20
votes
Accepted
How could one distinguish crankery from serious work?
How do I know which of the two it could be?
Look for somebody who does understand it. People who come up with novel thoughts often (but not always) find it difficult to describe those thoughts in ...
- 1,315
15
votes
How could one distinguish crankery from serious work?
The obvious answer is that you have to make a serious effort to understand the matter from first principles. For mathematics, that would mean reading all of the definitions of all of the individual ...
- 1,673
6
votes
Accepted
What does "true" mean in "justified true belief"?
This is slightly tricky as not everyone uttering that may have the same conception of truth, but generally speaking I think the definition only makes sense for some external/correspondence notion of ...
- 1,853
5
votes
Accepted
Defending the Unpopular: Foundationalism
To expand slightly on what Conifold mentioned, according to IEP the "modest foundationalism" has Alvin Platinga as a prime exponent; Wikipedia mostly covers that under "reformed ...
- 1,853
4
votes
Accepted
What would constitute as justification?
The word justification has an extended family of epistemological uses. In no particular order of generality (and not exhaustively), see:
Artemov and Fitting, "Justification Logic."
Hasan ...
- 10.1k
4
votes
What does "true" mean in "justified true belief"?
It might be easier to think about this in terms of the meaning of the word ‘know’. In that case, the ‘true’ part of JTB amounts to the following claim:
If S knows that p, then p
For example, if I ...
- 6,456
3
votes
What would constitute as justification?
Kristian, as usual, is thorough. From a tertiary source:
Justification in the epistemological sense is an essentially contested concept:
The term essentially contested concepts gives a name to a ...
- 20.4k
3
votes
Is this a case of JTB that may be true, but not knowledge?
Note that we know this well enough that entire industries depend upon it, and they are considered safe. RSA Public Key Cryptography is an international standard that backs SSL and other internet ...
- 1,098
2
votes
A priori vs false witness statement
First of all, Lisa can't do much to "expose John's statement as being false". It's not falsifiable. It might be true, for all she knows.
You are right to say that the probability of her ...
- 2,234
2
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between warrant and justification according to Plantinga?
This one is right in the WP article on Alvin Plantinga:
Plantinga discusses his view of Reformed epistemology and proper functionalism in a three-volume series. In the first book of the trilogy, ...
- 20.4k
2
votes
What does "true" mean in "justified true belief"?
As Fizz correctly points out, this is an expression of the correspondence theory - and external realism - at the base of the JTB theory of knowledge: When we say that we do know something about the ...
- 13.1k
2
votes
What does "true" mean in "justified true belief"?
"Justified" and "belief" already hinted our knowledge innately dooms to have some nuanced subjective nature. Thus without the only remaining "true" requirement, there won'...
- 4,183
2
votes
Basic truths as self-justified or parajustified
Talk of "self-evident" truths, sometimes called "axioms" (though "axiom" now carries mainly the sense of "not inferred," regardless of the attendant ...
- 10.1k
1
vote
Accepted
How do we know (i.e. justify our belief) that time exists without "proving too much"?
This is a basic question of epistemology. How do we know ANYTHING exists.
There are three basic methods:
Rationalism -- establish what is the case by reasoning
Direct knowledge -- we know what is, ...
- 9,743
1
vote
Is the axiomatic method an inherently well-founded method?
I'm out of my depth but maybe this is helpful from https://youtu.be/j4dlamySLuE?t=379. It seems like the presenter Elaine Landry disagrees with your "the purpose of axioms...is to provide for ...
- 2,222
1
vote
What's the difference between Justification and Evidence?
Evidence applies to the propositional attitude of belief or knowledge (claimed). Here, a propositional attitude report is a statement such as, "I believe/think/hope/pray/wish/want/intend/etc. ...
- 10.1k
1
vote
"Dinosaurs did exist once". Is it knowledge or is it only justified belief?
I think it is important to make a distinction — with the caveat that few people make this distinction, to everyone's detriment — between the politics of knowledge and the pragmatics of knowledge. ...
- 18k
1
vote
Accepted
"Dinosaurs did exist once". Is it knowledge or is it only justified belief?
Justified True Belief as a criteria for knowledge sets two conditions which are not satisfiable for the vast majority of what we know. Empiricism operates off an indirect realism assumption, in which ...
- 9,743
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