SpookyKitty

I think the answer to this question is important. Suppose that knowledge is simply justified belief. Then, all you have to do to gain knowledge is to justify whatever beliefs you happen to hold to the extent that you can, indeed, justify them. Suppose further that later on, you learn that one of your justified beliefs is false. Then, you are no longer justified in believing that belief, so that's one less justified belief in your head. But then it would seem as if you have somehow lost knowledge, when it would seem to make more sense to say that you have gained it. I believe that the JTB answers the above problem as follows. Because knowledge is justified true belief, when one discards a justified false belief, one has increased the degree to which his beliefs correspond (or at least fail to be in conflict) with reality.

But "I used to be in the state of knowing that God is real" is not the same as saying "I used to believe God is real". This is because, one could say the former in cases where one has simply forgotten a true belief.

It's not that it retroactively stops being knowledge, it's that it was never knowledge in the first place. I have an argument against your conception of knowledge. Does anybody ever say that they "used to know" something that they now know is false or do they say that they "used to believe" something that they now know is false? For example, imagine a Christian who eventually became an atheist. Would they ever be justified in saying things like "I used to know what really happens to you when you die. I used to know that there was a God. I used to know that Christ rose from the dead after three days."? Wouldn't they rather say that "I used to believe that there was a God"?

Rand was pretty clear in her definition of knowledge, and I don't think Peikoff talking here about certainty contradicts that in any way.

Is this your own view, or are you claiming that it is the Objectivist view? Because, to me it seems that the Objectivist view is consistent with JTB. Rand says that "knowledge is the mental grasp of a fact of reality." Which means that it must be true.

I would stay away from OPAR if what you want to study is Rand's Objectivism rather than Peikoff's. The best you can get from Rand's Objectivism is ITOE and Galt's speech. My problem with Peikoff is that he's a closeted rationalist (and a really bad one to boot), and I don't make that accusation lightly.

Actually, I explicitly assume that knowledge must be true to qualify as knowledge. I don't understand the rest of your post at all.

Both you and Eiuol have expressed this view now in that other thread. This looks like a good place to discuss it. You have both raised the objection to the JTB that beliefs can only be judged as true from an "omniscient perspective". Since this perspective does not exist (granted), then it is impossible to really know whether any belief is true, and therefore it is impossible to decide wether or not a given justified belief qualifies as knowledge. Hence, JTB cannot be true. But your argument confuses the extension of knowledge with its intension. One cannot infer from "we cannot decide in every case whether p is an isntance of q using conditions C" that "there is a p which is not an instance of q but which meets conditions C". In short, it is possible to know something without knowing that you know it.

Whatever it is, it's certainly not a proof that knowledge is impossible, nor is it intended to be. This is how analytic philosophy is done. One proposes the necessary and sufficient conditions for a certain thing, and then others try to find counterexamples. These counterexamples are then used to discover new conditions (or to jettison wrong ones) and the concept becomes further and further refined. The JTB analysis is especially interesting and it led to the development of the causal theory of knowledge which I think is on the right track. However, some philosopher (I forget who) claimed to have proven that it is always possible to come up with Gettier cases regardless of the conditions for justification. This has led some other philosophers to propose that knowledge is not a "state" of consciousness at all, but something else entirely. EDIT: Here's a video:

This is incorrect. Rand and Peikoff both say multiple times that a concept with no referents is not a concept at all.

By Galt! That is the single most interesting debate about Objectivism that I've ever seen!

At some point your life is just a trail of corpses you once loved. #Dark #Edgy

I'm reading up on the Pre-Socratics and Plato and Aristotle.

I'm not really sure what you're saying, but I'm not talking about "categories" whatever that means. Sure, understanding is a kind of knowledge in an everyday kind of sense. But when we are talking about predicates and concepts it is implied that we are talking about "knowing that...", which is not to be confused with "understanding that...". First of all, I'm not at all sure what it would mean to "combine" two concepts into one. Secondly, even if you could, your position collapses, as then the new combined concept would have a total representation.

No, not really.

I believe that I have provided the example that was required. The mere fact that there may possibly be more than one referent of a given concept (even though there is, in fact, only one) is beside the point. In Objectivism, one cannot form concepts by using merely possible or unknown units.

Fine. But if perception is 'infallible' in that sense, then what's the point? The judgments I derive from unreflective perception are still fallible.

I think all of you are failing to distinguish the cause of perception from the perception itself, which necessarily involves judgments (otherwise there is no way for perception to be wrong or even right much less infallible). It is true that, in fact, what causes my perceptions is a round Earth. But a round Earth does not cause a perception of a round Earth, it causes the perception of a flat Earth (for any human living on its surface).

Is there some difference between what is flat and what I call "flat"? But the judgment is based on perception alone. That I can explain why it only appears to be flat when in fact it is round is beside the point. Perception is often wrong, and one needs reason to tell when,

"Seems" is synonymous with "is pereceived as". The notion that standing on the surface of the Earth you can see its shape is absurd? Why in the hell is that? O rly? You seriously believe that the reason many primitive cultures believed that the Earth was flat was just because they felt like it? The very fact that it appears to be flat (i.e., that they perceive it to be flat) is completely out of the question? I think you are being disingenuous. That the Greeks rejected the notion that the Earth was flat is my whole point. The only reason they even entertained the notion of a flat Earth in the first place and felt the need to refute that notion was because they perceived that it was flat. But I could give countless examples where perception contradicts fact. For example, one perceives that the Sun goes around the Earth. This is obviously false. One perceives that time moves slower when he is bored. This is also false. One perceives that the stars are points of light on a celestial sphere not too far from Earth. This is also false. One perceives that solid objects are solid all the way through. This is again false, as the vast majority of the volume occupied by a solid object is empty space. The list goes on and on...

But I do. What is it that I'm standing on, if not the Earth? And when I look at it, it seems flat. Why do you think that people believed that the Earth was flat? Because they perceived it to be flat, and had no reason to believe otherwise (until they did).

No really. When I go outside, I perceive that the Earth is flat. Of course, I know that it is round, and I wouldn't need to see pictures of it from space to know that. But perceiving and knowing are two different things.

What does that have to do with anything?

I perceive that the Earth is flat.

She does, though. (although I guess it depends on what exactly you mean by 'concrete').