Philosophy Now Forum

What good is knowledge that can be wrong?

Jaded Sage wrote:What good is knowledge that can be wrong?

Well, again, it depends on how you define knowledge. You can put men on the moon with Newtonian physics, but it's wrong.

Excellent example. I'm totally using that. Yeah, I personally wouldn't call that knowledge, but I think most would.

Jaded Sage wrote:Excellent example. I'm totally using that. Yeah, I personally wouldn't call that knowledge, but I think most would.

So what makes your definition of knowledge better than "most"?

Better? Nothing. I just like it more.

Fair enough. So what is it?

Justified true belief. It is simple, and it helps with all the things I need it to help with. So for me knowledge is infallible.

Jaded Sage wrote:Justified true belief. It is simple, and it helps with all the things I need it to help with. So for me knowledge is infallible.

Well, that's Plato for you. How do you know that something is true though, if you are relying on justification and belief? Are you familiar with the Gettier problem?

Ya caught me. I'm still playing with that. Scientific method, I guess. Ya know part of me wants to say there is some truth in newtonian physics because it works. So maybe it's pseudo-knowledge, and I think maybe that might be the only thing we can get. Perhaps only analytic statements can count as true knowledge. Yes, I used to have a couple memorized, but we didn't cover it long in school. I've forgotten them. Have any examples off the top of your head?

2+2=4 and all the other maths stuff. All bachelors are unmarried men. Any tautology you care to mention. You changed empiricism for scientific method; you were right the first time. As Hume pointed out, all 'knowledge' is underdetermined and theory laden; we know there are phenomena, we don't know the cause.

Is all math a tautology? I guess so. Awesome. Isn't the scientific method based on empiricism?

Sry, I keep changing my answers.

Jaded Sage wrote:Is all math a tautology?

No, only anything with = in it.

Jaded Sage wrote:Isn't the scientific method based on empiricism?

What scientific method?

There's math without the equals sign? Huh.

Yeah, you'd think they'd cover that in a phil of science class, but they didn't. Whatever the standard one is. Hypothesis, experiment, conclusion? That's all I remember from grade school.


But check this out:

Yeah, so think about like this: I call them open and closed systems, tho there is probably an official word for it (esoteric and exoteric or something). You basically definte it or answer it from the other side, like they say there is no number before infinity, but you can describe it saying infinity minus one (or infinity minus zero point infinite zeros one).

So I ask the question: what is good? And the closed system answer would be "that which is good in at least one way and bad in no more than zero ways" and an open system answer is whatever the dictionary says, like "to be desired or approved of." The closed system answer doesn't really ever tell us much, at least not at first. The system has to grow. Eventually it should tell us as much as an equation full of variables. But the idea is to answer it from the other side, and be precise. Oh, and to be infallible.

I found out Buddha did the same thing, or I may have gotten it from him. When asked what is wholesome, he answered, "That which is not unwholesome." I call that a closed system answer.

marjoram_blues wrote:

duszek wrote:That the present moment does not exist.
What we call a present moment is the moment in which future changes to the past.
But the present as such has no dimension, no reality.

So how can people who claim to live in the present do so ?

Que sera,sera

Doris Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc

My.mom used to sing that to me when I was little....that was a good memory. Thanks M

Jaded Sage wrote:Ya know part of me wants to say there is some truth in newtonian physics because it works.

This is actually the official definition of mathematical physics, be it Ptolemaic, Newtonian, spacetime or any other kind of physics. Physics is "what works" and thus it is intrinsically tautologous. If it didn't work then the geeks would just keep tweaking the equations until it did. It is for this reason that physics can make no truth statements about the nature of physical reality.