Dreams & Rationalism

@Arjuna,

Arjuna wrote:

GoshisDead wrote:

It alright Ken if you don't get it after a couple years its not gonna sink in.

I'd suggest noticing how "confidence" and "knowledge" evoke the same thing... but I know better than to expect any sinking there either.

Except, of course, for the obvious fact that people are very confident about things that they do not know, and that turn out to be false. Unhappily, that is a common occurrence. It is not knowledge but belief which "evokes" confidence. People are often very confident about what they believe. But that is different, of course, from knowledge. After all, you can believe what is false. But you cannot know what is false. Although you can, of course, believe you know something that is false. All these different things have to be distinguished from one another, otherwise, confusion results. As you illustrate.

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@kennethamy,

Academese hmmmm. seems my rural Idaho Public school education, where I learned most of these words, was way above the national average, and here I thought when I graduated and took the SAT's Idaho Public Schools were ranked 46/50 in the nation. If we weren't speaking English I figured its because we were speaking Podunk. So it seems I must be a super genius or something to speak an entirely different language involving big words like axiomatic, behavior, identity and ideology, which obviously have no place in philosophy because no philosopher has ever written of them. And of course there is no arguing from a functionalist perspective as its not anywhere in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy site. What was I thinking. We have had this conversation for two years now Ken I'm over it. Feel free not to follow me.

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@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead wrote:

Academese hmmmm. seems my rural Idaho Public school education, where I learned most of these words, was way above the national average, and here I thought when I graduated and took the SAT's Idaho Public Schools were ranked 46/50 in the nation. If we weren't speaking English I figured its because we were speaking Podunk. So it seems I must be a super genius or something to speak an entirely different language involving big words like axiomatic, behavior, identity and ideology, which obviously have no place in philosophy because no philosopher has ever written of them. And of course there is no arguing from a functionalist perspective as its not anywhere in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy site. What was I thinking. We have had this conversation for two years now Ken I'm over it. Feel free not to follow me.

If you think that dreams can give us knowledge, then why don't you think that if I dream that my house will burn tomorrow, that is not a good reason to think that my house will burn tomorrow. That is what I would understand if someone said that dreams can give us knowledge. What else should I understand by it? In any case, I don't believe that you learned to say things like, "arguing from a functionalist perspective" in Idaho public school. That's something you could learn only in an Idaho institution of higher education. What "a functionalist perspective" has to do with whether dreams give you knowledge, you have yet to explain (or try to explain) to me.

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@Arjuna,

Yes knowledge is a functional creation. Birthed from belief and axiology. Knowledge cannot be acquired or learned. Its not out there independent of us. A truth might be out there independent of us, but knowledge of that truth requires our interaction, perception, and interpretation. None of this happens in a metaphorical vacuum. We must approach our perceptions with some tool to interpret them, and with some method for using that tool. This affects everything about the "fact" distorting any truth that may be independent of us. So in employing our somewhat arbitrary axiological and methodological tools we create a knowledge which is nothing more than an operational belief.

So assuming we are experiencing our dreams as we would real life we can create knowledge from them. Especially if that knowledge is operable only within the dream. we may formulate hypotheses and theorem to successfully navigate the dreamscape. The knowledge of the dreamscape need not transfer to the non-dreaming world as it is no longer functional. We do not believe it once we have awaken and it no longer operates as a motivator of action, even if in the dream it was.

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@GoshisDead,

Right. If I was a cat my knowledge would be attuned to my environment and different from the knowledge I would have if I was a fish.

I could easily be a cat or fish in my dreams, and experience them with whatever knowledge I'd have.

It seems we're having a definition of 'knowledge' problem here.

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@mister kitten,

mister kitten wrote:

Right. If I was a cat my knowledge would be attuned to my environment and different from the knowledge I would have if I was a fish.

I could easily be a cat or fish in my dreams, and experience them with whatever knowledge I'd have.

It seems we're having a definition of 'knowledge' problem here.

Aren't we talking about human knowledge? What difference does it make what cat knowledge is, even if cats have knowledge? Or what Martian knowledge is, supposing there are Martians?

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@mister kitten,

The standard definition can apply. The crux is that our behavior is not predicated upon any knowledge it is predicate upon the belief. This makes knowledge somewhat superfluous. It is not actionable or operational. Its just a bonus, so to speak.

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@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead wrote:

The standard definition can apply. The crux is that our behavior is not predicated upon any knowledge it is predicate upon the belief. This makes knowledge somewhat superfluous. It is not actionable or operational. Its just a bonus, so to speak.

So what? Especially in view of the fact that if I know, then I also believe. (But I don't understand what point you are trying to make, anyway. The fact remains that we have been talking about human knowledge). What this has to do with behavior is a mystery.

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