Then–your final sentence–is there no knowledge except what can be scientifically verified? (I’m not sure I got your meaning exactly so I’m double-checking.)

Great Site! have you read “Your Mind Matters” by John Stott? I just finished reading it not long ago and he backs up much of what you are saying. I have it listed on my “Current Reading List” page of my blog “An Uncommon Grace”. here is the link if you want to check it out:
http://anuncommongrace.wordpress.com/current-reading-list/

Havok,

No, I’m saying that for something to be knowledge it must be able to be objectively tested - something that is true for you is not knowledge, it’s simply a personal feeling/belief.

To have knowledge that this is true (rather than a personal feeling/belief), you must have objectively tested it. Did you?

Havok,

I’d be interested in getting your response to this. Moreland makes a good case for a different view of knowledge.

And to pick up from SteveK here: what is the objective test for your knowledge that there is no knowledge where there is no objective test for it?

That’s not a trick question. What Steve and I are getting at is that your position seems self-contradictory at the outset, that there is no objective test by which that statement’s proof can be established.

Objectivity itself is a very tricky term requiring definition. We got into a discussion here once with Paul (I think) saying that my knowledge that I am hungry is not objective because nobody else can confirm it. Nobody else knows what I’m thinking; does that mean I don’t know what I’m thinking?

This is some of what Moreland gets at in his short article.

Let’s not lose sight of the main point in the process: there are those who say that scientific knowledge is the only real knowledge, but this is a self-contradictory belief.

Edit: we cross-posted here. I wrote this without having seen your 6:50 comment. I’ll leave this for you to look at for now anyway.

There’s this interesting paradox (maybe mystery is a better word) when it comes to knowledge. You have to know something about what you are looking for before you begin so that you will recognize it when you find it. Does that make sense?

Regarding whether knowledge must be tested or verified, I’d like to discuss a specific example.

So, can someone state some knowledge about the outside world, beyond our minds, that hasn’t been tested and verified? I know I’ve qualified the question (I’m excluding qualia), but bear with me anyway.

Havoc,

I suppose I’m trying to find a method to identify method, which has few initial assumptions, and results in coherent knowledge which corresponds to reality.

I think we are all trying to find this.

The scientific methods seems to me to be the best method of achieving this we (as humans) currently have, though I’d be happy to be enlightened as to any other methods which can be shown to provide knowledge.

I think you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water. That might be a phrase known only in the USA, I don’t know. Said another way, your method filters out too much of reality. You said you wanted a method that results in coherent knowledge which corresponds to reality.

The scientific method (SM) is good, but it isn’t everything - not even close. I think you know that. If you depended solely on the SM for knowledge then every bit of perceived meaning would be stripped from your knowledgebase. That’s a MASSIVE part of your reality - and mine.

You could never say that you know the SM is important (!!), you know you love your wife, you know your thoughts** (!!!!), you know what hope is, you know what a book is about, etc.

It’s clear to me that knowledge requires much more than the SM. Can I know that is true without the aid of the SM? Yes! Logic dictates it.

** Required for the SM to even work. Think about that.

Charlie, I’m not sure where to take this, so allow me several approaches, I may not hold to one approach or the other, depending on where things wind up, I’m just thinking out loud.

I think we know the transitive property and the principle of non-contradiction (#1 and 2) by testing.

8 = 4+4 = 2+2+2+2.

If I put 2 apples four times into a bag, and put four apples twice into a bag, and have a bag with 8 apples, and then compare the number of apples in each bag, and I find it’s the same number, I have tested and verified the idea that if A = B (8 = 2+2+2+2) and if B = C (4+4=2+2+2+2), then A = C (8=2+2+2+2). If this didn’t work, the prinicple of A=B, B=C, so A=C wouldn’t hold. So the principle is dependent on that test, quite directly.

A similar test is possible for A cannot = not-A.

That human reason mirrors reality is founded on testing, too, Charlie’s #3 is not different in principle from his #1 and 2; #3 is just a generaly statement of the specific logical principles in 1 and 2.

I have no way of knowing that I’m not a brain in a vat. But it doesn’t much matter anyway, does it?

I don’t see how #5 isn’t founded on testing, if only through logic, but logic is founded on testing anyway, see above.

Hi Paul,
I still disagree with you all-round.
Logic is not known by testing and verifying but by reason. If you now want to call reasoning testing and verifying then I see no point in your asking your question in the first place.

A similar test is possible for A cannot = not-A.

1) This truth is not known because of a test but because of logic and reason.
2) There is no such empirical, verifying test.

That human reason mirrors reality is founded on testing, too, Charlie’s #3 is not different in principle from his #1 and 2; #3 is just a generaly statement of the specific logical principles in 1 and 2.

This statement is proven true by the fact that its opposite is self-refuting. One cannot truthfully say that human reason does not give a representation of the universe: if the statement is true, it is false.

I have no way of knowing that I’m not a brain in a vat. But it doesn’t much matter anyway, does it?

You do have a way of knowing. If you were a brain in a vat you could not say “I am a brain in a vat” and have that statement be true.
If you were a brain in a vat your Reason would not be a reflection of reality, but it is, because the opposite is self-refuting.

I don’t see how #5 isn’t founded on testing, if only through logic, but logic is founded on testing anyway, see above.

It is tested by logic. If your claim is now that we can know things tested by logic and reason rather than observation, weighing and measuring then welcome to the club.

Logic is not known by testing and verifying but by reason.

Since logic and reason are synonyms, you’re saying that logic is known by logic?

I showed you a specific example of how logic is verified by observation. I’ll repeat: if the observations I laid out didn’t verify the logic, we wouldn’t believe in the logic, so the logic is directly dependent on those observations.

The rest of your critiques all rest on the above point, I think.

You do have a way of knowing. If you were a brain in a vat you could not say “I am a brain in a vat” and have that statement be true.

But there’s no way I can tell if that statement (”I am a brain in a vat.”) is true or not. So I still don’t have a way of knowing.

I think you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water. That might be a phrase known only in the USA, I don’t know. Said another way, your method filters out too much of reality. You said you wanted a method that results in coherent knowledge which corresponds to reality.

So, what method(s) do you use to provide a coherent picture of reality?

The scientific method (SM) is good, but it isn’t everything - not even close. I think you know that. If you depended solely on the SM for knowledge then every bit of perceived meaning would be stripped from your knowledgebase. That’s a MASSIVE part of your reality - and mine.

What do you mean by perceived meaning? If you mean my perceptions, you’re wrong. I’m simply taking about things which are accepted as true. If I think purple jeans look good (a perception) I wouldn’t expect that to be some kind of truth, accepted by anyone. Is that about what you mean by perceived meaning?

You could never say that you know the SM is important (!!), you know you love your wife, you know your thoughts** (!!!!), you know what hope is, you know what a book is about, etc.

I know I love my wife because I feel it, but wouldn’t expect anyone else to accept that assertion as truth. I know my wife loves me due to her behaviour - I guess you could say that the love is tested through behaviour. All of the things you list can be tested in some fashion (apart from my own thoughts and feelings, but I wouldn’t expect someone to take those as being truth without some further verification - would you?)

It’s clear to me that knowledge requires much more than the SM. Can I know that is true without the aid of the SM? Yes! Logic dictates it.

So, how do you know truth without being able to verify it in some manner?
I might be slow on the uptake, but it seems you’re said that such a manner exists, but you haven’t mentioned what it is.

There are very many variations of the brain in a vat scenario which far predate the Matrix. I prefer the one where the brains are natural elements of the universe, uncaused and uncreated by anything.
Nonetheless, the position holds. If you are in the matrix what you think is a brain, or a vat, is nothing of the kind. It is a representative symbol. As you said, all your inputs are generated. Therefore, there is no “real” brain correlated with what your input perceives of as a brain, and you cannot be that thing.

It is a question of causation between the thing known/described and the thing itself. No matter the complexity of the inputs they are not the thing itself. The thing called a brain by the brain in a vat is not a brain. Therefore, the brain in the vat cannot be a brain in a vat.

The difference can’t be distinguished by the mind because there are no two things between which to differentiate. There is only what the brain in the vat thinks brain is, but it isn’t that thing. The signal may be the same, or it may not, as the brain wouldn’t know, but in the one case there is no brain causing the signal. The thing causing the signal is not a brain. But it is the thing the brain in the vat would refer to as the brain, were it to contemplate its vatness. Obviously, if it were a brain in a vat it wouldn’t be the brain it knows as a brain.

For that matter, neither does the vat exist.

No, I am not saying that that the simulated reality is indistinguishable from what the actual reality is. I’m saying we are talking about two very different realities, and that one is completely disconnected from the other.
No, it’s not that the brain in the vat can’t tell its a brain in a vat. It’s that the very proposition “I’m a brain in a vat” makes mincemeat of the words. They do not correlate to a reality in which there could be a brain in a vat.

You can do this by presuming that you are the brain in the vat. What would it mean for you to say “I’m a brain in a vat” and have that statement be true? For starters, you wouldn’t know what a brain was.

Again, you’ve lost me. I can, sitting here at my keboard, imagine that everything around me was simulated, ala the matrix. In such a situation, why would I not be able to conceive of what a brain was - I’d be/have one, for a start. Am I missing something?

You are missing something. Sitting at your computer, imagining that you are a brain in a vat, you are not at a computer or being or having a brain. You are being a sim having a sim. Your experience of a brain is that of a signal, a simulated program, not a brain. But that is not what you would be if you were, in fact, a brain in a vat. The two cannot be the same and cannot refer to the same thing.

Now I have no other way of saying this so I’m going to have to let it rest there for now.
But even if you can’t buy my argument or accept it, or even understand what I am trying to say, we have a simple fact here: I know I’m not a brian in a vat (and you do, too) and I have no way of testing this or verifying it.

Wow–busy night!

Paul, you said we know the law of non-contradiction by testing. Not true, not true at all. I’ll show it to you quite easily. Let’s take some things that we might think we know by testing:

“This banana cannot be a BMW.”
“The sun cannot be an oak tree.”
“Odd integers cannot be even integers.”

How have we observationally tested these? By induction, I suppose: we’ve never seen a banana that could be a BMW, or the sun vacationing as an oak tree. All the odd integers we’ve seen have remained stubbornly non-even. (Recall that we’re talking about empirical testing, not logical testing, because Paul said he thinks we can establish non-contradiction by experience rather than by logic.)

Let’s take this to the most generous possible extreme, and suppose that we repeat this kind of observation to the furthest reaches of reality. We observe every A and every non-A*, and we note that they are not equal. Have we proved the law of noncontradiction?

At this point I would stand up and say, “No! Absolutely not! The law of noncontradiction is a pile of hooey!” And you would say, “but we’ve tested everything in the universe and we’ve shown that A is always unequal to not-A.” To which I could reply, “No you haven’t;” and then you would probably say, “But of course we have!”

That’s when I would say, “Are you contradicting me? What if we’re both right–just this one time? What if this is the one exception you’ve been searching for all this time? How do you know that it isn’t?”

I think the answer is that you just know, as Charlie said above. The infinite search was unnecessary from the start.

There are similar problems with your claim that we know the transitive property by testing, but I won’t go into them.

(*There’s also a question-begging entailed in “observing every A and every non-A” during an empirical test for the truth of non-contradiction; but I thought this other line of argument was more interesting.)

Tom, one point before I get to your real point. I didn’t claim to prove absolutely that the law of non-contradiction worked, I only set out to check it out by a certain method (observationally). That is, proving it absolutely concerns the *extent* to which the law holds (100% of the time, or maybe only 90$ of the time, etc.); and seeing to what extent it does hold concerns the *method* by which check it out.

I don’t have to claim that the law of contradiction holds 100% of the time for all time and throughout the universe in order to observationally verify it to some extent.

OK. What you’re doing is assuming that the law of non-contradiction is a thing out in the world like an apple is, whose existence is subject to verification just like an apple. But that is not necessary for my argument. The law of non-contradiction can be viewed merely as a summary of the results when we test and verify claims about apples, atoms, ideas, etc. It does not need to be a conclusion, but merely a convenient way of talking about many conclusions. So to turn the law upon itself introduces an unnecessary category mistake.

Hi Paul,

I didn’t claim to prove absolutely that the law of non-contradiction worked, I only set out to check it out by a certain method (observationally).

No you didn’t. You set out to demonstrate that we can only know the truth of the law of contradiction because we can test/verify it. This is false.

That is, proving it absolutely concerns the *extent* to which the law holds (100% of the time, or maybe only 90$ of the time, etc.); and seeing to what extent it does hold concerns the *method* by which check it out.

It holds 100% and verification and testing can’t tell you this. More knowledge, unverified.

The law of non-contradiction can be viewed merely as a summary of the results when we test and verify claims about apples, atoms, ideas, etc.It does not need to be a conclusion, but merely a convenient way of talking about many conclusions.

And unicorns can be viewed as a convenient way to discuss horses without horns and I can say that I’ve seen scores of them. You can’t redefine terms and beg the question to make your point. The law of non-contradiction is not the summary of results of tests. It is a law of proper reasoning.

Paul,
I was going to leave this for a response to your next response, but I have to leave momentarily.
You keep saying things like “we can test the law of non-contradiction” by observation and verification. But you can’t even use tests of observation and verification without the law of non-contradiction. Tom pointed this out and you changed his point. How can you claim a result holds if that result could be something else?
“Look, I have concluded four apples!”.
“No, you have conclude three bananas”.
“No, look, count, these are four apples.”
“I am lookjng and counting. They are three bananas.”

Nature provides us countless examples of apparent contradictions to our knowledge and our model of the world. What do we do when we find these apparent contradictions? We theorize and experiment to change our way of looking at nature, to amend our knowledge. What we don’t do is say “well, that’s no problem, because we can just scrap the law of non-contradiction”. The apparent violation must be explained so that it is not a violation, but the law is not changed.

Charlie wrote:

It holds 100% and verification and testing can’t tell you this.

1. How do we know this?

2. How do we know it stands up to Tom’s March 15th, 2008, 6:54 am challenge.

. . . . That’s when I would say, “Are you contradicting me? What if we’re both right–just this one time? What if this is the one exception you’ve been searching for all this time? How do you know that it isn’t?”

3.

The law of non-contradiction is not the summary of results of tests. It is a law of proper reasoning.

Says you. ; )

Then I don’t believe in it as a law, but merely as a summary. I may, however, believe in it as a law when I see your answer to my #1 and 2 above.

Regarding if there are 3 or 4 bananas, (1) the conflict between how many bananas are in the bag is a problem with perception (the mere counting of how many items are in a bag). I counted 3 bananas, you counted 4 bananas, in another bag or not.

The mere fact that people can disagree about perceptions doesn’t invalidate using observation as an empirical means. It doesn’t have to work perfectly 100% of the time for all people in order to work well enough.

Tom, I’ll get back to your last post soon.

Tom, I haven’t forgotten about my response to your last post. But what I have to do to reply is to summarize your argument, which will take a bit of time for me.

But, in the meantime, can you tell me how we know that the law of contradiction is true, 100%?

I’ve been talking about the LNC, with just a brief and minor reference to the transitive property.

New question:

Then I don’t believe in it as a law, but merely as a summary.

A summary of what, though? And signifying what?

As for apples and bananas, as Tom said, it’s not a matter of perception. If the LNC doesn’t hold then 4 apples=3 bananas cannot be said to be wrong.

Your argument an exercise in question-begging.
You say “what can we know without verification?” and I say that we can know that A=C.
We see that is a product of logical analysis.
And then you contend that such results are not “known” because our trust in logical analysis is axiomatic - assumed.
Even if we accept your premise about reason your conclusion is a non-sequitur, but worse yet, look what it does to your criteria for “knowing”. If the fact that reason is accepted a priori as a starting point invalidates our claims to knowledge based on it then you have defeated all knowledge. That includes knowledge gleaned from experiments, observations and verifications.
Your skating around the issue is doing no good but further entrenching you in your radical skepticism and bringing you within a hair’s breadth of solipsism.
You are painting yourself into the same post-modernist corner that had us asking previous po-mo participants why they even bother to try to communicate if they can’t know anything.

Charlie, I’ll do my best to hit as many of your questions as I can tonight.

First: My hypothesis is that, like science, all knowledge is tentative and not absolute. My empiricism says that we first must assume rationality, and then conclusions based on observation follow, just like proofs of geometry follow from postulates. It doesn’t destroy knowledge, it only makes it useful, not some absolute.

Here’s my observational test that A is not not-A. Let A = an apple. Now, in a bag I have an apple. I call it A. In another bag there is a banana. Is it an apple? No, it’s not. So it’s not-A. I then check to see if what is in the bags are the same. I look, and they are different. So bag A is not bag B, so A is not not-A.

The spirit of this test is a bit along the lines of the operation in mathematics and set theory by which the true way in which we know that two sets have the same number of elements is not to count each and compare the abstract numbers, but to pair up each element in both sets, and if there are no members left over, then the sets are equal. Are you familiar with this operation? If so, it might place my attempt here in a more valid context.

Have you decided that testing with logic is “testing and verifying”, as per your original challenge? Have you determined that we can know that which reason and logic tell us?

I was not trying to use the words testing and verifying with the breadth that you not unreasonably took them. I meant to limit the testing and verifying to empirical observation. But, honestly, I’m not sure about the implications of this, I don’t know where you’re going, so I reserve the right to change my ideas if a certain context you might identify demands it.

For testing Kukas and Zipos, I’d say that the reason that we can know someting about them is only because we’ve found out certain things about apples and bananas and then generalize and abstract and summarize those observations, but we don’t need to elevate those summaries to a higher ontological status (like the LNC exists somewhere, perhaps Platonically).

At least I tried, gotta run now.

Oh yes, and remember this one:
Since all As are Bs and all Bs are Cs then all As are Cs.
You tried to resort to apple math bags to show an equality.
Now, use your apple math bags to show that this relationship does not show the opposite equality, ie: not all Cs are As.
Do you see the equivocation in your answer?

Here’s a rundown on a debate Bill Craig recently had in Vancouver.
Some of you will notice some trends replaying here. Some of you won’t.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6097

Hi Paul,
While I wait on your thoughts about Popper, here’s the name of another late-great philosopher of the 20th century with whom I imagine you share some sympathies: Bertrand Russell.
He had this to say on empiricism and a priori truths:

“In so far as it is primitive and undemonstrated, human knowledge is thus divided into two kinds: knowledge of particular facts, which alone allows us to affirm existence, and knowledge of logical truth, which alone allows us to reason about data. In science and in daily life the two kinds of knowledge are intermixed: the propositions which are affirmed are obtained from particular premises by means of logical principles. In pure perception we only find knowledge of particular facts: in pure mathematics, we only find knowledge of logical truths. In order that such a knowledge be possible, it is necessary that there should be self-evident logical truths, that is to say, truths which are known without demonstration. These are the truths which are the premises of pure mathematics as well as of the deductive elements in every demonstration on any subject whatever.
…
As soon as we take into account the consequences of Kant’s hypothesis, it becomes evident that general and a priori truths must have the same objectivity, the same independence of the mind, that the particular facts of the physical world possess. In fact, if general truths only express psychological facts, we could not know that they would be constant from moment to moment or from person to person, and we could never use them legitimately to deduce a fact from another fact, since they would not connect facts but our ideas about the facts. Logic and mathematics force us, then, to admit a kind of realism in the scholastic sense, that is to say, to admit that there is a world of universals and of truths which do not bear directly on such and such a particular existence. This world of universals must subsist, although it cannot exist in the same sense as that in which particular data exist. We have immediate knowledge of an indefinite number of propositions about universals: this is an ultimate fact, as ultimate as sensation is. Pure mathematics-which is usually called “logic” in its elementary parts-is the sum of everything that we can know, whether directly or by demonstration, about certain universals.

…
On the subject of self-evident truths it is necessary to avoid a misunderstanding. Self-evidence is a psychological property and is therefore subjective and variable. It is essential to knowledge, since all knowledge must be either self-evident or deduced from self-evident knowledge.
…
In the third place, we have seen that the possibility of mathematical knowledge refutes both empiricism and idealism, since it shows that human knowledge is not wholly deduced from facts of sense, but that a priori knowledge can by no means be explained in a subjective or psychological manner.”
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/russell.htm

Hi Paul,
I just erased my response to you, so my rebuilding of it may miss something …

Charlie, did you miss it when I said earlier that logic was an assumption? The issue is now whether an assumption is knowledge. In your quote of Russell above, he notes that logic must be self-evident, which is an assumption, a necessary starting point.

Please don’t ask pretend questions. A cursory glance at my responses will show many instances where I most evidently did not miss that you said logic was an assumption.
But Russell does not call logic self-evident.

Even if we absolutely need logic and reason, we adopt them on as assumption, not something proven, either by logic (which would be circular), and the only thing left is by observation, and if you’re willing to adopt that stance (thought I doubt it), then we’d really have no argument.

Your last paragraph I mentioned above did not answer my question “HOW do we know that logic is true 100%,” it only spoke to the need for it. So I’m willing to be convinced and retract my position here if you can answer that question beyond anything that reduces to positioning logic as an assumption.

But it is not “logic” which is in question. Your pedantry busted me on this mistake earlier and now your last defence requires the equivocation. My answer was that we can know that A is not not A, and that (through transitive relations) A=C. We know these things: we do not “know” Logic. These are the propositions which, as Russell says, are affirmed [or] obtained from particular premises by means of logical principle. And this is knowledge.
Your last defence against this was that because we assumed Reason or the truth of logic, that these propositions were not, then, knowledge. But that means that nothing is knowledge, nothing can be known. Which led to your invoking the name of Karl Popper.

Then, we’ll talk about whether an assumption is knowledge.

As you can see from above, the question isn’t about whether or not that which you say must be assumed is known: “Logic” is not the thing “known” in the examples.

I’ll grant you right off the bat, though, that conclusions, given a set of assumptions (as is Euclidean geometry) are a type of knowledge, so if our disagreement hinges on me missiing that point, I plead guilty and apologize.

So my repeated question “but is it knowledge?” seems to be answered (yes, with your usual qualifier). Your qualifier, of course, applies to all knowledge given that everything depends upon logic and reason, as you’ve stated above.

So now, I’m sure you’re satisfied that your original question is answered - and has been from the start:

Regarding whether knowledge must be tested or verified, I’d like to discuss a specific example.

So, can someone state some knowledge about the outside world, beyond our minds, that hasn’t been tested and verified? I know I’ve qualified the question (I’m excluding qualia), but bear with me anyway.”

Are assumptions knowledge? If they’re solid, then why not?

As to the empirical test for the law of non-contradiction, I’m surprised this is still alive. Here’s another version of the refutation:

You begin your observations, with a non-committal attitude toward the LNC because you are trying to determine empirically whether it’s true or not. Your test begins as follows, which I’ve quoted from you above, except for changing the first person pronouns to second person:

In a bag you have an apple. You call it A. In another bag there is a banana. Is it an apple? No, it’s not. So it’s not-A. You then check to see if what is in the bags are the same. You look, and they are different. So bag A is not bag B, so A is not not-A.

At this point I speak up, and this conversation ensues:
Tom: “The object in Bag B is an apple.”
Paul: “You’re wrong, Tom, it’s a banana.”
Tom: “Well, of course it is.”
Paul: I see we agree now. Thank you.”
Tom: “But just because it’s an apple doesn’t mean it can’t be a banana!”
Paul: “But apples and bananas are not the same,”
Tom: “Right, right right; absolutely right! But just because they’re not the same doesn’t mean they’re not the same, does it?”
Paul: “But look–I have an apple here, and a banana here–”
Tom: “Sure! That item in bag B is an apple, and that item in bag A is a banana. And the one in bag A is an apple and the one in bag B is a banana. And of course they’re completely different from each other in every conceivable way, and they’re absolutely identical in every way besides.”
Paul: “That’s impossible, Tom.”
Tom: “On what basis is it impossible?”
Paul: “Well, you’re contradicting yourself every time you open your mouth!”
Tom? “So what? You say you have an empirical instance in your two bags that demonstrates the LNC is true. I’m giving you an empirical instance out of my mouth that it isn’t. You don’t have a way to decide which to rely on–not unless you know in advance that the LNC is true.”

On the very first step of your empirical inquiry into the LNC, you rely on the LNC. Without it you cannot disagree with my conclusion that an apple is a banana even while apples and bananas are different kinds of things.

In short, you cannot demonstrate the LNC empirically without assuming, before you begin, that it is true.

Again, this is knowledge. You have not, and cannot, make an empirical case for the LNC, but you know it anyway…

Argh, the response I tried to post earlier today never made it. Here’s what I remember:

Tom, how do we know the LNC is valid? Charlie’s answer was that it was necessary, but that’s not an argument for validity. If it’s an assumption, what makes an assumption solid (=valid)?

Also, Tom, I see your point about the observation of the LNC. And I had some really great point to make about it in response that has escaped into the ether. Must not have been that good, eh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction#Alleged_impossibility_of_its_proof_or_denial
According to the link, there have been logics proposed which weaken or deny the law. This formal logic stuff isn’t my forte, but if it’s the case that systems of logic exist in which the law does not hold, then Paul is right in saying the LNC is an assumption - we base our knowledge upon the assumtion of the law holding. Is this incorrect?

Hi Havoc,
Your comments seem less and less about being real here.
We can trust Craig’s arguments when they are logically sound, contain true premises, comport with fact, etc.
If you’d been kind enough to supply a link with that damning quote I’d show you what Craig meant, why the context is important and why a man whose life is about evidence and positive argumentation ought to be taken seriously. I’d show you why your conclusion “regardless of the evidence…” does not follow from his quote.

Charlie, if you can offer no reason why the LNC is true other than the alternative is unacceptable, for whatever reason, then we don’t know it’s true, we only have to proceed as if it were. It’s hard to imagine how it could be false, but that’s not a proof or a reason for validity. Part of the problem here is that we’re trying to use logic and reason to justify the LNC, but the LNC is part of logic and reason. Of course I use the LNC in my everyday life, but that’s not the same as providing a rigorous reason for why it’s true. I often act like Newtonian physics is says everything about physics, but we know since Einstein that that’s not true.

That’s why I say we don’t know that the LNC is true, but we have to assume it.

I think we’ve come to the heart of the matter. Charlie, it seems to me that you’re willing to claim that something is true merely because the alternative is unacceptable. That’s a position I won’t adopt.

Thanks, Steve!

Thanks, Paul, for affirming what I’ve been asking all along.
So, once again, bearing Steve’s comment in mind, what was the point of your initial question?

I think we’ve come to the heart of the matter. Charlie, it seems to me that you’re willing to claim that something is true merely because the alternative is unacceptable. That’s a position I won’t adopt.

“Won’t”. That is the key. You make a conscious choice to maintain this (faux) radical-skepticism. It is not that the alternative is unacceptable, but that it is impossible if we are to know anything. If we are not to know anything then why, why, why do you keep posting?

The fact that I can know something, and I know I know something, tells me that I know the LNC is true.
You don’t (today, and for whatever reason).

Then it’s settled…we don’t know if ANYTHING is true. So much for all that talk about verification and the scientific method.

We don’t know anything in geometry, either, Euclidean or not, until we start with some postulates. Then, given those postulates, we can know some things about that geometry, but even than that knowledge rests on the postulates, and we can’t say that we *know* the postulates; rather, we just postulate (assume) them, and then make conclusions.

Remember, too, that my original question was what *knowledge* do we have that isn’t observed, verified, etc. We may have the LNC as a necessary assumption, but we don’t know it. Any geometry, Euclidean or not, requires postulates, but we don’t say that we *know* the postulates; rather, we postulate them, or, we assume them. *Then* we can begin to know some thing about that geometry, *give* the postulate.

A postulate or an assumption is not knowledge.

Also, my original question was limited to the outside world, and not about qualia. We have direct knowledge of qualia (I think).

Oh, and finally -
Can you tell me how you can have knowledge about whether or not Mary showered yesterday, given that you can not observe, test or verify the event but based upon the statistical finding that people shower 9 days out of 10? It would seem that the information rests on a foundation far less secure than that of logical necessity or geometric postulates. So how was it you could contend that by “knowing” a statistical likelihood we had “knowledge” about a particular event?

Paul,
So far you don’t *know* anything (trust me, I know). Everything is based on assumptions that you have no real knowledge of. Your knowledge of the assumption is not real knowledge - it’s an assumption that you may or may not (or both) have had, which was based on reasoning or sensory input that you may or may not (or both) have had.

To tweak a popular phrase: it’s ‘assumptions all the way down’ with no real knowledge whatsoever….and you can’t even *know* that.

To repeat what Charlie said, if we are not to know anything then why, why, why do you keep posting?

EDIT:
If you change your mind and conclude that you really *know* (not assume) you made an assumption then we can talk.

HI Paul,
I’m on my way out the door so I’ll have to hit most of your points later.
However, on “which geometry?” , well, you choose, as you seem very knowledgeable on the subject (remember to refer to the actual question when you do).

But when I address the rest of your post I’m going to be referring to Euclidean geometry.

So we need to keep the following straight:

Postulates: like the LNC and maybe some others, these are necessities in order to even discuss anything;

Knowledge: a conclusion based on observation and verification and also relies on some necessary postulates or a few assumptions;

Why must we keep straight your question-begging? If you were just going to define “knowledge” as that based upon observation and verification why did you bother to ask in the first place whether any knowledge could be otherwise? You already knew the answer. Given your own invented parameters you can have anything you want.

On What About Mary - thanks for finally admitting the failure of your previous standard to address the question and provide knowledge in that situation. I’ll emend our previous discussion on the topic this evening, and link it for you.
We do advance around here once in awhile.

SteveK, I don’t know what you mean about knowledge of the postulates. Can you explain?

Charlie, I didn’t just define knowledge arbitrarily, as a form of question-begging, but developed that definition based on the ideas that we threw back and forth, came up with that definition as the only one that made any sense, or at least that is my claim.

And, Charlie, is it only other people who advance, who modify their ideas on occasion, or do you do that too?

Paul,

SteveK, I don’t know what you mean about knowledge of the postulates. Can you explain?

You speak as if you have actual knowledge of the postulate details. To be clear, I’m not talking about the truth/false nature of the postulates for that is a separate question.

If you do, then you have knowledge without the need for any assumptions. At some point, the assumptions stop and the knowledge just IS.

If not, then you are on the road to an infinite regress without knowing ANYTHING because everything is based on an assumption that you have no actual knowledge of. Make sense?

Do you think that we know something about geometry, given that it is based on postulates? If you say yes, then why is not that an analogy that can help one to understand the idea that I’m claiming for assumptions like the LNC?

I’d say we know geometry because we were made to know it. Same with logic.

If I can know my thoughts without the need for assumptions (which are just more thoughts) then it seems obvious, per logic, that assumptions aren’t required for actual knowledge.

Where’s Holo when you need him?

Charlie,

Your comments seem less and less about being real here.
We can trust Craig’s arguments when they are logically sound, contain true premises, comport with fact, etc.

Sure we can trust them when they are sound. The question is, should we trust that craig is not simply ignoring evidence and argument to the contrary, given the statement I quoted above.

If you’d been kind enough to supply a link with that damning quote I’d show you what Craig meant, why the context is important and why a man whose life is about evidence and positive argumentation ought to be taken seriously.

The damning quote is from his book “Reasonable Faith”.
http://jcnot4me.com/Items/contra_craig/contra_craig.htm
The above link is from a person who presented craig with that quote, asked him to affirm it, and presented craig with a though experiment concerning falsification of the resurrection. If presented with this falsification, craig would continue to assert it’s truth.

I’d show you why your conclusion “regardless of the evidence…” does not follow from his quote.

Please, in light of the though experiment presented to craig from the above link, show me how “regardless of the evidence” does not follow.

I’ll grant you, Craig is a great debater and can make a persuasive argument, but from my (admittedly limited) exposure to his work, he bases those arguments on assumptions which are not known to hold, even in the fashion we “know” the LNC to hold, which is being argued above.

Paul,

We can say what that “law” (assumption) is.

If you actually know what the law is, then you can say it. Do you assume to know the law - which is not knowing - or do you actually know it? If you actually know it then, by definition, you know it without any qualifier.

That statement ignores the role of postulates in geometry, and apparently ignores the existence of geometries different from Euclidean, including the difference in their postulates. Am I wrong about that?

I’m not ignoring the postulates. I know the postulates themselves without relying on more postulates such as: ‘assuming (not knowing) I’m not a brain in a vat’, ‘assuming (not knowing) I’m not hallucinating or dreaming or ‘assuming (not knowing) I can think rationally’.

Assumptions on top of assumptions on top of assumptions add up to NO KNOWLEDGE just like a sum of zeros add up to zero.

Now, if I can actually *know* the assumptions (they’re no longer assumptions are they?) then why can’t I know the truth value of them?

SteveK, do you think we know the proofs of geometry even though they are completely dependent upon postulates, or do we not know them?

We don’t say that we know a big zero about geometry, but every single thing we know about geometry we know only because of initial postulates.

You’re trying to make the idea of “know” do much, much more than it has to. It only need be limited by being dependent on a few assumptions, like the LNC, as well as observables. That’s all it has to do to work for us.

Hi Paul,

And, Charlie, is it only other people who advance, who modify their ideas on occasion, or do you do that too?

Sure my views change. But I think it is more than appropriate to point out, on yet another thread where you are impervious