Categories of Knowledge Claims
I've been trying to generate a category of knowledge claims for my own clarification. Here are my thoughts so far, from most indubitable to least indubitable:
1. Indubitable
These knowledge claims are not necessarily or deomonstrably true (depending on how strict you are with your definition of the word true), but we (as thinking things) cannot doubt these types of claims, more due to our nature of knowing or thinking than the nature of the claim. Statements like this are "I think; I am". This statement is at first beyond normal logic - it is neither knowably true or false, it is simply unverifiable. But it is ALSO undeniable by a thinking thing. The statements one may infer from it however, just dip into the realm of meaning and logic. (logic being nothing more than the science / art of describing / defining relations between entities (real or stipulated)). From this we derive the conditions of consciousness, the concordant rules of inference (the form - no content: what thoughts / assertions / beliefs are, how one infers from one to another), and the basic conditions of thinking of both math and logic - in other words, all the forms of conscious cognition. This is the playing field, so to speak.
2. Self-Evident
Once we have the playing field, then we have the players. These types of statements require no related statement for one to infer them from. They are self-evident. For example: If A is the case then A is the case, 1 = 1, "a geometric point is a single identifiable space unto itself", "It cannot be true that a statement is both true and false" ie: ~(a & ~a), Claim A is the case or is not (A v ~A), etc. These statements are not indubitable; in fact they have been doubted quite a bit. Self-evident does not mean uncontestable - it means self-evident: they do not require a related concept, construct, or statement in which we may infer these from. We do not infer these self-evident statements *from* indubitable statements, but the pre-conditions that allow us to infer self-evident claims (in fact to *infer* period) are rendered intelligible for us by the conditions that allow indubitable statements (namely the nature of reality, our experience of it and the assertions / beliefs / thoughts we can make about the former. Note: by stating it like this I do not wish to maintain that there is, or is not, a seperation between the two former. Namely reality and our interpretation if it. Sometimes these cohere demonstrably, sometimes they do not).
3. Claims that must be (always)
Claims that are always true are not necessarily self-evident, but must always be the case. "All bachelors are unmarried men" is not self-evident but must always be true *by definition*. In other words a tautology. Interestingly this semi-famous statment is not always true, depending on what exactly the statement is purporting to describe and how you interpret the statement.
Interestingly, you only know that "All bachelors are unmarried men" is true because you assume these categories are empty defintions, and most importantly, the proper method of adjudication for that kind of statement is categorical adjudication.
But in fact this statement is about physical things in the material world, and so in truth one is supposed to do use the scientific method to determine the truthfullness of this statement - one is supposed to go out into the world and survey all bachelors of all time and see if they were / are / will be actually unmarried. Of course this is impossible and so you do lots of experiments and make an educated guess. "From our experiments it seems that 99.4% of bachelors are unmarried men". Sounds counter-intuitive perhaps but it is true. There is always a margin of error for statements about physical things as Augustine clearly explained (Contra Academicos). This is also necessary due to the highly stipulative nature of language, that although I am married I can very well call myself a bachelor and there is no reason why I couldn't mean it either. A professor of mine said that would mean something quite different and my response is "why"? I responded "No, your saying it means something quite different means itself soemthing quite different - who is to say which meaning is the correct one? Nobody."
Really, if you believe that "All bachelors are unmarried men" must be true solely because of the definitions of these words, then one has not properly understood a) the stipulative changing nature of language and b) the steady constant nature of meaning. For I may redefine my language as I communicate it at will - it is for you to try to grasp the meaning of what I have meant - and no rules have been broken in that language game. Further, bachelors and men are physical things, any statements purporting to describe their relations being an empirical one, and such a statement is thus irreparably adjudicated by the rules concerning empirical statements – that they may not be known true or false with certainty. As such, "All bachelors are unmarried men" is not necessarily always *knowlably* true, only by definition. And why would we choose to discuss / consider the definition of these physical things out of context from their proper realm?
In other words this statement is a trick statement that silly academics have perpetrated the fallacy of equivocation upon the meaning of which to make themselves and everyone else temporarilly confused. If they just understood Plato's Line a little better (the difference between physical and incorporeal reality) we wouldn't have wasted that time. A better example of a statement which must always be and cannot *easilly* be misunderstood or misadjudicated is 1 + 1 = 2. "1" (unity in thought) is indubitable, 1 = 1 thereby is self-evident, 1 + 1 = 2 must therefore always be.
Granted "All bachelors are unmarried men" may be a bad example of a statement which must always be, given I just argued that it is not a "good" example of that kind of statement at all IMHO :) but it is so often trunced out as that kind of statement that I think everyone understands what I mean when I say it here, and as I have already said, due to the fact there are no concrete (apodictically knowably certain) rules when adjudicating the meaning of statements, I could mean it in its categorical sense, even though I think it is a stretch to mean it that way - a stretch which can easilly confuse and equivocate the intended reference which IMHO ought to be avoided. But academics need something useless to do I suppose (maybe they should all start blogs... maybe I should become an academic... :)
4. Claims that are (happen to be)
a + b = 246. This claim would happen to be if the variables "a" and "b" happened to be certain numbers that added up to the integer 246. Or "The cat is on the mat" would happen to be true IF the cat was indeed on the mat. But these statements are by no means indubitable, self-evident, or certain.
5. Claims that are possible (ie: unverifiable with certainty) but you are sure of
These such claims are strange in that you can be sure of their truth "I am hungry", but you cannot *know* them to be true in the technical sense. "I know he just went around that corner" for someone you are following and just saw go around the corner 1.3 seconds ago is actually something you are "sure" of, not "know". We know those statements only which we can demonstrably justify them as certainly true. Everything else that we are sure of "seems" to us as highly likely to be true.
Quite often it is our intution that tells us what we are and are not sure of. Like when I am sure I can land a punch and I try and I do, exactly as I felt I could. To my consciousness, this is more than just I thought I could or I thought it was likely. In fact I did not "think" it at all. If I had taken the time to decide if I could punch him he would have hit me three times in the nose and the opening would be long gone. I had a "feeling". I was "sure" of it. I didn't *know* I could land it but I had that feeling - trained into me by repetition which beings out a natural quallity of all living thinking beings - that now was the time to strike. It is sometimes called a "Gut feeling" or "instinct".
Not that what we are sure of is certainly or even likely to be the case. Some people are statistically more intuitive than others - from completely out of touch to slightly psychic (maybe even very psychic - what is the difference between someone who is very intuitive and slightly psychic - nothing imho - they can accurately guess stuff most people can't). In my opinion there is nothing mystical about it - it is a trained quallity of the sub-consciousness, which some are inherently better at than others, like any human quallity.
6. Claims that are plausible
These claims are rendered within ones consciousness, usually refer to things extrinsic to their being, and do not have a surety to them to the knower either way - but "seem" likely. "The sun will rise tomorrow" is not indubitable, not self-evident, not necessary, I am not sure of it (and I don't think anyone can be in the sense of the word as I am using it), but it is believable ie: plausible to think that it will. Strictly speaking these claims are knowable only in terms of likelihood - of possibility. They are simply claims which are possible and seem likely. Of course, what seems likely can differ from person to person, based on their experience and abillity to reason well.
7. Claims that are possible
These are claims which are possible and may go either way. They may be true or not, and do not seem more or less likely given the information at hand. These claims are about physical things, the relations of physical things, or any other possible things of which we cannot know with certainty.
8. Claims that are possible but unlikely
Same as above except that the likelihood of these things occurring is plausibly less. Not knowably less, but only plausibly less. Like me winning 1 million dollars tomorrow. Very unlikely, seeings that I do not have a lottery ticket or any millionaire philanthropic friends. But really I don’t know if it could happen or not – it could happen but the statistical probabillity is low.
9. Claims that are demonstrably false (happen to be)
"I have blue hair". This happens to be false (I'm pretty sure) although it could be true. Or a + b = 4 could be true or false depending on what the values for "a" and "b" are.
Problems with 7,8,9: Because our senses are a faulty mediator, we can never be certain of what they tell us about the material world - could be accurate, could be inacurate. As such, any claim about physical things are always probable - no matter how sure you are, or how plausible the claims seem.
10. Claims that are demonstrably impossible (always)
2 + 2 = 5 - Sorry, this is always false. It is always true (as long as human nature stay constant) you can torture / delude someone into thinking otherwise however.
1. Indubitable
These knowledge claims are not necessarily or deomonstrably true (depending on how strict you are with your definition of the word true), but we (as thinking things) cannot doubt these types of claims, more due to our nature of knowing or thinking than the nature of the claim. Statements like this are "I think; I am". This statement is at first beyond normal logic - it is neither knowably true or false, it is simply unverifiable. But it is ALSO undeniable by a thinking thing. The statements one may infer from it however, just dip into the realm of meaning and logic. (logic being nothing more than the science / art of describing / defining relations between entities (real or stipulated)). From this we derive the conditions of consciousness, the concordant rules of inference (the form - no content: what thoughts / assertions / beliefs are, how one infers from one to another), and the basic conditions of thinking of both math and logic - in other words, all the forms of conscious cognition. This is the playing field, so to speak.
2. Self-Evident
Once we have the playing field, then we have the players. These types of statements require no related statement for one to infer them from. They are self-evident. For example: If A is the case then A is the case, 1 = 1, "a geometric point is a single identifiable space unto itself", "It cannot be true that a statement is both true and false" ie: ~(a & ~a), Claim A is the case or is not (A v ~A), etc. These statements are not indubitable; in fact they have been doubted quite a bit. Self-evident does not mean uncontestable - it means self-evident: they do not require a related concept, construct, or statement in which we may infer these from. We do not infer these self-evident statements *from* indubitable statements, but the pre-conditions that allow us to infer self-evident claims (in fact to *infer* period) are rendered intelligible for us by the conditions that allow indubitable statements (namely the nature of reality, our experience of it and the assertions / beliefs / thoughts we can make about the former. Note: by stating it like this I do not wish to maintain that there is, or is not, a seperation between the two former. Namely reality and our interpretation if it. Sometimes these cohere demonstrably, sometimes they do not).
3. Claims that must be (always)
Claims that are always true are not necessarily self-evident, but must always be the case. "All bachelors are unmarried men" is not self-evident but must always be true *by definition*. In other words a tautology. Interestingly this semi-famous statment is not always true, depending on what exactly the statement is purporting to describe and how you interpret the statement.
Interestingly, you only know that "All bachelors are unmarried men" is true because you assume these categories are empty defintions, and most importantly, the proper method of adjudication for that kind of statement is categorical adjudication.
But in fact this statement is about physical things in the material world, and so in truth one is supposed to do use the scientific method to determine the truthfullness of this statement - one is supposed to go out into the world and survey all bachelors of all time and see if they were / are / will be actually unmarried. Of course this is impossible and so you do lots of experiments and make an educated guess. "From our experiments it seems that 99.4% of bachelors are unmarried men". Sounds counter-intuitive perhaps but it is true. There is always a margin of error for statements about physical things as Augustine clearly explained (Contra Academicos). This is also necessary due to the highly stipulative nature of language, that although I am married I can very well call myself a bachelor and there is no reason why I couldn't mean it either. A professor of mine said that would mean something quite different and my response is "why"? I responded "No, your saying it means something quite different means itself soemthing quite different - who is to say which meaning is the correct one? Nobody."
Really, if you believe that "All bachelors are unmarried men" must be true solely because of the definitions of these words, then one has not properly understood a) the stipulative changing nature of language and b) the steady constant nature of meaning. For I may redefine my language as I communicate it at will - it is for you to try to grasp the meaning of what I have meant - and no rules have been broken in that language game. Further, bachelors and men are physical things, any statements purporting to describe their relations being an empirical one, and such a statement is thus irreparably adjudicated by the rules concerning empirical statements – that they may not be known true or false with certainty. As such, "All bachelors are unmarried men" is not necessarily always *knowlably* true, only by definition. And why would we choose to discuss / consider the definition of these physical things out of context from their proper realm?
In other words this statement is a trick statement that silly academics have perpetrated the fallacy of equivocation upon the meaning of which to make themselves and everyone else temporarilly confused. If they just understood Plato's Line a little better (the difference between physical and incorporeal reality) we wouldn't have wasted that time. A better example of a statement which must always be and cannot *easilly* be misunderstood or misadjudicated is 1 + 1 = 2. "1" (unity in thought) is indubitable, 1 = 1 thereby is self-evident, 1 + 1 = 2 must therefore always be.
Granted "All bachelors are unmarried men" may be a bad example of a statement which must always be, given I just argued that it is not a "good" example of that kind of statement at all IMHO :) but it is so often trunced out as that kind of statement that I think everyone understands what I mean when I say it here, and as I have already said, due to the fact there are no concrete (apodictically knowably certain) rules when adjudicating the meaning of statements, I could mean it in its categorical sense, even though I think it is a stretch to mean it that way - a stretch which can easilly confuse and equivocate the intended reference which IMHO ought to be avoided. But academics need something useless to do I suppose (maybe they should all start blogs... maybe I should become an academic... :)
4. Claims that are (happen to be)
a + b = 246. This claim would happen to be if the variables "a" and "b" happened to be certain numbers that added up to the integer 246. Or "The cat is on the mat" would happen to be true IF the cat was indeed on the mat. But these statements are by no means indubitable, self-evident, or certain.
5. Claims that are possible (ie: unverifiable with certainty) but you are sure of
These such claims are strange in that you can be sure of their truth "I am hungry", but you cannot *know* them to be true in the technical sense. "I know he just went around that corner" for someone you are following and just saw go around the corner 1.3 seconds ago is actually something you are "sure" of, not "know". We know those statements only which we can demonstrably justify them as certainly true. Everything else that we are sure of "seems" to us as highly likely to be true.
Quite often it is our intution that tells us what we are and are not sure of. Like when I am sure I can land a punch and I try and I do, exactly as I felt I could. To my consciousness, this is more than just I thought I could or I thought it was likely. In fact I did not "think" it at all. If I had taken the time to decide if I could punch him he would have hit me three times in the nose and the opening would be long gone. I had a "feeling". I was "sure" of it. I didn't *know* I could land it but I had that feeling - trained into me by repetition which beings out a natural quallity of all living thinking beings - that now was the time to strike. It is sometimes called a "Gut feeling" or "instinct".
Not that what we are sure of is certainly or even likely to be the case. Some people are statistically more intuitive than others - from completely out of touch to slightly psychic (maybe even very psychic - what is the difference between someone who is very intuitive and slightly psychic - nothing imho - they can accurately guess stuff most people can't). In my opinion there is nothing mystical about it - it is a trained quallity of the sub-consciousness, which some are inherently better at than others, like any human quallity.
6. Claims that are plausible
These claims are rendered within ones consciousness, usually refer to things extrinsic to their being, and do not have a surety to them to the knower either way - but "seem" likely. "The sun will rise tomorrow" is not indubitable, not self-evident, not necessary, I am not sure of it (and I don't think anyone can be in the sense of the word as I am using it), but it is believable ie: plausible to think that it will. Strictly speaking these claims are knowable only in terms of likelihood - of possibility. They are simply claims which are possible and seem likely. Of course, what seems likely can differ from person to person, based on their experience and abillity to reason well.
7. Claims that are possible
These are claims which are possible and may go either way. They may be true or not, and do not seem more or less likely given the information at hand. These claims are about physical things, the relations of physical things, or any other possible things of which we cannot know with certainty.
8. Claims that are possible but unlikely
Same as above except that the likelihood of these things occurring is plausibly less. Not knowably less, but only plausibly less. Like me winning 1 million dollars tomorrow. Very unlikely, seeings that I do not have a lottery ticket or any millionaire philanthropic friends. But really I don’t know if it could happen or not – it could happen but the statistical probabillity is low.
9. Claims that are demonstrably false (happen to be)
"I have blue hair". This happens to be false (I'm pretty sure) although it could be true. Or a + b = 4 could be true or false depending on what the values for "a" and "b" are.
Problems with 7,8,9: Because our senses are a faulty mediator, we can never be certain of what they tell us about the material world - could be accurate, could be inacurate. As such, any claim about physical things are always probable - no matter how sure you are, or how plausible the claims seem.
10. Claims that are demonstrably impossible (always)
2 + 2 = 5 - Sorry, this is always false. It is always true (as long as human nature stay constant) you can torture / delude someone into thinking otherwise however.
posted by JB @ 9:06 AM
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