You write, "baby's' earliest words, which we recognize as words, are similar to (and are obviously attempts to mimic) our own." But this swallows far too much. It slides by, without explaining, how babies "mimic" anything, since they can't know anything!
So I think that needs some further explanation. Absent a pre-linguistic ability to process information, none of us could learn. And I think that's enough to satisfy most people's definition of "knowledge."
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 31, 2019 7:03 pm...you concede that, by the use of the words "what one is conscious of." If there's nothing to be conscious
of, there's no knowledge: and that thing comes from the objective, external world. We don't generate knowledge
spontaneously -- that is, without cause, stimulus, or occasion to do so.
The problem with your description for me is that it implies that it is what is available to learn about that makes one (causes or stimulates them to) learn.
I did not imply that. The word "makes" is incorrect. A game of checkers is not possible without some sort of checkerboard, perhaps...but it does not suggest that the checkerboard "makes" the game happen.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 31, 2019 7:03 pm
So...the ontological reality of the cat being there is the stimulus for your discovery. That's just what I said: "knowledge" does not come spontaneously, but is stimulated by ontological realities outside the knower.
But seeing a cat does not in any way make me learn anything about it.
"Makes," again...I do not say that.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 31, 2019 7:03 pm
I am able to see all sides of a chair.
Not at the same time, you aren't. By the time you turn the corner to look at the chair from another side, it's a few seconds later. And as you turn the corner, you'll lose sight of the side you had formerly seen, and will stop seeing it.
That's why Cubists like Picasso tried to "flatten out" their images: they were depicting a kind of sight that comprehends more than one side of a thing at once. Naturally, since multi-sided sight is not a human experience, their efforts resulted in rather nightmarish images.
Well I know a little about old Pablo and I doubt very much he was trying to depict any kind of reality and certainly not more than one side at a time. But it doesn't matter, it would not be reality if he could.
That's my point. To say "I am able to see all sides of (anything)" isn't reality.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 31, 2019 7:03 pm
At the gambling table, one does not have to know what one's precise odds are to know that the game is governed by probability, or to know that some games (like roulette) are associated with lower probability than others (like blackjack). But whichever game one chooses, the important thing is that you know that you are not in an institution in which certainty is being guaranteed, and that some sort of "gamble" is involved in all the games being played.
To think otherwise is simply to be a "sucker."
I'm just asking here. You regard all of life, then, as a kind of gamble, because everything is only, "probable," and nothing is certain?
I know why people are put off by the word "probability." They associate it low-probability situations, like rolling dice. But the kind of probability we deal with in real life is
high-probability estimations, for the most part; and when we estimate that something has even or low probability, we say it's uncertain and avoid it, in most cases.
Let me see if I can supply a very "concrete" (pun intended) example, one in which certainty would certainly be a good thing, but high probability is all we have.
When an engineer builds a bridge, he does not know-for-certain that it will stand up. On paper, his calculations reassure him it will -- but calculations are sometimes wrong, when they encounter the real world. He builds the bridge on the supposition that it is highly probable that it will work. If he didn't think it was highly probable, he would not waste his materials or time, and would not risk the dangers of failure. He's very, very sure that his bridge will stand up...and he's very, very probably right, perhaps.
But bridges fail. If he forgot wind shear, or some aspect of bank erosion that was gradual and undetectable beforehand, or the possibility of an earthquake, or frost damage...or any one of a hundred other things, his bridge may collapse. He is very confident it probably won't; but he doesn't know-for-certain. And he's being very foolish, and maybe even dangerous, if he thinks he does.
But high probability estimations are not bad things. They are very, very good, in fact. Without such estimations, we would venture to do nothing at all, out of fear. We live and die by high-probability estimations. That's life. It's inevitable.
And it does not mean that we're merely "gambling." Building bridges is not like playing craps, except that in both there is a measure of probability of failure. In the former, it's very, very, low, and in the latter, perhaps, very, very high. The house may always seem to win, in gambling. But most bridges stay up, as predicted.
IC, I can assure you with absolute certainty that I am not God. If I were God, could I be mistaken about it? Could God doubt his own existence? If this is not true, I'd be lying. Would God lie about his own existence? I think we have found one thing you'll have to agree that I can be absolutely certain about.
Likewise.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 31, 2019 7:03 pm
Certainty is a judgement about the validity of a proposition, specifically that the proposition is true without doubt or question.
Then "certainty," as you define it, is available nowhere in the empirical world; only in the abstract realms, as in maths. For we have some reason to doubt or question every proposition that we draw from the empirical world.
How odd. After you bang your thumb with the hammer you are not certain you are really feeling pain,
You are correct. Some people have neural conditions which mean they can hit their thumb and feel nothing. Some have "ghost pain" from limbs that have been severed for years. But the highest probability is that that is not what is happening.
But it is what you call the, "empirical," world that all knowledge methods are about. If the empirical world is uncertain, so are your methods, including mathematics.
Mathematics are not "empirical." They are analytic, being operations within a defined system of symbols, rather than operations performed in the world of experience and real life.
If I have three apples and then find two more and count them I will count five apples.
The mathematics part of that operation is certain, because it's non-empirical. Three plus two will always equal five, and you can know that for certain. But is what you have in hand "apples"? That, you are not equally certain about. There is a minute possibility they are, say, unusual plums, or a kind of fruit with which you have not yet had any experience. You are high-probability convinced that's not so, perhaps; and perhaps you're right..but you are not absolutely certain beyond all possibility of doubt.
You bite, and discover that they are made of wax. They looked like real apples, but they were not. That is not an impossible scenario. Just unlikely.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 31, 2019 7:03 pm
... In regard to ontology, I'm an objectivist. But in regard to epistemology, I'm a probabilist. That is, I do believe in the real existence of the external, empirical world; but I also recognize that human perception of it is mediated by human senses...and that human senses are fallible and perspectival. So while the world is real, our grasp of it is probability-dependent.
Marxists, Pomo types and the rest would say that truth itself was relative. I would never say that.
I really don't see the difference. What difference does it make if truth is absolute if you can never know anything for certain?
It makes a huge difference. Again, the Pomo types want to say that truth is so "relative" that it can be ignored or negotiated infinitely. I do not say that, nor think that's right. I say that we must respect the objectivity of reality, and be modest only about our epistemology of that reality.
Put it this way. If there's a tiger outside my door, the Pomo types think there will only BE a tiger if I believe there is. For someone who does not believe that, there will not be.
I believe there is an objective answer to whether or not there is a tiger out there, and that my belief or lack there of will change
nothing. I must, therefore, estimate the probability (perhaps by looking out the window to see if something that looks like a tiger is out there), and then act rationally, in view of what that tells me about the probability of there actually being a tiger.
The Pomo types have no respect for truth or reality. I know very well that reality will "eat" me if I do not respect its ontological reality.
With regard to knowledge, I see no difference in saying, "there is no absolute truth," and saying, "there is absolute truth, but you can never know it."
Reword it this way, then: "There is absolute truth, but our knowledge of it is high-probability knowledge."
You're setting the bar too high, RC. You're thinking that contingent, empirical-world beings are capable of absolutely certain knowledge. They are not. But they are not thereby made blind, either. They have high-probability estimation, instead.
How about concepts? "What is a concept?" would be the question. I think it is fundamental to everything else we have been discussing, but I await your pleasure, sir?
Yes, that's fine. In a way, we're already nibbling around that one. What do you want to say or ask about it? Can you speak in terms of a
particular concept, for example?
Back to you, RC.