Is knowing a mental event?

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by paulhanke

... unfortunately, since we know that we do not have any access to "truth" to any great degree with the exception of what we agree to be cultural truths ("Quito is the capital of Ecuador") or have invented on our own, and since even those latter two are always in flux, this means we will never know what we know with the exception of these three things: 1) that we don't have access to the truths we have not invented, 2) the truths that have been invented as a culture are not under our full control, and 3) we can always change our mind about personal truths, thus downgrading any previous knowledge to mere belief ... (and note that these three things are all mental events) ... so let me ask you this: is this suitable as a theory of knowledge? as an epistemology? that beyond these three things, "knowledge" can be here one moment and gone the next even if nothing in our head has changed? ...

I would not put it so dramatically, but yes, if the facts change then, of course, what we know may change. But I don't see what is peculiar about that. In fact, that is exactly what I would expect be true. If I believe I know that Quito is the captal of Ecuador, and if, overnight, the capital is changed to Guyaquil (Ecuador's second city) then of course, I no longer know that Quito is the capital of Ecuador. That seems rational to me. That is how the word "know" is used in English, and so far as I know, in every other language. Indeed, if I were told that the Chinese word for "know" was not so used, then I would think that was not the Chinese for "know". We are, of course, talking of the concept of knowledge, and not a particular term in some particular language.

I don't know what you mean by "access to the truth". I have the same access to the truth that Mars is the fourth planet that I have to the truth that Quito is the capital of Ecuador. Of course, the cause of the latter truth is broadly speaking "cultural" or "conventional", but that that was the effect of the convention is a truth just like the truth that Mars is the fourth planet. The cause of one is a convention, and the cause of the other is not. But they are both truths. And I have empirical access to both of them. We do not invent truths, I hope. To say that a truth was invented is to say it is not really a truth. That it is a lie.

[prothero]

Reality is composed of events.
All of "experience" is composed of "mental events"

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by prothero

Reality is composed of events.
All of "experience" is composed of "mental events"

So, what is supposed to follow from that?

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by kennethamy

I don't know what you mean by "access to the truth". I have the same access to the truth that Mars is the fourth planet that I have to the truth that Quito is the capital of Ecuador.

... you only have access to what your human senses can sense and what your human mind can conceptualize - can that ever be "truth"? ... at any rate, if all there is to epistemology is that the only things we can know we know is that we can't know what we know, and that any old belief no matter how unjustified counts as "knowledge" if it just so happens to be true (but again, we can never know), then I find it very uninteresting ... it seems to me to be much more productive to investigate the process of justifying beliefs ... but that's just me ...

[kennethamy]

Originally Posted by paulhanke

... you only have access to what your human senses can sense and what your human mind can conceptualize - can that ever be "truth"? ... at any rate, if all there is to epistemology is that the only things we can know we know is that we can't know what we know, and that any old belief no matter how unjustified counts as "knowledge" if it just so happens to be true (but again, we can never know), then I find it very uninteresting ... it seems to me to be much more productive to investigate the process of justifying beliefs ... but that's just me ...

Well, I guess that it is "just you". No, we don't know that we know, but why does that mean that we don't know? I think that what you mean by knowing we know is absolute certainty. The impossibility of error. And fallibilism (which I mentioned before) is the view that error is always possible. But that does not mean that error is always actual. The impossibility of error is not the actuality of error, after all. Although there is reason to think that when I claim to know that Mars is the fourth planet, it is possible that I am mistaken, what reason is there to think that I am (in fact) mistaken? The possibility of error is no reason to think I do not know. It is the actuality of error that shows I do not know. Knowledge implies the actuality of truth, but not the impossibility of error. These should not be confused. The impossibility of error is certainty. And I do not have to be certain in order to know. It just doesn't "happen" to be true that Mars is the fourth planet. There is an enormous amount of evidence (justification) that it is. To say that it "happens" to be true, suggests that it is, at best, a lucky guess. But that is clearly grossly false. It is not a guess (lucky or otherwise) that Mars is the fourth planet. Nor is it a guess that there is a monitor in front of me at this moment, nor is it a guess that Obama is president. I know all of these things are true. And objecting that I might be wrong in no way is a reason for thinking I do not know. It is a reason for thinking I am not certain. But I did not claim I was certain, but only that I knew. Skepticism results from the confusion of knowledge with certainty.

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by kennethamy

Skepticism results from the confusion of knowledge with certainty.

... my definition of knowledge is justified belief - so my definition of knowledge is in no way confused with certainty ... your definition of knowledge, however, is the correspondence of belief with truth - so by your definition, the only way to know what you know is to know with absolute certainty that what you believe is what is true ... that there remains a possibility, however remote, that your perception of a monitor in front of you is merely a dream or a hallucination means that you cannot know with absolute certainty that your perception corresponds with what is true ... so by your definition, you can never know what you know ... my definition has no such problem - I am justified in believing that there is a monitor in front of me and that is all that is required to know what I know ... so it would seem that it is your definition of knowledge that confuses knowledge with certainty by making it conditional on correspondence with truth ...

[longknowledge]

When this thread started I thought I believed that knowing is a mental event, but now I don't know anymore.

[paulhanke]

Originally Posted by longknowledge

When this thread started I thought I believed that knowing is a mental event, but now I don't know anymore.

... it would seem that whether knowledge is the correspondence of belief with truth or knowledge is simply belief grounded in justification, that the fact that both truth and justification can be extra-mental implies that knowing is not always just a mental event ... but perhaps you have your own definition of knowledge that you'd like to toss into the ring? ...

[prothero]

Originally Posted by kennethamy

So, what is supposed to follow from that?

That "knowing" must be a "mental event"?

[ACB]

As I see it, the situation is as follows:

1. We only know something if our belief in it is both justified and true.

2. We can never be certain that any empirical belief is true; hence we can never be certain that we know something.

3. For a realist, there are truths independent of our minds. If any of these truths actually accord with our beliefs, then the beliefs in question (if justified) constitute knowledge. This is so by definition: truth + justification = knowledge. Certainty, or lack of it, is a separate issue. (Similarly, I may not be certain that X is a male sibling, but if he is, then he is definitely a brother, because male + sibling = brother.)

4. So we can never have any guarantee of knowledge, but we can still (as a matter of fact, from an outside perspective) actually have knowledge.

5. Arguably, although we cannot be certain, we can in some cases 'know that we know' beyond reasonable doubt.