Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 3:49 pm
I think justification is a-whole-nother can of worms - such as the argument between externalists and internalists - closely related to arguments about what constitutes knowledge in the first place. And this endless search for (metaphorical) foundations is the real problem.
Iwanna:
Yes, I sometimes look at justification and think, oh this is just sour grapes. You worked hard and had some rigorous methodology and mulled over epistemology and then some guy comes in off the street with the right answer and wants to think he knows something. And as much as I sympathize I think there is a degree of sour grapes and at least one faulty assumption: that we can know how we ourselves arrived at a conclusion and other people know their processes of justification and will report them correctly. It also creates problems with intuition in experts. Often people can consistantly draw correct conclusions or make great observations or sex-determine chicks or whatever, without even knowing how they drew the conclusion. The fear of course is that if we allow some intuition to be considered knowledge we have to throw the gates open. I don't think that's true and then that's not an argument against whatever their black-boxed process is. We can learn to make near instantaneous evaluations and be reliable without really being experts in our own methodologies and children of course do this regarding all sorts of things while growing up and sucking the world in.
All that could make me a kind of externalist, perhaps a reliablist. But I actually think my epistemology is eclectic. And I think everyone else's is also.
I agree with a lot of what you say here - and it may be that we've come to the same conclusion by slightly different routes. Could be that Moynihan's relevant here: 'You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.' I know this seems to beg the question, by assuming there are what I call features of reality (facts), which are independent from opinion. (More on that later.) And - given my standing objection to theorising about what we call knowledge, justification, and so on - I prefer the externalist approach - one reason why I think the JTB's focus on what S knows misses something important: what we mean when we say we know something. (In philosophy, we're always really talking about the use of words, not the existence of things. Other people do that, such as natural scientists.)
Your thoughts on intuition are interesting. I usually argue that an appeal to intuition on a matter of fact (more question-begging?) is unconvincing - and usually dependent on background objective knowledge anyway. But perhaps
how we come to know something is a separate issue from
whether we know it. Not sure. More work needed on that.
Of course. And my point is the need for a sharp methodological separation and distinction between the feature of reality and what we say about it.
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.
Of course. And my point is the need for a sharp methodological separation and distinction between the feature of reality and what we say about it.
Just nail this home for me. Why? I wonder about the term feature of reality. The term seems to presume 'it is real' and the person 'knows what part of reality'. One nice thing about 'what we say about it' is it obviously can be wrong. Feature of reality seems less neutral as a term. And in the specific story with the 'seeing the friend' I am not quite sure what it is referring to.
Okay. I prefer 'feature of reality that is or was the case' to 'state-of-affairs' - but the category's the same. These are things that exist or existed. And, pending evidence for the existence of anything non-physical, 'exists or existed' means 'exists or existed physically': the poet's rocks and stones and trees, humans, brains, electrochemical processes that we call thoughts, and so on. Of course, it's a realist assumption that such things do exist - but I see no reason to doubt it. It's the background for everything we know and say - the thing we never more than speculatively (philosophically!) doubt.
Peter Holmes wrote
As I think you suggest later, what we believe or know is that something is (or isn't) the case - because, outside language, features of reality have no truth-value.
Ah, ok. I think I have another problem with 'feature of reality' (though I think you are going in a good direction and i agree there is a problem). Features of reality have no truth value. Agreed. But a person does not have 'a feature of reality'. The propositional format gives us a statement describing reality (hopefully). This is ours, so to speak. I know where the proposition is. You said it. It's on paper or a screen. you thought it. When you replace it with 'feature of reality' I don't know where it is unless it is, seemingly obviously, outside of me. But a feature of reality cannot be mistaken or incorrect, either. And I think the term, whatever it is, has to have some part of my cognitive make-up in it or it is misleading. (I could be missing something you said here or meant) All the knowledge as mirror or representation models have their problems, but they do include the person in their noun for belief. LIke we know where the belief is, or part of it is constituted in a mind. Feature of reality is external.
Perhaps a verb or process might be better.
Not sure I understand you here. What do you mean by 'have' in 'a person does not have 'a feature of reality'? People - we -
are features of reality - physical existents. (I've called this Wittgenstein's prophylactic for philosophical delusion; we're objects surrounded by objects, not cut off from them.) So I don't understand why you say you don't know where features of reality are. You're one of them, as is your brain. (As you say of my point, I may well be missing yours.) Sure, beliefs and knowledge are things we - and arguably other creatures - have. But why does that mean features of reality have to 'have some part of [our] cognitive make-up' in them? That smacks of VA's supposed anti-realism. Again, sorry if I'm missing the point. (Oh - talk of reality as external and mind as internal may be the clue. I completely reject that quasi-religious delusion.)
Despite or perhaps surrounding my eclecticism is pragmatism. Not anybody's pragmatism, but my not well thought out, hey look this is what I find in me pragrmatism.
And this is a terrible term, but just to get the idea slightly more concrete, might it not make sense to say that someone with an incorrect belief actually has a problematic tendency related to a specific event, thing or other sustained phenomenon. In practical terms (ironically) that's a terrible suggestion. But I hope you can see what I am contrasting with both propositional beliefs and feature of reality.
I can't see what problem you're pointing at. Beliefs aren't propositional - that's my starting point. There are dogs, which are features of reality; there are things we believe and know about dogs - and we can be wrong; and there are things we say about dogs, which (classically) may be true or not true/false, in context. And, while I think the pragmatism theory of truth is well dodgy (like all the others), this three-part distinction seems to me pretty pragmatic in tenor - which is why I call it methodological.
I had more but I think that's enough for now.
Many thanks. And, once again, apologies for my misunderstandings. Please do straighten me out. All very interesting.