Witt

I don't think that anything is believable, do you?

In the absence of knowledge, we can believe whatever we want, but, in the presence of knowledge we cannot believe whatever we want.

If we know that, the moon is made of green cheese ..is false, then, we cannot believe that it 'is' made of green cheese.

What is know false cannot be believed true at all, don't you think so?

If I believe P, then what I believe is that P is true.

If P is contradictory and I believe that P is true, the, I am simply wrong, ..which becomes apparent when I realize that it 'is' contradictory.

If P cannot be true, e.g. P is contradictory, then P cannot be believed true either. (by a knowing subject)


x believes that P is true, iff, ~(x knows that P is false).

x knows that P is true, iff, ~(x believes that P is false).

x knows that P is true, implies, x believes that P is true.

x knows that P is true, implies, P is true.

P is true, implies, x believes P is true.


What do you guys and gals think about this stuff?

Witt

paul30

What we believe and even what we "know" are compromises between our perceptual apparatus and our social conditioning.

People who stay strictly with their individual perceptual apparatus and do not buy into the more-or-less agreed-upon reality are called schizophrenic or visionary or wacko.

People who slavishly adhere to the received consensus are not thought crazy, but will never make it as scientists, since new discoveries will demand new paradigms.

I personally THINK the kind of "knowledge" we get in science is valid; but I know I--and everyone else--could be wrong.

I don't think there will ever be any rigorously demonstrable "knowledge" because I--and others--might be hallucinating.

xoc

Well maybe not "world-shaking" discoverers, but I think a lot of scientists are technicians, following given methods/paradigms to make new discoveries, and that while "technicians" may not be as romanticized as an Einstein(who made a paradigm-leap of science through "thought-experiments", quite the miracle) the world of science still needs this kind of work and benefits from it exceedingly. There is such a level of detail in the world(and once we establish certain methods/paradigms that work reasonably there is usually near-infinite applications for them) that few scientists need be to be creative geniuses of insight. Indeed, only a few usually come forth with great paradigms in a generation... these methods though can be applied and tested by technicians for a long time and better our understanding of the world. For example a scientist who spends his hours observing stars to see if there are any black holes, planets, etc. nearby already has good methods for doing this, and if better methods arrive he can change to use them.

"I THINK the kind of knowledge..." there's the dilemna, there cannot be any kind of "knowledge" that we don't just "think" is knowledge because we can never get beyond our thoughts to grasp Reality-As-Is. If we cease to merely "think" we cease to be and can't say anything about the world anymore. Although we can alter our methods of thinking to get better and more accurate pictures, which are predictive and correlate to what we'd expect... we can never expect to reach 100% "Truth of Existence" from a System, systems are always lesser models than what they try and represent. (The "Globe" gives us a good picture of the world but could never equal the Earth itself in terms of representation of the Earth)

John Page

Yes, you just have to design a system to believe it.
Whereas I can believe ~P.

I would, however, agree that for any system where ~(P&~P) it necessarily follows that ~(P&~P).

Contrariwise, for a system making a truth determination, we must suppose (believe, pretend?) ~P and then P in order to determine whether P ^ ~P.
x knows that P is true, implies, P is true for x.

Cheers, John