Re: "Anglican leader urges ban on gay bishops" - Associated Press

Eric Potts wrote:

[me:]
May I make a distinction? I completely agree that sometimes people
use the word "know" about things they don't (in my sense) really
know. But that doesn't mean that they're using the word "know"
in your sense; it could simply be that sometimes people think
they know something but are mistaken.

[Eric:]
Indeed it could. And even if they are using the word in my sense, they
could still be mistaken! As, in theory at least, could be those who
say, for example, "I know that humans have evolved by natural
selection." (I hasten to add that I do not think they are mistaken in
that case, but it remains a theoretical possibility.)

Our earlier discussion about knowledge stuttered to a halt because of
unavoidable time lapses between posts. I wonder whether it might be
appropriate to re-post here the main points of my last post in that
thread (apologies if anyone thinks it is NOT appropriate, but here
goes):

I think it's entirely appropriate. I actually wrote a lengthy response
to your last, but it vanished amidst the various bits of server weirdness
that the group suffered about that time, and then I couldn't find your
article again. So I'm glad of another opportunity :-).

I've snipped rather a lot, where it seemed to me that you were
providing background material and I didn't have anything much
to say about it. If there's anything that you think required
comment that it didn't get, please let me know.

Thus, so far, we seem to have subjective impressions about the objective
world which then, if all works out, become objective knowledge. Even
there, though, we do have to retain always some element of
provisionality, since at any moment a piece of information might come up
which alters or even destroys our theories. That possibility may become
extremely remote so that we can speak of objective facts, but it must
always remain, I think.

So far, so good.

However, not all of our observations and theories can be checked in such
ways, even though we might wish that they could. When we deal with ideas
about human behaviour or, I would guess, behaviour of any higher order
animals, the question of verification becomes increasingly problematic.

Yes, I agree.

As an example, I offer the very wide range of economic predictions, by
highly qualified, skilled and experienced economists, about almost any
given economic situation. Why, one small committee of the Bank of
England cannot even reach regular unanimity on the advisability of a
small change in the interest rate, or even of the right direction of
such a change.

So, can we call economics "knowledge"?

We certainly can't call any economist's predictions "knowledge"
if there's widespread disagreement among equally expert economists.
(Except in special cases where that economist has extra information
or understanding that they don't.)

There are other things in economics that probably can be called
"knowledge": for instance, facts about the behaviour of some of
the toy mathematical models that economists use to seek insight
into how the (much more complicated) real world behaves; or about
economic history. Probably some more general claims about how
things work out in the real world would count as knowledge too,
if suitably qualified: "usually, prices fall when supply increases
and demand decreases", perhaps.

In these kinds of questions the best we can do is to study, theorise,
share our findings, and try to learn from our "knowledge". Of course we
can and should always seek to refine our tools, to obtain more
information, to re-form our theories; but in the end any knowledge we
claim to have will never be more than very well informed opinion or
theory. And we just learn to live with that.

Well, yes, of course: nothing is absolutely certain, most things
are very very far from absolutely certain, etc. And, crucially,
some things are further than others; and part of what is meant
by calling something "knowledge" rather than "opinion" or "guess"
is that it's rather nearer to "absolutely certain" than most
things are.

I think the distinction between things that are well enough
established that Something Really Weird would need to be true
if they were wrong, and ordinary opinions that we don't really
have anything like conclusive evidence about, is a useful one;
and that's pretty much what the distinction between "knowledge"
and "opinion" is for.

What distinguishes the things you call "opinions" or "beliefs"
but don't call "knowledge", from the ones you do call "knowledge"?
(I'm not looking for a perfectly precise answer carefully crafted
to withstand the scrutiny of expert philosophers, though if you
happen to have one I shan't complain. Just some sort of explanation
that makes some sort of sense. Because it seems like you're keen
to obliterate what *for me* is the heart of that distinction.)

If we are willing to accept
the term "knowledge", then it is subjective knowledge we are talking
about, even though that subjective knowledge is about objective reality.

To varying degrees, and (again) much of what justifies calling
something "knowledge" is its greater "objectivity".

Thus, when I use religious language, to say perhaps that I know that
God is creator of all, I am in fact expressing a subjective opinion
about what I believe to be objective reality; I am not expressing
objective knowledge, as I have used the term.

Well, you've just said that you think all knowledge is "subjective
knowledge", so that's hardly a surprise. The relevant question,
then, is *how* subjective. (And perhaps, once that's answered:
if it's *that* subjective, then why use the word "knowledge"?)

I am making a statement
of faith. It cannot be proven or verified or falsified by the kind of
means that we use for objective knowledge. The unknowns are just too
great for anything like that.

See, when I have opinions that are completely immune to verification
and falsification, I avoid calling them "knowledge". (In fact, I try
not to have such opinions; when something's uncheckable either way,
I don't have any grounds for having an opinion about it.) There might
be an exception for things sooooo basic that questioning them would
render all thought impossible (maybe some bits of elementary logic,
or the idea that there's some sort of correspondence between what I
experience and how things actually are), but I don't think you could
credibly put the existence of God (still less all the details of
Christianity) into that category.

I'm assuming here that you aren't making the elementary mistake of
thinking that the only sorts of verification and falsification that
matter are *immediately conclusive* ones. Scarcely anything is
susceptible of immediately conclusive verification or falsification.

And yet it is still based on those
factors by which any information or knowledge is obtained, namely our
experience and observation, followed by reflection. I experience love;
I experience beauty, shape and order. Reflection leads me to belief in
divinity. That belief is constantly under review, as I live my life
and as my experiences grow and change.

Is there any opinion of yours that isn't "based on ... experience
and observation, followed by reflection" in that sense? If so, could
you give some examples?

In setting out ways to knowledge, I have not mentioned the truth that
often we come to knowledge second hand, by hearing from those whom we
trust. For example, I was introduced to Pythagoras theorem by a maths
teacher whom I respected. I duly copied down the proof from the
blackboard, without understanding that proof, and have never revisited
it since. Geometry is not my strong suit! I have drawn or measured one
or two right angled triangles in the years since then, and it would
not be difficult to show me the theorem was false, if that were the
case; but fundamentally I accept it on the authority of "Daddy"
Denison, the maths teacher (and all the other mathematicians who
presumably accept it also).

There's nothing wrong with accepting something on the basis of
authority -- when you have evidence that that authority is genuinely
expert. The fact (which you have plenty of indirect evidence for)
that Pythagoras's theorem is universally accepted among mathematicians
is good evidence that it's right[1], because there is a well-established
way of distinguishing truth from falsehood in mathematics. (It doesn't
always give an answer; but when it does, there's little scope for
disagreement.) And there are other well-established less formal ways
of checking whether things are true -- numerical experiment, for
instance. So if Pythagoras were wrong, we'd know about it by now.

[1] As a proposition in pure mathematics; in the physical
world, it is known to be not quite correct because
spacetime is curved.

Initially my faith was similarly second hand. My "knowledge" was, in
that sense, acquired second hand. Like Pythagoras, it came from those
I trust who, like the maths teacher, were part of a great community of
people who had similar ideas.

Now, here we come to a big difference between mathematicians
and religionists: basically, all mathematicians agree about
everything in mathematics. Whereas in order to get a comparable
feeling of consensus about statements like "God is the creator
of all", you have to restrict yourself to a "community of people
who had similar ideas".

And, of course, argument from authority is perfectly worthless
(at least as a way of distinguishing truth from untruth)
if all it takes to confer authority is a "community of people
who have similar ideas".

From experience (eg the fact that
architecture works, usually), I have come to make Pythagoras my own -
though I still couldn't prove it! And from experience I have come to
make theist belief my own - and have no desire to prove it.

As with all theories, my faith has been refined and modified over the
years and that process still continues

OK, fine; so you believe these things, aren't interested in
proving them, and (in one of the cases) the details of your
belief change over the years. I'm not sure what your point
is.

In the case of Pythagoras's theorem, I'm guessing that your
belief is still basically second-hand: unless your life
is quite unlike mine, you don't have a lot of experience
that bears directly on it, and it's clear that you aren't
much interested in the theoretical stuff that mathematicians
regard as proving it. (Which is absolutely fine, by the way;
none of that is a criticism.) So, I'd say, what entitles
you to say (if for some reason you want to) that you *know*
that a^2 + b^2 = c^2 when a,b,c are the sides of a right-angled
triangle is the fact that you know that there are experts
on this stuff, who would know if it were wrong, and who
unanimously agree that it's right. (And I expect you could
give at least a rough account of what sort of thing they
might do to check whether it's right or wrong.)

What I'm missing, here, is what corresponding justification
you have for saying that you *know* that God is the creator
of all. There isn't any corresponding unanimous community
of experts who you can confidently predict would know if
the statement were false. (If there were such a community
of experts, then given your job you really ought to *be*
one of them.)

Perhaps, in fact, your grounds for saying you *know* that
God is the creator of all aren't at all parallel to your
grounds for saying you *know* that a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Which
is fair enough, except that then I'm not sure what the
point of this whole analogy was :-).

- so much so that Gareth and
some others think I have departed somewhat from "traditional Christian
belief" or some aspects of that belief (though I still wish I knew
what constitutes "traditional Christian belief" in the minds of those
who use the term like that.) Of course I maintain that I am an
orthodox Christian. But that particular dispute is somewhat barren,
I think.

Then I'm not sure why you brought it up again :-). (Brief and
necessarily approximate answer: let's say that something is a
"standard Christian belief" at a particular time if, at that
time, it's believed by at least 25% of all Christians and
is officially part of, or at least deducible from, the doctrine
of bodies to which at least 25% of all Christians belong.
And let's say that something is a "traditional Christian
belief" if for at least 90% of the last 1600 years (taking
AD400 as a rough estimate for when Christianity had crystallized
sufficiently for this sort of thing to make sense) it has been
a standard Christian belief. Then it seems to me that some
of the things you've said in uk.r.c. are (1) not traditional
Christian beliefs, and (2) incompatible with things that are
traditional Christian beliefs.

However, as you say, this is likely to be a barren discussion
and it's entirely unrelated to the discussion we're having
right now. So please take the above merely as a clarification
of the sort of claim I was making in the past, not as an
invitation to reopen the debate about whether I was right
to make that claim.

The fact is that my opinion that God is creating love is held so
strongly that it shapes the way I live my life.

This seems to me to be an *entirely different* question from
whether it's something you know-as-opposed-to-just-believe.
Because, for instance, we would then have to say that David
Icke *knew* that lizardmen from whereveritwas had taken over
the world's governments; that 10% (or whatever it is) of the
US population *knows* that Barack Obama is a Muslim; that
Ken Down *knows* that evolution is wrong; and so on, and so
forth. And I think that just isn't how the word "know" is
generally used, and isn't a useful way to use it.

(For sure it's *sometimes* used in that way; generally, I think,
ironically, as e.g. if you suspected some atheist of circular
reasoning and said "But, of course, you just *know* that there
is no God, and therefore it follows that [WHATEVER] isn't really
evidence of God's existence." The point, of course, being your
disagreement about whether it's really *knowledge* that she has.)

It is still a question
of faith, of opinion, not of proven fact in the experimental sense;
but to me it is knowledge. It is knowledge of a quite different order
from my knowledge of Pythagoras' theorem; but it is knowledge none the
less.

I understand that you think, and are determined to reiterate,
that it is knowledge. What I don't understand is why you call
it that.

It has been tested in my life; where uncomfortable problems have
arisen, I have found it possible, more than possible, to adjust my
understanding without at the same time ever losing faith. That is, my
theory is as open to modification or, should it be be necessary,
rejection as is any other theory.

You say "That is", but the things on either side of it don't
appear to me to be saying the same thing.

No doubt it would be better if some quite
different word was used; but often it is not. While we are free to
challenge the usage of a word, at the end of the day a word means what
people use it to mean, not some abstract, academic definition.

Er, yes, that's right. If you're suggesting (as it very much
appears that you are) that my objection to your (ab)use of the
word "know" is on the basis that it fails to accord with "some
abstract, academic definition", I invite you to show me where
I've said or implied anything of the sort.

Posts are public, for anyone to read. I was attempting to head off
possible arguments based on someone quoting from a dictionary, not
assuming anything about you.

But, it might still be interesting to note one (among many) dictionary
definition of "knowledge":
"Familiarity, awareness or understanding gained through experience or
study."
I think that definition, the second of a series in the Readers Digest
Universal Dictionary, fits very closely what I am talking about and
suggests that people do in reality use the word in the way I suggest.

I don't see how you get that from it. Would you say that I am
familiar with, am aware of, and understand, the non-existence
of the Christian god? It seems to me that making any of those
statements implies agreement that the Christian god doesn't,
in fact, exist. So I don't think you can say, according to that
definition, that I "know" that the Christian god doesn't exist;
and yet, unless I've misunderstood you very badly, I do "know"
that according to the usage you're advocating -- because I am
quite confident that it's true, and I live my life accordingly
(e.g., not going to church, arguing with Christians in uk.r.c,
etc.), and my everyday experience hasn't led me to abandon that
opinion.

(Whereas I wouldn't say that someone "knows" that the Christian
god doesn't exist without (1) agreeing with them and (2) thinking
that they had sufficient evidence to justify their confidence.
So, e.g., if someone is brainwashed by a weird atheist cult
then they don't *know* that the Christian god doesn't exist,
even if they happen to be right.)

If you mean that my knowledge is not proof, then of course I agree
with you.

No, I don't mean that, and I didn't say that, and I long ago
lost track of how many times I've pointed out that *proof*
is scarcely ever available and scarcely ever a reasonable
thing to demand (outside a few domains such as pure mathematics).

And yet, for some reason, it seems like every single time
I so much as suggest that when someone makes a claim they
ought to have some evidence for it, and that claims don't
get exempted from this merely because they have something
to do with God, along comes the suggestion that I'm saying
that no one should say anything without *proof*, or that
no one should believe anything without *scientific experiments*
backing it up. I don't know why this happens, but it's very
annoying.

I seem to have touched a nerve.

I don't mind when this misunderstanding happens once or twice.
But it seems -- perhaps my memory is at fault -- that it's
happened considerably more than that, despite repeated attempts
at clarification on my part.

I apologise for that. But you too are
making false assumptions if you think that I believe that evidence is
not appropriate and that claims about God are somehow exempted from
that.

Well, I don't know what else to make of it when you say that
you want to apply the word "know" to your beliefs about God
purely on the basis of the strength of your conviction; or
that "the means that we use for objective knowledge" don't
apply to them.

The question at hand is not whether or not evidence is required
but what kind of evidence is even possible and how we should assess
that. For beliefs about God, the kind of evidence that applies to
objective facts is simply not available. I do not believe that this
necessarily invalidates beliefs about God. Others think differently.

What I'm still hoping to hear, and not hearing[2], is what sort
of evidence *is* available and how it works.

[2] It is of course possible that the fault is on the
receiving end.

Saying "I observe how the world is and reflect on it, and this
is what I conclude" is, unfortunately, completely uninformative:
because, as I said above, it seems like it applies equally to
absolutely any belief you hold regardless of what it is, what
evidence you have, how you think about it, etc., etc., etc.

--
Gareth McCaughan
sig under construc


.

Relevant Pages
Loading