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

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Viewing a response to: @krnel/re-rocking-dave-re-krnel-knowing-yet-not-really-knowing-internal-and-external-wisdom-20170802t181930871z

· @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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