Knowing we are right

[wushi]

Ultimately, upon careful analysis, all facts that we claim to have knowledge of derive from a system of belief. Indeed, logical arguments require statements from which further facts are derived, and as you trace these statements back, ultimately you end up with qualitative statements that are unverifiable. Really then, knowing is believing

Comments

[arriya]

This depends on your standards for knowledge. Very few people in epistemology still require certainty about a belief in order for it to be justified and, if it is true, in order for it to count as knowledge. Many people do not require second-order knowledge (i.e., knowing that one knows) for knowledge either. For example, Alvin Goldman (a reliabilist) has argued that a belief need only be produced through a process that reliably produce true beliefs rather than false ones in order for it to be justified, and if it is true as well, then it can count as something known. Interestingly, he does not require that a believer have cognitive access to what makes her belief justified or that she be able to give an account of it in order for her to be justified in her belief. A little girl could be justified in believing that her dog is in the room if her belief is produced through reliable processes of perception (e.g., her seeing the dog) without her being aware of what those processes are or what makes them reliable, and if her belief is true

[wushi]

My whole argument with this has to do with the concept of a "true belief". How do you mean the phrase true belief?

[arriya]

I don't actually. How do you?

Part of my project as a student of philosophy is to critique the how vague concepts such as belief are used in epistemology without any regard for the details of cognition. There are all sorts of problems in philosophy that I think can be resolved by reconceptualizing things such as truth, the correspondence of truth to reality, knowledge, and justification based on a better understanding of how people interact as organisms in their environment.

[wushi]

I have always understood the "truth" to be a moving target, not because the truth is flexible, but rather because our ability to frame truths to ourselves change over times. I am reminded that certain groups of Buddhists categorize different sayings of the Buddha into relative truths and absolute truths. As some of what he said is understood best contextually, and some of it is so fundamental that even now the meaning is obvious.

I suspect a major difference in our discussion is that you are approaching truth from an epistimologic perspective, and I am attempting to approach truth from an ontologic perspective.

[arriya]

I thought we were talking about belief, not truth. As far as truth goes, I'm a correspondence theorist, meaning that I think that something is true if it corresponds with reality. For complicated reasons, I think truth is objective without being absolute, though I'm not sure how you're using absolute. If you mean by something's being absolutely true that it is timeless and/or applies universally, then I don't see any reason for thinking that anything is absolutely true. If you think that something's being absolutely true means that it is the only correct perspective, then I definitely disagree that anything is absolutely true.

What sayings of the Buddha are you talking about specifically? Some of them seem more like instructions or suggestions than statements that can be true of false.

I suspect a major difference in our discussion is that you are approaching truth from an epistimologic perspective, and I am attempting to approach truth from an ontologic perspective.

What do you mean by this?

[wushi]

We can talk about either. Belief seems a fairly straightforward thing to me, as something of a neo-Cartesian those thoughts that are the beliefs of others are essentially inaccessible, but the fact that I am capable of belief is a good start. Really, the seemingly irrational actions of others is a comfort, in the sense that I can presuppose that they exist too, because they'd better believe something

[arriya]

A neo-Cartesian? I'd be interested in which of his views you agree with and which you disagree with since I think he was one of the most confused and yet influential philosophers in the western tradition

[arriya]

Perhaps this is just a linguistic confusion, but I am skeptical about the possibility of inexpressible truths because the kind of thing that can be true is some understanding of how things in the world are, our understanding is conceptual, and our concepts are tied to our language. More importantly, we (as members of the same species) are embodied similarly, and the way we understand the world is based on how we are embodied as evidenced by a lot of work in phenomenology (just examining our experiences and how they are structured), cognitive science, linguistics, evolutionary biology, etc. and how we are socialized (raised in a shared social environment). Hence meaning is shared and meaningful propositions are communicable