False Knowledge? March 29, 2007
Posted by ocmpoma in : other , trackbackOver in the comments to my post on knowledge, Rhino referred me to “The Analysis of Knowledge” over at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
All in all, very interesting reading — so, thanks, Rhino!
However, I found myself disagreeing somewhat with the initial part:
“Condition (i), the truth condition [S knows that p iff p is true --oc], has not generated any significant degree of discussion. It is overwhelmingly clear that what is false cannot be known. For example, it is false that G. E. Moore is the author of Sense and Sensibilia. Since it is false, it is not the sort of thing anybody can know.”
First off, I must admit that I found it hard to believe that a bunch of philosophers have never gotten around to arguing about that one.
Secondly, I wonder how it can be “overwhelmingly clear” that someone can’t know something that is false? After all, how do we determine what is not false? (Yes, I’m still arguing for my position…)
I’ll drag the wall example back into it: 100 people looking at a wall on a lawn. They all agree that the grassy lawn is green, and the sky is blue. They don’t agree on the color of the wall. How do we determine what color the wall is (not what wavelength of light, but what color)? What can we say about the differing groups’ knowledge of that color? If the split between groups is 1 / 99? 30 / 70? 50 / 50? If it’s a 50 / 50 split, how are we justified in saying that one group knows what color the wall is, and the other group does not?
Really, if your name isn’t Rhino, it’s still okay to comment. I don’t have a degree in philosophy, either, and I’m willing to talk about this stuff.
Tags for this article: deep thoughts
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Color is subjective, isn’t it? Can there even be a “true” color for the wall? And how do you know if some people are just screwing with you and the voting system?
And, more importantly, who cares what color the wall is?
While color is subjective, a disagreement such as half saying it’s blue and half saying it’s orange is what I had in mind.
“Screwing” with the vote isn’t an option in this hypothetical.
The color of the wall isn’t important, the idea that people can know something which might not be correct is (like, say, Newtonian physics some three hundred years ago).
If you look at a wall and say it’s blue you *can’t* be wrong. You’re experiencing the sensation of ‘blue’, whatever you’ve decided blue is. If later you decide that you were previously mistaken about the colour of the wall and decide it’s ‘orange’ you’re right again. The truth of the colour is relative to the point of your perception, afterwards it becomes a memory and it again needs interpretation. The wall has no objective colour in that sense; it only has colour relative to subjects with sight. So it’s not that your wall-viewers are knowing falsehoods, even if one sees blue and the other orange. There is probably some pretty screwed up things going on in their brains though.
No one argues that you can know something false because that would make ‘knowledge’ mean ‘belief’. Belief either can or cannot correspond to reality; when it does it becomes knowledge.
I haven’t done any epistemology in over two years, but I think that’s the jist of it.
Hmmm… perhaps I need to find a different example than color… While I work on that, what do you think about Newtonian physics?