New answers tagged knowledge
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Are we too quick to assume that the most recent evidence is inevitably the strongest?
Recency bias is a well-known and ubiquetous cognitive bias. It is mostly unrelated to the N-ray fiasco, which was a case of confirmation bias and priming in the context of bad experiment design. The ...
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What does Hume think about Occam's razor?
Is there an agreed wording of the definition? If not, I prefer to call it the principle of parsimony. It is a philosophical tool. I do not know what Hume believed.
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What is the opposite of Plato's problem?
In linguistics Chomsky has a position on this as well: deep structure to language is much more complex than the surface level we do understand, which we grasp largely through innate knowledge and ...
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What does Hume think about Occam's razor?
What does Hume think about Occam’s Razor?
This timely article might be helpful: "The Philosophy of Security Risk Assessments," By Mark Ashford (13 November 2023); from https://www.asisonline....
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All I know is that I know nothing. Does this statement of Socrates still resonate in modern philosophy?
There are many different interpretations regarding how this phrase ended up both in Western and Greek literature, both in ancient and more modern times. Without going into historical details, let's ...
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What exactly is the persuasive power behind Jackson's "Mary's Room" argument?
We do not need to hypothesise. In 2009 Catherine Mancuso from the University of Washington gave functional full colour vision to adult squirrel monkeys using gene therapy. Squirrel monkeys are a New ...
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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?)
It is not a literal statement. Furthermore, the exact translation is disputed. Finally, Plato attributes words to this effect to Socrates. I take it to mean that a wise man knows the limits of his own ...
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Does Hume propose that causes might actually just be explained by coincidence?
Coincidence has a number of meanings. One expresses the idea of being at a common place in time and/or space. Another expresses the idea of an accidental or unrelated correspondence, or even a fluke. ...
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Hume says we can't determine a causal connections between objects. Why separate the system into objects at all?
I think your summary of Hume's view, regardless of how valid it is, undervalues our scientific understanding. We don't simply say the ball drops and bounces, we have ideas such as the curvature of ...
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Hume says we can't determine a causal connections between objects. Why separate the system into objects at all?
I agree with your summary of Hume's perspective of the principle of
causality.
The philosopher Karl Popper dealt with the problem under the name
“problem of induction”, i.e. how to justify a general ...
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Are we ever justified in not trying to establish the truth?
There is no "should" in wanting to know what's true.
One can justify not trying to establish the truth merely by deciding that you'd rather not know.
Skeptics would argue that's generally a ...
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Are we ever justified in not trying to establish the truth?
If it is a purely private matter, you have the right not to know. The other person has the right to privacy. But if it is a public matter, other moral considerations might come in.
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What if we abandon all assumptions?
Trying to abandon all assumptions or assertions of truth is self-defeating, and simply so: we sometimes call this "retorsion" (for problematic examples of which, see this PhilosophySE ...
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What if we abandon all assumptions?
Some did ... Buddhism and Zen.
Zen does not seek to answer subjective questions because these are not important issues for Zen. What really matters is the here and now :
Zen is a Mahayana Buddhist ...
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What if we abandon all assumptions?
I take issue with the use of the word "dogma". If I set out to reason, I start with what I know, not what I assume. So, I know that I exist and can reason. I cannot doubt what is immediately ...
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Can I know something but not be able to justify it to anyone else?
Yes , you can know something and not be able to justify. It’s called faith. Faith doesn’t need justification always. For example - so many people believe in God but they can not always be able to ...
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Can I know something but not be able to justify it to anyone else?
Most everyday examples should be justifiable to most people. The scenario where you can't prove the bus is likely to be provable to most people. The condition of "anyone" makes it more ...
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Can I know something but not be able to justify it to anyone else?
The skeptic view (in the sense of questioning beliefs, not radical philosophical skepticism) is, roughly speaking, that if you cannot justify something, you shouldn't believe it.
The above means being ...
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Can I know something but not be able to justify it to anyone else?
The examples @Dcleve gives in his answers for knowing "from pure first person thinking" seem to me examples for the experience of inner certainty. In most cases there is no problem to ...
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Can I know something but not be able to justify it to anyone else?
Yes. And this is true of most of what we know.
Almost everything we know, we learn thru first person empiricism. It may be possible to translate and detail at least some first person empirical ...
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Limitation of knowledge in real terms
If success is defined as wealth and power, then gangsters, corrupt politicians, corrupt lawyers, and fraudsters are right up there. They are also at the bottom of the moral universe. As for knowledge, ...
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