So it seems you thought this was my definition? It’s not similar to any definition I’ve given. Why did you assume this if you did? Did you perceive it as similar to what I’ve said? If so that would be significant.
“Know” is a verb, “knowledge” is a noun. They are different but closely related words, at least with my definitions.
We can substitute the words (in proper context) and the appearance of circular reasoning should go away. So this version of “to know” is:
to possess useful information
“To know” refers to “knowledge,” but it would only be circular if the definition of “knowledge” referred to “to know.”
It goes: to know → knowledge → useful information → the end (really the definitions of useful and information, but they don’t refer to any of these other definitions).
Other examples like this definition are:
To explain: to give an explanation.
To decide: to make a decision.
To observe: to make an observation.
You can make definitions where they don’t use their noun forms but those would just be substitutions. Using the noun forms should be fine so long as they don’t refer to their verb forms themselves.
What he said wasn’t friendly. You were basically told you were overreacting and you apologized, so I wanted to validate your intuition: in my opinion you correctly saw a problem. And you’re right that that he didn’t need to bring up the whole community including you.
You didn’t quote the harshest part of his message, the final sentence, so I’m not sure if you know what it means. “avoided” is a regular word but “evasion” is special Objectivist terminology:
Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know.
He was bringing up intentional refusal to think. I think productive philosophy discussion requires more patience, not getting so negative (and assigning blame for problems to others) that quickly.
It’s OK for people to express negative feelings, or get impatient or frustrated. It’s a normal thing that happens. But there are problems to solve there; there’s room for improvement; it’s not nothing.
ActiveMind clearly never defined knowledge in that way. This seems like such bad faith.
He suggested a few definitions to do with information:
You seem to be seeing arguments that aren’t there, in order to dismiss them as being basic logical fallacies. That’s what I think you did over in the Introduction to Critical Rationalism discussion:
Vague. Misleading or useless without examples and clarifications. Might unnecessarily rely on (potentially controversial) physics concepts that don’t have to brought up to understand knowledge.
I’m doing some self-criticism/investigation on my personal morality and justice in this situation. It may seem a bit dramatic, I don’t think the potential sins in this case are very big, but I think they should be taken seriously anyway. Evasion and injustice are big sins in general and it would be important to root out any small signs of them. There are degrees of evil but you are never justified in committing even the smallest sin over doing the good thing.
I agree that that was unreasonable from actually_thinking. I understood why Dface wanted to respond.
I agree that it was a problem.
I know evasion is a serious accusation coming from an objectivist so I figured he might’ve been frustrated at the that point. My strategy was to give a clear attempt at a definition and see whether actually_thinking was and/or will be calm. I planned on going back to critically examine his moral pronouncements after we had reached some milestone in our discussion. Was this strategy mistaken? Should I have brought it up immediately?
My plan was to delay judgment on actually_thinking, but I now think I should’ve said more given Dface brought it up. At least I should’ve said more if not everything.
I had somewhat of a general sense that I was being too harsh on Dface and too soft on actually_thinking. Why did I not follow up on this thought? I didn’t get a conclusion for myself but I ought to have. I think this was a real example of evasion.
I intended to say something like that with:
I should’ve said “understand” instead of “see” and suggest it would be justified to some degree. Was this just a random word choice mistake? No, I think if I was more convinced that some anger was justified I would’ve said it differently. At the same time I thought some anger was justified more than what came across in that sentence.
I think overall I was unjust in this situation.
I think I was thinking more about the immediate course of the discussion being calm and stable instead of thinking about justice. I thought I had potentially saved the discussion by clarifying and then Dface threatened the stability of the discussion. Without much consideration for the justice of situation I wanted to calm down Dface and not inflame actually_thinking.
When I wrote:
I literally meant that as explaining why I didn’t get very upset myself. I wanted to explain my character and how that affected the situation. I think I should’ve said that such that it wouldn’t come across as saying anger wasn’t justified.
While writing I found a contradiction:
Implies what I just discussed wasn’t just explaining my character. It implies I was suggestion Dface should be more like me. Which I do believe in to some extent. But I did write it primarily to explain how and why I reacted the way I did.
I think the issue was that he had too little impatience. I can see how that is compatible with both of the quotes above. Being patient means being more friendly, but having little patience doesn’t necessarily mean ill-intent. I brought this up since I think the two quotes seem contradicting.
Were my suggestions good in that sense?:
In this one below I’m suggesting Dface shouldn’t write like that in this situation:
How did I do overall with my self-investigation? Too defensive? Too harsh? Did I miss something? Unnecessary?
That is what it seemed like the implied definition was. I was wrong to imply it in that way. It was due to “information” being a synonym to knowledge. You said that “to know” meant both “to possess knowledge” and “to possess information”. Then “knowledge is useful information” is like saying “knowledge is useful knowledge.” This is circular. Am I wrong here?
I was wrong here. There was no need to lump @Dface or anyone else into the conversation.
My accusation of evasion was to the context of defining words. I don’t know why the word “roughly”, for example, should be included in a definition. It is purposely imprecise. And why be purposely imprecise? Maybe I am wrong, but intentionally being imprecise and refusing to be precise seems like evasion, which I said. I leave the door open to it not being evasion with the addition of “seems like”. I hope you can clear this up.
@Elliot “Knowledge is, roughly, useful information. It is information that’s adapted to a purpose. It is good explanations, and it is solutions to problems people had.”
What is information when it is not useful then? Or does your definition mean that all information is useful? For example, I know that the Ming dynasty preceded the Qing dynasty. I have never “adapted (this) to a purpose” or used it as a solution to a problem I had. Is this knowledge?
The argument is that certainty cannot be attained because of fallibilism. I contend that not being certain about simple things means that I can always be mistaken. Sometimes I don’t make a mistake, and this is certain. “I am myself” and “people use blankets” and “Tiger Woods plays golf” etc, etc are examples when I think it is irrational to lack absolute certainty. So if I do not always make a mistake then the door should not be opened to the interpretation that I possibly could have made a mistake when I did not. (I use the word “I” here but, of course, it applies to everyone.)
To be clear and precise, I will give my definitions here.
Knowledge: facts about reality
Facts: things that are true
To know: to be certain
In true Objectivist form, I assert that knowledge is not justified true belief, it is facts about reality derived from perception and validated using reason. Knowledge has nothing to do with the usefulness of the information either. Lots of knowledge is useful but the usefulness is not a requirement on it being knowledge.
I assure you all that there is no bad faith here. I crave clarity and become a bit impatient when my questions are left unanswered. I hope you all understand.
I defined “knowledge” as being a type of information, specifically useful ones. That means knowledge is a subset of information. Many concepts are defined like this. For example: a bachelor is man who has never married. Is a bachelor a man? Yes. Does that mean the definition is circular? No. Can you sometimes substitute “man” for “bachelor”? Yes. Can you always? No. Are they synonymous? No.
I guess some synonyms are subset and superset? In that case the differentiation must be minimal. Useful information is very different from useless information and you can also break information into false and true information. So we can’t equate knowledge with information.
I didn’t know that. Why do you know that? You can have abstract purposes like “understand Chinese history.” The historians who figured that out adapted that information for the purpose of understanding Chinese history. It is knowledge because it was information adapted by the historians.
An example: how many grains of sand there are in a beach.
Is it a problem to apply “useless” to your understanding of information? If so why? Are you asking for a definition of “information”?
My point was that the implied argument in bold wasn’t made by Elliot or CR. I wasn’t making a point about certainty.
If you want to continue the discussion about certainty, I think we need to address the terminological difference. You’ve stated what you mean but I don’t think you’ve tried to understand what I mean or what I think CR means and so I don’t think you understand the CR position on certainty.
Presumably because that’s the level of precision that Elliot thought it warranted in that context. Intentionally being imprecise doesn’t seem like a refusal to think. It seems like the result of purposeful thought. Refusing to be imprecise doesn’t seem like evasion for the same reason. I can refuse to do something after thinking about it.
Knowledge is purposeful information. It’s information that is adapted to a purpose (a goal, an objective). It’s information that seems designed instead of random or arbitrary. Design means or implies designed for some purpose. A designer tries to achieve something.
When we see the appearance of design, that indicates knowledge is present. Design comes from evolution – either evolution in nature or from a designer that uses an evolutionary thought process.