If I am to know something to a certainty, several building-blocks of
"knowing" must be present:
- I must be sure that I exist.
- I must be sure that the world beyond myself exists (otherwise all
"knowledge" would be mere introspection or navel-gazing).
- I must be sure that information about the world beyond myself is
accurately and reliably conveyed to me by my senses.
- I must be sure that the information provided by my senses is
correctly interpreted by my mind.
If any of these building-blocks is even slightly shaky, I cannot
really say that I "know" something. It would be more appropriate to
say that I "believe."
Frankly, after more than fifty years of questing, I am of the opinion
that it is not possible to know anything to an absolute certainty. To
some extent, everything is an item of faith, a suspension of
disbelief. However, in order to function, I choose to accept certain
things as "givens." To be in a constant state of doubt is an
uncomfortable and unproductive condition.
I am reminded of an old joke about a woman who consults a psychiatrist
because her husband is delusional: he thinks he's a chicken. The
psychiatrist suggests that the husband should be committed to an
institution. The woman exclaims "Oh, no, doctor, we can't send him
away. We need the eggs."
I have gathered some online information and speculation on the
fascinating, frustrating topic of "knowing that we know." Or at least
I THINK I have...
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"The truth is, I don?t really know anything except that ?I am!?. Our
usual knowledge is a combination of memories and past experiences and
we then use them to make assumptions about the present and the
future...
I may say that ?I know? what is in the room next door because I was
there a few minutes ago and have been there a thousand times and it
has always been the same. The truth is though, I am not in that room
now, I am here. I do not know what is in that room or even that it
exists at all until I go there. Again, the only true knowledge I have
is the ability to reflect on my being and know that ?I am now?. What
ever ?I? may be or ultimately ?where? I may be, ?I am?!"
Nick Roach: How do I know I know I know?
http://www.nickroach.co.uk/how%20do%20I%20know.htm
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"The Principle of Universal Doubt: A fundamental principle of investigation
Anything may be possible (or nothing is to be believed with absolute
certainty or nothing is to be seen as a proof ), for what is believed
to be true with 100 % certainty at present may be false. It may be the
believer?s inability to see otherwise or grasp the truth.
I, as a subject, am at the centre of investigation: I should not
accept something because someone else (of whatever kind and abilities)
believes in it. I?ve to be satisfied with the idea. However, I would
accept something for practical convenience (e.g. As I believe in
quantum phenomena though I?ve never experienced them in person.)
I feel therefore I am: The most certain belief in my own existence
because I feel something at the moment."
Articles Archive: Superultramodern Epistemology
http://science.articlesarchive.net/superultramodern-epistemology-theory-of-knowledge-se.html
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"Scepticism comes in many forms. In one form, the requirements for
knowledge become so stringent that knowledge becomes impossible, or
virtually impossible, to obtain. For example, suppose that a belief is
knowledge only if it is certain, and a belief is certain only if it is
beyond all logically possible doubt. Knowledge would then become a
very rare commodity.
Other forms of scepticism only require that knowledge be based upon
good, but not logically unassailable, reasoning... There appear to be
intuitively clear cases of the type of knowledge questioned by the
sceptic, but intuitively plausible general epistemic principles
appealed to by the sceptic seem to preclude that very type of
knowledge.
Another example will help to clarify the general pattern of the
sceptical problem. Consider the possibility that my brain is not
lodged in my skull but is located in a vat and hooked up to a very
powerful computer that stimulates it to have exactly the experiences,
memories and thoughts that I am now having. Call that possibility the
'sceptical hypothesis'. That hypothetical situation is clearly
incompatible with the way I think the world is. Now, it seems to be an
acceptable normative epistemic principle that if I am justified in
believing that the world is the way I believe it to be (with other
people, tables, governments and so on), I should have some good
reasons for denying the sceptical hypothesis. But, so the argument
goes, I could not have such reasons; for if the sceptical hypothesis
were true, everything would appear to be just as it now does. So,
there appears to be a conflict between the intuition that we have such
knowledge and the intuitively appealing epistemic principle. Thus,
scepticism can be seen as one instance of an interesting array of
epistemic paradoxes."
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Epistemology
http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/P059
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"Science operates upon a belief in the uniformity of nature even
though it does not account for it. Presuppositions of science, logic
or morality are not natural objects of the universe. They are merely
held by individuals to be true. They are presupposed. They are assumed
- by faith. In order to reason about any subject each of us must
presuppose the existence of certain pre-conditions in order to form
the premises from which we?ll draw our conclusions...Even to observe
requires a certain amount of faith."
Internet Infidels: Is pure observation possible?
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/archive/index.php/t-115391.html
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"The reason that most explanations of consciousness fail to convince
everyone is that there is always someone who will say 'but how do I
know that?' or even 'how do I know I know that?'. When a person says
they know something the word "know" can mean all sorts of different
things but what does it mean in this context? The experience that is
'knowing that you know' persists even when the mind is quite empty. If
you contemplate an object without any clutter of verbal thoughts in
your mind you 'know' you are still conscious even though there are no
words to describe this knowing. But where and when is this
'knowing'?...
If we suppress verbal thoughts the 'knowing' still persists and even
if we suppress all things except light or dark the 'knowing' remains.
The suppression of all things in experience except light or dark is a
difficult 'knack' of meditation. It is most easily done in a quiet,
dark room with the eyes shut then, when a verbal thought occurs it is
listened to, when a visual imagination occurs it is observed, if there
is discomfort in the body it is relaxed, observed and relaxed again.
Eventually a state can be obtained where everything is observed into
nothing. All that remains is an infinite darkness stretching outwards
or, if the eyes are pointed together and downwards, an extensive
whiteness that seems to originate from behind the eyes. What is
interesting is that 'knowing' still persists."
The Science and Philosophy of Consciousness: The Empirical Description
of Conscious Experience
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~lka/conr.htm
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"The relationship between knowledge and certainty is complex, and
there is considerable disagreement about the matter. Are these
concepts the same? If not, how do they differ?... The various answers
that have been proffered depend on how the concepts of knowledge and
certainty are analyzed. If one holds, for instance, that knowing is
not a psychological state but that certainty is, then one would deny
that the concepts are identical. But if one holds that knowing
represents the highest degree of assurance which humans can obtain
with respect to the truth... and that such a maximal degree of
assurance is a psychological state, one will interpret the concepts to
be equivalent. There have been proponents on both sides of this
issue...
The most radical position on these matters is to be found in
Wittgenstein's On Certainty, published posthumously in 1969.
Wittgenstein holds that knowledge is radically different from
certitude and that neither concept entails the other. It is thus
possible to be in a state of knowledge without being certain and to be
certain without having knowledge... 'Standing fast' is one of the
terms Wittgenstein uses for certitude and is to be distinguished from
knowing. For him certainty is to be identified with acting, not with
seeing propositions to be true, the kind of seeing that issues in
knowledge. As he says: 'Giving grounds, justifying the evidence comes
to an end--but the end is not certain propositions striking us
immediately as true--i.e., it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it
is our acting which lies at the bottom of the language game."
Steps Toward The Light: Epistemology
http://www.cyberspacei.com/jesusi/inlight/philosophy/epistemology/epistemology.htm#_Toc505150277
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"René Descartes is perhaps the single most important thinker of the
European Enlightenment. At an age most people graduate from college
nowadays, he quietly and methodically went about tearing down all
previous forms of knowledge and certainty and replaced them with a
single, echoing truth: Cogito, ergo sum, 'I think, therefore I am.'
From that point onwards in European culture, subjective truth would
hold a higher and more important epistemological place than objective
truth, skepticism would be built into every inquiry, method would hold
a higher place than practice, and the mind would be separated from the
body...
Descartes was a pretty smart fellow who established several patterns
for modern Europe to follow: he laid down the idea that the thinking
mind was somehow more real than the body in which it is housed (this
is called the Cartesian mind-body split); he established that emotions
were due to the overall nature of the character of the
individual--called Cartesian affect (i.e., emotion) theory: this would
become the basis of things like music education, which attempted to
develop the character by producing certain emotions in students, a
kind of Beethoven emotion work-out; he established the supremacy of
the observer over the things he observed."
The European Enlightenment: Descartes
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/ENLIGHT/DESCARTE.HTM
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"Every answer given to the questions the skeptic asks increases the
level of his vociferous condemnation of any attempt to reveal basic
principles. Though he supposedly seeks answers, he rejects you
precisely because you have answers. For him to ackowledge that you
know something with certainty about reality, to acknowledge that such
truth is even possible would destroy the illusion which maintains his
precarious self-image as 'a foe of dogmatism' and of
'closed-mindedness.'...
The skeptic has evidently never heard of the hierarchy of concepts,
the idea that higher order abstractions arise from, are dependent
upon, and would be meaningless without a proper foundation of basic,
axiomatic principles -- such as existence, identity, and consciousness
-- which by the application of logic and experience give rise to those
higher, 'practical' concepts...
In the guise of 'keeping an open mind,' the skeptic would have you
abandon your senses, your judgment, your knowledge; would have you
abandon that mind of yours which he seeks to keep open to any
contradictory nonsense he cares to expound."
Russell Madden's Home Page: The Skeptic
http://home.earthlink.net/~rdmadden/webdocs/The_Skeptic.html
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"Plato's Theaetetus defined knowledge as justified true belief. One
implication of this definition is that one can't be said to 'know'
something just because one believes it and that belief turns out to be
true. An ill person with no medical training but a generally
optimistic attitude might believe that she will recover from her
illness quickly. But even if this belief turned out to be true, on the
Theaetetus account the patient did not know that she would get well
because her belief lacked justification.
There are, according to this account, three categories of belief which
are not knowledge: beliefs which are true but not justified; beliefs
which are justified but not true (sometimes referred to as Justified
Error); and beliefs which are neither justified nor true (sometimes
referred to as Unjustified Error).
In the context of epistemology, belief is not used in the everyday
sense of having confidence or faith in something. Belief is used in
the sense of asserting the truth of some proposition or statement.
Beliefs in this sense are either true or false. If Jenny believes that
x is true, and x is in fact true, then Jenny holds a true belief. But
on the Theaetetus account, if that belief is to count as knowledge, it
must also have a suitable justification. Knowledge, therefore, is
distinguished from true belief by its justification, and much of
epistemology is concerned with how true beliefs might be properly
justified. This is sometimes referred to as the theory of
justification.
The Theaetetus definition agrees with the common sense notion that we
can believe things without knowing them... It also implies that we
believe everything that we know. That is, the things we know form a
subset of the things we believe."
Answers.com: Epistemology
http://www.answers.com/topic/epistemology
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"Skeptics say that because we are fallible, we must doubt all our
beliefs. But this claim is a self-contradiction: the skeptic is
claiming certainty at least for his belief in our fallibility.
Religious mystics often claim that God or the supernatural is so
different from everything we know that it is beyond reason's ability
to understand. But since whatever exists has identity, i.e. definite
and delimited properties, it is always possible to contrast it with
other things, conceptualize it, establish standards of measurement,
and thereby begin to reason about it. At a time when mathematicians
explore the properties that even infinite spaces and processes must
have, it underestimates the human mind to think it incapable of
plumbing deep or complex phenomena.
Anyone who claims insights that do not derive from sensory evidence
and logical reasoning is, in effect, asking you to abuse your mind.
Someone who claims, skeptically, that no real knowledge is possible is
asking you to abandon your mind entirely. Objectivism holds that it is
possible to be certain of a conclusion, and that there is such a thing
as truth. But being certain depends on scrupulously following a
logical, objective process of reasoning, because it is only that kind
of thinking that allows us to formulate true ideas. To be objective,
people must know how to define the terms they use (so they know what
they mean), base their conclusions on observable facts (so their
beliefs are anchored in reality) and employ the principles of logic
(so that they can reliably reach sound conclusions)."
The Objectivist Center: What is the Objectivist Theory of Knowledge?
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/objectivism/faqs/wthomas_faq-epistemology.asp
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"The two Absolutes form the bedrock of our beliefs. Each of us knows
beyond any possibility of doubt that our consciousness exists, and
that some kind of reality external to our consciousness exists. All
the rest of our knowledge consists of our understanding of the nature
of these two existents. As the reality we perceive is hard, it is
possible to test our ideas against it, and thus to learn.
However, it is impossible for such derived knowledge to be absolutely
sure: some element of doubt always remains. For example, the world we
know might dissolve tomorrow, and be revealed as a complex illusion
(and so on, ad infinitum ).
This most fundamental of doubts is not based on any evidence, however:
it is simply an inescapable logical consequence of the fact that
external reality is external. The very reasons by which we know there
is an external reality - we didn't create it, don't control it, and
know it only by means of how it impinges on us - mean our
understanding of its nature can never be an Absolute.
The same goes for all the tools of our consciousness, both fundamental
(reason, senses, memory and physical action) and incidental (intuition
and feelings): all are beyond absolute validation. For example, reason
is the primary tool of our conscious mind, but is not designed by it
(although by the use of reason we can work out explicit rules of valid
& invalid reasoning). It is a 'given' of consciousness, its basis
rooted in external reality: therefore its reliability cannot be an
Absolute. However, note that everyone must use the fundamental tools
and thus assume their basic validity, even in the act of disputing
them!"
Philosophical Reflections: Doubt & Certainty
http://www.thoughtware.com.au/philosophy/philref/PHILOS.07A.html
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"At first sight it might be thought that knowledge might be defined as
belief which is in agreement with the facts. The trouble is that no
one knows what a belief is, no one knows what a fact is, and no one
knows what sort of agreement between them would make a belief true...
In defining knowledge, there are two further matters to be taken into
consideration, namely the degree of certainty and the degree of
precision. All knowledge is more or less uncertain and more or less
vague. These are, in a sense, opposing characters: vague knowledge has
more likelihood of truth than precise knowledge, but is less useful.
One of the aims of science is to increase precision without
diminishing certainty. But we cannot confine the word 'knowledge' to
what has the highest degree of both these qualities; we must include
some propositions that are rather vague and some that are only rather
probable. It Is important, however, to indicate vagueness and
uncertainty where they are present, and, if possible, to estimate
their degree. Where this can be done precisely, it becomes 'probable
error' and 'probability'. But in most cases precision in this respect
is impossible."
Bertrand Russell: Theory of Knowledge
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/russell1.htm
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"Knowledge lies in the answer, wisdom in the next question... We do
not have certainty, merely our best judgement resulting in our best
conceptualisation providing the greatest understanding of the
situation. And always, seek the next question, only briefly enjoying
the satisfaction of the answer found to the last question. With the
next question being an aspect of the last answer, and reminding us
that we never achieve certainty, only a better level of judgement and
conceptualisation...
All I am is always present and in some known or unknown manner, all I
am is potentially implicated in every observation I make. I am first a
person, an example of an intelligent species. I am then embedded in a
now understood manner in the universe that I as a scientist seek to
observer. And no matter what I do as a scientist I cannot expunge
myself as a person from my observations of that universe. The rules
are not epistemology; they are and can only be an expression of my
endeavours to conduct myself in the manner to which I aspire. The
rules are ethics."
Graham R. Little: Are there ever 'answers' and the problem of truth.
http://www.grlphilosophy.co.nz/answers2.htm
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Google Web Search: "how do i know i know" OR "how do we know we know"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22how+do+i+know+i+know%22+OR+%22how+do+we+know+we+know%22
Google Web Search: epistemology
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=epistemology
Google Web Search: "knowledge and certainty"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22knowledge+and+certainty%22
Google Web Search: "theory OR theories of knowledge"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22theory+OR+theories+of+knowledge%22
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I hope this is helpful! If I may further clarify (or obfuscate) any of
the concepts discussed above, please let me know. Er... maybe "let me
know" isn't the best way to put it. Please ask. ;-)
Best regards,
pinkfreud |
