Re: <djuno> & howabout <krici>? (Was Knowledge & Belief)

[Steven Belknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

Steven Belknap:
>>What if the earth is hit by a giant meteor tonight, and instead of
>>snowing tomorrow it rains molten ashes and lava? I assert that although
>>one can "know" that it will snow tomorrow, one can not <djuno> that it
>>will snow tomorrow or <djuno> that any future event in the physical
>>universe will take place under an empirical epistemology.

Rob Zook:
>Certainly one cannot know a future event with absolute certainty.
>Usually, epistemology does not restrict itself to only absolutely
>certainty or direct observation. The gismu list on the web page defines
><djuno> with an epistemological usage, and no further qualification:
>
<snip>
>>One can <djuno> that the savior is coming, that Windows 95 is better than
>>Macintosh, or that Halle-Bopp is a spaceship which will take castrated
>>people to the next level because these claims are not based on empirical
>>observation or rational thinking, but instead are in the province of
>>religion, delusion, or more generally, "faith". (I am not saying that
>>these ideas are necessarily bad or wrong, just that they are not
>>empirically-based.) Persons with such beliefs often point out that their
>>predictions about such events represent an article of faith, and that
>>part of their trial on earth is to have doubt about the validity of
>>their creed, etc., etc.
>
>Now, I would not call religious thinking irrational.

Nor would I, because I don't know what "religious thinking" is.

>Religion uses
>reason as a tool just as science does. However, religion builds the
>foundation of it's arguments on faith in the supernatural. Something
>that cannot possibly ever "prove", the way a scientist can "prove" a
>theorum. Remember the CompSci motto, GIGO - Garbage In Garbage Out
>(Please, don't take that as a comparison of religion as garbage).

Scientists don't prove theorems. They attempt to disprove hypotheses by
empirical means. The harvest of science consists of those hypotheses which
are left standing after honest attempts to disprove them fail.
Mathematicians and logicians prove theorems.

>I personally, think that basing a true belief on faith in something
>non-empirical does not seem justified.

I also prefer empiricism, but we have the advantage of living in an open
society where such minority views are not subject to public stoning.

>Other's disagree. Note that faith in
>itself, does not make something unjustified. Science itself comes down to
>faith; faith in ones thinking, faith in ones instruments, faith that one
>has experiemented enough to prove the theorum (since one necessarily
>stops before the infinite number of experiments needed to absolutely
>prove a theorum).

I do not agree with this view of what science is. Experiments are not used
to prove or disprove theorems. Experiments are used to test hypotheses. No
faith is necessary. If one's thinking, instruments, or analysis is flawed,
the process of science will eventually uncover the flaw, and correct it. Of
course, you might be long dead when the flaw is discovered.

>>It doesn't have to be justified the same way for everyone. There is no a
>>priori universally agreed upon set of knowledge. Some people think that
>>books which are thousands of years old, have been heavily edited by
>>persons with economic and political agendas, and translated imperfectly
>>from ancient languages are valid sources of knowledge. Other persons
>>might insist on reproducibility of observations, consistency with a
>>mathematical model, and elegance of formulation to be the basis of their
>><djuno>.
>
>As I said, some dispute about what "justified means, exists. However,
>in epistemology one usually restricts the meaning of the word knowledge
>to "justified true beliefs" where justified includes direct observation
>_and_ logical arguments.

Observation is subject to error. Ever seen a magic show?

>>It is certainly possible to "religionize" science, and use that
>>as an epistemology. It is a rather odd thing to do, as "religionized"
>>science (that is, taking the current working hypotheses of science and
>>converting them to <djuno>) is no longer empirical.

>>Perhaps much of the apparent disagreement between empiricists and mystics
>>is due to unfortunate definitional overloading of individual natlang
>>predicates.
>
>Without a doubt they certainly help to cause great confusion.

Indeed.

-Steven

Steven Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria