I couldn’t disagree with this more. Quite at odds with this, I make the claim that it is demonstrable that people can know things for which there is no proof, demonstration, or evidence whatsoever. Just because something happens doesn’t mean it provides evidence. Evidence can be quite rare. Many things leave no evidence and some only leave evidence in unusual circumstances. To claim that something didn’t happen just because it left no evidence is a logical fallacy: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence ULESS you can demonstrate that evidence is expected. This is why the lack of a fossil for a transitional form is not evidence that no such transitional form existed – because we have good reason to expect that not all transitional forms are going to leave fossils.
So… ok, things happen which leave no evidence. But then how can one know such a thing when there is no evidence? LOTS of ways. Personal experience is the most irrefutable… though that one obviously doesn’t apply to transitional forms in evolution. But another way is LOGIC, and that is one which does apply to transitional forms in evolution. Another one is indirect evidence – how it makes sense of other data.
So if it isn’t demonstration that makes something knowledge then what does??? I suggest we leave behind the pie in the sky thinking and focus on the reality of the way people actually operate. What do they call knowledge? Knowledge are the beliefs they live by. It is the things they rely on to do the things they have to do. This actually works extremely well in understanding what is scientific knowledge as well. Scientific knowledge are the things which scientists use as routine tools in their scientific investigations. So… the theory of evolution is scientific knowledge. The theory of relativity is scientific knowledge. Quantum theory is scientific knowledge. It just happens to be the case that all of these are demonstrable because of the way science works.
But most people are not scientists and could care less about the tools of scientific inquiry and it is absurd to say they have no knowledge. Of course they do. The word knowledge was not invented by the scientists. But does this mean there is no difference? Does demonstrability add nothing? There is a difference and it adds a great deal. Demonstrability gives you a reasonable expectation that others should agree with you and accept what you know as true. Personal experience cannot give you this. Thus the difference is between objective and subjective knowledge.
Obviously this is something you do not know, since you cannot demonstrate any such thing.
LOL Oh really! As a scientist, I would say that shows an deplorable lack of understanding of science. Very little of science is accepted as true beyond reasonable doubt. Nothing is more welcome in science than doubt. All doubt is considered quite reasonable!
Well then consider the all evidence in science that a lack of evidence has never been evidence of an absence of anything.
That is more like it. The scientist accepts that he can indeed be wrong.
Ah yes! The delusion that one can live ones life as if it were a scientific inquiry. It is impossible. Science is objective observation. Life requires subjective participation where what you want is important. Trying to live your life as an objective observer is a refusal to live at all – not to mention immersing yourself in a sea of self-deception.
Do you think the meaning infused into Maggie’s series of otherwise disjoint events was a dragon in a garage? Rich Stearns’?
I need to write up the dozen or so involving my med school experience into one, or at least one with the sequence and respective links to the individual write-ups.
They are all evidence of God’s providential M.O., if nothing else.
Well, some have to start by expanding their worldview to allow some possibilities that they presently deny. If they are denied by presupposition, then no quantity of evidence will be compelling.
Here’s a single event with massive and unmistakable meaning infused, no association with meaning infused into sequences required, but very demonstrative of God’s providential M.O., if one’s worldview presuppositions can allow for the possibility of the reality:
Yes. However I am not basing my argument on those extreme cases. I am asserting that any attempt to assign the word ‘knowledge’ to that which cannot be demonstrated to be true, or has not been so, is not just fraught with problems, but is ultimately self-defeating since it renders the word ‘knowledge’ meaningless.
If all we mean when we say we know is that our thoughts, ideas, suspicions, hunches or theories (colloquial usage) about the world can be placed on an equal footing with empirically verifiable facts, or at least justifiable belief beyond a reasonable doubt (grounding in evidence of our senses and objectively verifiable). Because we have not paid close attention to this trend, we have slipped down the very slippery slope of eroding the very meaning of truth and evidence and now we are in the very abyss that we hoped the field of epistemology would help us avoid. Now what we hear everyday is things like this; ‘there are just different ways of knowing and they are all valid’ or ‘its just my truth verses your truth’ or ‘I have alternative facts’ and ‘scientific thinking is just another worldview’.
By throwing everything into the knowledge basket, we rob ourselves of the language we need to course correct, and steer ourselves out of this epistemological abyss. The challenge is that for some Christians, this threatens questions of belief, or faith, and of what they believe is a personal knowledge of God. This is a difficult subject for many, but if we do not use our language well, we will fail to establish the veracity of anything.
There’s also a ditch on the other side. Limiting knowledge to what can be demonstrated ultimately reduces knowledge to nothing, since none of our senses are foolproof, and none can be verified without the circularity of trusting our senses to tell us our senses can be trusted. We could all be brains in a vat. Or only one of us may be a brain in the vat while the rest of us are part of that brain’s dreaming (my money’s on @MarkD being the real one).
To trust our senses to generally give us accurate information about the real world is a step beyond what can be verified. That means every sensory verification we make has an unverifiable foundation. To say knowledge is only what is empirically verified is self-defeating, reducing knowledge to an empty set.
its late here and I need to go to bed, but I thought I would quickly correct something. You are quite right about the point below:
I really did word that poorly. I am well aware that science progresses by dis-proof and the fuel that drives the machinery of science is doubt. Allow me to rephrase please.
What I was attempting to convey, was conflated with an earlier point I made about testimony in court where the term ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ is apropos. I confess to being a bit lazy there, and your rebuke was justified! Obviously, in science, we never prove anything. I should have elaborated with examples such as evolution and gravity etc, where, given the enormous body of evidence that is explained by these theories, serious doubt of the sort that suggests they are completely wrong is unreasonable. Even so, doubt must always be present in science in order to keep it healthy and so nothing in science should ever be entirely free of doubt no matter the confidence we may have in it. I hope that clears up this point a little?
The other points I will tackle once I have finished pumping out the
I feel like this whole thread is conflating knowledge and truth.
I know there are all sorts of abstract discussions about certainty, correspondence, justified vs warranted belief and whatnot. But at the end of the day, I would say, all knowledge is a human construct, none of it is a perfect representation of truth. So if you start saying, “it’s not knowledge unless it’s objectively, verifiably true” than they only things we can know are of the 2+2=4 variety. I think human knowledge is more encompassing but also more fallible. Even many of the things we believe are objective are not completely objective.
I think that you may be conflating truth and reality here.
What I would say, is that the degree to which our human constructs comport with reality is the degree to which they are true. However, we cannot call this knowledge without a means to establish the truth value of these constructs. Otherwise it is all just a lot of thought in a vat.
Perhaps but it is also true that we must act on beliefs which do not meet the strict definition of knowledge all the time. As embodied creatures in a world that constantly challenges us we have need to carry on as if some things are true with or without proofs.
I agree. And I think some reality is pretty objectively knowable. But some social and cultural realities are subjective and depend on the perceptions and conceptual frames of the participants that are creating the realities.
I think you are right that some of the disconnect is with the semantic range of the word knowledge. My framework for discussion comes from education, sociology, and cognitive linguistics, where the focus is always on how knowledge is constructed and communicated. Determining the truth value of propositional knowledge is not what is in view. But if what you are saying about knowledge is right, then the vast majority of our human learning is not acquiring knowledge, it’s something else.
Others here are saying that somehow the fact that we must act and make decisions on our beliefs about the world, somehow upgrades those beliefs to the status of knowledge. I say that the imperative to move forward and make choices is just that, independent of the status of our beliefs.
I think we are closing in on things here Christy. Its 1.15am in Australia now. I will come back to you on this once I have slept for 1.45, then got up to watch the inauguration, then slept again then worked and then thought a bit…
