historia wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 12:51 pm
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 11:36 pm
I honestly do see what the point of your point here is.
The point I was making there is two-fold:
First, we don't typically draw a distinction between belief and knowledge when it comes to other controversial issues. We don't, for example, categorize people as "gnostic pro-choice" or "agnostic pro-choice" or as a "gnostic evolutionist" or an "agnostic evolutionist."
Well, why not? A "gnostic pro-choice" person is someone who claims to have a solid logical argument which shows why their position must be correct. An "agnostic evolutionist" is a person who accepts evolution, but doesn't really understand how evolution works.
Second, I suspect that many, if not most, people haven't given much thought to issues of epistemology, so asking them to assess whether their beliefs on a controversial issue somehow constitute knowledge or not isn't going to tell us much about their position on that controversial issue. It just creates noise in our data.
Oh come on, it's not that hard. You are just asking them, "Do you consider that you KNOW this to be true, or not?"
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 11:36 pm
historia wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 12:07 pm
Kylie wrote: ↑Fri Sep 02, 2022 10:13 pm
historia wrote: ↑Fri Sep 02, 2022 3:31 pm
The problem here is that we both agreed that your proposed scheme is
really only measuring belief, so the 'knowledge' axis isn't measuring anything meaningful.
At worst, it's measuring how strongly that belief is held.
I think
at best this is what it can accomplish. In that case, I think the scheme should drop the language of "knowledge" and replace it with adjectives that actually describe what it is measuring, like 'certain/uncertain' or 'strong/weak'.
And what is knowledge if not something that you are 100% certain about?
That's not how philosophers define knowledge.
It's also not how you seemed to be using the word earlier in the thread. You said previously:
Kylie wrote: ↑Tue Aug 30, 2022 10:37 pm
You can't, after all, KNOW a fact if that fact isn't true . . . if someone claims to KNOW that God does exist, they are not speaking of knowledge, but rather just a very deeply held belief.
It seems then you agree with me that knowledge is not just feeling certain about a belief. Moreover, outside of
a priori statements in mathematics and logic, we can never be 100% certain about our conclusions. To make that the bar for "knowledge" creates a whole other set of problems.
We can measure people's feelings of certainty on the question of God's existence -- as we can measure their feelings of certainty on any other issue -- but to label that "knowledge" is, by your own admission, problematic.
However, the believer who claims to KNOW that God exists holds that fact to be true in their own point of view - and it is their own point of view that I'm asking about.
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 11:36 pm
historia wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 12:07 pm
Kylie wrote: ↑Fri Sep 02, 2022 10:13 pm
There are, after all, many people who believe that they KNOW that their position is true. Most are believers (in my experience), but I've seen some atheists who KNOW that God doesn't exist.
I think that difference in frequency exists because many believers are using the word "know" in a different sense from the atheists, which is, again, why framing the positions in terms of "knowledge" is problematic and should be discarded.
I
KNOW the Earth is roughly spherical because I have seen what I consider to be valid evidence from the real world and arguments which show that a roughly spherical earth is the best possible explanation.
A believer
KNOWS that God exists because they have seen what they consider to be valid evidence from the real world and arguments which show that God existing is the best possible explanation
Right, so when people describe what they
believe in, they tend to use the word "know" in this looser way, as indicating that the belief is reasonable or supported by arguments, evidence, or experience. Believers do this for God.
But when you ask non-believers whether they "know" God
doesn't exist, they tend to switch to a much narrower sense of "knowledge" as meaning not
possibly being wrong.
Not from their point of view - which is what I am asking about.
In his article
What I Believe But Cannot Prove -- which is broadly relevant to our discussion of knowledge so worth reading in whole -- Sean Carroll makes this same point:
Carroll wrote:
The young Wittgenstein would not admit to Bertrand Russell that there was not a rhinoceros in the room, because he couldn’t be absolutely sure (in the sense of logical proof) that his senses weren’t tricking him. But the later Wittgenstein understood that taking such a purist stance renders the notion of "to know" (or "to believe") completely useless. If logical proof were required, we would only believe logical truths — and even then the proofs might contain errors. But in the real world it makes perfect sense to believe much more than that. So we take "I believe x" to mean, not "I can prove x is the case," but "it would be unreasonable to doubt x."
By this logic, we can't know anything at all.
Back to your questions on the alternative scheme:
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 11:36 pm
historia wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 12:07 pm
The old scheme is simple: If you are willing to affirm the proposition that God exists then you are a 'theist'. If you are willing to affirm the proposition that God does not exist, then you are an 'atheist'. If you are unwilling to affirm either proposition then you are 'agnostic'.
I leave it to you to decide which propositions, if any, you are willing to affirm. But let me just note that one doesn't have to be 100% certain to affirm a proposition.
The trouble is there's a big difference between not believing in God and believing that God does not exist. Your system can not account for that.
Sure it does. On the old scheme, someone who believes the former is agnostic and someone who believes the later is an atheist.
By your definition then, I'm an agnostic, yet I identify as an atheist.
Kylie wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 11:36 pm
There's a person who thinks that the issue of God's existence is inherently unknowable. They claim to KNOW that God's existence is always going to be unknowable. There's another person who, similarly, can't say if God exists or not, but they do NOT think that God's existence is inherently unknowable. How would your system describe the difference between these two people?
The old atheist / agnostic / theist scheme is (sensibly) just interested in belief, so categorizes people based on their willingness to affirm the proposition that God exists or the proposition that God does not exist.
It doesn't address this separate epistemological question, as that is a different issue. But if that is something you want to describe, historically people have used the terms "strong agnostic" and "weak agnostic" to differentiate these two positions.
[/quote]
Yet "agnostic" doesn't adequately cover it. Most people take "agnostic" to be someone who isn't sure if there's a God, or someone who thinks that the existence of God is unknowable. I do not hold either of these positions, yet your argument would label me as an agnostic. And your system does not actual describe the difference between the two people I spoke of, it just lumps them together under the same umbrella, despite the fact that the difference between their positions is, I'd say, fairly important. Yet my system describes this easily.
Also, the term "agnostic" means that there is also "gnostic", which your system doesn't use at all.