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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Would a "disagreement operator" break down if iterated too much?
Let D(S) read as, "I disagree that S." It is possible to iterate this, so that DD(S), "I disagree that I disagree that S." Then we can go on to DDD(S), and so on. (For a peer-...
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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 "...
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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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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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What exactly is the persuasive power behind Jackson's "Mary's Room" argument?
The knowledge argument (also known as Mary's room or Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982) and extended ...
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What is the literal meaning of "The only thing that I know is that I know nothing"? (Is not knowing anything a knowledge?)
If a person says, "The only thing that I know is that I know nothing." What exactly does that mean (not metaphorically), literally?
If the only thing they know is that they know nothing, ...
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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:
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Is the temperance resulting from the socratic maxim "know thyself" always about knowing others?
I was just thinking about what good 'know thyself' means. There is something arguably narcissistic and unnecessary - or at least self absorbed - about examining your life just to know your own flaws ...
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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 (...
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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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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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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/...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Could 'cogito ergo sum' possibly be false?
I've heard it postulated by some people that "we can't truly know anything". While that does seem to apply to the vast majority of things, I can't see how 'cogito ergo sum' can possibly be false.
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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?
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What does Aristotle think about the relation between blindness, knowledge and memory?
I’m trying to understand Aristotle’s views on blindness, as given in these passages:
"just as the blind remember better, being released from having their
faculty of memory engaged with objects ...
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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-...
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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&...
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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�...
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How does Husserl's "bracketing" secure a truly presuppositionless study?
I'm reading from an anthology of essays by and about Husserl (collected by Joseph Kockelmans):
More specifically, Husserl makes a strong argument against some of the internal problems of various ...
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Wanted references to the Phillip K Dick Total Recall (1990) paradox
The movie Total Recall 1990 was inspired by the book "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" written by Philip K. Dick whose leading role was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The storyline is about a ...
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Logic as an obstacle to knowledge
Has there been any philosopher making an argument along the lines that logic is an obstacle to knowledge about the world?
The informal argument could go something like: logic is created by humans (...
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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 (...
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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:
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Knowledge and certainty
From a French point of view, influenced by Descartes, knowledge is strongly linked to certainty: strictly speaking says Descartes, I cannot know anything unless it is impossible for me to doubt it, ...
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Homogeneity and human knowledge
The advances in technology and the unprecedented levels of knowledge-sharing in the last few decades could be extrapolated to suggest that the human race as a whole will eventually converge to perhaps ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Philosophical arguments that "knowledge is power"?
What philosophers have argued that "knowledge is power"? What sort of arguments did they put forward?
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Can certain knowledge be experienced without words?
This question has been framed from a reading of Ruth Lydia Saw's book, "The Vindication of Metaphysics", (Macmillan, 1951). It's being termed, the 'parrot' example from pp.50-52.
Saw poses a very ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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What resemblance is there between Moksha and Nirvana?
Both Moksha and Nirvana are said to free oneself from the cycle of reincarnations/samsara. Other than this soteriological goal, do they have any resemblances?
And how does/can one know in which path (...
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Can moral truths be known a priori or are they based on experience?
I am currently working on an essay that explores the concept of a priori knowledge and whether or not it can exist. I would love to hear any thoughts or opinions on this topic that anyone may have.
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Given I have no moral knowledge, can I still know what the best course of action is?
Given I have no moral knowledge, can I still know what the best course of action is? Do moral non-cognitivists or error theorists know that they shouldn't steal the car, that they should go buy milk, ...
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Can, "This problem is unsolvable," be used to formulate the first incompleteness theorem in erotetic logic specifically?
Assumptions/definitions: the Gödel sentence is informally equivalent to, "This sentence can't be proved in system X," where X is appropriately specified. Since that sentence can itself be ...
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Can we have moral knowledge without intuition?
Can we have moral knowledge without intuition?
I'm trying to justify my ethical beliefs, but can't do so without appeal to intuition.
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Epistemic failure and blaming others [closed]
It seems we have epistemic responsibilities
To be responsible is to be the proper object of one or more of the
normative rather than evaluative attitudes, namely praise, blame, or
neutral appraisal. ...
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