What is the Nature of Knowledge

[freeztar]

I appreciate the insights that have led to clarifying the relationship between knowledge and belief, though I feel that it is fallacious to equate the two. I agree with Zythryn that in the first person, they are the same thing, but they are definitely distinct when more than one mind is involved, as I believe Jedaisoul pointed out.

[Thunderbird]

This is the way I do it on the web.

Need assessment of current information system
Selection of key words {code}
Specifications of search information
Identifying the specific Informational context
Updating the general informational context

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Thunderbird

This is the way I do it on the web.

Need assessment of current information system
Selection of key words {code}
Specifications of search information
Identifying the specific Informational context
Updating the general informational context

1.Need assessment of current information system
2.Specifications of search information
3.Selection of key words {code}
4.Identifying the specific Informational context
5.Updating the general informational context

This is better order..

[Overdog]

Originally Posted by freeztar

I appreciate the insights that have led to clarifying the relationship between knowledge and belief, though I feel that it is fallacious to equate the two. I agree with Zythryn that in the first person, they are the same thing, but they are definitely distinct when more than one mind is involved, as I believe Jedaisoul pointed out.

Thanks, yes I completely agree it is fallacious to equate the two except in the first person. I'm not sure how I gave the impression that I did not agree with Jedaisoul. I have been talking about the first person view.

I'm going to have to drop out of this discussion (and others) until the week after next, I promised you a rain dance in Alabama next week and I'm leaving in the morning...not expecting much if any internet access where I'll be.

[freeztar]

Thanks for the clarification Overdog. I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page.

Have a good trip!

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by freeztar

Thanks for the clarification Overdog. I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page.

Have a good trip!

I guess I'll know when you've done your boogey when the dark clouds roll in.

[Overdog]

Ok, one final post before I hit the road (can't resist).

I'm dropping modeling the congnitive process, at least in this thread (realized it doesn't belong here).

If we agree that at the individual level there is little if any distinction between Knowledge and Belief, then...can we say our world view is a belief system?

If all we have as individuals are beliefs, then what I'm thinking of as "knowledge" is really a community of consensus on what beliefs I accept as true.
(I believe someone made this point earlier. no pun intended)

So I "believe" that a collaborative community of scientists peer-reviewing each others work, following the scientific method, is the best thing available for distinguishing fact from fiction, and my FAITH in it is reasonable and rational.

[Overdog]

Ok, I'm back from Alabama...did Freeztar's rain dance, for what its worth, and spent some more time pondering this.

So there is at least one other kind of knowledge, that is not part of our belief system. We know how we feel, don't we? We know when we are hungry... I'm calling this kind of knowledge innate knowledge. Innate knowledge would include instincts and emotion, and like Kant, Nature too "...had therefore to drop knowledge to make room for belief."

--Thanks for that Quote Modest.

For the evolution of a "believing" information system, much of innate knowledge was (had to be) dropped (by natural selection) but not all of it. We still have some instinctive behaviors, and certainly LOTS of emotion. What good would a believing machine be without emotions and some instincts to drive it, to give it impetous for action?

So the belief system evolved in the context of a pre-existing system of innate knowledge, and some behaviors governed by innate knowledge were cleared out, replaced by behaviors deriving from beliefs. It makes sense that an organism with the ability to quickly adapt it's behavior simply by "changing its mind" might enjoy significant survival advantages over the alternative of waiting for natural selection to alter instinctive behavior.

So we ended up as emotional, believing machines, driven to belive something, and able to believe anything, without regard to logic, reason, or the fact that one belief may be completely inconsistent with another.

We seem to have this innate ability to compartmentalize beliefs, so that conflicting beliefs are neatly hidden away, until some circumstance comes along that forces them into view.

I recall taking batteries of tests when I joined the Navy many years ago as a teenager. I remember one test in particular, it was some sort of psycological profile test. I remember about halfway through the test thinking I was aceing it, I knew the correct answer to every single question...then things began to fall apart in the second half of the test. The problem was, I still knew the correct answer to every question but the answer was in direct conflict with an answer I'd given in the first part of the test, and both answers could not be correct. The test was exposing to me what a confused, mixed up mess of conflicting beliefs my mind really was, and by the end of it I was afraid to turn it in for fear they would send me straight to the looney bin. But they didn't, instead I was recruited into the military, apparently no more mixed up than the next guy. Anyway, I left the recruiting office resolved to spend the rest of my life trying to organize and clean up the mess the test had revealed.

[Overdog]

So there seems to be yet another kind of "knowledge", and this is where the meaning of the word "knowledge" starts to get very fuzzy. As well, the theories and mechanisms for how it arises are controversial. The central questions here (at least to me) pertain to where and how we get our abilities for Language, Logic, and Reasoning. Do we get them from Nature (hardwired infrastructure/innate), or from Nurture, or (to me more likely) is it a combination of both?

Philosopher Immanuel Kant reasoned in his Critique of Pure Reason that the human mind knows objects in innate, a priori ways. Kant claimed that humans, from birth, must experience all objects as being successive (time) and juxtaposed (space). His list of inborn Categories are predicates that the mind can attribute to any object in general. Schopenhauer agreed with Kant, but reduced the number of innate Categories to one, namely, causality, which presupposes the others.

See:

Psychological nativism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It doesn't seem clear the extent to which these abilities can be attributed to instinct, yet at some level there must be a genetic basis for a physical infratructure which can, at the very least, support the development of these faculties through Nurture, if indeed they are not completely innate.

[Overdog]

So, either interest in this thread has evaporated, or folks are waiting in ambush...I'll assume the latter for now and continue.

Another kind of innate knowledge we seem to have leads to what is called a "Theory of Mind".

See:
Theory of mind - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Excerpt:

Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others. As originally defined, it enables one to understand that mental states can be the cause of—and thus be used to explain and predict—others’ behavior.[2] Being able to attribute mental states to others and understanding them as causes of behavior means, in part, that one must be able to conceive of the mind as a “generator of representations”[3][4] and to understand that others’ mental representations of the world do not necessarily reflect reality and can be different from one’s own. It also means one must be able to maintain, simultaneously, different representations of the world. It is a ‘theory’ of mind in that such representations are not "directly observable".[5] Many other human abilities—from skillful social interaction to language use—are said to involve a theory of mind.

AND

Theory of mind appears to be an innate potential ability in humans (and, some argue, in certain other species), but one requiring social and other experience over many years to bring successfully to adult fruition. It is probably a continuum, in the sense that different people may develop more, or less, effective theories of mind, varying from very complete and accurate ones, through to minimally functional. It is often implied or assumed (but not stated explicitly) that this does not merely signify conceptual understanding "other people have minds and think," but also some kind of understanding and working model that these thoughts and states and emotions are real and genuine for these people and not just ungrounded names for parroted concepts. Empathy is a related concept, meaning experientially recognizing and understanding the states of mind, including beliefs, desires and particularly emotions of others without injecting your own, often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes."

Earlier I suggested that our species had evolved into "...emotional, believing machines, driven to belive something, and able to believe anything, without regard to logic, reason, or the fact that one belief may be completely inconsistent with another."

To me, this says that we are Religious animals, by nature. I understand this may be an unusual use or definition of the word than ones we may be accustomed to.