Verifying Epistemologies

Jon, you're missing the point, I think. Here's the important point you seem to be missing. The meaning of validity in logic has no direct relationship to the truth of a conclusion or to knowledge. Straggler has been using the word valid in the more common sense, which does relate to truth and knowledge, which is one reason why the two of you aren't connecting.1) All Americans are Martians.2) Jon is American.3) Therefore Jon is a Martian.That is a logically "valid", argument, as you'll agree.1) All Americans are people.2) Jon is person.3) Therefore Jon is American.That is logically invalid, as you'll agree, even though both premises and the conclusion might well be true.I pointed out that epistemology is the study of knowledge, not the study of argument, and I expect you agree in principle. Yet you seem to have been inadvertently treating it as the study of argument in this thread, because of your inappropriate use of the word "valid" (your use is appropriate in the study of argument).If you want to apply logic in epistemology, try this.In one post, you stated that we cannot know anything.This, as I'm sure you've realised, is a statement of knowledge, so you can see that you've hit a paradox, and contradicted yourself.Now try "We can know things" as a statement, and guess what? No paradox, no contradictions.So, why not make a logic based choice if you're keen on applying logic to epistemology?And, of course, in reality you have, and you're just as much of an empiricist as Straggler by your admission and your actions.So, we don't need to nickname you "Paradoxical Jon", and we can wonder why this thread was started in the first place (although it has led to some interesting discussion, I think, so well done for starting it). Edited by bluegenes, : Misread Jon's post.

I have just been rereading your post. And I am astonished by just how inadequate your argument is. I really think you need to read bluegenese post Message 151 about validity and logic as he is expressing himself far more clearly than I seem to be. Bluejay that is patently a ridiculous position. Where does reality come into your thinking? How do you cope with the (really rather common) situation when reality demands that only one of the logically valid conclusions can be correct? EXAMPLE
One internally consistent non-empirical epistemology (the same one on which last Thursdayism is based) concludes that gravity is going to cease and the world as we know it is going end tomorrow at noon.Another internally consistent epistemology (i.e. empiricism in this case) concludes that gravity is going to continue to operate as per normal for the foreseeable future. Do you expect to still be here at 12:01 tomorrow afternoon?Do you really consider both of these conclusions to be equally valid and equally reliable just because they are both internally logically consistent? Is that really the sole basis upon which you judge such things?Honestly?And if we are still here at 5 past twelve tomorrow (as I fully expect we will be)- How does that impinge on your assessment of each of the conclusions and the reliability of the premises on which they are founded? Pure deductive logic can tell you nothing that isn't already present in the assumptions you start with.If we want to explore and investigate any reality external to our own minds we have to break through the purely axiomatic approach you are advocating.

On Validity:As a valid argument, is it possible for the conclusion of this argument to be False while the premises are True? Given all True premises, is it ever possible for an argument in which the conclusion derives from the premise(s) to arrive at a False conclusion? It is also possible for the conclusion to be False while the premises are True. We aren't talking about actual Truth values; we're talking about possibilities. And there is a direct relation to the possible Truth-value relationship of the conclusion of an argument to its premises given the definition of validity on which you and I have both agreed. An argument in which the conclusion derives from its premises also has the property that it is not possible for the conclusion to be False while all the premises are True. What about that statement says anything about actual Truth values? It's a simple statement about possibility, specifically about what is not possible in a valid argument, not about what is or is not actual. But if you want to continue on this road dealing with definitions of validity, I'd invite you to start another thread; it is going off-topic here. On Knowing:I have done neither. And it is not a paradox, but rather an infinite regression. And I also admitted that we cannot know that 'we cannot know anything' absolutely.¹

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Jon in Message 93:

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We cannot know that we know, but we also cannot know that we don't know, nor can we know that we cannot know. We seem left without knowing a lot about the very foundations of all our systems of thought and discovery. What does this say about them?

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I just arrived at a conclusion that was probably correct, but not absolutely, based on my observation that all known epistemologies are based on (or are actually comprised of) axiomatic foundations, and thus lack the ability to present absolute knowledgei.e., allow us to say 'we know we know', etc. Since all knowledge, by the definition of 'epistemology', is found within an epistemological framework (a series of axiomatic foundations defining what can be considered knowledge and what cannot), I could not conceive of a knowledge that does not suffer from this problem, and so based on all knowledge of which I was aware, knowledge both within my own epistemology as well as the epistemologies of others, I concluded, with no absolute certainty, that we aren't able to know that we know. And this creating an infinite regressioninterminable by means that are anything other than subjective and arbitraryled me to conclude that the evidence for the inability to know anything for certain is infinite. And as I equated infinite evidence with the notion of a shit-load of evidence, I figured my conclusions, given the right epistemologies, were shit-well evidenced and so the likelihood of their Truth was shit-load high. In short, I noted an observation. I've not actually made an argument.Of course, I do not know for certain, and I may be wrong. My conclusions will only be True given the truth of the certain axiomatic foundations off of which they have been built. You and Straggler continue to employ this fallacy in your arguments. It matters not how many people subscribe to a various belief system, it will never constitute evidence of that belief system's Truth. Pointing out that I am an empiricist, and Straggler is an empiricist, and the bum on the corner is an empiricist, etc., does not verify empiricism. I'm not even sure what this means, or what point was attempted. Perhaps you can expand this?Jon__________
¹ In addition to what follows in the quote box: We also cannot know that we cannot know that we cannot know, neither can we know that we cannot know that we cannot know that we cannot know, etc. Hence the 'infinite regression', which is not a paradox by any standard definition of the term 'paradox'.

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You seem to be under the silly misapprehension than anyone talking about knowledge is talking about certainty.I am confident enough to say that I know that gravity isn't going to suddenly cease to operate at noon tomorrow but I don't claim to be absolutely certain of this.Do you see the difference?

I have never stated such. What about what I have said has led you to conclude this? Of course; any idiot can. What does this have to do with the topic? Why don't you address my actual points as opposed to the crappier points you wish I were making?Jon

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Jon responds to me:

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For certain, only to yourself.

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So? You're missing the point. Because "cogito, ergo sum," all the rest of it follows. Again, I exist and the sensations that I perceive are so perfect in their quality that they are indistinguishable from an actual reality and therefore can be treated as such. Thus, not only do I exist, but you exist, too.

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Though, depending on the epistemology in place for others

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Irrelevant. This has nothing to do with how others wish to systematize their knowledge. This has to do with whether or not reality exists. And for you to wallow in Cartesian Doubt shows you really haven't done much research on the subject.

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Who said there is an illusion?

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Did you or did you not ask the following question? My response was then tailored to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, what I see isn't real. The result is that we assume what we see is an illusion (i.e., "not real.") But the illusion is so perfect that it cannot be pierced. And given that a difference that makes no difference is no difference, then there is no difference between a perfect illusion and reality itself. Ergo, we can treat it as reality.Thus, even the assumption of illusion leads us to conclude what we see is real.Unless you are suggesting you have a way of piercing the veil. Do you?

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I never said everything was non-reality.

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Did you or did you not say the following: Do I really need to explain it to you again?

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Perhaps you meant your reply for someone else.

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I meant my reply for the person who really hasn't done any real work in the subject.In other words, you.

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Descartes doesn't know for certain either, even with that fancy name.

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Oh...So just because someone is French, that makes his name "fancy." I see. When you can't respond to the argument, try to distract with an ad hominem comment.But actually, Descartes did know for certain. You would be certain of this, yourself, had you ever done any research on the subject. I can't say I completely recommed the Discourse on First Philosophy, but it is an important enough piece of work that anybody who thinks they have come up with something truly revolutionary by asking, "What if it's all just a dream, man?" really needs to have this beat into him: They were thinking that millennia before you (goes all the way back to at least Plato).Do you have anything new to add?

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Anyway, you didn't answer the question: Who says what you see is real?

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Anyway, I did: Let's assume that what I see isn't real: Then that leads us to the conclusion that what I see actually is real due to the fact that the illusion is so perfect as to be indistinguishable from reality. Since a difference that makes no difference is no difference, that means what I see is reality and the original assumption, that what I see isn't real, is false.This is stuff covered in the second week of the Philosophy of Knowledge. Why don't you know this?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

Jon your position seems to be rather contradictory on a number of fronts. Consider the following two points:1) An internally consistent epistemology (e.g. Bill's epistemology which you previously agreed to be valid by your own terms) is constructed and the conclusion that not all internally consistent epistemologies are valid is derived from this.Is this a valid conclusion? Is your theory of knowledge itself internally consistent?2) How does your thinking cope with mutually exclusive predictions?According to one internally consistent non-empirical epistemology (coincidentally the same one from which last Thursdayism was concluded) gravity is going cease and the world as we know it is going end tomorrow at noon.According to empiricism gravity is going to continue to operate as per normal for the foreseeable future.Do you think the world will end at noon tomorrow? You are the one who started ranting on about certainty and if you specifically put a point to me I will respond to it.But can you say the same regarding the above? Nobody is saying it does you idiot. The point is that for all your talk of validity being based solely on internal consistency, personal choice of axioms blah blah blah it is actually objectivity that distinguish some methods of knowing as superior to others.If Bill with his personal belief epistemology which you have agreed is valid by your definition as per Message 147 concludes based on this epistemology that an asteroid will hit the Earth and wipe us all out nobody including you will take a blind bit of notice of him.But if the aforementioned asteroid is predicted to hit the Earth and wipe us all out on the basis of empirical methods of knowing I would suggest that the response would be quite different.Why?Because the two methods of knowing may both be valid in purely logical terms but they are not equally valid in any sense that pertains to knowledge.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Indeed since validity isn't the criterion you use for determining suitability of epistemology (or at least it's not a sufficient criterion), what are your criteria and what is your issue with reliability?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Yes; I would hope that the simple presence of disagreement would suffice to make this point evident. I am not sure what you mean by 'suitability'. Suitable for what?If you want criteria for suitability of an epistemology, then I guess the answer is pretty simple there: the epistemology simply has to have a means for classifying knowledge from non-knowledge; this is implicit in the definition of an epistemology. If it doesn't do that, then it is pretty worthless. But by the definition of 'epistemology' all epistemology do this, so they are all suitable in this regard. Perhaps you had something else in mind?Also, there are two different uses for the word 'epistemology', and I fear that this is causing some confusion in this thread. In one use, 'epistemology' is defined as the study of how folk know what they know. In the other use, it is defined as being the set of axioms from which things considered knowledge are derived (and the implied criteria that allow one to assess whether information is knowledge or non-knowledge). It is the latter use that has been intend in this thread, at least by me. In fact, I am not even sure a discussion on the former use would be meaningful, but it might.As for reliability. How we judge reliability is based on how well we believe something to conform to truth (or, rather, what we perceive as truth, labeled 'knowledge'). Of course, this is implicitly a function, also, of any chosen epistemological frameworkto determine what we can and cannot accept as 'knowledge', or rather determine how well we believe something to conform to 'knowledge'. Both 'reliability' and 'epistemology' are tools for judging the conformity of informations to a given standard of knowledge. Thus, as they are essentially identical, I see two ways to run this:1) Judge the criteria of knowledge against the same criteria of knowledge (judge an epistemology against itself)
2) Judge the criteria of knowledge against different criteria of knowledge (judge an epistemology against a different one)Both of these lead to the fact that it is impossible to judge the reliability of an epistemology outside of an epistemology. This, no matter whether the judging epistemology is the same epistemology or a different epistemology, leads to problems regarding 'reliability' of epistemologies (see below). Judging an epistemology against itself simply leads to circular reasoning and gets us nowherewe get an answer, but it is meaningless, so that is not good. Judging an epistemology against a conflicting epistemology (2) would lead to a judgement of non-reliability, whereas doing so against a non-conflicting epistemology (also 2) would lead to a judgement of reliability. Unless we can come up with a way of determining which epistemologies should be set up as the judging standardwhich we cannot do without first picking arbitrarily an epistemology, we cannot even begin on method (2). Since (1) gets us nowhere, and (2) cannot even begin, I observe that these two methods are not acceptable for judging the reliability of an epistemology.As neither way of judging an epistemology's 'reliability' is acceptable, and as I have yet to see any other methods put forth, I conclude that it is simply not possible to judge an epistemology as 'reliable' or 'not reliable' in any meaningful sense. This led me to further conclude that Straggler's statement of: 'an epystemology that is known to be able to demonstrate itself as reliable' was just meaningless, shortsighted hogwash. Any epistemology can demonstrate itself to be reliable; so why should we use that as a reason to take up one epistemology over the others?The reasoning was flawed; this thread was designed to find out if there was a way to make it work. I've yet to see anyone describe such a way.Jon

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The illusion is only so perfect to you because you judge its veracity against the same epistemology that built the illusion: empiricism.If you judged your illusion against something else, you'd find it less perfect. Of course, I didn't say any of that; perhaps your reply really was meant for someone else? Are you going to address the confusion brought to light between Omni and myself regarding the intended reference of the '*I*' in your last post? The interpretation of your message hinges on knowing this; several points of reply to you may be the result of a non-intended reading of your message. What are your criteria for defining 'actual reality'? So you subscribe to the thought of treating the information from your senses as reality? I wallow not; and your statement is fallacious and amounts to 'if you knew what I know, you'd agree with me'. This does not support your position. An epistemology is not exactly a systematization of knowledge. It's more basic than that; it is not prescriptive, as a systematization would be, but rather descriptive. From these descriptions, we can extrapolate back to uncover and describe the axiomatic foundations that underlay the 'knowledge' within any epistemological framework. In this way, we are able to define the epistemology in terms of its axioms. Sure: Jesus is in my heart. Again with the 'if you knew what I know...' fallacy. Different epistemologies... Just kidding, sort of.Jon

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For you. Clearly you use some kind of empirical/rational basis for what you act on as if, for all intents and purposes, it was knowledge.edit:
So why do you do it?Clearly you rely on your eyes to avoid hazards,
why?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Because a lot of people are empiricists, at least in part. Again, what does their opinion on empiricism have to do with anything? It doesn't support your notion of empiricism being superior or more correct. You say you are not using other people's opinions to justify your position, but when you appeal to the response of the masses, that is exactly what you are doing. If it meets the criteria for validity:'The conclusion must be derivable from the premises' and, by implication, 'it is not possible for the conclusion of an argument to be False while its premises are True'.Why do you keep beating this dead horse? We've been over this again and again. You tell me there is an argument in which such and such a conclusion is derived. You then ask me whether it is valid; I then reply by telling you that so long as it meets the criteria of validity it is valid. Do you ever plan to make a point out of this? No matter what the conclusion; no matter what the argument, my reply will always be the same: if it meets the criteria of validity, the argument is valid. Of course I don't. So what? What does my opinion have to do with anything? And what does the end of the world have to do with gravity? Perhaps, perhaps not. As a human, I am not required to hold only consistent views; I can fudge a little. But what do my beliefs and views have to do with anything? I have, but will do so again: What non-assumptive premise(s) support your empiricism?Then show me those objective standards. You've been asked several times plus one to do so. Please, do it.Jon

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I've answered these questions already; but I'll do so again: Because I'm an empiricist. Yes; because I'm an empiricist. Because I'm an empiricist.As I said to others who asked these same questions, and to whom I gave these same answers, what does that have to do with anything?JonEdited by Jon, : -'ve

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I know that, I was asking, 'why'? Because it holds the key for merging what you are talking about and what Straggler was talking about. I figure we're all interested in moving towards some kind of resolution.

Because I am an empiricist. As per the definition of empiricism: I regard those things that I sense as real.¹I am still not sure I see your point. There is no reason I regard the things I sense as being real. There is no reason I am an empiricist other than because I am and enjoy it and want to keep doing it. I cannot prove I am right. Of course. Jon
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¹ And through the definition of reality as that which is true, with truth being defined as knowledge, by virtue of knowledge being considered a true belief. That is, if we say it is knowable, then we say it is real, and true; and if we say it is real, then we say it is true, and knowable; and if we say it is true, then we say it is knowable, and real.

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