mgeoffriau
Puritan Board Freshman
I think that if you are concluding that we cannot know people, then you have destroyed the common usage of the word.
Is exhaustive knowledge required for knowledge?
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WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
I dunno, I feel like I'm discussing "is exhaustive knowledge required for knowledge" and how that applies to God or persons or "things." I am not sure what common usage has to do with anything in a Philosophical discussion.
mgeoffriau
Puritan Board Freshman
As I stated before, I think it is all but impossible to make language intelligible without relying on common usage. You could, I suppose, fix the denotative definitions of words, but that is ultimately self-defeating, as you would be required to use other words to fix the definitions.
If you have another possible way for keeping language from becoming absurd, please explain.
WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
How much time do you spend every week in philosophical debate? How you utilize language is an extremely important aspect of philosophical dialogue. Simply relying on "common usage" of words will get you nowhere with any serious students of philosophy, in my opinion and in my experience. You have to be very "careful" with how you use words. For example, how would you interpret the word "power" or "progress"? In "common usage", these words would seem to have obvious meanings, but in philosophy, they are LOADED words, and cannot be thrown around flippantly.
mgeoffriau
Puritan Board Freshman
Still wondering what your theory of language is.
I'd say.....yes....and no.... you might learn something potentially, that is, it may be a justified true belief, but only in-so-much as it's justified by Scripture.
One issue of "justifying" is do you personally have to justify it by deducing it from Scripture, or does it mean it has to be justifiable from Scripture. Maybe something in between.... OK, I'll say you can learn through the words of another - if what they are telling you is the "Gospel" truth. It's may be somewhat uncertain, but technically, certainty is not part of knowing - certainty is a desired effect of justifying what we know. In this case, the knowledge is justified, but not by the hearer, but by the fact it's Gospel. (I imagine that was confusing...but there you are...and I'm not certain about it either..
)I don't disagree really. But I don't say you can't know a person, I'd say that to know a person means to know *about* the person. What you know may be his words, his history, his favorite food, his character..etc.
In generally, we think about "knowing" people only because we have spent time with them, but I think that's not required. Sometime people will say they know someone just on the basis of having met them, and being able to recall his name and face - "yes, I know Fred. I met him at that Christmas Party two months ago". And so that's what I often assume when they say they know Fred.
But at other times people mean they have spent much time talking to that person and observing how he does things - "I know Frank, he's my uncle, and I lived with his family and went on vacations with them, and he taught me how to fish, and I helped him write his dissertation".
Either way, it amounts to knowledge "about" that person - often amounting to familiarity due to such an accumulation of knowledge that is based on memories, but it's still propositional. We might never express that knowledge in propositional form, but it's still the same thing - knowledge about him.
But the best way to know a man, is for him to talk to you about what he believes, what he thinks is true, about what he his ethics and morals are, what his plans are, his goals, his desires, his loves. You can spend years with a person and not know much about them, and spend an hour chatting to a stranger on-line and know more about him then his friends do.
And so God speaks to us about himself through Scripture and we know Him. We know Him like a true lover, because we know what He thinks about the deepest and most important things. We know God because we know what he wants from us, obedience, and what He did for us by His sacrifice on the cross. We know God because he gave us the Spirit to make us understand his Word and believe it. We know God better then we know ourselves because we a mutible and incossitent where He is perfect, immutible, and clear in the Word.
Maybe even more important then knowing the common usage of a word, it to understand how a person is using the word in a particular instance. And even more, how the Bible is using the word in a particular verse. We start with knowledge of the different usages of a word (common, philosophical, colloquial, metaphorical(?), what ever it can mean) and then try the figure out how the word is being used at the time we encounter it in a conversation or piece of text. Does he mean "certainty, familiarity, justified true belief, or even in the marital sense used often in Scripture. Adam knew Eve.
Interesting, when God *knows* His people, it is often like being exposed to a bright light for the people He knows. It's more like a action than a state of having knowledge. When God knows you, He reveals himself to you. But I'm not sure that works both ways. ... Just something to think about.
mgeoffriau
Puritan Board Freshman
Absolutely. I should explain that when I say "common usage," I am not simply saying whatever definition is most common. It obviously should include consideration for the speaker, the context, the audience, etc. In fact, ordinary language theory isn't all that different from good biblical hermeneutics when you think about it.
WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
Hermeneutics is a branch of Philosophy, which deals with just this: language usage in context.
JohnV
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
Originally posted by Civbert
I'd say.....yes....and no.... you might learn something potentially, that is, it may be a justified true belief, but only in-so-much as it's justified by Scripture.
One issue of "justifying" is do you personally have to justify it by deducing it from Scripture, or does it mean it has to be justifiable from Scripture. Maybe something in between.... OK, I'll say you can learn through the words of another - if what they are telling you is the "Gospel" truth. It's may be somewhat uncertain, but technically, certainty is not part of knowing - certainty is a desired effect of justifying what we know. In this case, the knowledge is justified, but not by the hearer, but by the fact it's Gospel. (I imagine that was confusing...but there you are...and I'm not certain about it either..
How do I know this. Is this not your opinion? Or is it verified in the Word of God?
In other words, who is it that tells me what God says to be true? Must I read it for myself, and that only? Or may I trust another to tell me what God says too? And who may that be? Is it someone especially sent by God ( ordained ), or someone who is in himself an expert in the field of epistemolgy?
It's my opinion so far. I think it's pretty good opinion, but I'm kinda iffy on some parts. Some of it may not be "knowable" based on my criteria for testing knowledge for epistemic justification.Originally posted by JohnV
Originally posted by Civbert
I'd say.....yes....and no.... you might learn something potentially, that is, it may be a justified true belief, but only in-so-much as it's justified by Scripture.
One issue of "justifying" is do you personally have to justify it by deducing it from Scripture, or does it mean it has to be justifiable from Scripture. Maybe something in between.... OK, I'll say you can learn through the words of another - if what they are telling you is the "Gospel" truth. It's may be somewhat uncertain, but technically, certainty is not part of knowing - certainty is a desired effect of justifying what we know. In this case, the knowledge is justified, but not by the hearer, but by the fact it's Gospel. (I imagine that was confusing...but there you are...and I'm not certain about it either..
How do I know this. Is this not your opinion? Or is it verified in the Word of God?
That part we can agree on I think. The Holy Spirit tells us - do you agree? Who to trust, that's still a quesiton of faith. We are so completely dependenant on God, that everything we believe, true or false, be they propositions we find in in the Bible, or the ones we hear from other men, depend on the Holy Spirit for us to know them correctly. We do our best to reason correctly, and understand fully, but it all comes down to God's will for us to know - and so faith always comes before knowledge.
ChristianTrader
Puritan Board Graduate
It seems that you are using the word "know" to imply something infallible. That is not the usual way the word is used in philosophy or elsewhere. Infallibly know is the top of the range of the word's use but not the only use. You can know your girlfriend and still make mistakes in predictions about what she will do in situation X.
ChristianTrader
Puritan Board Graduate
Where exactly do I imply that to know who a person is and how they might act are synonomous?
Also to be fair, "knowing who she is" is one of the most ambigious statements that I have seen you use. I'm kinda shocked.
I used the phrase, "know a person". That does not unpack into, "know who she/he is". I know Brad Pitt is a movie star but I would never say that I know Brad Pitt.
For the time being, it may be helpful to let me interact with Gabe and then I can converse with you and your esoteric view of knowledge and related issues at a later point.
JohnV
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
Why should I not believe you? Because you are no authority. The only authority I can believe is Scripture. You even do not have an exception for ministers who are ordained to preach the Word. You think it might be OK, but you do not defend it like the Word of God commands it.
All you have authority for is to give me your opinion. I would not be very wise if I gave your opinion more credit than you do.
All you have authority for is to give me your opinion. I would not be very wise if I gave your opinion more credit than you do.
Of course not. What's your point. What am I not defending exactly?
We were talking about how we know God. No mans words are justified true statements (i.e. knowledge) on the basis of his position, title, or office in the Church. Be he a minister or elder, his words are only justified by adherence to Scripture - not title or position. This does not mean you can not trust him, but you may not blindly assume his words are Gospel. And your trust should not be based on his authority, but only his record for teaching God Word as fact. Men will always disappoint you, you can only depend on God.
(You're not Catholic are you? If you are, we need to do some back-tracking.)
[Edited on 3-17-2006 by Civbert]
JohnV
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
No, I am not Catholic. But I have been accused of it before, as well as of other things.
What I meant by not defending the ministry of the gospel was that you defend Scripture as your authority, but you do not believe what it says about that authority. The Spirit also works through the preaching of the Word: that is what that same Word says about the men whose position is that of being as the mouth of God to the people. That is how God is made known to His people.
That is what makes some of these things so odious to me. I am forever cured of any danger of being a Presuppositionalist in the sense of post Van Tillian presuppositionalism. And the ones who cured me were the most ardent followers of it. The very things that turned Dr. Van Til so vehemently against the "traditional method" have turned me from the present formal Presuppositionalism, and it is his ardent followers that made that known to me.
I want to bring back some of Dr. Van Til's first notions, the grounds that produced Presuppositionalism. I have already done so a little bit, with subtlety, but no one has noticed.
What I am saying is that it is one thing for you to say to me that I need not trust Dr. Van Til, because he is not the Bible; it is another to assert that Dr. Van Til is the grounding upon which we stand, and then not stand on it. You give me no other grounding than the Word of God; and even Dr. Van Til makes no authoritative claim for his own views other than that he was led to believe them. He makes no claim to special revelation from God to supersede the Church's authority. And the churches have not granted his views that kind of authority either. Yet it has happened that I have been accused of sin for no other wrong than that of not being a presuppositionalist formally, not to mention being physically alienated from the temporal and visible church over the very issue of authority.
No, I am not Catholic. And there is no present danger that I will become so, nor to become the modern equivalent of it. The very things which Dr. Van Til claims to have driven him to Presuppositionalism have driven me from it: self-asserting authority; turning apologetics into cold hard factualism; leaving behind the self-attesting person of Christ; undermining the sufficiency and pespicuity of Scripture; and many more. Just refer to "My Credo", and look at the nine ( or so ) items on the list that he finds deficient in the "traditional method", and see if any apply to the modern, and even your, presuppositional method. If it doesn't scare you, then you have not yet reached the conclusions that you claim to have reached.
My parents and grandparents would not have understood the issues of our day, being only educated to primary levels. But they would clearly have understood the declaration, "God is logic" and been aghast at it. I share that shock with them. Similarly, they would not have understood all the things talked about in this thread, but they would have been stunned at the assertion that we cannot know God. I share that sentiment with them.
[Edited on 3-18-2006 by JohnV]
Not sure that follows. If I say I believe in the authority of Scripture, then I believe in the authority that Scripture ascribes to itself.
Yes, through the preaching of the Word. Not the preaching of the words of men, but the Gospel. Unless you are speaking of some sort of extra-biblical revelation given through men - I don't know of any. Does Scripture support this idea, that anything can be added to the revelation of God in the Bible?
Scott Bushey
Puritanboard Commissioner
*Excuse this interuption*
We ARE Catholic! We are NOT Roman Catholic!
*Back to the scheduled program*
[Edited on 3-18-2006 by Scott Bushey]
Would that be because they are more familiar with the "Word" is God? If you think about it, that's just as strange a concept, but we've grown familiar with it, comfortable. But the word is Logos, which can be translated Logic just as well as Word as far as the verse making sense. Sounds strange, but it's not more than implying the a word is God. If John meant to say Jesus was God, why not use his name. But he used the term Logo. I think that means the there's much more to the term Logos than the word "word" in English connotes. And logic seems closer to the Greek logos in meaning.
JohnV
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
( I took you to mean Roman Catholic, Anthony. I thought about it as I was responding, realizing what Scott has added. I'm glad he clarified that for us. I fully agree. )
It would be for another reason, Anthony. They had a completely different mindset. The Bible reveals God to them, to they thought about God. The Scripture was true, and it was true about God and us, about the history of man and God's relation to man, about God's becoming man to die in our place. It was not about true propositions, but true propositions about the person of Christ and how He revealed the Father to us. It was about the witness of the third person of the Trinity in our hearts. There was nothing impersonal about it. It was personal through and through. It was a religion of loving God and our neighbour. Not just loving things about God, but loving God.
I have a unique background. My parents were immigrants, starting life all over in a strange land of a strange tongue. They, along with others, gathered as a church of believers. They had no formal education, no trained men for the eldership, no established church to join, but started out all on their own. The one thing they had was a well-grounded catechetical training, along with the memorization of the Psalms, and knowing the doctrines of the church, along with a good familiarity with church order. They all came with two trunks, and no more than $200, and their faith. They had a short time to live in a field house in order to find jobs and a place to settle, and then they had to get out to allow the next family to use the field house to settle themselves. In other words, they had to come with their sleeves rolled up, and they had nothing but the sure and certain assurance that God would keep them and uphold them. This faith kept them strong. It is this church that had no pretenses but the need to worship and work; these taught me the way of God.
That such a God was logic, as if "God is love" could easily be replaced by "God is logic" was unthinkable. Not that God wasn't completely consistent in truth; they surely believed He was fully consistent. But the word "logos" meant "word" in the personal sense, not "logic" in the impersonal sense. Such was not possible to them; not the God who walked with them through the hard times of living in a new land and making new roots for their children.
The difference is not in the translation of the word "logos" that they preferred, but in the manner of religion which they practiced.
Ron
Puritan Board Freshman
Ron Replied: Knowing who she is and supposing how she might act are two different things, CT.
CT Replies: Where exactly do I imply that to know who a person is and how they might act are synonomous?[/quote]
Your full quote was:
Your implied point was that knowledge can be fallible, which was underscored by your statement that one can "œknow" his girlfriend and still make mistakes about what she might do. From your statement, you communicated that one can know something false (hence fallibility of what is known). Yet you equivocated by moving from a knowledge of a person to a false belief about a person´s future action, which makes my last remark most appropriate for it stated that to know a person and to know how that person will act are two different things. Nonetheless, you decide. Were you equivocating over that which is known (person or action), or were you suggesting that a person may know something false, which undermines all divine prophecy and purpose. Maybe a combination of the two?
My esoteric view of knowledge? You believe that one can know something false and / or you equated knowing a person with foreknowing a person's actions, even falsely! We can get into whether essential properties of personhood are static or dynamic if you like; if they´re dynamic, then to not foreknow a future action has nothing to do with the real-time person at the time the foreknowledge is supposed.
Ron
ChristianTrader
Puritan Board Graduate
Your full quote was:
Your implied point was that knowledge can be fallible, which was underscored by your statement that one can "œknow" his girlfriend and still make mistakes about what she might do.
[/quote]
No my implied point is that someone can claim knowledge and in fact be wrong about it and move the point into the category of "not knowledge". Very few things can one infallibly know (or the way that you use the term knowledge).
On top of that one can know a person but not exhaustively knowing them. Which just implies that you can make mistakes when you venture beyond your range of knowledge.
No I didn't.
As I said, knowledge of someone doesn't imply exhaustive knowledge. Unless you want to make that claim, then I do not see where your argument is here.
I never implied otherwise, in my full or partial statement. They are related statements but not identical.
I obviously made the distinction between knowing a person (fallibly or infallibly) and knowing what they might do in the future (fallibly or infallibly).
As I have made crystal clear to you, one can claim knowledge about something not true, then find that the statement was not true, and recant the claim of knowledge.
I do not stutter when I write.
Again how can I equivocate with a word, when I do not imply that I am using it the same way in different parts of my statement?
There is a difference between claiming knowledge and having it. One must do a certain "duty" before claiming it but does not need to claim infallibility.
Why would I want to get into such a discussion?
CT
[Edited on 3-18-2006 by ChristianTrader]
WrittenFromUtopia
Puritan Board Graduate
I would like to make one closing post in this thread, if I may.
As to the notion that philosophers tend to neutralize the effectiveness of language in the removal of words from their common usage, I would have to -- still -- strongly disagree. I presumed, perhaps wrongly, that in a thread within a "Philosophy" forum, the normal way of discussing philosophical problems would apply.
A major "branch" of Philosophy, which almost all fields of the discipline will concede, is Hermeneutics; that is, the proper contextual use of language. In this case, we have the word "knowledge" to deal with. I concede fully that, in "normal usage", knowledge has a different meaning or usage than how I would like to see it being used within this discussion. When someone, in normal conversation, tells me that they "know" something, or that they "know" a person, I don't quibble over words and engage in philosophical debate -- at least, not always (Sometimes just for fun...).
However, in the context of philosophical discussion, one is obligated -- in my opinion -- to "play by the rules" and be courteous in how they both use language and understand another person's usage of it. How they interpret what someone says. Both parties in philosophical dialogue are obligated to respect one another, while at the same time, keep each other accountable insofar as how one uses words and how they apply those words and their meanings in dialogue.
In philosophical dialogue, words such as "good" or "power" carry a lot of linguistic "baggage". One cannot simply "throw around" such words in philosophical interactions and expect to "get away with" being flippant in their usage. They will get into a dry, analytical debate and lose the focus of whatever it was both parties intended to discuss in the first place. Because of such a philosophical environment that we face in our day and age (analytical and post-analytical, however you may see it), it is both beneficial and courteous to be "selective" in how one uses language.
In normal conversation, I would understand perfectly well what someone means, were they to state, "This is a good person." However, in philosophical dialogue, this statement would raise many questions. For example, how are you using the word "good." Utlity? Upright behavior? Attractive? Kind? What is it that makes such a person "good"? This, incidentally, is why I avoid the "good" and "evil" distinction in philosophical dialogue, when speaking in reference to Christianity. I prefer the terms righteousness and sinfulness. But, I digress...
In this discussion, I tried to bring across why I did not believe, philosophically speaking, one can "know" God; that is, that one can be "familiar" with God in the sense that we no longer marvel at His attributes or character. To put God into a box of knowledge is to either 1) Destroy God nihilistically (as Nietzsche would claim many "herd" Christians do, or 2) Make US on par with God or "a" God (or worse, more powerful than God, to know Him better than He knows Himself!).
Finally, I will close with a few selections from the second chapter of Louis Berkhof's Systematic Theology, where he states:
As to the notion that philosophers tend to neutralize the effectiveness of language in the removal of words from their common usage, I would have to -- still -- strongly disagree. I presumed, perhaps wrongly, that in a thread within a "Philosophy" forum, the normal way of discussing philosophical problems would apply.
A major "branch" of Philosophy, which almost all fields of the discipline will concede, is Hermeneutics; that is, the proper contextual use of language. In this case, we have the word "knowledge" to deal with. I concede fully that, in "normal usage", knowledge has a different meaning or usage than how I would like to see it being used within this discussion. When someone, in normal conversation, tells me that they "know" something, or that they "know" a person, I don't quibble over words and engage in philosophical debate -- at least, not always
(Sometimes just for fun...).However, in the context of philosophical discussion, one is obligated -- in my opinion -- to "play by the rules" and be courteous in how they both use language and understand another person's usage of it. How they interpret what someone says. Both parties in philosophical dialogue are obligated to respect one another, while at the same time, keep each other accountable insofar as how one uses words and how they apply those words and their meanings in dialogue.
In philosophical dialogue, words such as "good" or "power" carry a lot of linguistic "baggage". One cannot simply "throw around" such words in philosophical interactions and expect to "get away with" being flippant in their usage. They will get into a dry, analytical debate and lose the focus of whatever it was both parties intended to discuss in the first place. Because of such a philosophical environment that we face in our day and age (analytical and post-analytical, however you may see it), it is both beneficial and courteous to be "selective" in how one uses language.
In normal conversation, I would understand perfectly well what someone means, were they to state, "This is a good person." However, in philosophical dialogue, this statement would raise many questions. For example, how are you using the word "good." Utlity? Upright behavior? Attractive? Kind? What is it that makes such a person "good"? This, incidentally, is why I avoid the "good" and "evil" distinction in philosophical dialogue, when speaking in reference to Christianity. I prefer the terms righteousness and sinfulness. But, I digress...
In this discussion, I tried to bring across why I did not believe, philosophically speaking, one can "know" God; that is, that one can be "familiar" with God in the sense that we no longer marvel at His attributes or character. To put God into a box of knowledge is to either 1) Destroy God nihilistically (as Nietzsche would claim many "herd" Christians do, or 2) Make US on par with God or "a" God (or worse, more powerful than God, to know Him better than He knows Himself!).
Finally, I will close with a few selections from the second chapter of Louis Berkhof's Systematic Theology, where he states:
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