I have a suspicion that if there is a type of knowing that merits a capital letter (a different spelling) then you already acknowledge that it's not knowing, but something different. But if you are talking about something different to knowing when you talk about Knowing, then what do you reveal about knowledge?
The author of the SEP entry on Descartes's Epistemology thinks that it is helpful to split knowing into two kinds: the defeasible kind (knowing) and the indefeasible kind (Knowing).
I'm puzzled as to why he would do this. Descartes was, presumably, only talking about one kind of knowing - or at least, he thought he was. I don't remember him ever saying that the demon only wrecks one kind of knowledge, but it's OK - there's this other kind of knowledge out there.
The thing I find weirdest about this knowing/Knowing distinction, is why anyone would think that such a conceptual division could be explanatory. Obviously this person must think the split is intuitive and explanatory, otherwise they wouldn't have done it. But what motivates them to split the concepts, rather than decide they've screwed up and need to start again?
I guess the answer is pretty easy. The temptation to make the distinction between two kinds of knowledge lies in our intuition that we often say we know things like football scores, which bus goes near our flat in the evenings, and so forth, but which don't survive the method of sceptical doubt.
Since we want to continue to describe this ordinary stuff as knowledge, even though it can be doubted, then we need a weak concept of knowledge. But weak knowledge isn't everything - there is the second kind of knowing, that does survive sceptical doubt. That's the kind of Knowledge we really want. So, there are two kinds of knowledge.
Note that Descartes didn't make this distinction. As far as he was concerned, if you could doubt it then you couldn't know it. In order to preserve knowledge (with a small "k"), he had to invoke a benevolent God who would ensure that we weren't fooled about ordinary things. He didn't split knowledge into two varieties.
And nor should he have. We can't solve the problem of knowing by conjuring a new concept (not unless discovery of a sceptical argument creates a new class of knowledge). We're in the business of explaining and understanding the concepts we have - we can't just create new concepts to resolve these conceptual difficulties.
When Descartes talks about certainty, he at least believes he is talking about knowing. If he thought he was talking about a better, rarefied form of Knowing, then he wouldn't have written the Meditations as a manual for acquiring proper knowledge, but as an account of his amazing discovery of something called Knowledge (like knowledge, but Better).
You can post a comment - or join discussion at the sixteenvoices google group. Sign up today!
Showing posts with label knowledge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label knowledge. Show all posts
10 January 2008
08 January 2008
Shouldn't knowledge be described, not defined?
This is a response to a comment: "Any argument that shows that we can't know anything has a misguided concept of knowledge." I think the poster misunderstood my point (my bad) - my complaint is not about sceptical conclusions.
My complaint is with assumptions: Nozick starts his argument with the assumption that it's possible for us to be systematically wrong. I think scepticism is a symptom of a deeper problem, not a problem that itself needs to be solved, so I don't see how Nozick helps.
The problem I have with Nozick and his attempts to get around the troubles of defining knowledge as TJB+ is not his success (or maybe lack thereof) in coming up with a definition. From what I can understand, his definition is pretty water-tight. My problem is that he's been very successful in a project which I can't understand the value of.
I think that, whatever it means to have knowledge, the concept means what it does as a result of social interactions that render the word meaningful: the word "knowledge" means whatever has to obtain in order for the sentences containing the word to be true; and the particular meaning comes from the social interactions involving the word between people who live in a world.
That's pretty much Davidson plus whatever it takes to eliminate the "wrong" theories of meaning - there's a blog post related to this over here. Or at least, my own mangled understanding of the issue.
The thing is, these social interactions don't have much to do with truth (except insofar as utterances are nearly all true), and less stil to do with "counterfactuals" (unless you are living in a philosophy department, perhaps). Since Nozick has developed his concept of knowledge using his own concepts, I don't see how he has helped explain what it means to have knowledge: he has created a concept, rather than explained one.
The concept Nozick has created may even be co-extensive with knowledge; it may even be co-extensive enough that we can compare what we think we know with his counterfactual scheme, and come to some conclusion about whether in fact we know this thing we think we know or not. At least, it would be if we could travel to possible worlds.
But that still doesn't mean he has told us anything about this peculiar condition of knowing which is inflicted on human beings; that is there one minute yet disintegrates so readily under the sceptical ruminations of a Frenchman in a cellar. For my part, when I say I "know" something, it has bugger-all to do with counterfactuals. (Trust me.)
Why should I be interested in a theory of knowledge that explains a concept without any reference to my use of the word?
My complaint is with assumptions: Nozick starts his argument with the assumption that it's possible for us to be systematically wrong. I think scepticism is a symptom of a deeper problem, not a problem that itself needs to be solved, so I don't see how Nozick helps.
The problem I have with Nozick and his attempts to get around the troubles of defining knowledge as TJB+ is not his success (or maybe lack thereof) in coming up with a definition. From what I can understand, his definition is pretty water-tight. My problem is that he's been very successful in a project which I can't understand the value of.
I think that, whatever it means to have knowledge, the concept means what it does as a result of social interactions that render the word meaningful: the word "knowledge" means whatever has to obtain in order for the sentences containing the word to be true; and the particular meaning comes from the social interactions involving the word between people who live in a world.
That's pretty much Davidson plus whatever it takes to eliminate the "wrong" theories of meaning - there's a blog post related to this over here. Or at least, my own mangled understanding of the issue.
The thing is, these social interactions don't have much to do with truth (except insofar as utterances are nearly all true), and less stil to do with "counterfactuals" (unless you are living in a philosophy department, perhaps). Since Nozick has developed his concept of knowledge using his own concepts, I don't see how he has helped explain what it means to have knowledge: he has created a concept, rather than explained one.
The concept Nozick has created may even be co-extensive with knowledge; it may even be co-extensive enough that we can compare what we think we know with his counterfactual scheme, and come to some conclusion about whether in fact we know this thing we think we know or not. At least, it would be if we could travel to possible worlds.
But that still doesn't mean he has told us anything about this peculiar condition of knowing which is inflicted on human beings; that is there one minute yet disintegrates so readily under the sceptical ruminations of a Frenchman in a cellar. For my part, when I say I "know" something, it has bugger-all to do with counterfactuals. (Trust me.)
Why should I be interested in a theory of knowledge that explains a concept without any reference to my use of the word?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
