Theory of Evolution and Belief in God

[lao tzu]

I've limited time for thoughtful posts, so if you're not comfortable with having to wait a week or so for a meaningful response, feel free to ignore this addition.

(1) You're misunderstanding what I am saying. I have been responding to the (perhaps implied) view that 'science answers all questions' - or the related idea that if it can't be answered by science then it's not really knowledge.

When you do it, it's called "implied." From anyone else, it's called a "strawman." Outside your perceived implications, I can't find anyone suggesting science is formally complete. It's hardly something I would argue. I'm a mathematician, not a scientist.

(2) Again you over-state what I'm saying. I am simply pointing out that there are areas where there are answers to be had, and it's not science that gives us those answers.

"Pointing out." I don't think that means what you think it means.

Now I went poring over your posts in this thread for what looked to be the best all-round clarification of your position I could find:

If you actually want to understand what I'm getting at, then read my post in full context, and read my discussion with Robertb above. If you really need things spelling out, IMHO there is no one 'all-round best method' for everything, there are different 'best methods' for different things.

These two are incommensurate: "All-round best method for everything" and "best method for an individual thing." A claimant for the first need only outperform any other method across a range of specialties, like the winner of a decathlon. A decathlon winner could — though I'm not aware that it's occurred — win no individual event, and yet stand above all other contestants in the final rankings.

Returning to your current post:

From my perspective it looks like you have been responding to what you expect me to say, rather than what I actually have been saying. You misunderstood - perhaps I was not clear enough - and I explained where you had misunderstood. You have since carried on that 'misunderstanding' and persisted in attributing to me positions I don't hold, and things I haven't said.

Speaking of irony:

Science is not the only way we can get knowledge. That position obviously fails because it can't meet it's own epistemic standard.

Dude! How can anyone expect to represent you correctly when your "clarifications" are all over the map? Is it best all-round, best at all things, or only way? The first is probably true, which is the most meaningful answer possible as it's a statistical phenomenon. The second is an entirely different question.

The last is simply arguing from paradox, trivially dismissed, like asking if the statement "this statement is false" is true or false. It's not a statement, not a logical statement that is, as a logical statement must, by definition, be either true or false. And similarly the method of gaining all knowledge is not known, hence not knowledge, hence there is no epistemic burden on science to show that it is knowledge that can be obtained via science. This is the assumption that all questions can be answered that I read, you say incorrectly, from your posts. If this reading is incorrect, I apologize, but at the same time it's because that's what you said, independent of whether that was your intent.

These recursive paradoxes are often brushed over lightly in introductory logic courses, which is often all the logic instruction an undergraduate receives. But once their form is understood, they can be created with ease, and endlessly:

Tolerance of the intolerant. I've seen Nick use this one in an attempt to show that tolerance doesn't exist, and so escape charges of religious intolerance.

The above, lack of knowledge of what knowledge is. Endlessly debated, and thus, obviously, not knowledge.

Love directed toward those who hate love.

Sadistically torturing the masochist.

Then there are the classical examples:

A book listing all books that do not reference themselves outside their titles. Can it list itself? If it does, it should not, and if does not, it should.

A set of all sets that do not contain themselves. Is this set a member of itself? Then it must not be. But if it is not, it should be.

All of these formulations lose definition due to an infinitely recursive contradiction and are thus neither true nor false, but rather paradoxical. Earlier, Zack confused recursive paradox with reductio. The distinction is that the chain of a reductio argument must end. He confused recursive paradox with recursive proofs, a generalization of inductive proofs patterned after the natural numbers, taking advantage of unique successors and minimal elements in all subsets.

For example the proposition that 'Science is the best method for arriving at all knowledge'... how does science show us that that proposition is true? What science experiment can you construct to show that?

Note the assumption that there is a method of arriving at all knowledge implicit in the request that it be shown that science is the best method for doing so. Replace "best method" with "a method" and you'll see the implication more clearly. It's pointless to argue that science is such a method before showing that such a method exists. But this assumption is necessary before it can be argued, pro or con, that science is the best method. By labeling the above a proposition, you've entailed the implication.

Neither is science superior in all areas to other approaches to knowledge (philosophy among them), since science itself rests on various positions that can't be supported by science (but can be supported by philosophy).

Now there's another claim that needs clarification. If you're speaking of epistemic authority, as above, you're simply wrong. This happens more generally in these discussions, and often enough to see a pattern. Studies in the philosophy of science are where old scientists past their inventive prime go to retire, or should be. But it's also where certain well-known Christian apologists stymied by their own lack of knowledge of science go to create a pretense of addressing science, e.g. Plantinga. His EAAN exemplifies the maxim that speaking outside your field of expertise is the all-round best method for making a fool of yourself as an academic. But I'll acknowledge there may be other supports of which I'm unaware.

Much more often what I find are metaphysical arguments that confuse description with governance. A word's definition in a dictionary does not govern its usage, it describes it. As language changes, it's the dictionaries that lose their relevance, not the communication which dictionaries attempt to pin down. The methodologies of science active at any one point in history can be faithfully described by metaphysics. The genius of science, however, is that it escapes the need for any specific metaphysical grounding by relying instead on the simple justification "because it works." Why it works, and how it works, can be metaphyisically described, but these descriptions, and the careers spent analyzing and critiquing these descriptions, are contingent on the simpler physical justification.

My view is that we need science, and logic, and good philosophy, and pure mathematics, and a number of other approaches. They are simply different tools that we need for different areas of 'reality'. It's foolish to use only one to the exclusion of others.. ...if all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. There is no one single method or approach that answers every question, just as there are questions we don't have answers for.

It's said that English borrows from other languages. That's the polite recounting, in any case. The truth is that it follows them into dark alleys, clubs them over the head, and then goes through their pockets looking for loose grammar. Science incorporates logic —and good philosophy, and pure mathematics — in creating and testing its hypotheses. If it can be demonstrated that such incorporations lead to better predictions, science is the club, and good logic had better be wearing a hard hat if it wants to avoid the larceny.

Paradoxically, or seemingly so to metaphysical students, science achieves its best knowledge by abandoning perfect knowledge, like a digitization of continuous audio via sampling. It throws away certainty in order to achieve a better predictive power than has been achieved by any other human endeavor. Does it achieve truth? Well, no, but it approximates it where it counts, in the real world where there's nothing more true than truths discerned through our senses. We can know, beyond the most wildly improbable advances of science, the specific value of pi in a Euclidean plane, but we know it only because we're allowed to create a Euclidean plane in mathematics, despite the fact it exists nowhere in our universe.

It's not that science can't encompass these truths beyond instantiations of their approximations, it's that these are "truths" that are merely rhetorically identical, like the "truth" of Rhett Butler's concern for Scarlett's future happiness and security, or the truth of philosophical or theological fictions.

As ever, Jesse

[ZackMartin]

The last is simply arguing from paradox, trivially dismissed, like asking if the statement "this statement is false" is true or false. It's not a statement, not a logical statement that is, as a logical statement must, by definition, be either true or false. And similarly the method of gaining all knowledge is not known, hence not knowledge, hence there is no epistemic burden on science to show that it is knowledge that can be obtained via science. This is the assumption that all questions can be answered that I read, you say incorrectly, from your posts. If this reading is incorrect, I apologize, but at the same time it's because that's what you said, independent of whether that was your intent.

These recursive paradoxes are often brushed over lightly in introductory logic courses, which is often all the logic instruction an undergraduate receives. But once their form is understood, they can be created with ease, and endlessly:

Tolerance of the intolerant. I've seen Nick use this one in an attempt to show that tolerance doesn't exist, and so escape charges of religious intolerance.

The above, lack of knowledge of what knowledge is. Endlessly debated, and thus, obviously, not knowledge.

Love directed toward those who hate love.

Sadistically torturing the masochist.

Then there are the classical examples:

A book listing all books that do not reference themselves outside their titles. Can it list itself? If it does, it should not, and if does not, it should.

A set of all sets that do not contain themselves. Is this set a member of itself? Then it must not be. But if it is not, it should be.

All of these formulations lose definition due to an infinitely recursive contradiction and are thus neither true nor false, but rather paradoxical. Earlier, Zack confused recursive paradox with reductio. The distinction is that the chain of a reductio argument must end. He confused recursive paradox with recursive proofs, a generalization of inductive proofs patterned after the natural numbers, taking advantage of unique successors and minimal elements in all subsets.

I'm not the one who is confused here, you are. You are confusing a self-contradictory sentence like "This sentence is false" with a self-defeating claim.

"This sentence is false" cannot be proven true or false.

"All knowledge comes from science", given the further premises that (1) we know that, and (2) Science can't demonstrate that particular claim, can be proven false. The chain of the "reductio" ends here.

If P implies not-P and not-P implies P, then we have a contradiction which cannot be proven true or false. But P->~P without ~P->P, then we can prove falsehood but not truth, and hence no complete contradiction; likewise, ~P->P without P->~P, then we can prove truth but not falsehood, and no complete contradiction either.

Even Russell's paradox, "A set of all sets that do not contain themselves. Is this set a member of itself? Then it must not be. But if it is not, it should be." isn't like "This sentence is false", in that normally the response to it is to deny one of the axioms necessary to formulate it. That's how we get Zermelo-Fraenkel out of naive set theory - by restricting the axiom of comprehension. (And various alternative set theories achieve the same end in different ways.) So this is not some "useless" case of infinite recursion, but rather an argument that naive set theory is self-defeating, and it is a historically important argument in developing contemporary set theories.

You're so confused you're falsely accusing me of confusion when the confusion is in fact yours.

[lao tzu]

Even Russell's paradox, "A set of all sets that do not contain themselves. Is this set a member of itself? Then it must not be. But if it is not, it should be." isn't like "This sentence is false", in that normally the response to it is to deny one of the axioms necessary to formulate it.

The two are exactly equivalent, and addressed in the exact same manner, the former by denying the statement is a statement, and the latter by denying the set is a set.

I was right the first time. We are done here.

[ZackMartin]

Why do you (theists) feel that you need to assign an "answer" to an unknown....to the point that you end up believing in another unknown (god)? Do you feel that you must have an answer to all questions in life? What about the extinction of the dinosaurs? Do you make yourself believe in one particular theory just to avoid not having "an" answer?

I don't know what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs either, but this is not something I feel that I "must" have an answer for to the point of just choosing one theory over another just to have "an answer." What is wrong with admitting that you don't have an answer for something? That is the only intellectually honest answer. Even though I don't "know" how we came to be, I obviously don't believe a god created us, because I have not been convinced that a god even exists to have done anything. Prove god exists first, and then I'll give consideration to the claim that "he" created us.

If God is the answer, what is the question?

You are obviously acquainted with "cosmological argument" thinking - God is necessary to explain the existence of the universe. I believe in God, and I do believe God created the universe, but I don't believe the existence of the universe needs to be explained. My reasons for believing in God have nothing to do with any need to explain the universe's existence, because I don't feel any such need.

My beliefs don't start with God. I start with the idea that morality is real, objective, transcendent; and that reality is fundamentally moral, and that in whichever ways it currently appears not to be, that is a temporary situation. And I start with the idea that mind is endless, and that I can never cease to exist, nor can anyone else. And given those ideas as a background - none of which were adopted as an explanation of the existence of anything - I feel the existence of God makes more sense than the non-existence of God.

But neither God, nor anything else I believe in, is meant as a causal explanation of the existence of anything. Causal explanations don't interest me particularly. Sure, sometimes they are useful (in everyday life, in science, and so forth), and I have no problem with them on those occasions, but I'm not interested in causation at a metaphysical level. To me, causation is nothing more than a repeated pattern in observation. Where the pattern of causation is absent, that is no gaping metaphysical hole, just a lack of a pattern.

[ZackMartin]

The two are exactly equivalent, and addressed in the exact same manner, the former by denying the statement is a statement, and the latter by denying the set is a set.

I was right the first time. We are done here.

You were wrong the first time and you are still wrong. The fact that they are "addressed" shows that they aren't illegitimate arguments at all, but important steps in development of our conceptual thought.

[shunyadragon]

Why define "objective" in that way? Why the clause "acquired from the observations of the physical world"? Why can't things other than that be objective?

Here's my definition of objective: "A proposition is objective if it is capable of being true or false independently of our individual or collective belief in its truth or falsehood"

I think my definition is better (1) it doesn't have any clauses for "observation" or "physical" - while those aspects can help make something objective, I don't think it is demonstrated that they are essential to objectivity (2) "independent of our beliefs" is a more precise term than "independent of the mind", and I think the essential element of objectivity is that our believing something has no bearing on its truth - facts about minds can still be objective, so long as those facts are true or false independent of our own belief in them.

I think people's beliefs can still be objective, in two ways: (1) the object of their belief is an objective proposition - in this case, we can legitimately ask whether their belief corresponds to reality or not (2) a proposition can state whether someone believes something or not - I think "Fred believes in Christianity" can be objectively true or false, whether or not "Christianity" is. Although it is relative to Fred's beliefs, it is not relative to yours or mine or your culture or my culture or Fred's culture.

Maybe then I should phrase the definition as: "A proposition is objective if it is capable of being true or false independently of individual or collective belief in its truth or falsehood, other than any belief the proposition directly refers to". So "Fred believes X" is objective even though it is dependent on Fred's belief, for it directly refers to Fred's belief; but the point is, it is not dependent on anyone's belief other than Fred.

So I think you need to think more about precisely how "subjective" and "objective" should be defined.

No problem . . .

http://www.answers.com/topic/objective-3

Objective - Of or having to do with a material object.
Having actual existence or reality.
Uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices: an objective critic. See synonyms at fair1.
Based on observable phenomena; presented factually: an objective appraisal.

© source where applicable

http://www.answers.com/topic/subjective

subjective - Proceeding from or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world: a subjective decision.
Particular to a given person; personal: subjective experience.

© source where applicable

I think the cosmological arguments for the existence of God are pretty poor. So to me, judging the value of philosophical argumentation on the basis of them is less than entirely fair, since it is judging philosophy based on one of its weaker arguments. If you are going to judge something, you should choose the best example of it to judge, not one of the not so good ones.

I'm not sure if the "logical positivism is false" argument is the best argument philosophy has to offer, but it is certainly better than the cosmological argument in my opinion.

Take any one of the many theist arguments for the existence of God. They all have similar problems in that the assumptions, and the belief that the conclusions necessarily follow, are not generally accepted outside the theist belief that proposed the arguments. They have no consistently testable qualitties

Some assumptions can be indubitable yet untestable.

Some maybe, but generally in philosophy, many are not indubitable nor testable.

A good example is the assumption "Self-defeating theories are to be rejected" - i.e. if a theory when applied to itself implies it's own falsehood, or meaninglessness, or that it ought to be rejected - then that theory itself must be rejected. I don't believe there is any real doubt about the truth of this assumption - but how to test it? It can't be tested through sense experience.

I am not sure how you would be proposing a theory in terms of one that could not be tested? In philosophy I do not believe theories and hypotheses are considered in logic. In Science obvious " "Self-defeating theories" have no merit to be seriously considered in the first place. I do not consider this a coherent example.

I'd also dispute the claim "Third, the assumption that our senses are reasonably reliable is testable." How do you test that assumption? By relying on your senses. But that's circular - you are testing the claim with a test that only works if the claim is true. So we can't test this claim using our senses. I think this claim also belongs to the category of an indubitable but untestable assumption.

Please note, I use 'reasonably reliable.' , which is the basis of 'reliablism,' which is a well grounded philosophy. Yes we can by separating the tests and experiments. What this means is that our senses can be independently tested through observation and experiments, independently over time and in different parts of the globe and come up with independent results. The testability is the independence of the tests in time and space.

To take the contrary would to assume a sort of metaphysical monism, like believed by Hindus.

This is for a working comparison between philosophy and science, and how they work differently.

[magellan004]

I haven't read through this whole thread so I hope I am not repeating anyone else's thoughts:

As an atheist, I have not really studied evolution, so I can't say that I know that much about it to say that I necessarily ascribe to it.

Why do you (theists) feel that you need to assign an "answer" to an unknown....to the point that you end up believing in another unknown (god)? Do you feel that you must have an answer to all questions in life? What about the extinction of the dinosaurs? Do you make yourself believe in one particular theory just to avoid not having "an" answer?

I don't know what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs either, but this is not something I feel that I "must" have an answer for to the point of just choosing one theory over another just to have "an answer." What is wrong with admitting that you don't have an answer for something? That is the only intellectually honest answer. Even though I don't "know" how we came to be, I obviously don't believe a god created us, because I have not been convinced that a god even exists to have done anything. Prove god exists first, and then I'll give consideration to the claim that "he" created us.

Are you saying that because you don't know how we came to be that , therefore, no one else knows?

Magellan

[magellan004]

Here's an example of someone believing something they don't know.

Tom is a schoolboy. His maths teacher is Mr. Johnson. Tom hates Mr. Johnson. Now one day, Tom is in the bathroom stall, and he sees written on the wall "Mr. Johnson is cheating on his wife with a schoolgirl". Tom believes this. Does Tom have a good reason to believe this? No - it may or may not be true, but it is not a justified belief, because anonymous writings on bathroom walls are not reliable sources of information, and it is also likely that his belief is motivated for his dislike for Mr. Johnson.

A few weeks later, Mr. Johnson isn't at school one day. They have a substitute teacher. Everyone wonders what is going on, but no one knows. The following day, in the morning paper, Tom reads the headline: "Local teacher arrested for affair with student", and yes it is about Mr. Johnson. And let's suppose Mr. Johnson confesses and goes on to plead guilty to the charges. So it turns out, Tom's belief was true.

But, this is the thing: although Tom believed that Mr. Johnson was a lecherous teacher, and his belief happened to be true, it was not knowledge as long as it was not based on unreliable sources or reasoning. Tom didn't actually know Mr. Johnson was a lecherous teacher until he read it in the newspaper; he believed it before he knew it.

To know it, I don't think it is necessary that Tom had a perfectly reliable source of information - the newspaper is not perfectly reliable, but it is reasonably reliable, while anonymous scribblings on bathroom walls are not. So to know something, you must believe it, it must be true, and you must have at least decent reasons for believing it. The first two elements without the third, you may have a true belief, but you don't have knowledge.

You are essentially using the Agnostic argument 'I know that you do not know.'
You say 'Tom believes this. Does Tom have a good reason to believe this? No... ' and 'So to know something ... you must have at least decent reasons for believing it.'

You are the judge of what other people know. If a good reason is not manifest to you, even though the good reason might be manifest to the other person, then they do not know. Once you find a good reason, then all of a sudden They Know.

The way little monkey defined (by drawing the Venn diagram) knowledge , knowledge is something that only exists in people's minds. There is no 'outside/absolute' test of knowledge. A case in point - Lao Tzu is denying that you know . From his point of view you do not know. I think you would be very silly to accept his assessment of your knowledge.

Magellan

[ZackMartin]

You are essentially using the Agnostic argument 'I know that you do not know.'
You say 'Tom believes this. Does Tom have a good reason to believe this? No... ' and 'So to know something ... you must have at least decent reasons for believing it.'

You are the judge of what other people know. If a good reason is not manifest to you, even though the good reason might be manifest to the other person, then they do not know. Once you find a good reason, then all of a sudden They Know.

Imagine that a few years later, Tom is looking back on the events of his school days, older and wiser. He might himself come to the conclusion that he didn't know that Mr. Johnson was lecherous - he might, with greater maturity and distance from the events, be able to acknowledge that while his belief was true, his reasons for his belief were rather poor, and so his belief was only true by accident, and thus not real knowledge.

Looking at the case of the agnostic - not all agnostics say that. Some simply say "I know I don't know, but I don't know whether or not you know" - and it's hard to object to that. Some make a much stronger claim "I don't know whether it's true, and you don't know either". And I agree with you that claim is rather shaky - if they can't know all your reasons, how can they be sure you might not have good ones of which they are unaware? But not all claims about other people's knowledge are so shaky. Back to the Tom example - if he told you "I believed Mr. Johnson was guilty, and it turned out he in fact was, but I didn't know it, even though I thought I did" - in that scenario, believing that Tom didn't know what he once thought he did is just as reasonable for you as it is for him.

The way little monkey defined (by drawing the Venn diagram) knowledge , knowledge is something that only exists in people's minds. There is no 'outside/absolute' test of knowledge. A case in point - Lao Tzu is denying that you know . From his point of view you do not know. I think you would be very silly to accept his assessment of your knowledge.

Knowledge is a relation between what's in our minds and what's in reality. It requires (1) something in our minds [belief]; (2) something in reality [truth]; (3) the right type of relationship between them [justification]. So the idea that claims of knowledge are purely subjective are false. We can certainly have beliefs about other people's knowledge, and those beliefs can be right or wrong (in any one of those three dimensions I've mentioned, or in all of them.) But our knowledge of the knowledge of others is limited - to have knowledge of (others) knowledge, we need to know their minds, know reality, and know the relationship between their minds and reality (what justification their beliefs have). That's a hard standard to meet, but it's easiest when we can rely on other's accounts of what they believe, and what reasons they have for believing what they believe - but the issues of truth (correspondence to reality), and the rational evaluation of their reasons, we still have to do for ourselves.

[magellan004]

Imagine that a few years later, Tom is looking back on the events of his school days, older and wiser. He might himself come to the conclusion that he didn't know that Mr. Johnson was lecherous - he might, with greater maturity and distance from the events, be able to acknowledge that while his belief was true, his reasons for his belief were rather poor, and so his belief was only true by accident, and thus not real knowledge.

Looking at the case of the agnostic - not all agnostics say that. Some simply say "I know I don't know, but I don't know whether or not you know" - and it's hard to object to that. Some make a much stronger claim "I don't know whether it's true, and you don't know either". And I agree with you that claim is rather shaky - if they can't know all your reasons, how can they be sure you might not have good ones of which they are unaware? But not all claims about other people's knowledge are so shaky. Back to the Tom example - if he told you "I believed Mr. Johnson was guilty, and it turned out he in fact was, but I didn't know it, even though I thought I did" - in that scenario, believing that Tom didn't know what he once thought he did is just as reasonable for you as it is for him.

Knowledge is a relation between what's in our minds and what's in reality. It requires (1) something in our minds [belief]; (2) something in reality [truth]; (3) the right type of relationship between them [justification]. So the idea that claims of knowledge are purely subjective are false. We can certainly have beliefs about other people's knowledge, and those beliefs can be right or wrong (in any one of those three dimensions I've mentioned, or in all of them.) But our knowledge of the knowledge of others is limited - to have knowledge of (others) knowledge, we need to know their minds, know reality, and know the relationship between their minds and reality (what justification their beliefs have). That's a hard standard to meet, but it's easiest when we can rely on other's accounts of what they believe, and what reasons they have for believing what they believe - but the issues of truth (correspondence to reality), and the rational evaluation of their reasons, we still have to do for ourselves.

Then knowledge is unknowable - which is paradoxical or contradictory. Unless you can personally give an example of something you think you know but that doesn't meet the standard you laid out, what you think you know and what you do know will always be the same.

Agnostic do deny knowledge. If I say 'I know' and someone says 'I don't know whether you do' they are denying what I know. I might as well say to them 'Yes, you do know and you pretend that you don't know.' or 'I am not sure that you don't know'. That sort of second guessing people is useless. I could be proved wrong by finding an agnostic who says 'I don't know but you do know.'

As far as Tom's hindsight goes, there is no reason to think what we remember today is more accurate than what we knew yesterday. Changing our mind does not mean that we didn't once know. All it means is that things have changed.

I understand what you are saying about knowledge - that it somehow exists outside of a person's knowing . I can accept that for Truth and morals, but Knowledge is purely connected with consciousness. If you are unaware of 'Concept X' then Concept X is redundant.


Magellan

[pancreasman]

Imagine that a few years later, Tom is looking back on the events of his school days, older and wiser. He might himself come to the conclusion that he didn't know that Mr. Johnson was lecherous - he might, with greater maturity and distance from the events, be able to acknowledge that while his belief was true, his reasons for his belief were rather poor, and so his belief was only true by accident, and thus not real knowledge.

Looking at the case of the agnostic - not all agnostics say that. Some simply say "I know I don't know, but I don't know whether or not you know" - and it's hard to object to that. Some make a much stronger claim "I don't know whether it's true, and you don't know either". And I agree with you that claim is rather shaky - if they can't know all your reasons, how can they be sure you might not have good ones of which they are unaware? But not all claims about other people's knowledge are so shaky. Back to the Tom example - if he told you "I believed Mr. Johnson was guilty, and it turned out he in fact was, but I didn't know it, even though I thought I did" - in that scenario, believing that Tom didn't know what he once thought he did is just as reasonable for you as it is for him.

Knowledge is a relation between what's in our minds and what's in reality. It requires (1) something in our minds [belief]; (2) something in reality [truth]; (3) the right type of relationship between them [justification]. So the idea that claims of knowledge are purely subjective are false. We can certainly have beliefs about other people's knowledge, and those beliefs can be right or wrong (in any one of those three dimensions I've mentioned, or in all of them.) But our knowledge of the knowledge of others is limited - to have knowledge of (others) knowledge, we need to know their minds, know reality, and know the relationship between their minds and reality (what justification their beliefs have). That's a hard standard to meet, but it's easiest when we can rely on other's accounts of what they believe, and what reasons they have for believing what they believe - but the issues of truth (correspondence to reality), and the rational evaluation of their reasons, we still have to do for ourselves.

I don't disagree with any of this. Surely we have all experienced being utterly convinced that a certain proposition is true. In our shorthand version, we say we KNOW it's true. Later, as more information becomes available we recognize that our conviction was misplaced, that we were in error, that we didn't really KNOW what we thought we did. I have made mistakes about what I thought I knew. Historically, we have seen people totally convinced of the truth of a proposition, even willing to die for it, which is either in contradiction to something somebody else claims absolute knowledge about or simply false as demonstrated by the evidence.

I've been wrong about what I thought I knew.
At the time I was wrong I was totally convinced I was right.
Historically, I've seen claims of certain knowledge be wrong or contradictory.
Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that claims of certain knowledge go too far.

Certainly we can be justified in believing something. Certainly we can have a high degree of confidence in some things we know, but we need to watch out for the danger of hubris.

[magellan004]

Saying 'I know that I didn't know' does not lend any weight to the notion that knowledge exists outside of 'I think'.

Magellan

[ZackMartin]

Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that claims of certain knowledge go too far.

I can make a long list of things I believe I know for certain to be true. None of them are particularly fascinating, they are all the kinds of boring facts that absolutely everyone agrees on (e.g. "At least one mind exists", "The English language exists", "The colour red exists", "Time exists", "Space exists", "Space has three observable dimensions", "1+1=2"). So I'd agree that interesting claims of certain knowledge go too far, but boring and trivial ones are quite respectable.

[shunyadragon]

I can make a long list of things I believe I know for certain to be true. None of them are particularly fascinating, they are all the kinds of boring facts that absolutely everyone agrees on (e.g. "At least one mind exists", "The English language exists", "The colour red exists", "Time exists", "Space exists", "Space has three observable dimensions", "1+1=2"). So I'd agree that interesting claims of certain knowledge go too far, but boring and trivial ones are quite respectable.

At least one mind exists? At least billions of minds exist.

Ask seer,and would tell you can be certain that anything is true.

[ZackMartin]

At least one mind exists? At least billions of minds exist.

If at least billions of minds exist, then at least one mind exists.

Some people claim the existence of other minds can't be known for certain. I claim that it can. But even those who claim it can't must agree that the existence of at least one mind can be known for certain.