Knowledge

[jondwhite]

I saw the new book Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction reviewed in the Guardian recently.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/16/knowledge-very-short-introduction-review-jennifer-nagel

[ALB]

It seems that this forum is not the only place where epistemology is being discussed !

[jondwhite]

The book however is finite.

[DJP]

There's a short podcast to do with this book here:http://philosophybites.com/2014/08/jennifer-nagel-on-intuitions-about-knowledge.html

[ALB]

Just finished reading this. Main problem is that it is based on what a single individual can reasonably conclude what they 'know'. This is the traditional approach of Western individualist philosophy but it must be wrong because a single individual can only think through language; but language is a social product and so implies the existence of others. Descartes should not have concluded from "I think" that therefore just "I am", but rather have said "I think, therefore others (society) must exist too". Which would take the theory of knowledge off in a quite different direction.I see that modern philosophers of knowledge have abandoned analysng ordinary language and are now amusing themselves by trying to show that what someone thinks they know they might not actually know. One example is the traveller who looks at a railway clock showing 1.15. It actually is 1.15 but what the traveller doesn't know is that the clock is stopped, at 1.15. Question: can they really be said to know that it is 1.15?  This apparently is how modern philosophers amuse themselves for their money (and career).The only thing that emerges from the book that might have some relevance to what we've been endlessly discussing here is a doctrine called "contextualism" which says that there can be different criteria for knowledge depending on the context, e.g everyday life or scientific research.

[Anonymous]

Does Nagal deny the existence of an 'objective reality or simply our knowledge of it?For example is it a 'fact' that the clock has stopped but the onlooker does not know of this objective fact?But the philosopher does?

[DJP]

I read this book by Simon Blackburn earlier in the year. It's good, but more like a guide through the arguments as they have taken form through the millennia than an out and out solution to the problem…http://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/may/21/highereducation.news1

[ALB]

Vin wrote:

Does Nagal deny the existence of an 'objective reality or simply our knowledge of it?

She's basically describing the various theories of knowledge still extant (including some ancient ones) but, yes, she does say that all serious theories accept objective external reality. But some raise doubts as to whether we can acquire "knowledge", defined as "a justified true belief", about it. You'd be surprised at the absurdity of some of the arguments they use, eg how do we know that we are not a brain in a vat fed impressions by a computer?

Vin wrote:

For example is it a 'fact' that the clock has stopped but the onlooker does not know of this objective fact?

Yes, the dominant theory (and the view of most people questioned) is that the person does not "know" that the time is 1.15 because, although this might be a "true belief", it is not "justified". Or something like that.

Quote:

But the philosopher does?

Someone who knows that the clock has stopped and who has obtained the time from a clock that hasn't can (in the view of most philosophers but not of those who think we might be a brain in a vat) justifiably claim to know that the time is 1.15.This seems to be the level of what they are discussing in universities these days.

[alanjjohnstone]

By coincidence i came across this critique of Copernicus and his theories. I was going to post it on the science thread where Lbird argued that the "fact" that the Earth goes around the Sun was mere ideology but since this is an active thread, here will do. 

Quote:

While most of us today assume that our brilliant scientific minds, space exploration programs, and high-tech telescopes and equipment have long since proven that the Earth orbits the sun, Mr Delano explains that no experimental evidence has ever been obtained that unequivocally proves this to be true. As historian Lincoln Barnett states in The Universe and Dr. Einstein, "We can't feel our motion through space, nor has any physical experiment ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion." Hence, Mr Delano states that the Copernican Principle is not a scientific fact, but rather a metaphysical assumption supported by profoundly convincing ideas and theories. His film, The Principle, is the first documentary ever to directly examine the scientific basis of the Copernican Principle by bringing together top scientific experts in a commentary, which he says, will leave us questioning our very place within the cosmos.

 http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins-human-origins-science/radical-new-documentary-claims-copernicus-and

[twc]

“The Evidence of Our Senses”An essay in historical materialism¹ 

C. P. Ortlieb (False Objectivity) wrote:

the evidence of our senses speaks in favor of the geocentric view.

For Copernicus, “the evidence of our senses” was both the start point and the end point of science.  And the “evidence of our senses” that vitally mattered to him was naked-eye observation of planetary astronomy.Copernicus’s scientific practice became the exemplar for future scientific researchHe analysed planetary astronomy into a general principle that reduced its complexity, but nonetheless managed to preserve its essential aspects.In modern terminology, he reverse-engineered it to arrive, by abstraction, at the mechanism that drove it—its essence—the general principle of heliocentrism that the planets revolve around the Sun [helios] and not around the Earth.He undertook to reproduce, by logical synthesis, the “evidence of our senses” as the necessary form of appearance of its heliocentric essence.²Copernicus saw his scientific role as comprehending the determinism that necessarily binds essence and appearance in order to comprehend the “evidence of our senses”.At the heart of Copernicus’s deterministic science lies a deep contradiction that energizes it:  its heliocentric essence contradicts the appearance it aims to comprehend.Consider the ContradictionThis contradiction between “sensuous” appearance and conceptual essence continues to disturb those of a philosophical mindset.  It became a cell-form for ensuing western skepticism, taking an extreme turn in Kant’s critical philosophy, where only essence, and its synthesis can be known.³ Latter-day Kantians of the Left remain affronted by this essential contradiction that drives one of them, Claus Peter Ortlieb, to consider Copernicus’s sheet-anchor—the “evidence of our senses”—as false objectivity.Renaissance thinker Copernicus would have been appalled.  If the familiar appearance of the planets isn’t objective then neither is its heliocentric essence nor the determinism of appearance by essence.  Astronomical science becomes utterly impossible.Copernicus, who anticipated most attacks, could scarcely prepare himself for this one.  In this essay I defend Copernicus’s analytic–synthetic scientific practice against the Left Kantian charge of its false objectivity, in Marxian terms:The heliocentrism of Aristarchus, Copernicus and Kepler was scientifically possible only because heliocentric essence is disclosed by astronomical appearance.  It could not have elicited their conviction otherwise.Consider the AppearanceFor nine months the brightest star in the sky, the evening star, trails the setting Sun along the zodiac.  During its course, it moves away from the setting Sun, turns about, moves back, and vanishes in the Sun’s glare for a further nine months.Meanwhile, out of the glare of the rising Sun, a morning star appears.  For the next nine months it leads the rising Sun along the zodiac, moves away, turns about, moves back, and vanishes in the Sun’s glare for nine months.Every 19 months this cycle repeats itself, over-and-over again, as certain as the Sun’s day or the Moon’s month, and just as obvious to watchers of the sky.⁴ This eternal round appeared to our neolithic ancestors,  just as it appears to those of us who are “familiar with the night”,⁵   and just as it will appear to our socialist descendants.Consider the Essence“Oh, East is East, and West is West”, wrote Kipling, but that didn’t prevent the wise men of the East—the astronomers of Babylon—from identifying the bright star of the East with the bright star of the West, as two aspects of a single planet Venus ♀ [their goddess Ishtar].In so doing, they bequeathed to the world a potent conception of ‘Venus’ as a unity-of-opposite motions about the Sun—a conception that was destined to became the cell-form of heliocentrism.⁶ It was only a matter of time and circumstance before Greek astronomers conceived Venus’s familiar East ⇄ West movement about the Sun as the appearance of a circular orbit, seen from side-on.Such an insight could arise, and carry conviction, only after industry and transportation had embraced the wheel, and “sensuous” experience of harmonic rotation had become socially commonplace, i.e. where:⁷potters made plates and bowls on turntables;spinners wound textile threads on spindles;artisans turned timber and stone on lathes;toolmakers cut gear trains.Aristarchus, whose 3rd century BCE writings vanished in the anti-scientific Christian era, conceived Venus’s harmonic oscillation about the Sun as what we’d expect of an orbiting planet glimpsed edge-on in the common plane of a solar system.So too did Copernicus in Renaissance times, with more powerful naked-eye observations and scientific resources at his disposal:  namely, the astronomy, physics and geometry that flourished in late pre-Christian antiquity, as rescued from oblivion and elaborated by Arab scientists.What else could Venus’s “sensuous” maypole-dance around the Sun signify?  Only heliocentrism makes sense.⁸ Consider the LogicVenus always appears within 45° of the Sun, and so is closer to it than we are.  Her year must be shorter than ours, because the closer the planet, the faster it travels [Aristotle De caelo, II.10]. But Venus has a long year of 19 months, as the Magi from the East knew.  That’s a physical impossibility!Explaining Venus’s impossibly long year is Copernicus’s Hic Rhodus⁹ Copernicus faces the reality that science is born out of the resolution of contradiction.  The appearance it seeks to explain, and the essence it explains that appearance by, necessarily interpenetrate but are not identical.Copernicus only establishes his science in actuality, once he can logically deduce ‘impossible’ appearance as necessarily flowing from his science’s heliocentric essence.  Here’s how he did it:Venus’s apparent 19 month synodic year is the time Venus takes to orbit the Sun—its actual year—plus the additional time it takes to catch up to the moving Earth.¹⁰ Copernicus derives the actual year by deflating the synodic year proportionate to planetary contributions:      365·25/(synodic year + 365·25) , (the derivation of this famous Copernican conversion factor should be obvious to mathematician Claus Peter Ortlieb).Venus actually has a short year.  It orbits the Sun in only 224 days.Consider the ConvictionReverse engineering a quantitative heliocentric year from Venus’s impossible “sensuous” year seems to have clinched qualitative heliocentrism for Copernicus, just as it did for his successor Kepler:¹¹ 

Kepler (Myst. Cosmo. Ch. 20) wrote:

every [astronomer] wants planets to proceed with a slower motion the further their distance from the centre.  For nothing is more reasonable, witness Aristotle, [De caelo] than that “the motions of the planets should be in proportion to their distances”, … In Copernicus’s cosmos such a ratio is quite apparent at first sight.

Copernicus’s deterministic explanation of the ‘impossible’ is the stuff of scientific conviction—of heliocentric-consciousness.  With this act, naked-eye astronomy falls into place, and the “evidence of our senses” becomes comprehensible.For the first time, a working scientist is openly conscious that the “evidence of our senses” is necessarily at odds with its analytical essence but is in harmony with its synthesized appearance.This disparity is what deceives the Left Kantians, but Copernicus has demonstrated in practice what it naturally is—simply the way we humans comprehend all things.At this triumphant moment, modern natural science is born, and Ishtar, she of dual aspect, is its progenitor.Consider the ScienceBlood-red Mars ♂ flares in the midnight sky 70 times brighter [in opposition to the Sun] than its feeble glimmer [in conjunction with the Sun], when Mars is lost amid the background stars.  This is the “evidence of our senses”.Watch heliocentric-conscious Copernicus now in full flight:

Copernicus (De Rev. Ch. 1) wrote:

Mars is brightest when it rises at sunset because it is on our side of the Sun, and so is close to us;  and it is faintest when it sets at sunset because it is on the other side of the Sun to us, and so is far away from us.

Mars’s extreme brilliance makes heliocentric sense, but is a geocentric impossibility.  That’s the “evidence of our senses”.Henceforth Mars supplants Venus as the generative cell-form of heliocentrism.  Within the appearance of Mars’s extreme brilliance, there lurks a cyclic anomaly that reflects Mars’s non-circular orbit.  This “sensuous” anomaly prompts Kepler into conceiving elliptical planetary orbits.Kepler’s quantitative reverse engineering of planetary motion is a staggering achievement on so many counts.  After Kepler, the cosmos becomes quantitatively heliocentric.  He shows us how to synthesize the precise appearance of the planets deterministically from their heliocentric essence.Heliocentrism, by the “evidence of our senses”, simply annihilates geocentrism.  And warlike Mars is executioner.Consider the FutureHenceforth the Earth becomes the potent cell-form for explaining the earthly charges brought against the heliocentric heavens, which astronomer Copernicus confidently abstracted from, content that one day they might be mopped up by a future heliocentric-conscious champion.  That champion was Newton, who proudly acknowledged that he stood on the shoulders of giants.If Left Kantians claim “the evidence of our senses” is false objectivity, I challenge them to make good their claim by showing us how they would have reasoned differently from the Babylonian astronomers, Copernicus and Kepler who somehow managed to find a decent working substitute for genuine objectivity, when they delivered us the world as we all now know it.How would they have unravelled the “evidence of our senses”, in their own Left Kantian way, and bequeathed to us a more philosophically perfect solar system than the Copernican?¹²  Notes⁽¹⁾ Written in response to “Unconscious objectivity—aspects of a critique of the mathematical natural sciences (excerpts)”,  Claus Peter Ortlieb. https://libcom.org/library/unconscious-objectivity-aspects-critique-mathematical-natural-sciences-excerpts-claus-pe⁽²⁾ Analysis of appearance into essence is variously described as “Phenomenology” by Hegel, “descent from the concrete to the abstract” by Marx, and “revolutionary science” by Thomas Kuhn.  Synthesis of appearance from essence is specifically called “Logic” by Hegel, “ascent from the abstract to the concrete” by Marx, and “normal science” by Thomas Kuhn.⁽³⁾ Marx [Thesis VIII] and Engels [Feuerbach] reply that such quibbles are solved by human practice, and the comprehension of that practice.  This essay aims to comprehend Copernicus’s practice for the benefit of his Left Kantian critics.⁽⁴⁾ The Aboriginal Yolngu imagine that the morning star is tethered to the Sun by a rope.  Amazingly, for pre-literate folks, they foretell its 19 monthly rebirth, and celebrate its advent in myth and ritual.⁽⁵⁾ Robert Frost, “Acquainted with the Night”.  Given our light-polluted cities, we now need to have “outwalked the furthest city light”.⁽⁶⁾ The Babylonian astronomers noticed that the evening star on entering the setting Sun conveys its Eastward motion to the morning star that emerges from the rising Sun;  and symmetrically for the Westward motion.  The “evidence of our senses” forced them to conceive the phenomenon—as Hegel proved we humans conceptualize all that we comprehend—as an instance of a more general category:  in this case, the conservation of movement that observational astronomers are intimately familiar with.  That is how the Babylonian astronomers discovered the planet Venus.  Incidentally, it is impossible not to see the star followed by the Magi [Matthew 2] as a vulgar nod to the pre-classical Eastern ‘wisdom’ that astonished the early Greeks.⁽⁷⁾ Ptolemy [Almagest] argued that celestial motions have just got to be circular because that’s the only form we [Greeks] are familiar with that keeps on repeating itself harmonically.⁽⁸⁾ Claus Peter Ortlieb claims “Galileo observed the movement of the moons of Jupiter around the planet, but this does not prove the truth of the Copernican system … by way of observation…”  However, Galileo and the astronomical Cardinals were attuned to the appearance of Venus [and Mercury] as the Sun’s attendants.  On watching Jupiter’s attendants, each was “pre-adapted” to involuntarily recognize the signature of the same phenomenon.  Make no mistake, the astronomical Cardinals instantly knew precisely what class of “sensuous” phenomenon they were observing.⁽⁹⁾ “Either put up, or shut up”, as famously used in modern times by Hegel and, following him, Marx.⁽¹⁰⁾ Just as a runner must first complete an orbit of the track to be able to lap a competitor.⁽¹¹⁾ Heliocentrism is “quite apparent” to Kepler because it makes sense of astronomical appearance.  Kepler joins Copernicus in refuting Claus Peter Ortlieb’s primary thesis.  Incidentally Kepler exploded any suggestion of strict proportionality, when he distilled the observational “evidence of our senses” for the planet Mars into his three “laws of planetary motion”.⁽¹²⁾ Left Kantians are more comfortable at delivering negativity or even nothing, as demonstrated by Peter Ortlieb, who takes humble pride in declaring himself impotent to realize his article’s own thesis.

[twc]

This TV special is not about Copernicanism at all.  It is about something quite distinct from Copernicus’s solar system, of which there is no scientific doubt.Instead this sensationally promoted TV special focuses on two working hypotheses of cosmology, one of which happens to be named after Copernicus:Copernican Principle—we are not in a special place in the universe,Cosmological Principle—the universe is isotropic, or the view from anywhere looks roughly the same.The apparent breakdown of (2) from the “evidence of our senses” [cosmic microwave background observations from the COBE and WMAP satellites] supposedly implies the breakdown of (1).So what if the Universe is anisotropic on the cosmic scale.  That’s “evidence of our senses” we are compelled to comprehend by Copernicus’s analysis–synthesis practice.The implication that (1) is false, and the Earth is a special place, has no Copernican analysis—synthesis practice to comprehend it.Instead it is immediately self-evident to ever-doubting religious hankerers after a cosmic sign of God’s hand to bolster lagging faith.  God apparently offers salvation through the anisotropy of the Universe!Notice the hysterical “experts” in the promo confidently informing us we are special.  This is intelligent-design “science”!The contrary “evidence of our senses” is overwhelming:The Murchison meteorite—a carbonaceous chondrite left over from the 4·5 billion-year old planetesimal dust that accreted to form Copernicus’s solar system—contains 12% water and at least 14,000 molecular compounds including 70 amino acids and 11 alcohols (just for measure).Our Milky Way contains probably 400 billion exoplanets, with almost every star having at least one planet.Copernican solar systems are everywhere throughout the Universe.  Here is the modern day equivalent of Galileo’s view of Jupiter’s attendants, except that we are looking at planets in Copernican orbit around the star HR 8799 129 light years away.We may be special, but we aren’t super-universe special.

[alanjjohnstone]

My devious plan, TWC, as i have said several times before on various threads…and they always turn out to be the lengthy ones with very few participants….i can never really see where they lead to…they end up in circles and repeating themselves…and what does it all prove apart from some being able to use words that i have no idea of their meaning, (even those using them end up disagreeing on their definition) and citing experts who few has heard of much less read,  so i occasionally throw a spanner into the works, rattle the cages, stir the shit, and add my tuppensworth. We have an urgency in the need to not only communicate our ideas which has an extremely limited adience but even a greater need to convince those who do actually come across us of the validity of our case…I think too much energy is spent navel contemplation rather than practical politics…even if it is simply an exchange on image and logos, or how to make a presence felt on the internet, or stand candidates in elections…As Morris says our aim is making socialists…not scoring philosophical debating points with one another that interest no-body. Newcomers to the forum respond to the threads that are about socialism, not the ones such as this or those others. Its time to relate our arguments to what people are actually experiencing…and if we have to use the occasional abstraction let it be connected with something of everyday importance explained as clearly and simply as we can with words and images that they understand. That alone is a challenge to accomplish and we should be spending more time on that. Every month the issue of the Standard should be dissected and discussed for strengths and weaknesses, where is the thread for that? It's time to get the priorities right for a socialist political party. Time to re-focus our energies and apply ourselves to the simpler things in life such as persuading our fellow workers of the benefits and viability of socialism…The only sure knowledge i know of, btw, is the taxi drivers test and now even that is redundant technologically.(you caught me at a bad time where i'm more apt to be in a grumbling mood)  

[twc]

For Christ’s sake Alan, can’t you see that that’s the very view I’ve exploded.Except that your reference to Barnett is an even worse target than Ortlieb, and beneath contempt for scholarly consideration. Barnett was a popularizing dud like his contemporary Koestler.I should now follow your link…

[twc]

The relevance is that Claus Peter Ortlieb was formerly quoted to disprove the objectivity of “sensuous” practice in the name of Marx.  If what you are doing for Socialism is not objective, what’s its relevance?

[alanjjohnstone]

Quote:

The relevance is that Claus Peter Ortlieb was formerly quoted

My point exactly, what is his relevance…who the fuck is he and just who cares what he says…hands up the those who have had him quoted or his work mentioned at a public meeting…Come on, lets get back to the basics…leave the academic crap where it deserves…in dusty tomes on library shelves and at tedious university symposiums…When he or people like him pose a threat to the case for socialism, sure critique him, but truthfully….i'm not going to meet him on a picket line, and unlikely to read anything by him through the paywall Jstor site, am i , and that is being objective. Is socialism objective? Nope …its about passions, anger, righteous outrage …or it should be. What did Marx say?…when there exists two rights what prevails is down to might. So i really don't care about if some intellectual tries to disprove the validity of socialism…our case is that we will demonstrate the truth of our argument by winning.   (You still caught me in my bad mood)

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