My problem with the Gettier Problem.

[Mise]

I'm afraid I cannot follow this. You can't put it in better English?

Well it was my attempt at putting your original post in better English so not really.

 

[sophie]

I'm afraid I cannot follow this. You can't put it in better English?

You really need to stop doing this mang; asking people for their input and then insulting them for providing that input is not going to make them want to participate.

 

[Mouthwash]

The major (and crucial) difference between the two is that 'relative to human' is already inherently and logically tied to 'human', while 'fixed absolute truth regardless of human' isn't.
Eg, for a human it is true that if he picks up a rock and leaves it from some height, the rock will fall. Indeed, but you already have the human observed objects, places, and qualities such as volume and movement. Those are not needing to be there for any/all kinds of (non-human) observer.

Hmm, well, can't we infer that our universe isn't built around human perception? The further out we travel from our natural space, the more alien it becomes (take quantum physics as an example). We might not be able to properly conceive of the fixed reality, but we can comprehend it in metaphorical terms.

Or maybe this is just missing the whole point of the thing, but I'm not in the right state of mind to determine that.

Maybe are intuitions about "knowledge" are more simulation based then preposition based. A person is said to know something if his model matches the true system (and he has good reason to adopt said model).

Why is the 'good reason' necessary? Justifiability applies to humans. Who is to say that information doesn't become substance on some higher echelon of the quantum world, and that there aren't creatures who know things directly?

I'm not sure why you didn't ask your question on the Ask A Theologian thread.

Because it's about theology and Plotinus can answer on this thread if he's actually interested.

That was a simple example showing knowledge is based on definitions. Which (to my mind at least) shows knowledge needs to be defined precisely as well. Now there are two types of knowledge: scientific knowledge and religious knowledge and they rely on different definitions, both claiming truth. (Again: without a clear defintion neither knowledge would lead anywhere.)

"Now I know for a fact that..." is a statement. Is it based on any (solid) knowledge? Without any additional information we have no way of knowing. (Again: importance of definition.)

I'm not sure we disagree at all... knowledge does need a practical definition. All I'm saying is that it isn't something epistemologists should be hung up about.

You really need to stop doing this mang; asking people for their input and then insulting them for providing that input is not going to make them want to participate.

I don't mean to insult; arguing philosophy without drowning under the weight of the concepts takes experience. Nevertheless, if I can't understand something I can't understand it, and it's probably much ruder to ignore it.

 

[Perfection]

Why is the 'good reason' necessary? Justifiability applies to humans. Who is to say that information doesn't become substance on some higher echelon of the quantum world, and that there aren't creatures who know things directly?

Part of the value of knowledge is that we can use it to make decisions. If information comes from unreliable sources then we cannot trust it as a basis for decisions. Hence we need good reasons to ensure reliability.

As for your hypothetical creature, I'm not sure how much that difffers from human sense data. My sight though an imperfect sense is highly reliable. Knowing this fact allows me to justify acting on visual data without need for an explicit deliberation.

 

[Flying Pig]

I don't mean to insult; arguing philosophy without drowning under the weight of the concepts takes experience. Nevertheless, if I can't understand something I can't understand it, and it's probably much ruder to ignore it.

There's a world of difference between 'You can't put it in better English?' and 'I'm sorry, I don't follow; could you explain exactly what you meant by such-and-such a phrase?' That difference is usually called tact, and it does help keep your conversations civil.

 

[Perfection]

Robert Nozick came up with a reasonable explanation - in order to say 'S knows P', the following need to be true:

P is true
S believes that P
If it were the case that (not-P), S would not believe that P
If it were the case that P, S would believe that P

Where did he write this?

The counterfactuals here are confusing. For instance let's say I play a game with S that goes as follows.

I flip a coin in view of S
If heads I put a 4-sided die in a box
If tails I put a 20-sided die in a box
Box is shaken rolling die
Box is opened revealing state of rolled die.

If I flip heads I think we can say the proposition (P) "the die in the box is less than 5" is known by S before the box is opened. However because there's cases where P is True but S does not believe P (the case where tails is flipped and the die reads 1-4) it fails condition 4.

Edit:
Maybe you misread Nozick are you sure condition 4 isn't

If it were the case that P, S would not believe that not-P

 

[Flying Pig]

I'm afraid I'm only quoting Wikipedia, but I can imagine that they failed to make that distinction. Your counterfactual provides a good reason why the suggestion in teh article doesn't quite work.

 

[Atticus]

The wikipedia article mentions that problem too:

A major criticism of Nozick's theory of knowledge is his rejection of the principle of deductive closure. This principle states that if S knows X and S knows that X implies Y, then S knows Y. Nozick's truth tracking conditions do not allow for the principle of deductive closure. Nozick believes that the truth tracking conditions are more fundamental to human intuition than the principle of deductive closure.

Here X=heads, Y = "die < 5".

 

[civvver]

Hmm, well, can't we infer that our universe isn't built around human perception? The further out we travel from our natural space, the more alien it becomes (take quantum physics as an example). We might not be able to properly conceive of the fixed reality, but we can comprehend it in metaphorical terms.

I watched this special on mathematics on pbs the other day and this was one of the main themes.

Is mathematics a human invention made to describe the world and universe around us, or is mathematics the actual rules that govern the universe?

Or put another way, is mathematics an invention or a discovery?

It really is a philosophical question cus on the one hand I say to you 2 + 2 = 4. If I have 2 apples and you give me 2 more I now have 4 apples. The notion and description is all human invented to describe our perception, but the fact that 2 apples added to 2 more apples is a fundamental truth of the universe.

I think to answer your question truth is what is actually true and knowledge is just awareness of that. So saying 2 + 2 = 4 is my knowledge of the mathematical truth that 2 + 2 = 4.

In the case of the barista problem I don't think she knew at all, because for one thing it concerns humans emotions and preferences not scientific truths. It is quite possible that even her regular customer did not want his regular order on that day. She didn't know, what she did was took the information she had on hand and made a best guess with it and said she knew.

And outside of scientific knowledge I don't know how you can absolutely define truth anyway. Let's say the regular thought he wanted his regular order, but a different waitress messed it up and served him something else which he liked better. And he exclaims, wow this is great, this is what I really wanted! His desire changed so how can you say 100% factually that you know his desired order? He might not even know what his desired order is, he just thinks he does.

 

[Kyriakos]

I watched this special on mathematics on pbs the other day and this was one of the main themes.

Is mathematics a human invention made to describe the world and universe around us, or is mathematics the actual rules that govern the universe?

Or put another way, is mathematics an invention or a discovery?

It really is a philosophical question cus on the one hand I say to you 2 + 2 = 4. If I have 2 apples and you give me 2 more I now have 4 apples. The notion and description is all human invented to describe our perception, but the fact that 2 apples added to 2 more apples is a fundamental truth of the universe.

I think to answer your question truth is what is actually true and knowledge is just awareness of that. So saying 2 + 2 = 4 is my knowledge of the mathematical truth that 2 + 2 = 4.

In the case of the barista problem I don't think she knew at all, because for one thing it concerns humans emotions and preferences not scientific truths. It is quite possible that even her regular customer did not want his regular order on that day. She didn't know, what she did was took the information she had on hand and made a best guess with it and said she knew.

And outside of scientific knowledge I don't know how you can absolutely define truth anyway. Let's say the regular thought he wanted his regular order, but a different waitress messed it up and served him something else which he liked better. And he exclaims, wow this is great, this is what I really wanted! His desire changed so how can you say 100% factually that you know his desired order? He might not even know what his desired order is, he just thinks he does.

I think (and so did most ancient philosophers, and i suppose most modern ones too but i don't know that and they may be hipsters) that math is sort of an invention, but also it is a discovery of ability to reflect on our own logic through using some basic axioms and have stuff follow or not follow from that.
Likely the ultimate basis of our math is the notion of an integer, and moreso the smallest integer, One, which is also used as a meter.

Aristotle in his Metaphysics proposes that philosophy moves from dialectics (where there are no axioms and so stuff never can be proven outside any fixed set) to 'syllogisms', which have basic axioms as a start, and therefore lead to proven true or proven wrong or inherently ambiguous statements.

Personally i view that as a needed development to achieve what Aristotle wanted (to have separate sciences from philosophy, eg his physics or biology, and he tried to argue that for math too), but at the same time it was a certain downgrade of philosophy which has to examine the axioms as in flow as well. (as did Parmenides, Socrates/Plato and basically all the main presocratics). Should be noted that in ancient philosophy axioms as part of a defined system begin with Thales and his theorem in geometry.

I do not think that our math is tied to absolute universal truths. It ties to vast unknowns in our own human mental world, though.

 

[Flying Pig]

The wikipedia article mentions that problem too:


Here X=heads, Y = "die < 5".

Surely you can just treat 'X' and 'X implies Y' as one big X? That still satisfies the third condition - if Y must be true whenever X is true, then S would not believe 'big X' if Y were not true.

 

[Atticus]

The problem is that if you know things, it should be correct to say you know also the things implied by those. I know you're British, so I should also know you're an European. With Nozick's defintion that isn't true, as Perfection's example shows: I know the outcome of the coin toss, but I don't know that the die will be less than 5, since I wouldn't know it if the coin had landed otherwise.

This is of course extremely counter intuitive.