Is exhaustive knowledge required for knowledge?

[Civbert]

Originally posted by WrittenFromUtopia
I would like to make one closing post in this thread, if I may....

Even if I disagree with you on some points - that was very well said.

Well done!

 

[ChristianTrader]

Originally posted by Ron

No my implied point is that someone can claim knowledge and in fact be wrong...

ChistianTrader,

That might have been what you wanted to communicate but what you actually wrote was quite different than what you now say you intended to wrote. I was dealing with what you wrote, not what you thought you were writing.

You wrote: "You can know your girlfriend and still make mistakes in predictions about what she will do in situation X."

You did not write: "You can claim to know your girlfriend and still makes mistakes.... because in fact you might be wrong about "knowing" her..."

The rest of your post builds upon your re-defining what you actually wrote the first time.

Ron

You can know your girlfriend and still make mistakes about what she will do in certain situations, unless you want to claim that knowing a person implies exhaustive knowledge. Without exhaustive knowledge, mistakes can be made. So as written in the post above, I stand by this statement.

CT

 

[Civbert]

Originally posted by ChristianTrader

Originally posted by Ron

No my implied point is that someone can claim knowledge and in fact be wrong...

ChistianTrader,

That might have been what you wanted to communicate but what you actually wrote was quite different than what you now say you intended to wrote. I was dealing with what you wrote, not what you thought you were writing.

You wrote: "You can know your girlfriend and still make mistakes in predictions about what she will do in situation X."

You did not write: "You can claim to know your girlfriend and still makes mistakes.... because in fact you might be wrong about "knowing" her..."

The rest of your post builds upon your re-defining what you actually wrote the first time.

Ron

You can know your girlfriend and still make mistakes about what she will do in certain situations, unless you want to claim that knowing a person implies exhaustive knowledge. Without exhaustive knowledge, mistakes can be made. So as written in the post above, I stand by this statement.

CT

You're not wrong - not matter what other's say. You're just using a different definition of "know".

It's a common in philosophy to say that given the definition of knowledge as "justified true belief", the no false proposition is knowledge.

But the problem is it seems to be contray to a common understanding of what "know" means; that is - what we know are things we believe are reasonably true. With this definition, we can be mistaken, and claim to know something that is actually false. And who is Ron or myself to say you didn't know something just because we think it's false. Maybe we're wrong and you're right. And that would mean you know and we don't. Or I just think I know. Or I know, but I don't know I know.

The problem with saying you can not know a falsehood is that makes it hard to know what you think you know. What you think you know, you may not, in fact, know. Know what I mean? Given that human reason is faulty, then how can we tell when we are mistaken about what we think we know? It gets kind of disturbing if you only think you know something when you don't actually know something! Oy vey!!

So I am sympathetic with you view of know and knowledge. I'm not sure I agree with it, but that does not mean my definition is wrong and your's is right. But if no falsehood is knowledge, then maybe knowledge and knowing are two separate things. Because it is self-evident that what we think we know can be false. And if we can't be sure about what we know, why bother saying we know what we think we know? Ya know?

 

[Ron]

You can know your girlfriend and still make mistakes about what she will do in certain situations, unless you want to claim that knowing a person implies exhaustive knowledge. Without exhaustive knowledge, mistakes can be made. So as written in the post above, I stand by this statement..

Which brings us full circle, CT. Context is everything. Your first statement was:

"œIt 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."

As I originally pointed out, you´re equivocating over what is said to be known. You simply wanted to make the point that one can know X without infallibly knowing X. You then went on to try to make this point by saying one can know his girlfriend yet fallibly because he does not know her actions infallibly. Well, that´s to equivocate over that which is said to be "œknown." Your girlfriend is X and her actions are Y. Consequently, you do not demonstrate that one does not know his girlfriend infallibly because he doesn´t know her actions infallibly! The reason being, the actions are not the girlfriend! If someone doesn't know his girlfriend's actions, it means just that: he doesn't know his girlfriend's actions. This does not imply that there's a want of knowing the girlfriend or that one knows his girlfriend fallibly.

You're now saying most clearly by your most recent statement that you can know X and be wrong about Y but this is not what you originally argued, which was you can know your girlfriend-X and be wrong about her --your girlfriend -- X, which is not her actions. So, in trying to show that one can be wrong about X, you pointed not to X but to Y, the actions of X.

Ron

 

[WrittenFromUtopia]

Originally posted by Civbert

Originally posted by WrittenFromUtopia
I would like to make one closing post in this thread, if I may....

Even if I disagree with you on some points - that was very well said.

Well done!