Tag Archive for 'knowledge'

Correspondences

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christopher
31 August 2006 ago
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Knowing
1: Epistemology 2: Flux Capacity 3: Correspondence 4: Synthetic & Metaphor 5: Postmortem Epistemology

In the last two posts, i outlined first the “broad strokes” of what falls under the realm of epistemology, followed by a look at some Greek responses to knowledge. Now, our focus jumps nearly two millenia to the next “big thing” in the history of : .

In his Meditations on First Philosophy as an attempt to prove God’s existence concludes two things with regards to knowledge: it must both be foundational and correspond. Knowledge is true if and only if a person’s matches (or corresponds to) the external world. Descartes gets to these conclusions by first being skeptical about everything (so he says). He reasons that if he finds something that he cannot doubt, then he can build up an entire system of knowledge that (ultimately) proces the existence of God. Descartes first reasons that he could be dreaming (sometimes called the Dream Hypothesis), so he concludes that anything perceptible is suspicious. Keeping with his plan, he rejects as a basis for . In his second meditation, Descartes argues that if he is supposing that all perceptions are false, then he must somehow exist (yes, this is where he gives he famous cogito ergo sum). But, he could be deceived. So, he supposes that that some being with powers on par with God has deceived him (this is called the Evil God Scenario by some) on everything (including that which he removed via the Dream Hypothesis). But still, Decartes is still thinking. The next logical step is that he perceives himself and this must be true because he exists. Therefore, whatever he can “clearly and distinctly perceive” must be true (this is his response to the DH). Descartes then proceeds through the 3rd, 4tf, and 5th meditations arguing God’s existence on these two bases. His final conclusion is that God, a perfect being, exists and does not decieve (and thus negates the EGS). Therefore, since God does not deceive and is the source of perceptions (God is the vehicle through which perceptions are made), what is perceived must also exist. Thus, Descartes concludes that what one perceives corresponds to reality and, as such, must be true. One way of seeing this is:
Descartes_diagram

In a relatively short time frame after Descartes, George Berkeley, a Bishop and professor, brought forth his ideas on human knowledge, which showed some of the difficulties with Descartes’s theory. One of Berkeley’s primary arguments against Descartes dealt with correspondence and perceptions. Essentially, one only perceives one’s own sensations. That is, all perceptions a person experiences comes from the person. This leads Berkeley to conclude that an external world (if it exists) cannot be verified. As such, there cannot be any correspondence between an internal concept/perception and an external object. Therefore, Berkeley concludes that for something to be true, it must correspond with an idea within the self. This would look like such:
Berkeley_diagram

Following Berkeley’s motion, Hume took the most extreme position for his day by rejecting even Berkeley’s idea. Where Berkeley was satisfied with knowledge being an internal correspondence, Hume still wanted a better definition. Hume’s main problem was that of cause and effect. He proposed that cause-and-effect was just a custom. No matter how often something came before another (such as lightning before thunder), there was no guarantee that it would be such in the future. Because of this, there isn’t anything available for an internal correspondence because every instance of something must be taken as a new object, instead of a recurrence of an prior object. There cannot be any internal correspondence. As such, Hume saw no other possible criteria for truth other than custom (or tradition).

Since Hume, very few philosophers have accepted the idea of correspondence when it comes to epistemology as a foundational criteria of it. Of course, it should be noted that Plato had already come to this conclusion centuries before (see the second post in this series), so it could be argued that, except for this small period of time, correspondence has never been a criteria for knowledge (let alone true knowledge), even though some philosophers have found ways of incorporating it in remarkable ways.

Flux Capacity

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christopher
20 July 2006 ago
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Knowing
1: Epistemology 2: Flux Capacity 3: Correspondence 4: Synthetic & Metaphor 5: Postmortem Epistemology

One of the earliest theories of epistemology is attributed to . His theory can be summarised in the phrase “everything is in motion.” Because we lack a complete text attribute to Heraclitus, much of our information is based on fragments and secondhand sources. One of our best sources comes from some of Plato’s writings, particularly his Theaetetus. As such, we’ll be working from the assumption that Plato was accurate in his understanding of Heraclitus’s theory.

Measures

’s Theaetetus will be a focus in many of the discussions on epistemology because (1) it is Plato’s clearest work on the matter and(2) Plato covers many different views that eventually become their own theories. If you don’t have a copy available, there is a good summary at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [link] and a copy at Tuft’s Perseus Library [link]. i’ll follow the standard pagination. This one dialog is quite possibly Plato’s clearest discussion on the matter as it revolves around the question, “What is knowledge?” The first third or so of the dialog, Theaetetus suggests that knowledge is perception. As such, Socrates takes this definition and compares it to ’s notion that “Man is the measure of all things: of the things which are, that they are, and of the things which are not, that they are not” (this will abbreviated as “Man is the measure” or MM). In combining these two notions, we are left with a more defined (and arguably stronger) position. There are some problems with this, though. Socrates quickly discovers that if man is the measure, then something “heavy” could appear “light” to someone. Therefore, it seems that this view, when considering some form of “objectivity,” requires more. As such, Socrates suggests that things are not, but rather are becoming. That is, things that are objects of perception are relative to each other. Six dice, when placed besire four, is “more,” but when placed beside twelve, is “less.”

Yet, Plato does not end there. He comes to Protagoras’s defense and remakes Protagoras’s argument, adding the requirement of compentcy. That is, a person can “judge rightly” with MM relative to his competency on the matter. Therefore, someone who is a medical doctor would generally have a more correct opinion on matters of medicine than a baker. So, Socrates introduces another problem: the future. In one example, he has a person come to a doctor and claim that he will have a fever in the near future and the doctor disagrees. If “man is the measure,” then we have a problem: the future cannot hold both claims to be true. We cannot accept the possibility that the man will have a fever by his measure, while not by the doctor’s measure. There is no amount of competency that would allow a doctor to accurately determine whether a healthy person will have a fever in the near future. This problem is reflected in Hume’s argument in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. There is no guarantee that two events occuring immediately after one another (say lightning and thunder) must occur that way in the future. This has become an accepted view in science, even though it is impractical. As such, Plato rejects MM in its current state.

Flux

Socrates tries then to look at the problem through Heraclitean : that everything is in motion. This view argues that a given object (say this word) is in constant motion such that at any given moment, it can be any color. If i were to call it “green” while another calls it “red,” we would both be correct because the object had to be that color in the moment of perception. This is based on the argument that flux must be seen in two ways: (1) change in position (i.e. physical motion) and (2) change in appearance. For flux to work, everything must be in both forms of motion, else it would be in motion while standing still. Physical motion can be seen in recent physics through Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which does suggest that everything is in constant physical motion (even stationary objects have a very minute level of motion). In fact, if something had no physical motion, it would have no temperature (i.e. it would be at absolute zero) because temperature requires motion. Thus, if we are to speak of things that are in constant motion, we are unable to speak thusly about them. This would then make the kind of language necessary to be correct about a particular perception unitelligible. Socrates then argues that we are completely free from the notion that “knowledge is perception.” Yet, we still have one problem: . The Parmenidean theory suggest that everything is one and totally unmoved. In other words, reality is not in motion at all and any perceived motion is imaginary. agrees with his mentor here (cf. Zeno’s Paradoxes). Yet, it should be self-evident from above that this position is also untenable, particularly in contemporary thought. Is there some middle ground in which we can find an answer? Can we navigate between Scylla and Charybdis? We’ll have to look somewhere besides “ is .”

Epistemology

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christopher
25 May 2006 ago
in Philosophy
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Knowing
1: Epistemology 2: Flux Capacity 3: Correspondence 4: Synthetic & Metaphor 5: Postmortem Epistemology

What is ? Beyond that, what is truth? In other words, what makes something knowable and/or true? With regards to knowledge, how should we classify things? Is anything knowable? If so, what parts? These are all questions that tie into the general category of epistemology and will be pursued in subsequent posts. First, though, we should get some definitions cleared up.

Truth

What kind of things can be true? For our purposes, “kinds of things” will be grouped into two categories: real objects and assertions. Real objects are things like this computer you are looking at and the person who wrote this (i.e. me). Assertions are things such as propositions (such as the infamous “If P then Q”), statements (”The earth is round”), beliefs (”i believe i am alive”). Can real objects be true? If i were to say something falsely (e.g. “Man was created by aliens from the Orion Nebula”), am i true (or not)? Or is it that my statement is true (or not). It seems, then, that real objects cannot be true or false, but assertions can. With that in mind, we will restrict our enquiry to assertions.

Now, there are three general theories of and each has good points and bad ones:

  • : This is basically such that an assertion is true if and only if (or, iff) it corresponds to the way things actually are in the world. In computer lingo, that’s similar to WYSIWYG. The good is that it is intuitive with regards to perception (after all, it’s what you see), but it’s impossible to prove (there is no way to “step outside” and verify). For example, this screen that you are seeing exists because you see it.
  • : This differs from the above in that an assertion is true iff it consists with one’s already true beliefs. In other words, if an assertion is coherent with one’s set of beliefs, it is true. The downside is that it is not so intuitive when it comes to perception, but chances are, this is how most people in practice call something true. To re-use the example above, this screen exists because it is more in line with your other beliefs (such as the one that you are reading this on a screen) without contradicting them.
  • Pragmatism: The last general theory of truth comes down to practicality. William James wrote “what works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word.” That is, if it works best to assume this screen does in fact exist, then believe that it does. This may best be seen in the abundance of Euclidean geometry in grade school because it works better to assume that parallel lines never meet that the opposite (although that opposite is required to be assumed when discussing atomic bombs).

Generally, though, most do not hold to just one of these theories, but work them together in some way to create a more plausible notion of truth.

Knowledge

This is what is primarily about. What constitutes “knowing”? There are two generic theories of this as well:

  • : This is found must notably in Descartes’ writings. There are some assertions that are foundational to others. Knowledge is constructed as a pyramid of sorts where the most basic assertions are required for others. If one of these basic assertions is removed, the structure collapses like a house of playing cards. Many foundationalists hold to Correspondence from above.
  • Coherentism: This should not be confused with coherence from above even though the two are related. Here, knowledge is not a structure of assertions, but a web of them. While a single assertion may be open to doubt, when it is combined with others, the interlocking strength bolsters each other. It is akin to a crossword puzzle where more answers means a greater likelihood of being correct on one particular answer.While much of the forthcoming discussion will be focusing on foundationalism, it should be important to notice where coherentism can enter into the mix.

Foundationalism began with the simple assertion that an assertion is known if and only if the assertion is true and the knower believes that assertion. For instance, i know that i have a cat if and only if i really do have a cat and i believe that i do have a cat. See how correspondence fits nicely into this argument as i can then assert that “i really do have a cat” because i am in possession of one. Yet, there is difficulty here because of “lucky guesses.” Let’s say we are playing a game and you tell me to tell you how many straws you are holding behind your back. If i were to guess correctly, it is hardly the case that i knew it. i just guessed and happened to be right. It doesn’t seem wise to consider my guess knowledge. Also, what if i were to walk into a room and the clock read “2:02 pm,” but it was stopped at that time. If i believed it to be 2:02 pm and it happened to be such, can that still be considered knowledge? Or, was it that i was just lucky for believing it to be that time. After all, if it were in actuality 3:21 am, i would have been wrong. The problem is that my justification for my belief was faulty. i was right, but not for the right reason.

Justified

For that reason, foundationalists modified their theory a little to try to iron out those two difficulties. The result is called Justified True Belief. Here, a person knows an assertion if and only if, like above, it is true and she believes it, but also that she has justification for believing it. In other words, there is some evidence to believe the assertion. In this way, consequential assertions (such as the stopped clock and the guessing game) are excluded from knowledge. Beyond that, even pre-conceived assertions are excluded. For example, let’s take the OJ Simpson case. Let’s assume that someone (say, OJ’s father), before the trial even started, said that he believed OJ to be innocent regardless of the trial. Once the trial ended and OJ was declared innocent, that additional evidence would not have mattered to OJ’s father. Regardless of the trial, OJ’s father would have believed OJ to be innocent, even if he had no evidence to do so. Justified True Belief removes that from possibly being an object of knowledge. But, there are some problems with it. Edmund Gettier has given us a really good example of this.

Let’s say Mr. Smith has a family. Mr. Smith’s daughter tells him that she just bought a car. She is honest and he sees no reason to believe she is deceiving him. Therefore, Smith’s belief that his daughter bought a car should count as a true belief (and therefore, knowledge). Because of that, Mr. Smith is also justified in believing that “a family member just bought a car.” Yet here’s the rub: Smith’s daughter is lying to him in order to cover up the fact that Smith’s wife bought a car for Smith for his birthday. Now, it is still true that “a member of Smith’s family bought a car” and Smith still believes it. Smith even has justification for believing it, but we don’t want to call this knowledge because the justification is still faulty even though it gives the same result. As a result, more refinements of the foundationalist theory comes from an attempt to restrict knowledge to assertions that are justified via correct and true justifications, but none have completely escaped Gettier’s counterexamples yet.

In the upcoming posts, we will look at some major thinkers and their contributions to epistemology and hopefully come to some conclusions as to what is known, what can be known, and how do those relate to truth.