Originally posted by Palynka
But if the source of such inferences are introspective then I don't see how we can use such methods so that we can have such verification conditions for others.

That is because you seem to think that verificationism is a thesis about knowledge and not about meaning. Because we can conceive of what would have to be the case for the claim 'X is in pain' to be true, the claim 'X is in pain' is meaningful. It is a further question whether we can come to know, for some actual X, whether X is in pain. Additionally, there is no general verificationist requirement that the truth-conditions for a claim be publically observable. Since it is possible for me to verify whether the claim 'bbarr is in pain' is true, the claim is meaningful. It is a further question whether you can come to know that I am in pain. But this question is an epistemological one, not one of meaning.

Originally posted by bbarr
That is because you seem to think that verificationism is a thesis about knowledge and not about meaning. Because we can conceive of what would have to be the case for the claim 'X is in pain' to be true, the claim 'X is in pain' is meaningful. It is a further question whether we can come to know, for some actual X, whether X is in pain. Additionally, there ...[text shortened]... know that I am in pain. But this question is an epistemological one, not one of meaning.

That makes sense, but (and I'm not being pedantic for the sake of it) we were talking about the possibility of knowing someone and not simply whether claims about such subjective concepts were meaningful (that I already implicitly stated earlier that I believe them to be).

I did think that verificationism was a thesis about knowledge, though. How would you define knowledge?

Originally posted by Palynka
That makes sense, but (and I'm not being pedantic for the sake of it) we were talking about the possibility of knowing someone and not simply whether claims about such subjective concepts were meaningful (that I already implicitly stated earlier that I believe them to be).

I did think that verificationism was a thesis about knowledge, though. How would you define knowledge?

I don't know how to define knowledge. The best I can do is: Non-accidentally justified true belief, where the 'non-accidental' component refers to a connection between justification and truth that rules out Gettier-cases.

Originally posted by bbarr
I don't know how to define knowledge. The best I can do is: Non-accidentally justified true belief, where the 'non-accidental' component refers to a connection between justification and truth that rules out Gettier-cases.

I don't think that knowledge is necessarily true belief, but I have to go and I don't know how interested you are in discussing this anyway.

Originally posted by Palynka
I don't think that knowledge is necessarily true belief, but I have to go and I don't know how interested you are in discussing this anyway.

I certainly don't think knowledge is only true belief. If so, lucky guesses would count as knowledge. But you can't know something unless it is true, and you can't know something unless you believe it. This is so regardless of what has passed for knowledge historically.

Originally posted by bbarr
I certainly don't think knowledge is only true belief. If so, lucky guesses would count as knowledge. But you can't know something unless it is true, and you can't know something unless you believe it. This is so regardless of what has passed for knowledge historically.

"What has passed for knowledge historically". What an interesting statement. So how do we know if what we consider now as knowledge isn't simply "passing for knowledge"?

"Standing in the shoulder of giants" is an important part of science and knowledge creation. You're underestimating the need for some sort of tatonnement before we reach (if ever) true belief. We do not jump from absence of knowledge to true belief, we update our beliefs progressively. Such updates may still be short of true belief, but they are knowledge creation nonetheless.

Originally posted by Palynka
"What has passed for knowledge historically". What an interesting statement. So how do we know if what we consider now as knowledge isn't simply "passing for knowledge"?

"Standing in the shoulder of giants" is an important part of science and knowledge creation. You're underestimating the [b]need for some sort of tatonnement before we reach (if ...[text shortened]... updates may still be short of true belief, but they are knowledge creation nonetheless.[/b]

I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

Originally posted by bbarr
I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

Try harder. Or not.

Originally posted by Palynka
Try harder. Or not.

I doubt it is worth it. Cheers.

Originally posted by bbarr
I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

Where is the mystery? It sounds to me like Palynka is simply describing the scientific method.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
Where is the mystery? It sounds to me like Palynka is simply describing the scientific method.

And how is that relevant to the definition of 'knowledge'? I guess my mistake was in assuming that something in the post above would be relevant to the question that we were discussing.

Originally posted by bbarr
And how is that relevant to the definition of 'knowledge'? I guess my mistake was in assuming that something in the post above would be relevant to the question that we were discussing.

I'm sure that if you tried reading the post, you would understand.

Originally posted by bbarr
I certainly don't think knowledge is only true belief. If so, lucky guesses would count as knowledge. But you can't know something unless it is true, and you can't know something unless you believe it. This is so regardless of what has passed for knowledge historically.

But you can't know something unless it is true, and you can't know something unless you believe it.

And how can you believe something if you can't know that it's true?

EDIT: We have self-evident truths in mathematics (2+2=4, etc.), ethical principles such as "we ought to pursue what is good," the law of contradiction (a rose cannot be a rose and not a rose), truths of perception (i.e., the sense-data itself), etc., etc. But surely there are truths which are not self-evident, which we can know only with a degree of certainty, which may nevertheless be as true as those truths deemed self-evident. Educated guesses, as it were; tested but falsifiable. Strictly speaking, not humanly speaking, isn't a proposition's relative certainty negligible when it comes to determining belief?

EDIT 2: Can a person interested in objectivity ever really know, i.e. believe, anything beyond self-evident truths?

Originally posted by epiphinehas
[b]But you can't know something unless it is true, and you can't know something unless you believe it.

And how can you believe something if you can't know that it's true?

EDIT: We have self-evident truths in mathematics (2+2=4, etc.), ethical principles such as "we ought to pursue what is good," the law of contradiction (a rose cannot be a rose ...[text shortened]... sted in objectivity ever really know, i.e. believe, anything beyond self-evident truths?[/b]

You can believe that there is milk in the fridge, even though your wife drank the last of it yesterday. You can even believe that you know that there is milk in fridge. But, if your wife drank the last of the milk, then your belief that there is milk in the fridge will be false, as will your belief that you know there is milk in the fridge. So, it is certainly possible to believe P without knowing that P, as will be the case whenever you believe P despite P being false.

Further, you can believe that there are fairies in the fridge that cannot be detected. Of course this will not be a rational or justified belief, and hence cannot be a belief that also counts as knowledge, but it is a belief nonetheless. To have a belief is simply to take it to be the case that some proposition is true, and this means that it is possible to believe P without P being such that it could come to be known.

I agree with everything you assert in Edit 1, but I am not sure whether I understand the question you ask therein. When our belief forming processes are functioning well, we tend to believe things that we have good reason to believe, and hence tend to believe things that are likely to be true. But we can certainly err, and come to believe things for which we have no reason, or come to believe things that are likely to be false. We can succumb to wishful thinking, or self-deception, or fall prey to irrational conversions, etc. So, although as generally rational agents our beliefs tend to track the truth, we are fallible.

I do not know what you mean by the term 'objectivity', since that term is used in so many different ways in ordinary discourse. If you are asking whether we can know with certainty anything beyond the self-evident, I would say that we cannot know with certainly even the putatively self-evident. Just because we cannot conceive of some proposition being false, it does not follow that that proposition must be true. Self-evident propositions may be a priori justified, and they may be so justified that we cannot imagine any evidence that would shake our confidence that they are true, but this does not entail that they are true. There is, after all, no non-circular proof of the reliability of deductive inference.

Originally posted by bbarr
You can believe that there is milk in the fridge, even though your wife drank the last of it yesterday. You can even believe that you know that there is milk in fridge. But, if your wife drank the last of the milk, then your belief that there is milk in the fridge will be false, as will your belief that you know there is milk in the fridge. So, it is certai ...[text shortened]... e true. There is, after all, no non-circular proof of the reliability of deductive inference.

If we cannot know with certainty even the putatively self-evident, then what can we know with certainty? I guess what I'm trying to get at is, what is the practical effect of such uncertainty? In our every day lives we take many so-called facts for granted, e.g., that the car is where I left it, that I will wake up in the morning, that orange juice won't suddenly taste like grapefruit juice, etc., certain persistent realities come to be relied upon unconsciously. Humanly speaking it probably isn't realistic to think that we can avoid taking aspects of our reality for granted, whether or not we take into consideration that everything is uncertain. So what practical effect does the teasing out of uncertainly have? Can we be certain that nothing is certain? When does the systematic process of defining what knowledge is eventually plunge us into the absurd? I'm looking for the underlying philosophy to all this, I guess. Geniuses tease all the intricacies out of the obvious and usually have no interest in what real effect their discoveries have. For instance, if we cannot rely upon logical absolutes to be absolutely certain, then of what use is logic?