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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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 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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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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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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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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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 ...
user67675
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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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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 ...
user67675
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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Is the unlearned nature of language a la Chomsky a way back into logical empiricist epistemology?
***I'm struggling to erect the supports of this question because of lack of knowledge, I hope that it makes sense and is useful and appropriate for this site.
I'm hoping there's a form of logical ...
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How do we use topology to model knowledge?
The topology of knowledge: In this application, topological spaces are used to model the structure of knowledge, where the open sets correspond to coherent bodies of knowledge and the closure ...
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Is scientific knowledge personal or general?
This question was considered off topic in "History of science and mathematics". According to a comment by Alexandre Eremenko it belonged to philosophy.stackexchange.com. I don't understand ...
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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 ...
user64279
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Lumen naturale, Lumen gratiae, Lumen fidei, what are they?
Unfortunately, I'm unable to locate a good source to cite on these terms you see in the question title.
Below is a short abstract based on Google.
Natural light (lumen naturale), equivalent to lumen ...
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When I present information (to myself or others), e.g. by making a statement, is this accompanied by another statement, that what I said is true?
When I make a first-order claim like, "The sky is cloudy right now," is this claim implicitly accompanied by a second-order claim like, "What I just said is true/not a lie"? Or ...
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How should I define the problem of skepticism and the criteria for its solution?
I am writing an epistemology essay on whether a particular theory solves the 'problem of skepticism'. I am familiar with the skeptical paradox, but I am not sure exactly how to define what a solution ...
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I want to start reading more into philosophy, what should i start out with
I have some stoic books by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and some Kant and the myth of Sisyphus, but I don't know where to go now.
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Are logical truths a subset of facts which in turn is a subset of possible truths?
Are logical truths (those that are true in all possible interpretations) a subset of facts (known via observation in our reality)? Are facts a subset of possible truths(satisfiable)? Where do axioms ...
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Knowing that they know that you know that they know
Suppose there are two spies, A and B. There is also a secret, s. The following situation unfolds:
(1) A learns s.
(2) B learns that A knows s.
(3) A learns that B knows that A knows s.
(4) B learns ...
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Human Knowledge definition and architecture [closed]
Hello Every one I'm really determined to understand what is human knowledge and its main fields. For me knowledge is the must important concern for humanity. I read some books and the one who really ...
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How do we know (i.e. justify our belief) that time exists without "proving too much"?
How do we know that time exists?
This is a complex question.
First, we cannot make sense of a question like this without first establishing what we mean by knowledge.
For convenience, let's pick the ...
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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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