Internalism

@Tuna,

Quote:

For instance, if a woman, blind from birth, claims she knows the traffic light is green, we'll probably say: no, you don't know that

How do you know you're right when you say that? Green reflects a different electromagnetic wave length than other colors, ya know? Most of us don't rely on sonar, but blind people learn to. They will steadily click their teeth to emit sound waves, and then they can tell where things are, by listening to the return.

I wonder what bats see? I wonder if blind guys, like Ray Charles, for example, really "know" where the keys are when they play piano?

I do know this much: I see an apple, Imma hog that sukka down, right quick.

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@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

layman wrote:

Leadfoot Quote:
"Not so sure about that. I've driven a lot of hotrods, built a lot of planes and eaten a lot of hamburgers that I thought I really needed and they seem awfully real."

Layman said:
But, looky here, eh?: Are you CERTAIN about that?

Frank replies:
I'm sure he is.

They did SEEM real.

The question is not what they seemed to be, however. The question is: Were they real hamburgers...or just a real illusion

Well, if the rest of the stuff I need turns out to be just as real , I'll be happy. Hell, who says a brain in a vat can't be happy?

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Quote:
layman wrote:

Leadfoot Quote:
"Not so sure about that. I've driven a lot of hotrods, built a lot of planes and eaten a lot of hamburgers that I thought I really needed and they seem awfully real."

Layman said:
But, looky here, eh?: Are you CERTAIN about that?

Frank replies:
I'm sure he is.

They did SEEM real.

The question is not what they seemed to be, however. The question is: Were they real hamburgers...or just a real illusion
Well, if the rest of the stuff I need turns out to be just as real , I'll be happy. Hell, who says a brain in a vat can't be happy?

I'm happy also, Leadfoot.

If this is an illusion...I LIVE in the illusion...and derive lots and lots of pleasure from doing so.

Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with you or anyone else doing it.

My comment was just to set a thing straight.

I understand the antipathy toward solipsism in this forum...but the bottom line is, the only thing I know for sure is that I think. If that means "I am"...fine with me. But I know I think.

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

Hell, who says a brain in a vat can't be happy?

Exactly, Leddy. Some of the best times I've ever had was dreams. There was that there one time, for example, when Halle Berry told me she wanted to show me something.....

1 Reply

@Tuna,

Tuna wrote:

The thread isn't about skepticism exactly. People make claims to knowledge. We suppose that sometimes they do that when they shouldn't. Sometimes we give the big thumbs up to such claims.

The thread (the starting point, anyway) is the question: how do we sort out which claims to thumb-up and which ones to discard?

An answer given by some is that if there is no awareness of the basis of a claim to knowledge, then we place that claim in the bit bucket and move on.

For instance, if a woman, blind from birth, claims she knows the traffic light is green, we'll probably say: no, you don't know that (assuming we know nobody told her its green). A name for this attitude is internalism.

Thoughts?

I am willing to use the word "know" the way it is used in (what might be) the illusion.

I KNOW my name is Frank Apisa; I KNOW I am a member of A2K; I KNOW I am sitting in my den at my keyboard typing; I KNOW the capital of England is London; I KNOW in base 10 that 2 + 2 = 4.

Most of the stuff people claim to know...or more exactly, that people assert (except where it agrees with what I claim to know using the reservation I just made)...I have doubt about.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

I am willing to use the word "know" the way it is used in (what might be) the illusion.

Good. Are you willing to examine the ways that this word is used?

1 Reply

@Tuna,

Tuna wrote:

Quote:
I am willing to use the word "know" the way it is used in (what might be) the illusion.

Good. Are you willing to examine the ways that this word is used?

Say what you have to say. I will comment if I deem it appropriate.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

Say what you have to say. I will comment if I deem it appropriate.

Ok. It will be a few days before I post another installment.

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@layman,

Quote:

Leadfoot Quote:
"Hell, who says a brain in a vat can't be happy?"

Exactly, Leddy. Some of the best times I've ever had was dreams. There was that there one time, for example, when Halle Berry told me she wanted to show me something.....

Most of the beautiful women in my life were less real than dreams. Thank heavens for sweet dreams and a few real McCoys.

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@Tuna,

Quote:

In the words of a non-famous wise person I came across: "We get along fine without certainty. It's when we think we need it that we start making stuff up."

This person was indeed "wise," in my opinion, Tuna. Kinda brings to mind something Fred done said once:

Quote:

“I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.” (Nietzsche)

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@Tuna,

Quote:

For instance, if a woman, blind from birth, claims she knows the traffic light is green, we'll probably say: no, you don't know that (assuming we know nobody told her its green). A name for this attitude is internalism.

Thoughts?

Thought #1: She can probably tell from the sound of traffic.

#2: Why call that "internalism"? What's internal about it? It's been part of "common sense", pretty much forever but at the very least since Hume and Locke, that knowledge must be based on sensory experience... an idea generally called "empiricism".

Old wine in new bottle.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Quote:

#2: Why call that "internalism"? What's internal about it? It's been part of "common sense", pretty much forever but at the very least since Hume and Locke, that knowledge must be based on sensory experience... an idea generally called "empiricism".

Hume is probably best known for drawing attention to the aspects of knowledge that can't be accounted for by observation. When you think of Hume, think of the end of British Empiricism.

If you put quote marks around common sense, the average philosophy buff will first assume that you're talking about G E Moore. The "common sense" angle is an attack on certain forms of idealism. How it relates to what it means to know something would need some fleshing out. Feel free to add that if you want.

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Internalists recognize that in general, having knowledge does not entail actual access to the basis of knowledge. But they assert that a knower must have access to the basis of knowledge (upon reflection.)

But they accept that accessibility is not likely to extend to all the bases of one's knowledge in all cases. They respond to this challenge by saying that some of the essential bases for knowledge must be accessible.

So we should understand internalism to be one of these (they're called the partial basis knowledge accounts):

SEP article listed in the OP wrote:

Weak AKI:
One knows some proposition p only if one can become aware by reflection of what is in fact some essential part of one's knowledge basis for p.
Strong AKI:
One knows some proposition p only if one can become aware by reflection that some item k is some essential part of one's knowledge basis for p.

Next up: what is knowledge externalism?

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@Tuna,

My questions remain unanswered: Why call that "internalism", and how is it different from empiricism?

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

When I think of empiricism, I think about what fundamentally grounds knowledge. It becomes interesting when we think about the conditions in which scientists can be said to know things. If all they're doing is speculating, they don't know. They need to do experiments. We should pay close attention to whether scientific claims have an empirical basis or not. That sort of thing.

Knowledge internalism is part of broader look at what it means to know P.

I don't have a firm grasp on all the ins and outs of it. I'm learning.

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@Tuna,

I see parallels between your internalism and the current discussion on the Dawkins thread. There is definitely another alternative to knowledge other than empiricism and that alternative is more than simply 'making **** up'.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Quote:

I see parallels between your internalism and the current discussion on the Dawkins thread. There is definitely another alternative to knowledge other than empiricism and that alternative is more than simply 'making **** up'.

Some parallels in the "free will" thread too, which seems to be quieting down at the moment.

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@Tuna,

Empiricism needs not be limited to science. It's just the belief that the only trustable basis for knowledge is sensory experience. Add reason as another source of knowledge, and you do get the scientific approach (science = a mix or rationalism and empiricism), but one can certainly apply the idea to blind women commenting on traffic lights, as I did upthread...

In my experience, modern academia are a bit too quick to invent new words to describe their (supposedly) brand new ideas. But there's often nothing new in there beyond the label... Most of the time they are just repackaging something that goes back to Matusalem.

In this particular case, Socrates said it best: "All I know is that I know nothing" (for absdolutely certain). IOW, there can be no objective, air-tight basis for knowledge. Even our senses can be doubted, and sometimes they clearly mislead us, like in optical illusions.

Knowledge has an intuitive dimension, a degree of fuziness which makes of it a very human thing.

The big difference bretween mathematical set theory or logic on the one hand, and natural intuitive logic and human sets on the other hand, is that the latter have fuzzy boundaries while mathematical ones cannot accomodate fuzziness. There ARE borderline cases in real life, but not in mathematics. A door really CAN be open AND closed in real life (it's called being ajar), but not in mathematics... Knowledge is like that: it is fuzzy, and therefore it is not mathematical - you can't prove it or even define it in mathematical terms, reason for which I believe your quest is futile.

A real, practical and useful theory of knowledge would not lose time wondering how do we know that "apples are sweet". It would rather point out that sweetness is not an inherent characteristic of apples but rather a perception by humans of the sugars contained in apples; that such perception gives us pleasure because sugars are high-energy items and the pleasure is an incentive to eat more of them; that apples trees produce the sweet flesh of apples as an incentive for animals to eat apples and thus spread the apple seeds wherever they dump a ****, helping the species propagate; that all apples are not equally sweet; that in fact some apples are not sweet at all (e.g. unripe ones, not yet ready for propagation)... and that in spite of all this murkiness, we can still say something by-and-large true by stating: "apples are sweet"...

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Thanks, Olivier5. I think your post may be addressed further along.

We explored Knowledge Internalism and found it fairly easy to come up with hypotheticals to put its rubber to the road.

P: A mixture of yellow and blue paint makes green paint.
I know P.

Generally speaking, an internalist would not demand that I know P only when I'm actually mixing the paint. But I can only be said to know it if I can access some essential part of the basis for P.

Can I? I do not remember any specific mixing episode, although I know that I have mixed a lot of yellows with a lot of blues. My sense is that this is the basis of my knowledge: that I know P2:

P2: I have mixed a lot of yellows and blues, and I usually get some kind of green. It is possible to get some kind of grey or brown. It depends on the make-up of the paint. But true yellows and blues: always green.

Can I pass the AKI test for knowing P2?

I don't think so. I'm reflecting. I'm going through memories extending back to early childhood. And I think that's the problem. My first experience of painting was so far back, that my memories of it have the character of constructions. I'm trying to build a memory out of facts I know about my childhood. No, I don't have access to even some of the essential bases of my knowledge of P2. I just know it.

I think this is going to be the general trend with many propositions I say I know. I might be able to access a basis. But frequently, bases have other knowledge as their bases. It's the basis of the basis I'm going to have trouble with.

Knowledge Externalism basically denies strong AKI and therefore Knowledge Internalism all together. It's not a positive position. It just states that:

SEP article listed in the OP wrote:

Strong AKE:
It is false that: one knows some proposition p only if one can become aware by reflection of some essential knowledge basis for p.

AKE has no problem with the fact that knowledge of P is often accompanied by awareness of or accessibility of basis. It's just saying that neither awareness nor accessibility is necessary for knowledge.

This article shows how seamlessly Knowledge Internalism/Externalism flows into issues of justification:

https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/internalism-and-externalism-in-epistemology

Next up: Justification

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@Tuna,

I doubt you can address my points. Your quest is futile and outdated.

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