What does it mean for something to be "logically possible"?

[Speakpigeon]

Our mental representations tell us how things look, that is to say, they tell us how light is affected by bouncing off them. That's obviously very informative and useful, but it's fundamentally different from knowing the things we are "looking" at in themselves.

You're essentially treating the mental percept as a middleman that stands between us and the objects of the external world, so when I tell you I see an object of the external world, you think I'm mistaken and see not the object but rather the mental percept of the object.

My objections are not as they apparently appear to you. There are two issues that serve to obscure my communication. I'm trying to find a work-around.

As long as nothing gets personified, I'm inclined to agree with you on specifics, but there's still hierarchical description issues. In normal discourse, I'm not going to call anyone out on their word choice so long as a meeting of the minds isn't substantively repressed.

I very much want to understand and accept the scientific results of past endeavors, but I'm highly (highly) resistent to verbal interpretations of their findings. In other words, I'm open-minded to the facts that flow from science, but I cringe at the words used to express their findings.

I see the tree. I don't see, nor does my brain see the tree percept. I have eyes. My brain doesn't have eyes. My eyes allow me to see things external to the skull (through the eye sockets, in particular). Science shouldn't be telling me I can't see things external to my eyes. Science shouldn't be telling me that my brain is what sees and that what it sees is mental percepts. Seeing isn't on the same hierarchical plane. Now, when science explains the factual process with a distinct absence of personification, I'm highly inclined to accept the facts, but when those facts are sprinkled (more like highly garnished) with misinterpretations wrought by poor word choice, I begin to deny the kind of silly verbal (or written) interpretations of their factual conclusions.

I understand your reservations but there's still a good reason to accept the formulation that what we see is in fact inside our brain. The basic idea is that all we know as conscious beings is what we are immediately conscious of and nothing else. And this apply to the impression of seeing things with your own eyes. Sure, I accept that most likely there's something in the world out there which is referred to by the phrase "my eyes". This thing probably allows light that bounced off something in front of me to end up looking like a tree. Yet, all the trees I have ever been visually aware of have been mental representations of trees, not actual trees. So, even when I recognise a tree as a tree, all I'm doing is recognising the mental representation currently inside my brain as similar enough to memories of previous representations. Yet, we think of those representation as actual trees out there. So you have to allow for the fact that almost everything we can possibly say talking about this has to rely on words normally used to describe the reality that's assumed to be out there. This makes it complicated to comply with your requirement to explain things differently.

Still, we could put it as follows: anything I know is part of my consciousness. Because of this, the tree I seem to see right now (through a little window) can only be a representation which part of my consciousness. There's probably something outside my consciousness which is best identified with an actual tree, but the fact is that what I am conscious of is the representation, not this actual tree, even though this representation probably provides useful informations about the actual tree. However, what is true of a tree, is also true of the whole process of seeing a tree. This process is really a mental representation standing for whatever is actually going on outside my consciousness. So, while I agree with you about what we mean when we say that we see a tree, the fact is that everything we know about that is part of our consciousness, not anything outside of it. Again, sure, there must be something that could be identified with 'my eyes', but when I look myself in the mirror all I can be conscious of is a mental representation that includes the representation of a mirror with a reflected image.

Again, we can't explain this without distorting what we usually mean with words. Your understanding has to close the gap to allow for this real difficulty. The only statement that makes sense and fully respects word usage is that all we know of reality is whatever is part of our consciousness and what we know compels us to believe that there's a material world outside our consciousness and to take the content of our consciousness for this material world itself. We take the picture for the thing pictured. And again, we can understand why this is as it should be if we are to function properly within this putative material world.

And, I would agree to say that what we see is actually what this material world looks like to us, except that "what we see" is really something inside our brains, presumably.
EB

 

[fast]

I understand your reservations but there's still a good reason to accept the formulation that what we see is in fact inside our brain.

Philosophers, even philosophers who are diametrically opposed to one another in their views often have something they agree on. Unfortunately, there are times even when what they agree on is actually false. Once someone has taken that path and holds tight to a notion that even their adversary agrees with, it doesn't matter who seemingly prevails in the end when a falsehood has already been accepted as true.

What I'm talking about surrounds the mind body issue. I firmly believe there's a mighty substantive difference between a person and the brain a person has. They are not one and the same, we don't ordinarily talk as though they are one and the same, and though the brain is a critical component that accounts for certain peculiarities in thought experiments, I believe there is a fallacy of composition at work when people conflate them.

Even on the surface of what you're saying, "what we see is in fact our brain," is screamingly false. Because I do have a good sense about what drives you to say it, I mentally twist what you're saying to fit what I hold as true, and if I somehow get the wording right, even you might agree.

So, what could I possibly do? Well first, I have to do away with the words "we" and "see." Why, because that pertains to what a person does. If you think that the brain and person is one and the same, then you might be inclined to speak about the organ a person has as a person. I'm not taking that path. I don't think brains see anything at all. Metaphorically, I can appreciate someone saying that when unable to use nonanthromorphological verbiage, but you and I can easily dispense of that kind of talk and use more neutral language, such as the brain functions such that it senses only internal percepts. In that light, I agree with both you and the underpinning science that the brain cannot sense external stimuli without it first being filtered through a mental percept also created by the brain.

I acknowledge this intermediary percept between the brain and the external objects that light is reflected off of. What I strenuously object to is the ill-thought out notion that scientifically new found knowledge of the reality of how the person sees something is to be characterized as a mistake made by the layman. The mileage people try to take when they learn something is astounding. The idea that we don't really see anything with our eyes should be obviously false. The idea that although we can't see anything with our eyes, we can somehow see mental percepts is even crazier. That's not to say I disagree with the science. I agree with the science so long as youngster-style misinterpretations aren't buttering the bread of science. What we see (directly see--unless through an indirect method) is often (so very often) the external objects we think we see. What science tells us isn't (or shouldn't tell us) that we don't see what we think we do. What science explains (or should explain) is the very facts you have been (or at least would be) ascribing to the brain had you not taken that unfortunate path that has you conflating the brain (which can only sense the mental percept and never the external object) with the person (who most certainly can see only the object and never the percept sensed by the brain).

 

[untermensche]

...I firmly believe there's a mighty substantive difference between a person and the brain a person has...

Yes. You have stimulation then brain then person.

The brain stands between the person and the light stimulation reflecting from the tree.

The person has no access to the tree itself.

In terms of vision.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I understand your reservations but there's still a good reason to accept the formulation that what we see is in fact inside our brain.

Philosophers, even philosophers who are diametrically opposed to one another in their views often have something they agree on. Unfortunately, there are times even when what they agree on is actually false. Once someone has taken that path and holds tight to a notion that even their adversary agrees with, it doesn't matter who seemingly prevails in the end when a falsehood has already been accepted as true.

What I'm talking about surrounds the mind body issue. I firmly believe there's a mighty substantive difference between a person and the brain a person has. They are not one and the same, we don't ordinarily talk as though they are one and the same, and though the brain is a critical component that accounts for certain peculiarities in thought experiments, I believe there is a fallacy of composition at work when people conflate them.

Even on the surface of what you're saying, "what we see is in fact our brain," is screamingly false. Because I do have a good sense about what drives you to say it, I mentally twist what you're saying to fit what I hold as true, and if I somehow get the wording right, even you might agree.

So, what could I possibly do? Well first, I have to do away with the words "we" and "see." Why, because that pertains to what a person does. If you think that the brain and person is one and the same, then you might be inclined to speak about the organ a person has as a person. I'm not taking that path. I don't think brains see anything at all. Metaphorically, I can appreciate someone saying that when unable to use nonanthromorphological verbiage, but you and I can easily dispense of that kind of talk and use more neutral language, such as the brain functions such that it senses only internal percepts. In that light, I agree with both you and the underpinning science that the brain cannot sense external stimuli without it first being filtered through a mental percept also created by the brain.

I acknowledge this intermediary percept between the brain and the external objects that light is reflected off of. What I strenuously object to is the ill-thought out notion that scientifically new found knowledge of the reality of how the person sees something is to be characterized as a mistake made by the layman. The mileage people try to take when they learn something is astounding. The idea that we don't really see anything with our eyes should be obviously false. The idea that although we can't see anything with our eyes, we can somehow see mental percepts is even crazier. That's not to say I disagree with the science. I agree with the science so long as youngster-style misinterpretations aren't buttering the bread of science. What we see (directly see--unless through an indirect method) is often (so very often) the external objects we think we see. What science tells us isn't (or shouldn't tell us) that we don't see what we think we do. What science explains (or should explain) is the very facts you have been (or at least would be) ascribing to the brain had you not taken that unfortunate path that has you conflating the brain (which can only sense the mental percept and never the external object) with the person (who most certainly can see only the object and never the percept sensed by the brain).

The fundamental distinction I make is between knowing and believing. So it's an epistemological distinction but it affects our certainty about ontological matters.

So I would say that what we know is our own subjective experience, i.e. our own consciousness. What we believe, essentially, is that we are material beings in a material world. This distinction seems to work very well and I never had to twist it to accommodate particular cases. I take it to be really fundamental to our nature.

I take the notion of 'person', however, to be a complex construct straddling subjective experience and material world. It is the notion of person that allows us to discuss publicly, and sufficiently if not entirely coherently, things that are part of our private subjective experience, with what we believe to be other people. So a person has subjective properties, like ideas and feelings, but equally it has objective if abstract properties, like legal rights and romantic interactions and, crucially, its own physical body, something very objective and very concrete.

So, in fact, I only have to point out that all I know is my own private subjective experience. All the rest is putative. I believe there are trees. I can say I see trees with my own eyes but, actually, I don't even know I really have eyes at all, let alone that there are trees. And I also don't know of any coherent model of reality whereby there would be any actual trees.

Thus, I can rephrase the idea we're discussing as follows: I believe I see a tree with my own eyes but all I know is the representation of a tree, and of my eyes, and of the process of seeing a tree, all within my subjective experience. And this apply to absolutely everything that we deems to be part of the material world. Things like the Earth and the Sun, our friends and family, but also atoms and molecules and energy, and physical space and physical time, and indeed the whole physical universe. All that I know of these things are the ideas I have of them. Whether these ideas are really informative, I just don't know.
EB

 

[untermensche]

...I don't even know I really have eyes at all...

Yeah you do.

The evidence of biology in the form of the Theory of Evolution shows us what we are and how we came about.

Two choices. Either this evidence is an elaborate hoax constructed by "something else" or it is merely evidence of a history with no "something else" needed.

Parsimony lets us easily dispense with "something else" when it is not needed at all.

 

[fast]

...I don't even know I really have eyes at all...

Yeah you do.

The evidence of biology in the form of the Theory of Evolution shows us what we are and how we came about.

Two choices. Either this evidence is an elaborate hoax constructed by "something else" or it is merely evidence of a history with no "something else" needed.

Parsimony lets us easily dispense with "something else" when it is not needed at all.

His notion of "know" is being used in a very specific kind of way, just as "logical possibility" is used in a very specific kind of way. You're right though. He does know, just not in the sense you and I (and even he) knows.

 

[Speakpigeon]

His notion of "know" is being used in a very specific kind of way, just as "logical possibility" is used in a very specific kind of way. You're right though. He does know, just not in the sense you and I (and even he) knows.

No, I believe I use the word 'know' in the ordinary sense, i.e. like everybody else.

The problem is in people. People are prepared to say they know something when they don't. That may be because of an intent to deceive but more usually it's just that they believe they know. And of course, believing you know is not the same as knowing, not by a long shot. But if you believe you know, you will say not that you believe you know but that you know. Therein lies the problem.

UM believes he knows he has eyes so he assumes he knows he has eyes and infers I must know I have eyes. What can I say? Is it possible for me to know and yet believe I don't? I doubt that very much.

And I can see (without mine eyes) how people would misconstrue me saying I don't know I have eyes. Of course, I'm fully aware of the impression of having eyes and I understand that people should say that they know they have eyes. The question is whether what there is in actual fact are things which are exactly like eyes. I doubt that very much and, crucially here, I really don't know that this is the case. So, I also effectively don't know whether I have eyes or not. Really simple.
EB

 

[Juma]

His notion of "know" is being used in a very specific kind of way, just as "logical possibility" is used in a very specific kind of way. You're right though. He does know, just not in the sense you and I (and even he) knows.

No, I believe I use the word 'know' in the ordinary sense, i.e. like everybody else.

The problem is in people. People are prepared to say they know something when they don't. That may be because of an intent to deceive but more usually it's just that they believe they know. And of course, believing you know is not the same as knowing, not by a long shot. But if you believe you know, you will say not that you believe you know but that you know. Therein lies the problem.

UM believes he knows he has eyes so he assumes he knows he has eyes and infers I must know I have eyes. What can I say? Is it possible for me to know and yet believe I don't? I doubt that very much.

And I can see (without mine eyes) how people would misconstrue me saying I don't know I have eyes. Of course, I'm fully aware of the impression of having eyes and I understand that people should say that they know they have eyes. The question is whether what there is in actual fact are things which are exactly like eyes. I doubt that very much and, crucially here, I really don't know that this is the case. So, I also effectively don't know whether I have eyes or not. Really simple.
EB

I believe ”know” and ”knowledge” are weasel words. They dont have any referents. All there really is are beliefs. Education fills us with lots of beliefs, more or less justified. Our experience of our conciousness fills us with beliefs of who we are and what the world is.

Knowledge really doesnt come into it.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I believe ”know” and ”knowledge” are weasel words. They dont have any referents. All there really is are beliefs. Education fills us with lots of beliefs, more or less justified. Our experience of our conciousness fills us with beliefs of who we are and what the world is.

Knowledge really doesnt come into it.

I would agree as to knowledge of the material world but I don't think it's even conceivable that we don't know the colour red when we subjectively experience redness. Please don't get stuck with the word 'redness' itself. We have a certain subjective experience and I don't see how we could possibly fail to know it in itself. A representation may be misleading as to what it represent but not about itself.
So I think.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

The fundamental distinction I make is between knowing and believing. So it's an epistemological distinction but it affects our certainty about ontological matters.

So I would say that what we know is our own subjective experience, i.e. our own consciousness. What we believe, essentially, is that we are material beings in a material world. This distinction seems to work very well and I never had to twist it to accommodate particular cases. I take it to be really fundamental to our nature.

I take the notion of 'person', however, to be a complex construct straddling subjective experience and material world. It is the notion of person that allows us to discuss publicly, and sufficiently if not entirely coherently, things that are part of our private subjective experience, with what we believe to be other people. So a person has subjective properties, like ideas and feelings, but equally it has objective if abstract properties, like legal rights and romantic interactions and, crucially, its own physical body, something very objective and very concrete.

So, in fact, I only have to point out that all I know is my own private subjective experience. All the rest is putative. I believe there are trees. I can say I see trees with my own eyes but, actually, I don't even know I really have eyes at all, let alone that there are trees. And I also don't know of any coherent model of reality whereby there would be any actual trees.

Thus, I can rephrase the idea we're discussing as follows: I believe I see a tree with my own eyes but all I know is the representation of a tree, and of my eyes, and of the process of seeing a tree, all within my subjective experience. And this apply to absolutely everything that we deems to be part of the material world. Things like the Earth and the Sun, our friends and family, but also atoms and molecules and energy, and physical space and physical time, and indeed the whole physical universe. All that I know of these things are the ideas I have of them. Whether these ideas are really informative, I just don't know.
EB

I can't parse your thinking speakpidgeion. I think my problem stems from a completely different view of what is this experience, consciousness thing. Obviously you put some functionality on the idea of consciousness. It is an aware deciding mechanism necessary to continuing ongoing neural transactions produced for some decisive use in response to input and history behavior.

I take that same thing to be nothing more than aware theater, just making known to one, or, reviewing, or repeating, ongoing analytic and planning processing status or history. Why do I have this view, this strange view. I believe the human to be a machine, like any machine, one treats with ongoing events through physical processing and responding in a very determined manner.

Television though capture and transmission of photic and acoustic events at one sight transmits and produce, via an audio and video device, the television set, a relatively faithful representation.

Analogously humans through capture of photic, gustatory, acoustic, someasthetic, and olfactory capture of events at one sight, the sensorium, transmits and processes those events through processors, analyzers, and decision makers, to form a coherent and relatively faithful representation of the input which is then made useable via output devices such as speech, mechanical behavior, to perform environmental interaction.

While it makes sense to provide machinery that views, rehearses, stores, and decides, it does not make sense that those tasks require some holistic deciding and visualizing mechanism to do so.

I will not deny humans have capability to visualize and direct their behavior with respect to what has been presented to them, my best take is that humans have this capacity refined to its obviously very advanced state as theater for conducting social intercourse. It is unreasonable however to consider this theater as some cauldron where decisions are made to act since all that is available are inputs of past moments. Obviously the experiences we have are of what we may be planning given what has already happened which requires it to take place after the plan has begun being executed.

Now with this alternate frame it is obvious that what you see with your own eyes are the best representation of what actually exists as a tree in the real world. It is replicate and generalization via memory capacities. Of course what you believe is not what is, it is a replicate or generalization of 'treeness'. One's ideas are, given they are the result of input stimulation, the best representation of the real thing our evolved condition can provide. With those caveats I take your point on the subjectivity of experience.

Seems to me the best example of the world you seem to embrace is that of one high on a drug that produces unreliable or different processing of the real world. There one can have experiences built from processes other than those expected when the nervous system is operating with normal transmitters substrata. This would be where one produces experiences of trees that may not very like those formed by normal brains wherever they exist in the human world. Here is where subjectivity can not be known by others.

I'm pretty sure finding common ground among subjective reports can be defined very precisely since humans are designed to produce very similar images when identical images are presented.

 

[fast]

No, I believe I use the word 'know' in the ordinary sense, i.e. like everybody else.

But you're not. You are making a very common mistake. We are not infallible beings, so while it's sometimes true that we don't know what we declare to know, we sometimes do know just what it is we say we believe we know. That I might be mistaken merely goes to show I'm not so certain that mistake is impossible, but that's not a criteria for knowledge. If I'm ACTUALLY not mistaken, then my justified belief (save Gettier examples) is sufficient reason to assert or claim knowledge.

I can give a more detailed and easy to follow explication later. Time is calling upon me to do things right now, lol

 

[Speakpigeon]

The fundamental distinction I make is between knowing and believing. So it's an epistemological distinction but it affects our certainty about ontological matters.

So I would say that what we know is our own subjective experience, i.e. our own consciousness. What we believe, essentially, is that we are material beings in a material world. This distinction seems to work very well and I never had to twist it to accommodate particular cases. I take it to be really fundamental to our nature.

I take the notion of 'person', however, to be a complex construct straddling subjective experience and material world. It is the notion of person that allows us to discuss publicly, and sufficiently if not entirely coherently, things that are part of our private subjective experience, with what we believe to be other people. So a person has subjective properties, like ideas and feelings, but equally it has objective if abstract properties, like legal rights and romantic interactions and, crucially, its own physical body, something very objective and very concrete.

So, in fact, I only have to point out that all I know is my own private subjective experience. All the rest is putative. I believe there are trees. I can say I see trees with my own eyes but, actually, I don't even know I really have eyes at all, let alone that there are trees. And I also don't know of any coherent model of reality whereby there would be any actual trees.

Thus, I can rephrase the idea we're discussing as follows: I believe I see a tree with my own eyes but all I know is the representation of a tree, and of my eyes, and of the process of seeing a tree, all within my subjective experience. And this apply to absolutely everything that we deems to be part of the material world. Things like the Earth and the Sun, our friends and family, but also atoms and molecules and energy, and physical space and physical time, and indeed the whole physical universe. All that I know of these things are the ideas I have of them. Whether these ideas are really informative, I just don't know.
EB

I can't parse your thinking speakpidgeion.

Yeah but, on the other hand, you can't even parse my moniker. It's Speakpigeon, not "speakpidgeion"! Mine is not even difficult to remember or spell I think.

I think my problem stems from a completely different view of what is this experience, consciousness thing.

Which if true is simply amazing. I really can't get my head around this.

Obviously you put some functionality on the idea of consciousness. It is an aware deciding mechanism necessary to continuing ongoing neural transactions produced for some decisive use in response to input and history behavior.

Er, no. I certainly don't put any functionality in subjective experience. Consciousness is sometimes understood in an objective sense, as the thing that allows you to interact with your environment and so on so I don't usually use this term for it is too ambiguous.

Talking of subjective experience, then, it don't think of it as in anyway functional. I think of it as a spectacle. Whether this spectacle represents something or not is irrelevant at this point. The spectacle is made of every impression, sensation, idea, thought, feeling, whatever, we may have (Descartes would have called these "thoughts").

The specific impression we have that this spectacle is representative of the physical reality around us, or indeed that it is this physical reality itself, I see as just another bit of the overall spectacle. It's one impression among others.

You can try it, it works.

I take that same thing to be nothing more than aware theater, just making known to one, or, reviewing, or repeating, ongoing analytic and planning processing status or history. Why do I have this view, this strange view. I believe the human to be a machine, like any machine, one treats with ongoing events through physical processing and responding in a very determined manner.

Me, all I know is the spectacle. The theatre is something else. One can believe there's a theatre or not. Only the spectacle cannot possibly be denied. Needless to say, I really wouldn't know anything about the machine, or machinerie, which maybe makes the spectacle possible.

Television though capture and transmission of photic and acoustic events at one sight transmits and produce, via an audio and video device, the television set, a relatively faithful representation.

Television is analogous to the human visual system so it doesn't mean much that we find it "faithful".

Analogously humans through capture of photic, gustatory, acoustic, someasthetic, and olfactory capture of events at one sight, the sensorium, transmits and processes those events through processors, analyzers, and decision makers, to form a coherent and relatively faithful representation of the input which is then made useable via output devices such as speech, mechanical behavior, to perform environmental interaction.

How you could possibly know that the human visual system is faithful I don't know. I would accept that it's likely that it is functional, otherwise I would expect interaction with my environment to be excruciatingly and painfully difficult, and probably, very quickly, deadly. But functional does not require faithfulness. All we need is some sort of correspondance. As long as it works.

While it makes sense to provide machinery that views, rehearses, stores, and decides, it does not make sense that those tasks require some holistic deciding and visualizing mechanism to do so.

That's an interesting question but it goes much beyond the conception of subjective experience. It's in effect a question about this putative physical world the belief in which is part of my subjective experience. No knowledge involved here.

So I think you're addressing an issue that's irrelevant to my conception. And certainly, I don't need to presume anything as to how our brain works.

I will not deny humans have capability to visualize and direct their behavior with respect to what has been presented to them, my best take is that humans have this capacity refined to its obviously very advanced state as theater for conducting social intercourse. It is unreasonable however to consider this theater as some cauldron where decisions are made to act since all that is available are inputs of past moments. Obviously the experiences we have are of what we may be planning given what has already happened which requires it to take place after the plan has begun being executed.

It's certainly an interesting question but not one that could affect in any way my conception.

Now with this alternate frame it is obvious that what you see with your own eyes are the best representation of what actually exists as a tree in the real world. It is replicate and generalization via memory capacities. Of course what you believe is not what is, it is a replicate or generalization of 'treeness'. One's ideas are, given they are the result of input stimulation, the best representation of the real thing our evolved condition can provide. With those caveats I take your point on the subjectivity of experience.

Yes and no. It's worse than what you say. I really have no way of knowing the physical world. I certainly imagine it. Or rather, I can accept that my body somehow imagines the physical world and presents me with a coherent image of it but I still don't know it in itself. All I know is the representation, the image, not the represented thing. The point is, I can't possibly know that this representation is even an actual representation of some actual physical world as opposed to some arbitrary image of a non-existence world.

Seems to me the best example of the world you seem to embrace is that of one high on a drug that produces unreliable or different processing of the real world. There one can have experiences built from processes other than those expected when the nervous system is operating with normal transmitters substrata. This would be where one produces experiences of trees that may not very like those formed by normal brains wherever they exist in the human world. Here is where subjectivity can not be known by others.

That's one way to explain this idea.

I'm pretty sure finding common ground among subjective reports can be defined very precisely since humans are designed to produce very similar images when identical images are presented.

Ah, but that's something we can only believe is true. We don't actually know that there are even actual human beings, let alone that they would be sufficiently similar to each other to share their subjective experience. Sure, it may look exactly like that in my own subjective experience but I don't know that this image is a representation, let alone that it is true of anything.

That being said, for materialistic purposes such as doing some actual science, this view may be good enough to be operational.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

No, I believe I use the word 'know' in the ordinary sense, i.e. like everybody else.

But you're not. You are making a very common mistake.

No.

We are not infallible beings, so while it's sometimes true that we don't know what we declare to know, we sometimes do know just what it is we say we believe we know.

How would you know that? Even scientists, which may be regarded as the best among equals, have to revise their theories. So, if you're guilty of having claimed knowledge and you now think this was mistaken, how could you know now you're not also mistaken?

I don't even care that you would be certain about knowing. The fact is I think you don't know even one thing about the material world. Prove otherwise, please.

That I might be mistaken merely goes to show I'm not so certain that mistake is impossible, but that's not a criteria for knowledge.

When we realise we were mistaken we accept that we didn't know what we thought and said we knew. This shows conclusively that we take truth to be a condition of knowledge.

The fact that we use the word 'know' to talk about things we can be mistaken about merely shows that we use the word 'know' whenever we believe we know. Which is certainly my experience of things.

If I'm ACTUALLY not mistaken, then my justified belief (save Gettier examples) is sufficient reason to assert or claim knowledge.

Circular reasoning. How could you possibly know you're not mistaken?

And if you can't, you also cannot distinguish between knowledge and belief and this turns everything into belief.

It's easy to compare to actual knowledge, which is subjective experience. When I experience redness, there's absolutely no way I could be mistaken as to what it is I experience. Whether I call it 'redness' or 'blueness' and even 'pain' would be irrelevant. I may be mistaken in calling redness 'blueness' one day and 'greenness' another day. It doesn't matter. It's not what name I may give to it. It's that I experience it and there's no intermediary. I cannot be mistaken and therefore I know. There's not one thing physical or material that I could similarly say I know.

Take whatever you may be aware of at one moment as a symbolic representation of the world. Think the ink bottle on your desk is not an ink bottle on your desk but an arbitrary symbol standing for an ink bottle together with another arbitrary symbol standing for a table. Now, try to imagine all your experience of reality is mediated by this symbolic scheme. All you have access to are symbols. You don't have any direct access to the real world. It's all coherent, though. You can live you life, survive in your environment and reproduce, all through using this symbolic scheme. Can you conceive of that? If it can help, think that it's the situation of all artificial intelligence machines. Now, symbols don't need to be analogous in any way to the thing they stand for. They are arbitrary. Given this situation, how could you possibly make sure you know anything about the world so represented? How would you go about validating your symbolic scheme since you would be able to access directly the world represented by the symbols? Even the notion that you're able to stay alive and to apparently function properly in this world would be no indication since even the physical life of your own physical body would be represented by a symbol.

I can give a more detailed and easy to follow explication later. Time is calling upon me to do things right now, lol

I was talking about knowledge per usage, not the Justified True Belief conception of knowledge, which I think is not in line with usage. If you can't argue on the basis of usage, i.e. language as most people use it, then don't bother to explain anything. I'd rather not waste my time with JTB, thank you.
EB

 

[untermensche]

Yeah you do.

The evidence of biology in the form of the Theory of Evolution shows us what we are and how we came about.

Two choices. Either this evidence is an elaborate hoax constructed by "something else" or it is merely evidence of a history with no "something else" needed.

Parsimony lets us easily dispense with "something else" when it is not needed at all.

His notion of "know" is being used in a very specific kind of way, just as "logical possibility" is used in a very specific kind of way. You're right though. He does know, just not in the sense you and I (and even he) knows.

All these magic words.

I understand there is this cult that talks about "logical possibilities" as if they are something real.

But nothing was ever made possible by human chatter.

Either the universe allows it or it does not. The universe defines all possibilities.

Humans have no say what-so-ever.

 

[untermensche]

UM believes he knows he has eyes so he assumes he knows he has eyes and infers I must know I have eyes. What can I say? Is it possible for me to know and yet believe I don't? I doubt that very much.

It defies parsimony to think one is not an evolved animal with eyes.

One has to discard incredible evidence and assume it is all some elaborate trick played by "something".

Some mastermind trickster behind the scenes or not? And of course there is not a shred of evidence of this "trickster".

It is highly irrational to even entertain the possibility that we are not evolved animals with eyes.

When one starts entertaining possibilities of "something" behind the scenes playing tricks then one should just convert to Christianity and be done with it.

 

[fast]

When we ask 6 year old Pam if she knows her name and she says yes, she is not merely expressing just a belief but rather a highly justified belief. Whether she in fact knows THAT she knows makes not one iota difference, for if it's actually true that her name is Pam, then she knows.

We can do this 3000 more times, and what we learn is that kids know their names. Now, if we repeat this process, eventually we're gonna come across a kidnapping case whereby the child was merely taught that her name was one thing while the facts of the matter is that wasn't her actual name.

The similarity in conviction might very well be the same amongst all the children, but while one claims to know and doesn't, the remainder makes the claim and does. Those that don't know they know doesn't have an effect on the fact they in fact know what they claim to.

 

[fast]

His notion of "know" is being used in a very specific kind of way, just as "logical possibility" is used in a very specific kind of way. You're right though. He does know, just not in the sense you and I (and even he) knows.

All these magic words.

I understand there is this cult that talks about "logical possibilities" as if they are something real.

But nothing was ever made possible by human chatter.

Either the universe allows it or it does not. The universe defines all possibilities.

Humans have no say what-so-ever.

Do you think a dwarf planet is a type of planet? I don't, yet I think a basketball is a type of ball.

 

[untermensche]

All these magic words.

I understand there is this cult that talks about "logical possibilities" as if they are something real.

But nothing was ever made possible by human chatter.

Either the universe allows it or it does not. The universe defines all possibilities.

Humans have no say what-so-ever.

Do you think a dwarf planet is a type of planet? I don't, yet I think a basketball is a type of ball.

The word is "possibility" and what ultimately defines all of them.

It is not humans.

 

[Juma]

Do you think a dwarf planet is a type of planet? I don't, yet I think a basketball is a type of ball.

The word is "possibility" and what ultimately defines all of them.

It is not humans.

Nah. The imoprtant word in ”logical possibility” is ”logical”.

 

[untermensche]

When we ask 6 year old Pam if she knows her name and she says yes, she is not merely expressing just a belief but rather a highly justified belief. Whether she in fact knows THAT she knows makes not one iota difference, for if it's actually true that her name is Pam, then she knows.

We can do this 3000 more times, and what we learn is that kids know their names. Now, if we repeat this process, eventually we're gonna come across a kidnapping case whereby the child was merely taught that her name was one thing while the facts of the matter is that wasn't her actual name.

The similarity in conviction might very well be the same amongst all the children, but while one claims to know and doesn't, the remainder makes the claim and does. Those that don't know they know doesn't have an effect on the fact they in fact know what they claim to.

What is the connection between this and all the evidence of biological evolution?

Yes humans can be mistaken about many many things. Especially when the only evidence is the words of other humans.

It doesn't mean they are wrong about everything. Or wrong about biological evolution.

Either the evidence of evolution is some elaborate hoax perpetrated by "something".

Or we can dispense with this "something" and say it is evidence of a real history.

Reason tells us we can dispense with all extraneous "somethings". There is no end to them.