What is knowledge and is it ever non-empirical?

Do you have an example or two?

(I’m off for tonight.)

That is an argument that rests on an example that we already know is true. It is structurally a tautology. The idea of true testimony being knowledge is predicated on the word true not the word ‘testimony’. If the testimony is false, it cannot be knowledge. If the testimony can be said to be true, than it must be that it can be, or has been, verified to be true through some other means.

Testimony itself is not a reliable path to truth. To testify to something is to assert its truth of the content of the testimony. The act of testifying does not in and of itself possess the value of truth or falsity.
There is no such thing as testimony of your eyes. Your eyes are not testifying. They are part of the sensing equipment that produces information that your brain interprets and which you consciously receive. Your eyes aren’t ‘telling’ you anything, you are the one receiving the information about the world, and not withstanding tricks of light, you are accepting or rejecting reality, you are not accepting or rejecting your eyes as if they are some independent agent giving testimony.

If we were not so confident of the existence of Kyrgyzstan, we would embark on some reasoning or other to ascertain if we can assign a measure of probability that the evidence for its existence is reliable. I could note that I have seen it in text books, in atlases, and I have heard about it in the news. Many people have mentioned it, and there is little evidence to suggest that there is a good reason for people to fabricate the existence of that country. Then someone claims to have been there and seen it for themselves, so I concluded that it is very likely that Kyrgyzstan exists. Doubt is unreasonable at that point given that nothing is really at stake if it turns out that Kyrgyzstan does not exist after all.

Once I decide to accept the proposition that Kyrgyzstan probably exists, I then retrospectively confer the same level of confidence in the testimony that I have received that it exists. I decide to accept that the content of the testimony is likely to be true. But remember that we have all been confident of testimony that has later proven to be false too. It is not that I now know Kyrgyzstan actually exists, but I now have formed a belief that the choice I have made to provisionally accept it exists, is well founded.
Once I visit Kyrgyzstan myself, I will have empirical information that confirms that my confidence was well founded and then I can say that I know Kyrgyzstan exists. That is knowledge.

Another good example is the misconception people often have around trust. When I say I trust you, what I am really saying is that I trust my own judgement of you that you will probably not betray me. If you betray me, yes I will be angry at you, but this is misplaced because I ought to be mad at myself for my poor judgement. The connection here is that I believed that my ability to predict your behavior was reliable, and it turned out not to be. I now have knowledge that the quality of my judgement is not as high as I thought. This is knowledge because I have tested it, and have an empirical result. However, before an outcome becomes apparent - i.e. the event that reveals if you will betray me or not has yet to happen - I can say that I trust you (belief) but I cannot say that I know you will not betray me. I can say that I believe in my ability to judge you, but I cannot yet say that I know I can judge you correctly. Thus it is not knowledge until it is tested.

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Just because many examples of abuse or absurdly fringe use can be found doesn’t mean that all such broader application of the term ‘knowledge’ is useless or meaningless. Just as the existence of cults doesn’t render the word ‘religion’ meaningless.

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No it doesn’t. I just googled “non-empirical knowledge” and it is definitely not the case that philosophers agree all knowledge is empirical, or that other kinds of knowledge cannot be precisely defined. Among other kinds of knowledge I can find defined in a quick search are semantic knowledge, systemic knowledge, procedural knowledge, metacognitive knowledge, a priori knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and tacit knowledge.

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Knowledge definitely seems to go beyond more than just concrete facts produced by a scientific method.

Such as being knowledgeable. You can be knowledgeable about the Bible. Or consider systematic doctrine. We can systematically study out scripture to be knowledgeable about what it says. Unless you believe scripture is completely useless and is biblical hermeneutics is based entirely on feelings.

I just read a couple entries in philosophy encyclopedias. They flat out say that philosophy is concerned with propositional knowledge, but that is not the only kind of knowledge.

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There are clearly lots of uses for the word knowledge or “to know” besides that discussed in philosophy departments. Your suggestion makes me think of the phrase “know how”. One can indeed have expert know how in a field without any formal training as with language use. So knowledge can be demonstrable even where one cannot provide sufficient reasons.

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Exactly. To demand that the use of the word be restricted that way can’t succeed. So general discussions of knowledge need either be comprehensive or else one must specify what kind is being discussed.

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I resonate with this. I think that is precisely the issue and it does bear on the difficulty of achieving propositional knowledge in so much of human experience. I prefer professions of Christian faith -or any other kind of faith regarding that which doesn’t lend itself to certainty- which embody appropriate humility rather than brashly proclaiming it as an obvious fact.

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Yeah, this is pretty brash :slightly_smiling_face: –

The heavens declare the glory of God,
    and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
    and night to night reveals knowledge.
Psalm 19:1-2

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(…and I think the least brash profession of the Christian faith would endorse it, or certainly should.)
 

…requires us to humble ourselves before God.

So you’re saying humility isn’t an aspect of character God values in itself? All He cares about is how you behave towards Him? I’m no good at the cite scripture game but I feel certain there is a case to be made that you are mistaken.

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Sorry, but I cannot help but take that as a pejorative. I do not need to apologize for a certain and valuable familiarity with the operating instructions for a complex piece of equipment. Ultimate truth is far from being a game.
 

Why did you infer that? He does that, too, but if someone is not humble before him, they certainly lack that ‘aspect of character’. In fact, the scripture game tells us that God is humble, at least with respect to who he is in himself.

…who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians 3:6-8

And since he is the most valuable thing that there is, he would be lying if he said or suggested somehow that he was not. You want that he should do that?

Then you must define what it means to know. Perhaps this is a limitation of English. Perhaps we need an extra word that sits somewhere between belief and knowledge.

In chess, there is a concept called ‘the overworked piece’ which is a structural weakness. It is a piece that is responsible for protecting two or more other pieces or being the linchpin for the whole position. If it falls then everything falls with it. I think that knowledge is an overworked word, in that we are asking it to perform too many functions and serve too many masters, as a result, if you are not careful, you will create an untenable structural weakness in your epistemology.

If knowledge is divided into kinds, some of which are verifiable, and some not, then we place ourselves into a position of assuming things to be true that may not be and we have no way to establish that. Thenceforth, ‘knowledge’ cannot be defined as true or even justifiable true belief, but simply a collection of true and false thoughts, some of which have been verified as true beyond reasonable doubt. I assert that this is a useless meaning, and is equivalent to defining truth as meaning what we believe - which is backwards, AND THAT, is precisely why the wheels have fallen off western civilisation.

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And there is this from the Gamebook, as well:

God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. 1 Peter 5:5

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Human cognition is also capable of believing in falsehoods, inventing fantasies, and making false associations. Just because human cognition can do something does not automatically make it knowledge.

One thing I think we can all agree with is that knowledge is messy, as are all human endeavors. When we talk about what is and isn’t knowledge what I think we are really asking is what methods should we use to differentiate between the two. We are talking about discernment instead of what we should believe.

I think the best we can do is describe the method we use to acquire knowledge. We may never agree on what we truly know or what knowledge is, but we can at least help each other understand how we got there.

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Perhaps: “knowledge” = beliefs which one can be sure are true on grounds that are defensible to any knowledgeable, fair-minded person. Of course in this definition the linkage is to a moveable standard. You mentioned (or so I gathered) already that logical implication only applies where the conclusion and premises are tautologically linked. Beyond that, empirical knowledge of the scientific kind is no guarantor of certainty, but only of strong candidacy based on agreed upon standards. Perhaps it is certainty itself which is problematic given our nature. In case you missed it I’m currently heavily influenced by Iain McGilchrist’s work on our two kinds of brain function, rational and intuitional. So I think “knowledge” of the philosophical kind wins, if it does, only because it limits the field to the rational kind. We know what it is like to feel justified on rational grounds but the mistake is in thinking it can take you absolutely anywhere. More likely its range is much more limited.

Many of us also know what it feels like to feel justified on intuitional grounds. Unlike in the case of rational grounds there is very little to be said about what makes us feel justified intuitively which can be expected to persuade another person, unless perhaps we share some common mythos of the world and our place in it. Not much chance of that in our pluralistic modernity. But just because intuition is effectively mute in making its own case, doesn’t mean we as beings who have both natures should always and only embrace rationality. That would certainly put a damper on our romantic lives as one casualty of an exclusively rational world.

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Presuppositions come into play, or rather, the play is based on presuppositions. Something will be discarded as being knowable if the object in question is presupposed to not to exist, as in ‘the spiritual realm’. Then you get a kind of ‘make me believe’ response, as if the spiritual could be demonstrated scientifically by material means.

Reminds me of Sagan’s “The Dragon in My Garage”.

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