Questions tagged [knowledge]

Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something, which can include facts, information, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education.

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Logic and its beginnings and why it is

When dealing with logic aren't we supposed to question logic, as though what caused it and why it is and therefore ask or beg the question, "Can our basic understanding of logic be logical?" ...
How why e's user avatar
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Do we feel compelled to defend objectivity, but not subjectivity, because objectivity is a concept in the domain of the subjects' knowledge?

Objectivity https://iep.utm.edu/objectiv/ The object is something that presumably exists independent of the subject’s perception of it. In other words, the object would be there, as it is, even if no ...
SystemTheory's user avatar
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Is it even possible to know, from the outside, whether a physical system is conscious?

I take it for granted that other humans, and other higher animals like chimpanzees and dogs and cats, are conscious. But is it even possible to know, from the outside, whether a physical system is ...
user107952's user avatar
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Is the fundamental nature of knowledge intimately linked to the fundamental nature of minds (consciousness)?

This is a follow-up to Is knowledge non-physical?. Can knowledge exist outside of minds? Can something devoid of consciousness truly possess knowledge? Consider objects like books, inscribed rocks, ...
Mark's user avatar
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Is knowledge non-physical?

What is the fundamental nature/ontology of knowledge? Is knowledge a physical state? Is knowledge a specific arrangement of physical particles in a brain, a book, a solid-state drive, a GPU, etc.? Or ...
Mark's user avatar
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What are examples of non-physicalist approaches to acquiring knowledge?

As a follow-up to my previous question Is non-physicalism reasonable?, I would like to know about non-physicalist ways of acquiring knowledge that philosophers have considered. What sorts of knowledge ...
Mark's user avatar
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Is learning an infinite loop?

We learn from people who were taught by other people. Those people were taught by other people. Those people were taught by other people. For example, a professor teaching in a university was once ...
NotPhilosophy's user avatar
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Can faith be based on hope rather than belief or intellectual assent?

I've been reflecting on the interplay between faith and hope, especially when hope entails some degree of uncertainty and lack of intellectual assent but a strong desire for something to be true. As ...
Mark's user avatar
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Is there an affective state of knowledge or belief? [closed]

Is there an affective state of knowledge or belief? Can I affectively or emotionally know that my wife is having an affair or that I am not the father of my children, but not be able to justify to ...
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Did i Just found the solution to radical skepticism?

If someone uses the premise that: 1=1 and then arrives at the conclusion that: 1=2 this means that the conclusion has proven the premise wrong; and if the premise is wrong, then the conclusion is ...
Neo Granicen's user avatar
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What sort of knowledge are we entitiled to have?

What sort of knowledge are we entitiled to have? Is there a class of knowledge which we should not be deliberately deprived of? I have asked before about anonymity, the right not to tell, deception, ...
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What are the sources for the idea that those who don't know, who know less, have a certain wisdom?

What are the sources for the idea that those who don't know, who know less, have a certain, valuable, wisdom? In French, there is this idiom "the popular wisdom" (la sagesse populaire) which ...
Starckman's user avatar
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Does the universal "step-by-step" property of knowledge eg in The Meno conflict with the fluctuation theorem from statistical mechanics

Background: There seems to be a universal property of knowledge, which is captured under Plato's reminiscence theory (remembrance), that acquiring knowledge necessary involves a series of steps that ...
J Kusin's user avatar
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Is 'knowledge' a single concept?

Is 'knowledge' a single concept? Obviously it has a variety of different philosophical definions, JTB, JTB+ etc.. Suppose that I think 'knowledge' must involve a certain form of justification that I ...
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How much knowledge is based in aesthetic virtues like 'elegance'?

How much knowledge is based in aesthetic virtues like 'elegance'? I know that they feature in e.g. inference to the best explanation. What about 'intuition'? When is it ever the deciding factor in ...
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When is someone responsible for a lack of justification and/or strong belief in something?

When is someone responsible for a lack of justification and/or strong belief in something? Suppose I suspect that my wide is cheating on me, and have evidence that she is meeting someone, but aside ...
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8 answers
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Is there a difference between knowing, and knowing for certain?

When one knows something, do they also know it for certain? Or is knowing distinct from knowing for certain? I find a statement like, "I know X, but I don't know X for certain" to be pretty ...
user107952's user avatar
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Questions about the Justification part of knowledge (justified true belief)

There is a so-called Justified, true belief as knowledge. When was the justification part of the definition of knowledge started to become explicitly stated and not merely implied? Who wrote about it ...
Noble_Bright_Life's user avatar
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Is Romans 1:19-20 philosophically sound?

Romans 1:18-25 ESV 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about ...
Mark's user avatar
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Are we too quick to assume that the most recent evidence is inevitably the strongest?

In what contexts is this true and in what contexts can this be considered true and vice versa? Personally, I think it has a lot to do with confirmation bias, especially in natural sciences where for ...
OBAMIUM's user avatar
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What is the opposite of Plato's problem?

Plato's problem Plato's problem is the term given by Noam Chomsky to "the problem of explaining how we can know so much" given our limited experience. In the field of linguistics, Plato's ...
user366312's user avatar
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What does Hume think about Occam's razor?

Let's define Occam's razor as this: That it is not rational to believe something unnecessary or extra about reality without a specific reason to believe it. In other words, the facts that are ...
BigMistake's user avatar
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All I know is that I know nothing. Does this statement of Socrates still resonate in modern philosophy?

Regardless of attribution, this could be interpreted as profound wisdom or a suggestion that things are ultimately unknowable. It certainly seems to indicate humility. Does any of this still hold true ...
Meanach's user avatar
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Does Hume propose that causes might actually just be explained by coincidence?

Does Hume propose that what people interpret as casual connections could instead be explained by coincidence? I want to know if this is an accurate understanding. Hume says something to the effect of: ...
BigMistake's user avatar
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Hume says we can't determine a causal connections between objects. Why separate the system into objects at all?

A summary of Hume's perspective is as follows: When we reason about matters of fact to reach new conclusions, we use cause and effect: when a dropped ball hits the ground (observation), it bounces (...
BigMistake's user avatar
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Are we ever justified in not trying to establish the truth?

I can take steps to find out if my ex wife cheated on me, and I do want to know, but no good will come of me knowing, nor of the steps I need to take to find out (assume that they are not immoral but ...
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What if we abandon all assumptions?

By the title I mean that "What would happen if we didn't assume anything as true?" My first thought was that nothing could be stated (since there isn't logic/reason to hold any argument/...
PageSteiner's user avatar
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5 answers
2k views

Can I know something but not be able to justify it to anyone else?

Can I know something but not be able to justify it to anyone else? I don't necessarily mean metaphysical puzzles, but everyday examples. If I cannot - and I know I cannot - prove to anyone else, all ...
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1 vote
0 answers
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Higher education knowledge and high school knowledge and pleasure

This post wonders about the levels of pleasure that can be attained using high school only knowledge as compared to using higher education knowledge (assuming all pleasurable activities are related to ...
Joselin Jocklingson's user avatar
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If we don't know anything for certain, how do we know that?

I think it is the case that we don't know anything for certain. But if that is the case, how can we know that we don't know anything for certain? This is related to Socrates's famous remark that all ...
user107952's user avatar
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Limitation of knowledge in real terms

In the "real world," economists are not rich, political scientists are not successful politicians, and so on. My question is: is there some limitation on success imposed by knowledge (in ...
quanity's user avatar
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Is the complexity paradox inherent to human theory and practice?

First of all, sorry for the lengthy body of the question. A little background: I'm a musician, and an active thinker. In my career there's a seemingly inevitable bifurcation: the path of academic ...
Simón Flavio Ibañez's user avatar
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Did Locke think that animals have innate knowledge?

Locke famously believed that humans were born as a tabula rasa. Did he also think the animals are blank slates?
BigMistake's user avatar
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1 answer
93 views

Knowledge-that, knowing-what, epistemic logic, and invertible functions

There's a subsection of my main argument (in my offline notes) that goes: ∃f(f(𝔼) = ♪) If we knew what f was in particular, then we could go to f -1(♪) = 𝔼 But this would make 𝔼 knowable in a well-...
Kristian Berry's user avatar
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1 answer
108 views

What does "p is true for S at t" mean?

In Alvin Goldman's article "What Is Justified Belief", what does "p is true for S at t" mean? where p is a proposition, S is a person and t is time. More specifically, how is it ...
Charles's user avatar
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3 answers
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What is a complete understanding?

In a comment to this recent question of mine, somebody used the phrase, "complete understanding." Without necessarily answering the linked question (i.e. without defining "understanding&...
Corbin's user avatar
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What differences and relationships are between "innate ideas" and "presuppositions of knowledge"?

p149 of Section "Rationalism and Empiricism" in Big Questions by Solomon talkss about "innate ideas": One of the main points of debate between the rationalists and the empiricists�...
Tim's user avatar
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Is John Locke's Empiricism Unempirical?

The esteemed seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke famously declares that we are tabula rasa (blank slates). When it comes to human understanding we rely upon the force of experience (...
Paradox Lost's user avatar
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How is synthetic knowledge produced in fictionalism?

With the Greek gods being fictional there is still objective knowledge - how many Greek female gods are there, etc. (Or if that's still too ambiguous, how many Greek gods are named Zeus). But "...
J Kusin's user avatar
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2 votes
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Using 'love' to make sense of knowledge

I love my spouse, but I suspect (I think I believe the are) they are cheating on me, and I've even heard my friends gossip about my spouse's affairs etc.. But I love my spouse, so do not think I know -...
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Help sourcing a quote - "There is no doctrine so invalid..."

Recently a quote popped into my head, which I recall as a Bishop Berkeley proposition. But on further looking into the matter, I can't seem to find it. It's within the general area of the following: "...
shman613's user avatar
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7 answers
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All we know is that we know nothing? Can we know anything?

Many great philosophers doubted their knowledge. The Paradox of Induction touches on this skepticism Skeptics say that all knowledge and scientific progress is based on inductive logic, which is ...
ActualCry's user avatar
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What is Sustainable philosophy of the Objective kind?

Umm... new to site & so new Q. Had to set up a new space to ask such a Question on Quora recently. Called the Environment of Philosophy Space where there Q. & Answers in reality explaining the ...
peter m's user avatar
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1 answer
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What is a succinct description of the problem of the criterion?

I've been studying the problem of the criterion for about a month, and I'm finding that there is a paradox involved with knowing it. Supposedly, as I interpret, in order to know what the problem of ...
Dennis Francis Blewett's user avatar
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3 answers
127 views

How do I know what I don't know?

I am not looking for a straight answer to this question but some references on how I should further investigate this problem. Problem Let us consider a person bob When Bob makes a statement, he ...
Shriman Keshri's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
252 views

What would constitute as justification?

Follow up to this post. The question here is quite short, what would constitute as justification in regards to justified belief theory? Seems something a bit vague to me. My main motivation to this ...
tryst with freedom's user avatar
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5 answers
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Does the idea that we can’t know anything for sure contradict itself?

Wouldn’t this itself be a statement of knowledge? By anything, I don’t mean to include experience or having a sense of consciousness, which we all likely atleast feel certain about or in agreement ...
thinkingman's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
506 views

What is the difference between understanding and interpretation?

What is the difference in the cognitive processes of understanding and interpreting an utterance (especially written discourse like a legal statute)? What does a judge do when they interpret law; is ...
George Ntoulos's user avatar
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5 answers
435 views

Do judges violate due process in their efforts to make a logical connection between would-be evidence and facts in question?

Note: I had this post with a question that follows, but then I reformed the question again. I've used ChatGPT to help me research this issue, and I think it has been somewhat helpful. For anyone ...
Dennis Francis Blewett's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
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Does context dependence mean agents who are being irrational may, in some contexts, have knowledge attributed to them?

Suppose I can justify something to some small extent. I thought I could smell someone else's perfume on my husband this evening. And I am a jealous wife, so believed he was having an affair. But I had ...
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