Made some changes to the commenting: I decided to use the built-in commenting feature instead of the haloscan.com one.
Pros: Fewer passwords to remember and fewer sites to log into to do administrivia; also you can specify an email address to have comments sent to when someone comments on your blog so's you don't have to check it all the time.
Cons: You can't (as far as I can tell) delete individual comments (e.g. in the case when someone you don't know makes a stupid comment or whatever), you can only hide
all comments for a particular post.
I emailed the people at blogger.com about this. Perhaps something will come of it.
Knowledge and truth seem to be the same in my analysis.
An Analogy. Mere opinion is to knowledge as stealing is to honest toil.
Now, "true opinion" is somewhere in between. "Merely true opinion" is closer to "mere opinion" (on a spectrum) than it is to "knowledge." And "justified true opinion [belief]" is closer to "knowledge" (on the spectrum). So we have the following:
This is very much like there is a continuum between mere thievery and honest toil. Of course someone would argue against both counts believing that there is a precise point at which an action becomes stealing: there are necessary and sufficient conditions for stealing, and these conditions (taken together) are logically exclusive to the necessary and sufficient conditions of honest toil. And they would say the same of the relationship between mere opinion and knowledge.
But Let me illuminate further: acquisition of knowledge requires a certain type of experience that acquisition of mere opinion does not.
Socratic moment: How can I speak about knowledge when I do not as yet have a definition of it? Well, first of all I am not trying to come up with a definition [hence I do not assume the primacy of definition], and second, I am able to use the term knowledge coherently in a community of speakers [unless I'm actually crazy or something] hence I am legitimate in speaking about knowledge; for I am speaking about he use of the term 'knowledge' and the proper use gives way to a proper understanding of the term which comprises the proper meaning.
What is the nature of this "certain type of experience"? I have already spoken of the analogy: knowledge is like honest toil. If I seek knowledge of calculus I will read about it, trying to understand what someone has written about it; I will work problems, and someone will check them. When I make mistakes, I will strive to correct them. Hence I come to have knowledge about calculus. There is not one essence to this experience but a family resemblance (to use an increasingly hackneyed term) amongst all of these experiences.
How does one know a person? You spend time with that person--in discussion, in silence, discovering what makes that particular person an individual.
How does one know virtue? One experiences the actions of others who are called "virtuous" and one mimics those individuals.
So we see that knowledge and experience are closely related. Having knowledge is not the satisfaction of some necessary and sufficient conditions, but is the gaining of experience with respect to the thing to be known.
A theory is the putting of reality in nice little boxes in our heads. This is the same as when I say that theories partition the world. A theory is a deception. A dream. (This is not a metaphor.)
For example, one theory of 'truth' establishes two boxes. Box 1 is called 'True' and box 2 is called 'False.' There is no provision for box 3, box 4, box 5, and so on unless they are given in terms of boxes 1 and 2. This is called a rule. So a conventional theory of truth has the following things. Boxes: 'True' and 'False'; Rules: "The boxes of all other theories must fit inside boxes True and False."
But now I have made a theory of theories. I will quit doing that. Theories should be done away with as soon as they are invented. I am not giving out a theory here--not saying what one
ought to do but I am saying that when you make a theory then if you dedicate yourself to that theory it will become too hard to think any other way. I prefer not to do this, but you may have a different preference. I cannot (nor will not) decide for you.
I would like to be inventive, hence I do not want to think only in terms of True and False, or even in terms of the box of Box (i.e. my theory of theories as putting reality in boxes is itself a box and I do not want to put myself in a box permanently as I have already mentioned).
So there is only the here and now and it would seem that there is no way to pin anything down unless you dedicate yourself to a theory to a box, to a living space within reality. Actually I dislike moving around so much--it is tiresome. There needs to be some place to set one's head at night to sleep. But if you are always sleeping then what will you miss?
Yet I
want there to be something which is like an overarching thing, a box, a shelter, in order to find some constant rest, but I fear about becoming blind. This is what happens when you are stubbornly holding on to your boxes: become blind to the goings on outside of the boxes.
Of course there's the stupid saying "think outside the box." My terminology is unfortunate to now be associated with that saying.
Be homeless then. Do not have a home.
Yes, "box" was a bad choice of term--contrary to purposes: moving the furniture around a bit.
Imperative: "Do not make anything out of my words. If you do, I'll be pissed."
Imperative: "Develop a theory and publish it. If you don't, you'll not have money." This is the problem with contemporary philosophical life.
Aporia: "Yes, but what can he mean?" "What? What is meaning?--I'm not asking a question."
In short, I am saying that theories are endless. Every word I make is trying to make something out of itself even when I try not to make it so. This is
my ultimate philosophical problem.
How to speak without unexpectedly making a theory. I want to speak, but I do not want to make a theory, but speaking (philosophically) implies making a theory. And by philosophical speach I do not mean speach which is explicitly philosophical, but speach with a hint of figuring things out.
Having things "figured out" conventionally means having a theory (albeit simple) worked out in the mind sufficiently so as to be able to put it into words when a friend asks "How's it going?"
My hypothesis is that non-theoretical philosophical speech is possible. This is the hypothesis--to be tested, by experience. But perhaps not. Such speech might be speech which is literally in comprehensible but which, in its
intention, is understandable. This is what needs to be studied: speech which is literally confusing, disjointed, even crazy, but in its intention meaningful, insightful, illuminating, etc. This is a sort of poetic philosophy.
Where does all of this fit with the discussion of truth? Well, my problem is that I wish to say what truth is, but I do not want to make a theory of truth.
