Knowledge: justified, true, belief?

[2ndRateMind]

Is faith knowledge? Is non-faith, knowledge?

Does our choice in the matter amount to a claim of knowledge?

Best wishes, 2RM.

[ElCodeMonkey]

[Replying to post 1 by 2ndRateMind]

Not sure how either in and of themselves could be knowledge. What you have faith in might be true but faith doesn't make it true or guarantee it's true. Lacking faith certainly doesn't make something true either. Maybe the question is whether or not we can define something as knowledge even if it's not something true? Truth is true despite our imaginings and faith. Knowledge, I would argue, must be true lest it simply be deception.

Knowledge:
facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject

[2ndRateMind]

[Replying to post 2 by ElCodeMonkey]

So, according the text I am currently tackling, there is:

a) ability knowledge. eg., how to ride a bicycle.
b) acquaintance knowledge. eg., recognising my bank manager, because I met him before.
c) propositional knowledge. eg., knowing the conclusion of an argument to be true, because the argument is both valid and sound.

In this thread, I am mainly interested in gathering the aggregate wisdom of the forum as regards propositional knowledge, as it relates to religious belief. However, I do not discount ability knowledge, such as how to pray effectively, or acquaintance knowledge, such as our perception of God, completely. I just think these latter two are inevitably subjective, and unlikely to persuade.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[2ndRateMind]

[Replying to post 1 by 2ndRateMind] Maybe the question is whether or not we can define something as knowledge even if it's not something true? Truth is true despite our imaginings and faith. Knowledge, I would argue, must be true lest it simply be deception.

And I think all philosophers since Plato up to quite recent times would agree with you.

If X is not true, an assertion that X is true cannot be knowledge.
Similarly, if we do not believe that X, even if X is true, we cannot be said to know that X.
Finally, if we have no solid justification for believing that X (we think that X is true because it suits us, or by chance, or circumstance of birth, or for some other capricious reason) then we cannot either be said to know that X either.

Thus the 'Justified, True, Belief' (JTB) philosopher's definition of knowledge.

As the English philosopher AJ Ayer put it:

We know that X if and only if:
X is true.
We are sure that X is true.
We have the right to be sure that X is true.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[ElCodeMonkey]

[Replying to post 4 by 2ndRateMind]

Excellent summations of the 3 potentials from the definition. I am not sure I agree, however, with the requirement that we must have the right to be sure that X is true for it to be knowledge or even that we must be sure of X ourselves. I may believe I have the knowledge of where my keys are at. It is indeed knowledge for as long as I am right despite the chance that someone moved them or I misremembered. Only when someone moved them or I improperly remember is my knowledge wrong and thus not knowledge. I can be aware of these potentials and still remain reasonably sure that my knowledge is indeed knowledge and it is proven knowledge when I am found to be right. Would you disagree?

[Divine Insight]

I am mainly interested in gathering the aggregate wisdom of the forum as regards propositional knowledge, as it relates to religious belief.

It seems to me that this is an extremely difficult task. The reason I say this is because we have already recognized that we cannot disprove the hypothesis of solipsism.

To get past solipsism we simply agree to embrace the premise that everyone is having their own experience. It's seems "reasonable", but even so, it's still a premise that we must assume without proof.

When it comes to religious "beliefs", it appears that none of them are based on any credible evidence. At the very best, we have personal reports of having had visions or experiences that seem to the person reporting them to indicate that there is something more to life than what we believe to know.

The problem with this, as you have suggested, is that it's entirely subjective. Moreover, we see reports of this kind from believers of vastly different religious beliefs. Religious beliefs that are often quite incompatible when considered with respect to the formal theology of those different religions.

So I'm not sure that we could ever come up with any compelling proposition that would result in a conclusion that a "God" exists or even needs to exist.

There have been many arguments put forth along those lines by theists, but to be quite frank about it, none of them hold any serious water.

One such argument is that the world appears to be intelligently designed, therefore it must have had an intelligent designer. But this argument fails immediately because if something that is intelligently designed needs to have been designed by an intelligent designer, then how did the first intelligent designer come to be?

To try to say that it always was, is nothing more than an attempt to tack on another unprovable "premise". One that no reasonable person should be required to accept.

So we need to be very careful that our "arguments" for the existence of a God, don't result in nothing more than an attempt to "premise" the existence of God by simply tacking on unprovable premises just for the sake of reaching a desired conclusion.

[2ndRateMind]

[Replying to post 5 by ElCodeMonkey]
[Replying to post 6 by Divine Insight]

OK. Let's get to where the rubber hits the road.

No-one, I think, would complain that theists do not believe in God. Those who don't would simply argue that that belief is unjustified, and therefore cannot be known to be true. And if it is unjustified, and not known to be true, the agnostics and atheists among us would argue that it is not knowledge.

Any comments, anyone? Or is this all OK, so far?

Best wishes, 2RM.

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 5 by ElCodeMonkey]
[Replying to post 6 by Divine Insight]

OK. Let's get to where the rubber hits the road.

No-one, I think, would complain that theists do not believe in God. Those who don't would simply argue that that belief is unjustified, and therefore cannot be known to be true. And if it is unjustified, and not known to be true, the agnostics and atheists among us would argue that it is not knowledge.

Any comments, anyone? Or is this all OK, so far?

Best wishes, 2RM.

If I were sitting down with you to have a philosophical discussion on this, my very first question to you would be, "What do you mean by God?"

For me this is not only a very serious question, but one that formal philosophy demands must be answered before any meaningful discussion can proceed. There is no point in trying to have a discussion about an undefined or ill-defined term.

If by "God", you are referring to the God described in the *Bible (see note below), then this is fine. In that case you've offered a quite extensive definition for how you are using the term "God" at this point. In fact, within this meaning of "God" I would argue that this God is indeed ill-defined, incoherent, unjustified, and even self-contradictory on many levels which I could then point to within the Biblical Canon description of this cultural "God".

On the other hand, if you are using the term "God" in some undefined abstract sense, then I would suggest that there is insufficient information to even discuss the term. As far as I can see a concept must be well-defined before we can even begin to discuss whether or not the concept can be "justified". If you are talking about some abstract idea of "God", then I would suggest that you need to define that concept at least to a degree where we can have something specific to address.

*Note: When I say the God of the Bible I'm talking about the God of the ancient Hebrews that is the foundation for many divisive religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each of which has further divided into disagreeing factions about how they define this original God of Hebrew folklore. So we have the further question of which faction of this God's description are we even talking about. And of course, they are all based on the original Torah. So they all have at least this much in common.

EDITED TO ADD:

Obviously we can have "knowledge" of how the culture God of the Bible has been described by these different cultural factions. Just as it is also true that we can have "knowledge" of how the story of "The Lord of the Rings" goes.

In fact, where would this kind of knowledge go in your previous list of types of knowledge?

a) ability knowledge. eg., how to ride a bicycle.
b) acquaintance knowledge. eg., recognising my bank manager, because I met him before.
c) propositional knowledge. eg., knowing the conclusion of an argument to be true, because the argument is both valid and sound.

Would this be "acquaintance knowledge", since we are talking about having been acquainted with a particular story?

In other words, we can have "acquaintance knowledge" of Judaism.
We can have "acquaintance knowledge" of Christianity and its many divergent sects.
We can have "acquaintance knowledge" of Islam and its many divergent sects.
Just as we can have "acquaintance knowledge" of The Lord of the Rings, or any other story that has ever been written or told.

But this isn't a knowledge of the existence of anything other than the stories themselves.

[BeHereNow]

[Replying to post 5 by ElCodeMonkey]
[Replying to post 6 by Divine Insight]

OK. Let's get to where the rubber hits the road.

No-one, I think, would complain that theists do not believe in God. Those who don't would simply argue that that belief is unjustified, and therefore cannot be known to be true. And if it is unjustified, and not known to be true, the agnostics and atheists among us would argue that it is not knowledge.

Any comments, anyone? Or is this all OK, so far?

Best wishes, 2RM.

Do I get to decide if you have sufficient justification to claim knowledge?
If so, I can deny any bit of knowledge you might claim, saying it lacks justification - assuming that is what I truly believe.
You might object, for any number of reasons. I would not expect otherwise. Of course you believe you have justification. I understand that. You are mistaken. It is that simple.
For example, macro evolution lacks sufficient justification to be considered knowledge. If you claim to have knowledge that macro evolution is true as presented, clearly you are mistaken. That belief lacks sufficient justification to be considered knowledge.

[Divine Insight]

Do I get to decide if you have sufficient justification to claim knowledge?
If so, I can deny any bit of knowledge you might claim, saying it lacks justification - assuming that is what I truly believe.
You might object, for any number of reasons. I would not expect otherwise. Of course you believe you have justification. I understand that. You are mistaken. It is that simple.

But who are you to decree that someone else is mistaken and then say, "It's that simple."

It's not that simple at all. They would present their evidence, and you would need to present your case for why it is that you reject that evidence. In the end, if no "reasonable consensus" can be achieved. Then all we end up with is two philosophers who hold different opinions. To say that either one is "mistaken" is nothing other than pure arrogance on the part of the one who make that assertion.

For example, macro evolution lacks sufficient justification to be considered knowledge. If you claim to have knowledge that macro evolution is true as presented, clearly you are mistaken. That belief lacks sufficient justification to be considered knowledge.

I simply disagree with your assertion that macro evolution lacks sufficient justification to be considered knowledge. I argue that our current understand of how genetic evolution actually works, and because we can show overwhelming evidence that various macro biological entities (i.e. plants and animals) are clearly related genetically in undeniable ways, along with fossil records that even show the history of macro evolution, that there can be no doubt that macro evolution is indeed true.

Therefore the rational and reasonable conclusion of the knowledge of macro evolution is more than justified by the overwhelming evidence for it.

Moreover, there doesn't current exist an alternative explanation. "Intelligent Design" fails miserably on many levels. Not the least of which is that many biological entities can be argued to not be "intelligently designed" at all.

This would then lead into a side-discussion of what constitutes "intelligence", of course. For example, if an engineer designs a car that will only work if he is personally nailed spread eagle to the hood of the car. Is this an "intelligent" design.

One could argue that it took technological know-how to design this wretched car, and therefore it was indeed "Intelligently Designed", even though everyone would agree that an engineer would need to be extremely stupid (in terms of wisdom) to have designed such a situation.

So rejecting the overwhelming evidence for macro evolution is not an intelligent thing to do, especially when there doesn't even exist a meaningful alternative explanation.

So I hold that our understanding of macro evolution is sufficiently justified knowledge. It's also the only rational knowledge in town.