humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Apr 7, 9:48 am, Gordon Sollars wrote:
> In article <4f05b067-a038-46f6-b542-199cea8fd9b4
> @m71g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, fredwe...@papertig.com says...
>
> > On Apr 7, 8:38 am, Gordon Sollars wrote:
>
> > > Doesn't a dog know his master? You can use "know" in place of many
> > > words - "aware", "recognize", "understand", etc. - without doing
> > > violence to the English language.
>
> > Except when you use "know" to mean "not know" as in "I know but I am
> > not certain of it", e.g a conjecture. That does violence to the
> > English language.
>
> Sometimes tough measures are required.

For what?

> > > We say that a person knows how to ride a bicycle or play the piano.
>
> > When they actually do know how. Doesn't it do violence to the language
> > if you say that they know how, but in fact they don't?
>
> It does no violence - you could be wrong about it.

But if you are wrong about it, you don't know.

> > > ...Now, Ken likes to
> > > argue that knowledge is not belief, because knowledge has some special
> > > property that transforms it out of the category of belief altogether.
>
> > You mean the "special property" of truth - and your certainty of it?
>
> Except that this does not explain why a belief cannot be true and
> certain.

Because if it is true - and you are certain of it - it more than mere
belief. Although there may be some strong senses of belief, where you
state it emphatically, that might convey that.

The more important point is that belief usually conveys some degree of
doubt and therefore is weaker than knowledge. In any case, a belief
can clearly be mistaken, as many are and have been. Knowledge cannot.

Fred Weiss