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RE: Knowing, Yet Not Really 'Knowing' - Internal and External Wisdom by krnel

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· @krnel ·
Knowledge is information. The apple is green. The apple is red. Using logic to derive understanding, we notice a contradiction that needs to be resolved. We can distinguish truth from falsity by reflecting back to the grounding in reality. The apple is actually red, not green.

I distinguish belief from knowledge in that belief is trust, loyalty and faith put into something. There are two (main?) types of belief that I have discerned, one that I call healthy and the other unhealthy, in terms of properly aligning our perceptions with reality.

![102a-Beliefs-40.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmfEeUFXdkJwgCMhBU9edqhn8rSxHA3h1quRYWLeq1faTy/102a-Beliefs-40.jpg)

Unverified knowledge is belief. Claims of truth that aren't verified are not truth to us because we haven't verified it. We can believe and have trust, loyalty and faith in others, which is the foundation for cooperation and human success, as we can't know and verify what happened in other people's lives and must trust them and their competency. A health belief is fine, so long as we don't actually call it the actual truth that is demonstrable and verified. When people tell us things, we can say we believe them, or we believe they are telling us the truth, because that's how it actually works. 

Truth has a definition. It's veracious and veritably verifiable, from Latin veritas (truth). Belief has a definition, which is of faith, loyalty and trust in something, an idea, a person, etc. To accept truth is objective, one only need to initially have faith, trust and loyalty to believe the truth is possible, then when one goes out to understand more and verify things, one can indeed verify that truth exists as a universal grouping order construct, like reality, existence, universe do. Many things exist yet don't exit in themselves as their own individual things, like an apple, atom, etc. Morality is another thing that exists as a description reflecting our behaviors. Truth is a reflection of "what is" or what was, and there is the future that will be the truth of what will come to be when it happens.

Belief potentials from imagination are where we can create anything and then verify with reality to see if what we think is true or not. It can lead us to a type 2 truth as I call it, moral truth of possible ways to live. 

![19a-Truth-Two-Levels---Two-Truths.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVLuhjQvjbBtTrwr2BYLqN5nR8jfLLP3prKDKE27mmvRe/19a-Truth-Two-Levels---Two-Truths.jpg)

Right and wrong can be objectively determined. I don't adhere to your definition of objective. Actions come from hands that are real. Actions are real. They are objective. What they do is objective. The harm they create is objective. The basic foundation is the objective harm from murder, rape, assault, theft. 

If someone doesn't understand that those actions are real and objectively discerned, then that sucks that they can't see the reality of human behavior before their eyes. I can't get past rigid "left"-brain imbalanced mindsets like that. Discerning what is objective and what is subjective is required, which I have tried to do: [Objective and Subjective Defined](https://steemit.com/philosophy/@krnel/objective-and-subjective-defined). Simply because something originate from a subjective internal consciousness of thoughts and emotions, actions are in the real world with effects and are objective occurrences. Subjective morality is fake false understanding of how morality works as a representation and reflection of our behavior. Objective morality is objective discernment of the difference between right and wrong. And it's complex as hell, as there are nearly infinite context and situations that can arise, which is why rulsets are not the goal, but proper thinking. Learning how to think is required so that differentiation can be done given a context, not rote obedience to a rulset like the "legal" system has co-opted in place of moral law comprehension.

Indeed, we must always be ready to revise something if better reflections with reality emerge. But there is a real territory we are discovering, and if we discover 5% of one aspect, and later 5% more, it doesn't mean that the first 5% was wrong, but only applicable to that depth of perception which limited deeper comprehension and additional facets. The map detail was on enhanced into higher definition detail. Vision is enhanced compared to before. And for sure, many times there can be outright false mapping that doesn't represent reality. We need to be more careful and desiring to root the false areas out, than to enhance the detail in other areas. Avoiding disaster is better.

Personal experience still reflects "reality", but maybe we hallucinated and it didn't happen in external reality, but only our internal reality hehe ;) Still the senses are all we have, those are the instruments we must trust. They are the portal to truth. If we were blind, deaf, couldn't taste, feel, or smell, then we would be dead in short time. Senses although limited compared to other tech, are the tools that were designed for our use, and we have them to make good use of in order to discern objective reality of the territory in existence.

You seem to think you can't know anything with certainty to base your actions upon, so it's all "internal approximation of reality"? The overly "left"-brain type of hyper-skepticism and doubt can lead to a subjectivist and solipsistic type of thinking. I know, I was there in the past. I'm just mentioning this, as I'm getting this mindset from you at times. It can also happen with "right"-brain imbalanced mindsets as well. But, if you mean it's an approximation like the %5 now, and it's not "100%" of all knowledge or truth about something in reality... ok. You don't need to, nor can likely have, 100% absolute knowledge of everything about something. We learn all the way through life ideally. That doesn't mean that as we go, we don't achieve levels of comprehension, certain percentage points of understanding something, that is accurate and won't need to be revised, ever. There are some things that are certain for us to base our actions upon, and not approximate.

That's my objection to some points in what you said. I like how you think for the most part, except for what I consider some misunderstanding of what objective is. I've done lots of thinking and infographics and audios and text on this type of stuff. I mostly stick to the realm of consciousness and more general things in reality, as you may notice I don't do specific political things or events much. This is because these truths about ourselves, behavior, thinking, and some things about reality in general, can all be verified and demonstrable on our own, by each person. It applies to all our lives and we can all see it if we want to learn and verify it. Psychological and philosophical understanding is the foundation to start from that we can each very on our own.  Then the trust we can put in others competency also grows as each person becomes a better thinker.

Anyways, I respect you, your psyche-mind, and I rarely take the time to respond in depth as I have been. It takes a lot of time to explain things hehe. Like this aspect of confusion regarding objective and subjective is a big rabbit hole. I understand it, but explaining it takes so much time. I have pieces of work that interconnect that relate to understanding the intricacies. If you have more issues about this, I'll try to make posts next time. Doing things one-on-one takes up a lot of time with fewer people befitting from it :P I like to do one-to-many information presentation.
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@rocking-dave ·
$0.68
First of all, thank you for taking the time to write such an in-depth answer! I appreciate it!

> Unverified knowledge is belief. 

I think we use belief differently. For me anything that we believe is a belief, so I use the word more broadly. For me, when I say that I believe the Earth is round, it's still a belief, it's just a very well-substantiated one. But I can use idea instead and of belief and my view gels pretty well with the model you are presenting.

Describing knowledge as a system of well-substantiated ~~beliefs~~ ideas does make sense to me, that's a very good and practical model for it. I think I'll "keep" it ;)

>  I don't adhere to your definition of objective.

That is very surprising to me :P I'm left with the impression that we actually use the word quite similarly, so even after reading your older post on the topic and subjectivity and objectivity, I'm having a hard time seeing a real difference or anything to really object to in your usage. We might have a bit different ideas for some of the implications, but a true definitional difference alludes me.

> Actions are real. They are objective. What they do is objective. The harm they create is objective.

This part I agree with 100%.

> Subjective morality is fake false understanding of how morality works as a representation and reflection of our behavior. 

This is where our positions start to diverge. I don't think morality can be viewed as intrinsically objective much like ethically right and wrong are in my opinion not intrinsically objective.

Let me illustrate that with an example. I personally believe that eating animals is morally wrong while others disagree for a variety of reasons some of which would be internally consistent and even reasonable. If morality was truly objective, we should have an objective way of determining what is right or wrong in the situation.

I think morality is something that is based on some standards and values. It generally revolves around not causing harm to others, a concept that I've seen formulated as well-being, which I think is a nice way to put it. But there are different standards that are possible. Somebody that sees eating animals as a morally acceptable act, has the well-being of humans as the standard, while I prefer to expand it to all conscious beings. A more radical difference in moral standards would be people that would say that moral is what their religion defines as moral. So the standards by which we judge what is right and wrong and not really set in stone and are subject to subjective evaluation and judgment based on personal values and views about the world.

Having said that, I wouldn't go as far as to say that objective morality is not impossible. After we have agreed on the standards for morality, we could indeed apply the standards in an objective way and we can start determining if an act is moral or immoral according to the standards that we have put forward.

This is very much what happens with definitions too. Deciding on a definition is a subjective act. As words are not magic, we supposedly somehow come to an agreement on a particular definition for a particular word. Defining it has some intrinsic subjectivity, but after we have defined it in whatever way we have, we then can supposedly have an objective standard of what falls in and out of that defined category.

So I'd say we can indeed have somewhat objective morality, but only after we have agreed on the standards.

> Indeed, we must always be ready to revise something if better reflections with reality emerge

Well, that's why I'm reluctant to talk about something that is true with absolute certainty as there is always a chance for a hidden factor or a delusion to be the culprit of our supposed understanding. It's in a way accepting solipsism. But that's my "theoretical" approach to this if you will. While absolute certainty about anything might be something that I would be reluctant to postulate theoretically, I would say that in practice, we can indeed demonstrate things beyond any reasonable doubt and we can view them as facts. It's like saying that 100% perfection is impossible, but that 99.999% is enough for all practical purposes. The last bit of doubt is reserved for taking into account the ever present possibility of what you mentioned here.

> Still the senses are all we have, those are the instruments we must trust. 

Yep, a crucial point indeed. The problem with solipsism is that it doesn't offer anything to replace our senses while reality (real, imagined, hallucinated, or simulated) forces us to act and react to it. And we are much better off, basing the reasoning for our actions in it.

> But, if you mean it's an approximation like the %5 now, and it's not "100%" of all knowledge or truth about something in reality... ok. You don't need to, nor can likely have, 100% absolute knowledge of everything about something.

Yes, this is more or less what I mean.

> Anyways, I respect you, your psyche-mind, and I rarely take the time to respond in depth as I have been. 

Yes, I appreciate that a lot! It's been a very interesting conversation for me and I'd like to assure you that all the time you've put into those replies has not been wasted as you've indeed nudged me to think about some aspects of my positions that I hadn't really considered before and that has been inspiring.

>  If you have more issues about this, I'll try to make posts next time. Doing things one-on-one takes up a lot of time with fewer people befitting from it :P I like to do one-to-many information presentation.

That would be great. I agree presenting complex ideas in the comments is not the most efficient way to go and actually in a way ignores part of your audience here. If you end up making a post at least in part inspired by a conversation we have had, that would be an honor :)
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@krnel ·
>For me anything that we believe is a belief, so I use the word more broadly.

If everything is belief, then there is no truth. See, the words were created to reflect certain representation. Belief is anything including unreality, whereas truth is only what 'is' that you can verify in reality. Beliefs may be possible, they are phantasmal fantasies in imagination, but they may be verified and demonstrated to be true.

I just wanted to make that distinction. I only really understood the difference between belief and truth when I looked into the etymology for work I was doing, and understand how language is created to reflect reality, and how belief and truth are used in our language to represents aspects of reality. One is a representation of the reality of our thinking and imagination, internal, subjective,  multiverse existence reality, and the other is demarcated by grounding in reality, the light in reality, not simply the holographic light in our imagination. That's why I say multiverse, because we can project any world we want internally and create worlds that don't exist, unrealities within the internal reality. But truth and belief not being understood and not used properly to distinguish what we talk about, is a reason for much confusion when trying to get to truth. I've done work to try to explain the difference hehe. It's important. :)
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@rocking-dave ·
Thank you for yet another interesting and though-provoking reply and I really hope you would not find my lengthy reply too tiresome or repetitive.

> If everything is belief, then there is no truth.

That doesn't follow at all from my positions and could only be deduced if you want to substitute the way you define the word into the context of what I'm saying. This is fallacious because you are in this way substituting the meaning of what I'm saying altogether. The broader usage I favor doesn't postulate that belief has to always be unsubstantiated. I use it to mean any idea that one is convinced of regardless of correctness, reasoning or substantiation. When I say I believe something I mean that I'm convinced of its truthfulness regardless of how good a reason I have to hold that belief.

So one's beliefs and the truth about reality are two (hopefully :P) partially overlapping circles on a Venn diagram and the overlapping area is what you call knowledge in your model.

I just find this usage more useful and I've actually adopted it because I have seen many people use it that way and I found it descriptive and understandable. But I do understand the *without proof or reason* part that you are implying in the word and this is indeed a common usage too. I prefer using faith for that which gives me the ability to work with two different concepts. On one hand belief refers to all internal claims and faith is what you use to justify the ones that you don't have better justification for.

Please note that I'm not even advocating for my usage over yours here, I'm just pointing out what I mean by the word to avoid confusion and I'm arguing that I'm warranted to stick to the usage I find utility in. I guess I could go with position instead of belief here to eradicate the ambiguity and then I think you would not have trouble understanding what I mean, right?

Still, I reject the idea that etymology is the most important factor when determining the meaning of a word. It's a factor that could be considered but current usage is much more important. There are boatloads of words that have moved away from their original etymological meanings and using them in their "original" sense would actually be a hindrance to communication and a source of misunderstanding, ambiguity and irrelevance.

> [...] how language is created to reflect reality [...]

We can try to understand how language was created in the hope or belief that it reflects reality, but we should not assume that it reflects reality correctly. When we discover new things, we need to create new concepts and find words to express them. We could create new words, but more often than not, we add a new usage in the new context of old words. Going back and trying to bound those new usages to old contexts does not lead to ideas that reflect reality. 

You can look at the word *nice* which comes from the Latin *nescire* which means *to be ignorant of*. But if you try to use nice as a synonym for ignorant today, very few people would catch the negative connotation. If you try to convince the world that we should go back to the etymologically substantiated usage of the word, you would fail, because in practice usage is simply more important that etymology.

> But truth and belief not being understood and not used properly to distinguish what we talk about, is a reason for much confusion when trying to get to truth.

Whenever topics like this one are discussed, there is a always a chance for misunderstanding. That's why it's important for the two communicating parties to agree on the meanings of the terms they are using or at least to have a way to communicate the differences in their usages. It's not a burden that falls solely on one of the parties even if one of the parties is for instance an expert linguist. As words are not magic or fixed, one party cannot have a monopoly on dictating what is or isn't a correct usage of a word, because such a thing does not exist as an absolute. Languages are fluid and so are individual words, which often have more than one accepted meaning and might have very different meanings in specialized fields and/or specific circles, areas and so on. My opinion is that you cannot properly talk about language without taking that fluidity and inherent ambiguity into account.

Additionally, I think concepts should give color to words, not the other way around, so I don't think our inquiry into truth should start from words and trying to determine their supposedly correct meaning.

I don't believe that you can make a claim that I'm not using the word belief properly when I use it the way I do. We need to find a way to understand each other, but there isn't a less proper usage and a more proper usage here.

>  I've done work to try to explain the difference hehe. It's important. :)

That's a difference and a distinction that you are warranted to make and I agree it's important but that applies to the particular usages of a term you subscribe to or are examining in your thinking. It is not something that can invalidate other usages especially in cases where those usages are not uncommon and the conclusions you have come to do not necessarily apply to other usages as they are in practice differing concepts. The distinctions you make apply to the usages you have based the distinction on.

A prescriptivist approach to language is in my opinion simply unfeasible as you could not in any way force me to abandon a usage I see as common, useful and descriptive enough to stick to.
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