Tal's epistemology (and DCP's)

[_Tarski]

You are a mathematician...so, I hope I am right in saying that "quantity" as a concept would be meaningless unless we contemplated finitude, or if you prefer, exclusion. That is, if we deny that any parcel of anything can be discrete or bounded or exclude something else, then we can have no "parcel of anything", for all would merely all melt together - it would be entirely unquantifiable, and therefore, we could hardly understand it, if at all.

I am not sure what you are getting at here. Are you just insisting that words must have precise meanings?
by the way, Ordinary mathematicians might not even feel that what you are saying here is clear. Finite and discrete are not the same thing for example. I also don't know how I am to take "melt together" Does that have precise meaning? (we both know one can quantify both ice cubes by number and water by volume ;)

I think words and concepts are like that. For any proposition to be intelligible to us, it must have content; and it can only have content, if it has bounds - dividers (however provisional perhaps for purposes of inquiry) between it and other conceptual parcels, as it were. If, for example, the (just-invented) word "mig" can refer to absolutely anything, then what would this statement mean to us?:

I would say the the boundaries between our concepts are often not perfect but only need the kind of precision appropriate to the task.

Consider three examples.

1. That is a mountain! Is the meaning clear? How about "That is a mountain in the same familiar sense that skiers understand"


Now is the following true?

M1. If you remove one molecule from a mountain it is still a mountain.

If so, shouldn't I be able to proceed iteratively and conclude that when only one molecule is left I still have a mountain?

"When canaries mate with other canaries, baby canaries are often conceived". This obviously tells us something.

Yes, in its usual context it tells a lot but you remind me of another point:

Consider:
P1: The parent of any naturally conceived chicken is a chicken.
Therefore
C: every naturally born ancestor of a chicken was a chicken (contra evolution)

You might think the problem is that C1 is wrong.
But suppose I argue that C1 is wrong because some mutation means that there was a first chicken. But this isn't right either.
The problem is that the word chicken isn't up to the task. It is not well defined when we view species over long periods of time.
So which ancestor of joe the chicken was not really a chicken? Dennett would use the phrase "there is no fact of the matter".

I can talk about the first double digit prime but not the first chicken.

How about the words cup, bowl and saucer?

An infinity of possible meanings led to the impossibility of intelligibility;

I catch your drift but,....,well I can't quite perfectly agree with that either. If the infinite meanings clump together like the continuum of points near the center of a 2D bell curve in meaning space (as it were) with small standard deviation then the variance in meaning may have no untoward practical implications for our domain of discourse. It may go unnoticed (until a philosopher shows up and makes his demands).

So, in order to understand anything about the world, we maintain many hundreds of thousands, I am sure, of conceptual, lexical, etc., boundaries. It might be argued that the boundaries are not inherent in nature, but are only the result of our own projections born of psychological necessity. But if so, it is no matter - without them, the world would be unintelligible to us...it becomes less intelligible the more we depart from a kind of ideal state (though that must always be in dispute) of meaning- or boundary-granting.

Lexical boundaries have to clear be enough to serve our purposes. That's why we are so very troubled when we can't
quite get it to happen as in deciding how to define knowledge for purposes of philosophical discussion.

For example, if the words knowledge, theory, hypothesis, conjecture, and guess, were all to be granted something like synonymity, I think this would be a blow to our ability to comprehend the world, not a boon to it.

I grant that we should use words as precisely as is necessary for the task and in philosophy and science that usually means as precisely as possible (which still might not be perfect).


Will that work for you?

Perhaps you do not need to be so socratic with so many rhetorical questions. Perhaps you can just say what you are getting at directly.

[_Ren]

Consider:
P1: The parent of any naturally conceived chicken is a chicken.
Therefore
C: every naturally born ancestor of a chicken was a chicken (contra evolution)

You might think the problem is that C1 is wrong.
But suppose I argue that C1 is wrong because some mutation means that there was a first chicken. But this isn't right either.
The problem is that the word chicken isn't up to the task. It is not well defined when we view species over long periods of time.
So which ancestor of joe the chicken was not really a chicken? Dennett would use the phrase "there is no fact of the matter".

This is a great example. If someone were to say that it's unhelpful for science to 'catagorise' things, it might not seem that sensible.
But was that - possibly - one of the reasons why (macro)evolution remained such an elusive principle - for so long? I mean, we had a lot of the nessesary data for a heck of a long time. We were aware that an offspring organism was slightly different to either of it's parents. We were aware that this is a continual cycle. OK - I don't think the extraordinary time scales of the earth's history were established - but Darwin didn't require THAT kind of data at the time...

Was it because a lot of biologists were so eager to identify the differences between the species that we weren't paying enough attention to the incredible similarities between them? And what that really meant?

We were coming up with names for things. Dogs. Cats. Fish. Birds. Mammals. Reptiles etc. And it seemed to be an important point to know what the exact demarcation between them is. After all, we don't want to go calling a platypus a 'mammal' when it is - in fact a 'reptile'. (Or vice versa). That kind of catagorisation (from a certain point of view) seems like a very sensible, rational thing to do. And very important. And yet, if your mind is focused on drawing hard, uncrossable lines all over the place, then how are you going to see The Truth with a capital T (TM)?
I mean, isn't this what ID'ers are doing today? Clinging to these hard, thin, uncrossable lines we spent so long drawing up - for all their worth...

Did we really get distracted from such a fundemental part of reality just because we were so obsesssed with making sure we were labelling things correctly?!

This goes back to the Baconian point doesn't it? We can't help but process the data in subjective ways, and not 'truly' objective ways. We just can't help ourselves...
The only way to know whether your on the right track is to construct theories where the main 'test' isn't our objectivity, but how reality 'kicks back at us'.

[Guest]

A couple more thoughts:

Consider person A and person B.

Person A beleives that the sun is composed of hydrogen (about 74% of its mass, or 92% of its volume), helium (about 25% of mass, 7% of volume), and trace quantities of other elements. It's mean distance from Earth 1.496×1011 m (9.295×107 mi) (8.31 min at light speed). It's mean diameter is 1.392×109 m [43] (8.649×105 mi) (109 Earths).
The Sun has a spectral class of G2V. G2 implies that it has a surface temperature of approximately 5,500 K (or approximately 5,315 degrees Celsius / 9,600 Fahrenheit). Through most of the Sun's life, energy is produced by nuclear fusion through a series of steps called the p-p (proton-proton) chain; this process converts hydrogen into helium. The core is the only location in the Sun that produces an appreciable amount of heat via fusion: the rest of the star is heated by energy that is transferred outward from the core. All of the energy produced by fusion in the core must travel through many successive layers to the solar photosphere before it escapes into space as sunlight or kinetic energy of particles.

Person B believes that the sun is a 'god'. And that the 'sunshine' that arrives from the sun is the 'love' of that god.

Person A says: 'I know that the sun is shining'.
Person B says: 'I agree with you. I ALSO know that the sun is shining.'

So is it accurate to say that both person A and person B do actually know that the 'sun is shining'?
Does person B actually have any real clue as to what is actually going on? And for that matter - does person A?!
Is it really accurate to say that Person B agrees with Person A?

Is it really relavent to be in any way impressed with such simplistic statements as "I know the sun is shining"? Isn't 'real' knowledge meant to be a little - ermm - 'deeper' than that?


Also - on the point of 'flying in a plane'. The implication is 'how can we sit on a plane while it is flying through the air, and possibly think that we don't Know (with a captial K) more about the world / universe / reality than we did 500 years ago...'?
Well - when aviation engineers design a new type of plane, or even just a new type of wing - they still run 'experiments'. They still build prototypes, and go through 'trial runs'.

If we REALLY did Know (with a capital K) more about the world / universe / reality than we did 500 years ago, then would we nessesarily need to build any protypes, or run computer simulations, or do 'trial runs'?
...if we really knew more, then couldn't we just build the new type of plane, and then 'pile on' the lucky passengers straight out of the factory? Why wait for reality to 'kick back' and confirm that we 'guessed right', when we should know perfectly well EXACTLY how that new plane will work?
...we do KNOW that by now - don't we? Is trial and error the same thing as 'knowledge building'?

Now - how do I convince anybody that the above doesn't logically infer that I think we are no closer to the 'truth' now than we were 500 years ago...?

[_Gadianton]

I read through Tal's Popper quotations pretty carefully last night. I'm actually not exactly sure how to respond. That's partially because I don't know what he's going for. I think it would help if Tal could answer the following: Is there anyone who's given an account of knowledge such that we can safely say we know more now than 500 years ago? Who? And how did they do it?

The way Tal bolded some of Popper's statements, it made it seemed to me that on their face we should recognize them as absurd. How on earth could anyone accomplish basic tasks without inductive reasoning? Though Tal might not hold it in dispute, I'd like to draw a distinction between induction and statistical inference and note Popper did not reject statistics. In dispute would be how something like statistics works and he'd try to explain it using falsification. To my knowledge there is no indisputable philosophy for how statistical inference works. Last night I read through a list of 7 heavy objections to Bayesian confirmation - it doesn't seem to me that induction is on any kind of sure footing to expalin how science progresses.

Feyerabend did something similar to Tal, going through the history of science and showing how codified scientific methods fail to account for what we'd intuitively call progress.

...we do KNOW that by now - don't we? Is trial and error the same thing as 'knowledge building'?

Now - how do I convince anybody that the above doesn't logically infer that I think we are no closer to the 'truth' now than we were 500 years ago...?

It fails to approach the Truth assymptotically as Popper hoped. In fact, can't even save it by becoming a thoroughgoing instrumentalist because you're stuck with the same problems of defining "better" and "worse".

[_Tarski]

Feyerabend did something similar to Tal, going through the history of science and showing how codified scientific methods fail to account for what we'd intuitively call progress.

Somehow I doubt that Tal is heading to take a position similar to that of Feyerabend ;)
But it just highlights how badly we need to hear the "second half" of what Tal has to say.

[_Tal Bachman]

I grant that we should use words as precisely as is necessary for the task and in philosophy and science that usually means as precisely as possible (which still might not be perfect).

Will that work for you?

---Yes

Perhaps you do not need to be so socratic with so many rhetorical questions. Perhaps you can just say what you are getting at directly.

---Okay, I'll try to make clear here that Popper

1.) Denies, or at least is reluctant to admit (K), the proposition that more is known now than was known in 1507 or 50,000 BC;

2.) That he denies, or is reluctant to admit, any rational basis for a series of gradations of belief, that is, any rational basis for a spectrum of calculated odds about what might be true;
3). That along the way, he often eviscerates the most important words and concepts of their meanings, dissolving them below the threshold necessary to even have a productive discussion about how we might know things to be true. (Important caveat: Popper, however, also at times uses words like "discovery" and "knowledge" and "truth" in the standard way, though fortunately seeming to reserve his most outrageous assaults on these concepts when specifically discussing his own philosophy. More on this below).

Rather than type out a giant exegetical piece, I will post a series of quotes which substantiate each claim above, with a few comments here and there. Note: some of these quotes will no doubt sound plausible at first read; just keep in mind their point here - to substantiate my claims above, and specifically, my claim that Popper's philosophy requires him to deny that more is known now, than was known five hundred, or five thousand, years ago. (You might as well also, as you read, consider my claim that, in light of the fact you're reading this on a computer, in an air-conditioned house, with electric lights on, any philosophy which denies, or is reluctant to admit [K], may be known by that fact alone to be seriously defective).

***Quotes in substantiation of Point One:

1A.) "(The scientist) can never know for certain whether his findings are true. One may formulate this 'third view' of scientific theories briefly by saying that they are genuine conjectures - highly informative guesses about the world which although not verifiable (i.e., capable of being shown to be true) can be submitted to severe critical tests. They are serious attempts to discover the truth. In this respect, scientific hypotheses are exactly like Goldbach's famous conjecture in the theory of numbers. Goldbach thought that it might possibly be true; and that it may well be true in fact, even though we do not know, and may perhaps never know, whether it is true or not.) ...(Italics in original) (C&J, p. 154).

---I ask: do we not know that the theory that blood circulates through our veins and arteries, not Elmer's Glue or styrofoam pellets, is true? NO, not according to Popper, taking him at his word, for as he says, scientists can "never" know for certain whether their findings are true. (Holding Popper to what he says, he MUST concede that it might actually be liquid cement, or sand, or diesel fuel, or cow manure, circulating through our veins and arteries...).

Note that in addition to statement 1A necessarily denying [K] ), it shows Popper gaily synonymizing the words I underlined. Following along with him here, he says that "scientific theories" are "conjectures", and that "conjectures" are "guesses", and that "guesses" are "hypotheses", and that "hypotheses" are "conjectures", and that "conjectures" are, or comprise, "theories". (Of course, he must synomyize these words because he is committed, by accepting Hume's conclusion detailed above, to denying that any observation can give us any reason to believe a proposition about something unobserved; that is, Popper is committed to denying that a theory could be the result of an inference drawn from observations, or the result of inductive reasoning. It can therefore have nothing more to it, in the end, than a guess.

So, let me ask this. Is there anyone reading this (again, excepting Wade), who would say that the THEORY that "blood circulates through our veins and arteries", is a proposition about the world identical in nature and origin and level of justification of belief than a GUESS about, say, what the winning Powerball Lottery number is going to be next week? If you decline to categorize these two propositions about the world as identical in these respects, then you too have identified something very problematic in Popper's philosophy. But to continue.

1B). "...Theories themselves are guesswork. We do not know; we only guess. If you ask me, 'How do you know?', my reply would be, 'I don't; I only propose a guess. (See C&J, 204-205).

---Popper, as I noted before, claimed to have solved the problem of induction by denying that inductive reasoning is possible. He here claims to have solved all our problems of knowledge by denying that knowledge is possible. It is too bad he has passed on; otherwise, he could have solved the problem of poverty by simply announcing that "poverty is not possible", and likewise with famine, war, and philosophers who keep claiming to have solved problems they haven't solved at all.

More:

1C.) "Thus the proper answer to Russell's question is: 'I do not know; and as to guesses, never mind how or why I guess what I guess. I am not trying to prove that my guesses are correct...the moment we replace the idea of knowledge by that of guesswork, the apparently 'essential subjectivity' of the theory of knowledge disappears...Thus Russell's fundamental problem needs to be reformulated in terms of guesses; in terms of the hypothetical character of knowledge..." ("Realism and the Aim of Science", p. 86-87).

1D.) "We never know what we are talking about" ("Unended Quest", p. 26).

1E.) "...I suggested that the whole trouble was due to the mistaken assumption that scientific knowledge was a species of knowledge - knowledge in the ordinary sense in which if I know that it is raining, it must be true that it is raining, so that knowledge implies truth. But, I said, what we call 'scientific knowledge' was hypothetical, and often not true, let alone certainly or probably true (in the sense of the calculus of probability). Again, the audience took this for a joke, or a paradox, and they laughed and clapped. I wonder whether there was anybody there who suspected that not only did I seriously hold these views, but that, in due course, they would be widely regarded as commonplace". ("Unended Quest", p. 125-126).

---This quote supports all three points above. One comment about that "scientific knowledge" bit, though I want to save most of the word-assault discussion for later...

What does it tell us about Popper's conception of "knowledge", I ask, that for him, saying "I know, in a scientific sense, that the earth is round", is entirely compatible with saying, "I do not know, in a scientific sense, that the earth is round"? Further, in light of quotes like 1A and 1E, what does it tell us about Popper's conception of "knowledge", that for him, the following sentence is entirely unobjectionable: "I know that the earth is round, even though it is not possible for me to know that the earth is round"?

1F.) "...We must regard all laws or theories as hypothetical or conjectural; that is, as guesses". ("Objective Knowledge" [hereinafter "OK"], p. 9).

---Note: Popper often makes bold to claim that he believes in "the growth of scientific knowledge". He even puts this phrase as the subtitle to his "Conjectures and Refutations"; yet as he makes clear in these quotes, a far more accurate title would have been "The Growth of GUESSES". Now, can anyone explain, honestly, how there can be a growth of guesses? (see quote 1E again).

1G.) "...All our theories must remain guesses, conjectures, hypotheses". (OK, p. 13)

1H.) "From a rational point of view, we should not 'rely' on any theory, for no theory has been shown to be true, or can be shown to be true". (OK, p. 21)

---We shouldn't "rely" on the theory that the earth is round when flying an aeroplane, or the theory that blood circulates when performing an operation?

1I.) "All this would hold even if we could be certain that our physical and biological theories were true. But we do not know it". (Do we not know that the theory of blood circulation is true? Do we not know that sexual intercourse is the cause of conception? Do we not know that it is our eyes which enable us to see, not our navel or nose or left foot? Popper's position disallows him from admitting that he knows any of these things).

1J.) "I saw that what has to be given up is the quest for justification, in the sense of the justification of the claim that a theory is true". (OK, p. 29).

1K.) "The realization that all knowledge is hypothetical leads to the rejection of the 'principle of sufficient reason'..." (OK, p. 30).

I - literally - could go on for hundreds of pages (most of these last examples were taken from just one single essay, entitled 'Conjectural Knowledge'); but here is just one more:

1L.) "Since all knowledge is theory-impregnated" (and remember that for Popper, a "theory" is identical to a "guess") "it is all built on sand". (OK, p. 105).

I ask everyone reading this: is your knowledge that chopping a person's head off will cause that person to die, "built on sand"? Is your knowledge that your wife is a human being, not a kangaroo or a boiled cabbage, "built on sand"? Is your knowledge that dropping a ping pong ball on someone's head will inflict less injury than dropping a 600 lb. anvil on it, "built on sand"?

These quotes, and hundreds of others, I submit, should be convincing evidence that Popper's position makes it logically unavoidable for him to deny that more is known (in any sane definition of the word) now, than was known in 1507, or 50,000 BC. (Though he often obscures this fact with great art - more on this next time).

***Now, quotes to bolster Point Two - Popper's denial that there can be any rational justification for gradations of belief, or an estimation of a theory's probable truthfulness based on past performance:

Second Amendment.) "My theory of preference has nothing to do with a preference for the 'more probable' hypothesis...every probabilistic theory of preference (and therefore every probabilistic theory of induction) is absurd". (OK, 18)

2B.) "I used to take pride in the fact that I am not a belief philosopher...and I suspect that the interest of philosophers in belief results from that mistaken philosophy which I call 'inductivism'...This is why, like E.M. Forster, I do not believe in belief". (OK, p. 25)

2C) "There exists a subjectivist theory of probability which assumes that we can measure the degree of our belief in a proposition by the odds we should be prepared to accept in betting. This theory is incredibly naïve". (OK, 79).

2D.) "Hume's answer is as clear as can be: there is no argument or reason which permits an inference from one case to another, however similar the conditions may be; and I completely agree with him in this respect". (OK, 96).

2E.) "As I have briefly indicated (in section 22), subjective probability as a measure of 'rational belief' seems to me a mistake that has nothing good to offer to the theory of knowledge. But since nothing depends on words, I do not of course object to calling what I have called here a 'good' (or 'the best') conjecture a 'probable' conjecture (or the most probable of the known conjectures)" [CHECK THIS OUT] "as long as the word 'probability' is not interpreted in the sense of the calculus of probability". (That is, as long as by 'probability' we do not mean 'probability' at all...). (OK, 101).

2F.) (Already quoted in an earlier post) "In my view the importance, if any, of giving the best possible definition lies in the fact that such a definition shows clearly the inadequacy of all probability theories as theories of induction....Science has nothing to do with the quest for certainty or probability or reliability. We are not interested in establishing scientific theories as secure, or certain, or probable...we can never give positive reasons which justify the belief that a theory is true. (C&R, 331).

2G.) "The claim is often made that we 'derive' estimates of probabilities - that is, predictions of frequencies - from past occurrences which have been classified and counted (such as mortality statistics). But from a logical point of view there is no justification for this claim. What we may have done is to advance a non-verifiable hypothesis which nothing can ever justify logically:" (remember Hume's argument here) "the conjecture that frequencies will remain constant, and so permit of extrapolation".

2H.) "The idea that a high degree of probability (in the sense of a calculus of probability) must be something highly desirable seems to be so obvious to most people that they are not prepared to consider it critically...all kinds of more or less sophisticated (probability) theories have been designed. I believe I have shown that none of them is successful." (C&J, p. 296-297).

---To sum up, what Popper is here saying is that a calculation of a theory's probability, or different levels of justification of belief, have no rational basis (since those would require inductive reasoning, which he goes so far as to say doesn't even exist).

To try to put this in perspective:

Say a die is cast before you 1,000 times in a row; each time the die lands with six up. The die is about to be cast for the 1001st time. Popper argues that you have no rational basis, despite the 1,000 sixes in a row, to inductively infer that the die is weighted, and/or that there is the greatest probability that the 1001st toss will also show a six. After all, this is an inference from the observed, to the unobserved, and as he says, he "completely agrees" with Hume's argument that such inferences are invalid (actually, as he says, not even possible!). Popper, in other words, would argue that YOU would be the irrational one if you wagered that the 1001st toss would also be a six. And he must also argue that no greater probability can be calculated of the 1001st toss turning up six after all of the previous 1000 tosses turned up six, than if there had been a perfectly random distribution of numbers across the thousand tosses, from one to six.

Popper could not be clearer. He denies, over and over throughout his works, that there is any rational basis for probability estimates (though he does try to get around this - more later). He even denies any difference between knowing something to be true, and guessing (another way of denying [K]), so of course it is no wonder he also denies that certain levels of belief can ever be justified, for as he says, "we never have positive reasons for believing a theory to be true", and "I do not believe in belief".

Readers might be wondering at this point why, if the quotes they are reading have not been distorted, and this is really what Popper posits, how he could have ever become one of the most influential philosohers of science of the past century. That is an excellent question, and there are, I think, a number of good answers. One I will take up in the next post is the one alluded to in Point Three above: his misleading use, or misuse, of language, which of course, these quotes already have begun to highlight.

See ya when I can

Tal

[_Ren]

---I ask: do we not know that the theory that blood circulates through our veins and arteries, not Elmer's Glue or styrofoam pellets, is true? NO, not according to Popper, taking him at his word, for as he says, scientists can "never" know for certain whether their findings are true. (Holding Popper to what he says, he MUST concede that it might actually be liquid cement, or sand, or diesel fuel, or cow manure, circulating through our veins and arteries...).

I don't think you are accurately representing Popper here - in this specific instance.

We can be (at least) 'more confident' that 'blood' (according to our definition of blood) flows (according to our definition of 'flow') in our 'circulatory system' (according to our defin.... you get the idea!) then the idea that 'Elmer's glue', or 'styrofoam pellets', or 'liquid cement', or 'sand', or 'diesel fuel', or 'cow manure' flows in that same system.

...why? Because we have enough 'data' to know that if anybody tried to construct a theory based around those ideas, they'd get immediately shot down in a "heartbeat"! And therefore - all the possibilities you listed can be 'discounted'. Which must mean - at the very least - that we are less 'confident' in them than our favoured theory of 'blood'.
This is using the principle of 'falsification' as - apparently - the only method Popper thought COULD increase our confidence in anything.

So moving on from that point - how can we say that we don't know that there is 'blood' flowing in our veins?!
Well, the way I see it, this is about definition. This is about what the word 'blood' means. Do we feel that we understand everything there is to understand about blood at this time? I'd be very wary to say so. But is it fair to say that we understand 'blood' better than we did hundreads of years ago? I'd say that if I know anything, I know that.

But if the only thing I can say I 'know' is that we are 'more sure' about some things than we were in the past, what do I 'really' know?

For a lot of the other stuff you've quoted, it really does depend on whether Popper meant that the statement '2 + 2 = 4' is 'conjecture' in the same way as - say -the statement 'It is raining right now' could be considered 'conjecture'. I doubt he really meant this, and this makes ALL the difference to how I read him. But I do agree that taking certain statements literally puts this in doubt.
I can only come back to the context - scientific philosophy. i.e. isn't it reasonable to assume he was only refering to 'emperical' knowledge, and not literally 'all' knowledge - in many cases...?

I don't have time right now to go further though, so I'll leave it at that for now...

[_Ren]

What does it tell us about Popper's conception of "knowledge", I ask, that for him, saying "I know, in a scientific sense, that the earth is round", is entirely compatible with saying, "I do not know, in a scientific sense, that the earth is round"?

I don't think this hits the mark either.
I think this kind of statement would be more what Popper was aiming at:

"I know, in a scientific sense, that the earth is round", is entirely compatible with saying, "I do not know, in a 'literal' sense, that the earth is round"?

Popper is trying to describe 'scientific' knowledge seperately from 'absolute', or 'literal' knowledge. You can call it absurd if you will, but it isn't contridictory.

Also, here he was very specifically describing a concept of a certain 'type' of knowledge. The idea that there can be different 'types' of knowledge is a very important one, and that must be remembered as we read the rest of what he had to say. If the assumption is made that there is only one valid type of 'knowledge' then of course much of what Popper had to say will come across as utter gibberish.

I am more and more confident that to take attempts of whole-sale redefinitions of 'knowledge' to 'conjecture' too literally is missing the point.

[_A Light in the Darkness]

(Holding Popper to what he says, he MUST concede that it might actually be liquid cement, or sand, or diesel fuel, or cow manure, circulating through our veins and arteries...).

No. Popper would regard those views as falsified or, if you prefer, relatively uninformed (i.e. bad) conjectures. If you just mean that he thinks that this is logically possible given what we know, then yes, but that's a defensible position few if any philosophers of science will dispute. It's possible, for instance, that your veins are filled with sand and it is only aliens that have put on an elaborate ruse to make you think otherwise.

[_KimberlyAnn]

Tarski, I'm learning a lot from this thread!

Down in the Terrestrial forum, there's a thread about how critics eat Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and Barrelomonkeys asked someone to do you. I used what I've learned in this thread to show how you like to eat Reese's.

Here's my reply to Barrel's request for someone to do you:

barrelomonkeys wrote:
Someone needs to do Tarski!


KimberlyAnn wrote:
Okay, I'll do him. I did Coffee yesterday, so I can handle Tarski this morning. But, I need to make it clear: I can't do another man until this afternoon. A girl deserves a break, doesn't she?

Tarski: My preferred ratio of what I believe to be chocolate, though I cannot know it's chocolate (but I've ruled out by falsification that it's not something else) to what I believe to be peanut butter, though I cannot know it's peanut butter (but I've ruled out by falsification that it's not mayonnaise or marshmallows or pudding...still a few more things to falsify re: the "supposed" peanut butter) is: (Ch1) (Pb3) = (abcdefghijklmnopyummy).

So, how'd I do? Did I incorporate Popper's philosophy correctly, lol?

Now, in seriousness, I have learned a lot from this thread. I must be growing smarter because I read through the posts and was going to make a reply but noticed RenegadeofPhunk had already posted exactly what I was thinking regarding Popper's concept of falsification and how it's possible to learn and make gains in scientific theory through falsification while at the same time realizing it's impossible to concretely "know" anything. I'm not sure I completely buy into that argument, but I do understand it more than I did before reading this thread.

Thanks for teaching me something new! Soon, Ray A. won't be able to call me a dumb blonde anymore!

KA