trc@houti.UUCP (T.CRAVER) (07/23/83)
Response to Tom Craver, by Tom Craver, on "knowing": After discussing and reconsidering my previous submission on what it means to "know" something, I want to partially recant. I think that my err was to take the word "true" from the definition: "First, you had to believe it; second it had to be true; and third, your belief had to be justified" to mean "absolutely, universally true". This, in fact, may be what the original meaning was intended to be. However, if "true" is taken to mean "true within a context", the definition becomes better. Thus one knows something when 1) acceptance is justified (strong evidence, no contradictions 2) one accepts it because of the evidence (not on faith) and 3) it is true within a context, and one recognizes that though one may not be fully aware of all the factors in the context, the knowledge is contextual. One example that was cited to me (taken from Dr. Leonard Piekoff's lectures, I believe. He is the author of "The Ominous Parallels".) was the case of the researchers that discovered types of blood. They categorized the types of blood by type, and determined what types were compatible. However, later on, the rh factor was discovered, which meant that certain types of blood that had been previously categorized and would have been declared compatible on that basis, were not in fact compatible. So long as the researchers did not claim more than was justified - that they knew that, so long as no other factor was involved, blood of certain types are compatible - they would in fact have had real knowledge. If they had dropped the context, by assuming they knew all that could be known about the context, they would have declared that there would never be any circumstance under which certain types of blood would not be compatible. Under this modified definition, knowledge is possible, but contradictory knowledge is not possible - if two people claim to know contradictory things, one can be certain that one or both are wrong, and that they may have made some unjustified assumptions about the context of what they DO know. Reference to reality is still the means they must use to find the correct answer. Tom Craver houti!trc