What is it to know?

My first thought about knowledge is that knowledge is information that we believe to be true. I know you dislike concepts filled with dualities like true and false, but this is the way that I see things.Since our abilities to understand are limited, obviously there will be things that we can only partly or approximately understand.I kind of see what you are saying about knowledge by experience, but you might want to explain that some more. If we want to know about something that we have no direct experience with, like say gravity or quantum mechanics, then we tend to use our imgaination to analyze and synthesize other information to create an artificial or approximate understanding of the concept we are trying to grasp. Well, with God, I have information about Him that I believe to be true, therefore I accept it as knowledge. My understanding of Him is far from perfect and since I have no direct sensual experience with Him, I must rely on anthropomorphisms and approximations based on the information I believe to be true in order to create a picture of Him in my mind.

It really is... I just finished "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Kurzweil... If his predictions are correct computers will surpass humans in flexibility and intellect in 20 years. Yep, when you get down to it, we are mostly empty space with a slightly higher probability of energy than the rest of space. And we don't know where energy or space or probability comes from. And we don't even know if these things are true... If the universe as it appears to be actually exists in some form, then the probability is exteremly great that we are already living inside a computer matrix because once computational capacity rounds the nose of the curve and increases beyond all bounds, time increases to infinite...So... as Poe said, "Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?" I can see how that definition can be stretched to cover pretty much every kind of knowledge. It is another way to approximate what we do not fully understand...

Thanks for your reply. I agree that it is impossible to be 100% confident in something because there is always room for doubt about everything except for one thing: I exist. I cannot possibly raise a doubt in my mind that I exist. Therefore there must be at least 1 truth: I exist. Therefore, I think we can agree that there must exist absolute truth and falsehood.Knowledge is information that we BELIEVE to be true. Scientific knowledge is information gained by empricial tests that show us reliablity, thereby increasing our confidence enough to believe the information to be true.Personal knowledge might be something a friend tells you in conversation. If your friend is reliable and you trust him, then you are sufficiently confident to believe what he says is true. His information then becomes knowledge.I hope that clarifies my idea. Right, I agree, but I would add that because we are born with an intuitive understanding that there is truth and falsehood, that in the vast majority of situations we choose to accept trustworthy information as true even if all doubts cannot be removed. Whether or not the information is trustworthy is objective. How trustworthy something must be in order to believe it to be true is a subjective decision. Scientific knowledge does. But if you use this strict definition of knowledge for everything, then you really don't know very much do you? This means you can say you know almost nothing that is passed on to you in daily contact with people. This morning I took a nap in my room. Nobody except my roomate knows that I did this. I'm telling you this now so that you can know that I took a nap in my room. Do you trust me enough to say that you KNOW I took a nap in my room this morning? There is no way to test or prove that I took a nap this morning. You could send me to a shrink that was determined to prove that the nap was in my imagination, and if he is good enough, he might be able to hypnotize me and convince me that it was yesterday I took a nap.What is the difference between my claim that I took a nap this morning and PY's claim that he and others with him have seen supernatural things? There is no more reason to trust my words that I took a nap this morning than that PY and his friends have seen supernatural things for the past 25 years.Nevertheless, you are probably more likely to trust the nap claim and accept it as knowledge because you have also experienced napping and witnessed others napping, but have never witnessed supernatural events. I am willing to trust someone's word that they have experienced something I've never experienced, but you aren't.That is the choice that you and I make, but you cannot dogmatically state that you KNOW every claim of the supernatural is myth and mystery because by the same reasoning you must say that you KNOW it is a myth that I took a nap this morning despite the fact that this is true.

Thanks for your reply. It raises some exciting and scary questions. It makes me think that the verse in Genesis was not an overstatement, "If man speaking by one tounge can accomplish this, nothing shall be impossible for him."I think he's right about many of his predictions, but ultimately wrong in his conclusions about the future of humanity. As knolwedge increases so does power and as power increases, so does the potential for evil. ...unless of course evil can be gotten rid of by fixing the problems with our brains, which I do not believe is the case.Anyways... Yes, its too deep a question to wrap my mind around so to speak. But as far as knowledge goes, I still think knowledge is information that we choose to accept as true and store in our brains. I think our brains, like our computers, store things as true or false. We don't have an infinite set of places to store things according to how confident we are. Perhaps this is the reason for cognitive dissonance. We find it hard to continually doubt something. We must decide whether or not to accept it or not.

I agree that reliability or confidence is a continuum; however, I fail to see how that carries over to the truth... Either I did or did not take a nap. Either you DO or do NOT exist. There MUST be a true and false answer. Of course you can believe that there are multiple realities and anti-realities and that true and false have no meaning -- in which case our discussion based on logic has no meaning. But for me the understanding that there is a distinction between truth and falsehood is hardwired into me. I cannot shake that.Of course people can be mistaken or lie, but the meanings of those words assume there to be some truth that is being covered up. Yes, I've heard of this before. They may have gotten the details wrong, but I bet none of them said they saw and heard nothing. I bet when the angels appeared to the shepherds and said, "Tonight a savior is born," none of them could be convinced they hallucinated just like PY or my friend Micah or Steven or Brother Richardson can be convinced otherwise. And when you supernatural events become so commonplace that they lose the shock factor, it would be fairly easy to recall accurately the details of an experience. Obviously memories and minds can be bent out of shape, but you are being unreasonably biased to conclude that ALL such claims of a supernatural experience are not completely true. Haha... So you are questioning not so much the empistemology and psychology of knowledge, but rather the deeper understanding of knowledge as a part of our existence. Why and what happens when a few clumps of energy and probability get together and 'know' or experience other clumps of energy and probability?Well, I would say that knowing is the result of a soul or consciousness which is an immergent property of intelligence which is in turn an immergent property of the universe which is an immergent property of truth which is the Word which is God. Why? Because God wanted to have some kids. Now do I REALLY know what it is to know, absolutely not.

I spose since our bodies are crafted in three spacial dimensions with the hardware and software preprogrammed to recognize patterns and store information we build neural pathways when we recieve information about distances in our surroundings. That's how it works, but how does such computation become a thing called experience or knowledge, I don't think anyone really knows.