Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

The Gettier counterexamples to Justified True Belief as knowledge

Rate this topic


Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, Plasmatic said:

What is the range of answers to 1+1 ?

1

There is no range of answers to 1+1, but you are still working within a range.  1 is 1 of something. 1 apple + 1 apple is measured in the range of apples.  Just as 1 inch + 1 inch is measured in the range of inches.

In the excerpt you pasted above, the quote, “This pencil is longer than that pencil,” is still a measurement as far as I can see.  The range, in this case, would be the shorter pencil.  That is the unit of measurement determining that the other pencil is longer. The first pencil is longer than what?  It's longer than the shorter pencil. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your equivocating on "range" as well as missing the point as relates to Oist epistemology and the base of mathematics.

1+1=2 regardless of what qualitative differences the entities you are counting possess because we omit all measurements except quantity. That is, the one thing one cannot omit is the fundamental concept entity. Entity=1 and that is the information that is absolute and universal to every moment of perceptual awareness. Just as there is no range of existing there is no being more or less an entity. Metaphysically "to be, is to be an entity" (76 lectures). Thats why concepts rely on concrete symbols to exist. 

This relates to the topic because while the analytic synthetic dichotomy is in error there is definately something factual they were trying to explain. (Peikoff recounts his struggle to answer many questions posed by the dichotomy in one lecture. How he dealt with those questions is something I think everyone should be aware of)

Buddha, McCaskey tries to deal with those "Exceptionless and universal statements" here:

http://www.johnmccaskey.com/analytic-statements/

 

Edited by Plasmatic
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, New Buddha said:

Whatever belief that they might have had about why 3-crop rotation works, it would necessarily have be wrong.

-Something- was probably wrong or mistaken, or perhaps missing. It probably produced -some- false propositions. SK was saying NM is that way. But you responded to that:

"But if our goal is to send a rover to Mars -- and Newtonian Mechanics works  -- how is Newtonian Mechanics not true?"

You seem to contradict yourself.

*

About 3-crop rotation. I'd call that knowledge, based on all my posts in this thread. It'd be false, from modern understanding (albeit true in some [many?] narrow regards). If the belief was unjustified, like "God revealed 3-crop rotation", that's not knowledge, even if it's true.

What's JM?

Edited by Eiuol
Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

About 3-crop rotation. I'd call that knowledge, based on all my posts in this thread. It'd be false, from modern understanding (albeit true in some [many?] narrow regards). If the belief was unjustified, like "God revealed 3-crop rotation", that's not knowledge, even if it's true.

What's JM?

JM is John McCaskey and his Induction Without the Uniformity Principle.  I think I've mentioned in replies to you 4 or 5 times now as being relevant to this discussion.

Per the bold above, I feel like I'm beating my head against a wall here. 

Read the paper.  If you disagree with it fine.  We can discuss that.  But at least do me the courtesy of reading it.

Edited by New Buddha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't know you meant his initials, I was looking at the blog post for where he used "JM" :P

I read it the first time, and I reread it today. I agree with him. I do not see how it in any way contradicts what I said. Conclusions reached by bad reasoning are not knowledge. Simple as that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That three-crop rotation worked is/was knowledge, justified by perception of the results of the practice.  Why it worked is a different item knowledge.  It is not necessary to know why it is in order to know that it is when dealing with perceptual evidence and first level concepts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Eiuol said:

It'd be false, from modern understanding (albeit true in some [many?] narrow regards). If the belief was unjustified, like "God revealed 3-crop rotation", that's not knowledge, even if it's true.

Now apply this same type of reasoning to my other example, the Wright Brothers.

Is it a fact (knowledge) that the airplane flew?  Or only a belief?  Remember, a "modern understanding" of the mechanics of aerodynamics lay years in the future and there is still much to learn.

Edited by New Buddha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Grames said:

That three-crop rotation worked is/was knowledge, justified by perception of the results of the practice.  Why it worked is a different item knowledge.  It is not necessary to know why it is in order to know that it is when dealing with perceptual evidence and first level concepts.

To add to this.  From Harriman's The Logical Leap, p. 19.

"How do you know that pushing a ball makes it roll?  There is no answer, not even by Newton or Einstein, except this:  Look and see.  One cannot "prove" such a generalization by deriving if from any abstract laws of motion.  On the contrary, without a fund of such generalizations established at the outset, one could not discover or prove any laws of motion.  The laws are valid only if their first-level antecedents are valid, not the other way around."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, New Buddha said:

Now apply this same type of reasoning to my other example, the Wright Brothers.

Is it a fact (knowledge) that the airplane flew?  Or only a belief?  Remember, a "modern understanding" of the mechanics of aerodynamics lay years in the future and there is still much to learn.

My post explaining to SK what I say are proper standards of justification (notice I didn't say standards of -proof-) answers this. The post also says certainty is what makes something knowledge. Seeing the airplane fly is knowledge that it flew. Being at the perceptual level makes the observation certain without further analysis (for all the reasons Rand said that perception can't be wrong). This fits the "perceptual foundation" requirement as well as the "narrowness" requirement.

What Grames wrote last is where I was going with my post where I responded about 3 -crop rotation. If it didn't seem like it, it's just that I had to formulate my idea better. I was thinking in terms of if its inventors were wrong about anything, it's only that they were wrong about the why (which is what you were talking about), not the bare fact that it worked. If they kept their conclusions about why properly narrow (e.g. their classifications weren't done as, say, "God's rewards for labor") as I spoke about, and they were certain, it was knowledge - even if, perhaps, they got something wrong based on their theory.

I'm more interested in the contradiction I pointed out...

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/27/2017 at 8:21 AM, Plasmatic said:

 

Your equivocating on "range" as well as missing the point as relates to Oist epistemology and the base of mathematics.

 

 

I can now see why you made the above comment. I was not meaning to say measurements are not exact.  This was in an attempt to dispute the people saying that because you can measure within a range that measurements are only approximations.  I was trying to say that in the context of comparing measurements of length, let's say a table's length and inches, that just because the table may not be evenly divisible by inches does not mean we cannot know its length. That, if a table is 48" then a measurement in inches would give you an exact measurement of 48", and if the table is 47 3/4" then a measurement in inches would give you a range of accuracy, that being within an inch, between 47" and 48".  If you needed to be exact you would have to switch from a measurement in inches to a measurement in quarter-inches.  In essence, to achieve an exact measurement, the object being measured must be evenly divisible into the unit of measure being used.

In my reply to your question, I was referring to the fact that 1 represents something specific and that not all units are commensurable. 1 apple + 1 banana is not 2 apples but rather 2 fruit or 2 entities.  But what is 1 pound + 1 inch?  These are incommensurable.  Basically, the context of what the units represent must be kept. 

I am still not seeing why "This pencil is longer than that pencil." is not a measurement.  You are first abstracting length as your standard and then making the shorter pencil your unit of measure, right?

Thanks, I appreciate your feedback!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Jesse Abbott-Dallamora said:

If you needed to be exact you would have to switch from a measurement in inches to a measurement in quarter-inches.  In essence, to achieve an exact measurement, the object being measured must be evenly divisible into the unit of measure being used.

What's important in measurement with an instrument is establishing what the measurement is needed for.  Because  measuring devices (like the object itself) is subject to changes in size due to moisture absorption, thermal expansion, deformation, etc.  See Tape Correction and Tape.  This of course applies to all measuring devices.  Think of the problems caused by using two different air pressure gauges in Inflategate.

I understand the point that you are making but the "even divisibility" of an object is not relevant.  Every object is "evenly divisible".  Measuring something just for the sake of measuring it is largely meaningless and futile.   And this is the point that I was making.  You are right, I should have used the word "precision" in lieu of "approximation" regarding measurement.

The term approximation is unproblematic in the sciences - it's the given.

 

Edited by New Buddha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...