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In a recent answer to a post, @Ted Wrigley posited that a belief [his own] that is not necessarily true, is not “knowledge in the exacting sense of the term.” (last paragraph of this answer) An astoundingly high criterial bar. Does this mean that in order for a belief or proposition to constitute knowledge [“in the exacting sense”] it must be necessarily true; that only tautologies and logical truths constitute knowledge, again, “in the exacting sense.” (As well, one would assume, as Kant's synthetic a priori and Wittgenstein's hinges/normative "rules," to the extent they can be considered to be truth evaluable.)

How can this be squared with Quine’s observation that it is simply wrong to assume that there is a class of statements which are in principle “immune from revision” in light of experience – that is, that are necessarily true. Because only non-existent necessary truths constitute knowledge [in the exacting sense], is it any wonder that we are inextricably ensconced in what has come to be known as a “post-truth” world?

Ted Wrigley
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gonzo
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    A belief never constitutes (certain or true) knowledge. This is why it's called a belief. When you are in pain you do not say 'I believe I am in pain'. You know you are, even though it is not a necessary truth. Even (what seems to be) a tautological truth might be be false if your calculations contain errors. . –  Mar 15 '20 at 10:52
  • @PeterJ -- except that we all experience being wrong about our own perceptions. "I thought I saw something red, but I was wrong" is an entirely reasonable thing to say. Put an ice cube on the back of someone's neck by surprise, and they will THINK they feel pain, but then later realize it was cold instead. Phenomenology does not give certainty either. – Dcleve Mar 15 '20 at 18:19
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    @PeterJ "A belief never constitutes [true] knowledge." Really? A belief or opinion is simply a judgment that results from evaluation, is it not? How old do you believe you are as of today? Where do you believe California is? Pakistan? Who is the president of the USA? In 1961? Your/a belief (on 3/15/20, or today, another belief [that today is 3/15/20] BTW) that Trump is the president is true, whereas your belief (today) that Obama is the president is false. Nevertheless, the claim you make goes to the heart of my [clumsily articulated] query. – gonzo Mar 15 '20 at 18:36
  • It is definitely not an accepted view in contemporary epistemology that knowledge requires necessary truth. See e.g. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/ – E... Mar 15 '20 at 18:39
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    Assuming you have in mind the traditional theory of knowledge, no. A belief only needs to be actually true (in this world), not necessarily true (in every possible world) to be knowledge, nor do we need to know whether it is true or not to make it knowledge. Quine’s point is not even relevant here, whether something is true or necessarily true has little to do with whether it is immune from revision. We can, in principle, justifiably believe something true, and hence know it, and then (mistakenly, but also justifiably) revise it, and cease to know it. – Conifold Mar 15 '20 at 19:41
  • @Conifold. Agreed. But here (next comment) is the last paragraph of Ted Wrigley's answer in https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/70420/a-question-about-wittgensteins-tractatus/70423#70423. The key appears to be in what he meant by "the exacting sense" of the term "knowledge". – gonzo Mar 15 '20 at 22:14
  • "Let's say I do know German, and I have read "Phänomenologie des Geistes" in the original, and I remember encountering the phrase you've handed me. Does that mean that I know that the phrase is in the text? Maybe there's a copy of the text that was revised by the author or an editor, removing the phrase; maybe over the years of publication and reprinting the phrase was accidentally lost or garbled. My belief that the phrase is in that text is a sound hypothesis based on my experience, but it is not necessarily true, and thus is not knowledge in the exacting sense of the term." – gonzo Mar 15 '20 at 22:16
  • Even if we take Wittgenstein's "exacting sense" of knowing that some regularity extends into the future it is distinct from "necessarily true". The regularity applies to our actual world only, not to all possible worlds that "necessarily" stands for. – Conifold Mar 15 '20 at 22:21
  • @Conifold So Ted Wrigley misused the term " necessarily true" in the quoted sentence: "My belief that the phrase is in that text is a sound hypothesis based on my experience, but it is not necessarily true, and thus is not knowledge in the exacting sense of the term?" – gonzo Mar 15 '20 at 22:40
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    I think he is using it colloquially for rhetorical emphasis, whereas your references to tautologies and logical truths suggest a different meaning. – Conifold Mar 15 '20 at 22:45
  • Blimey. The bar is set very low for knowledge here. It seems that a justified opinion counts as knowing even when one doesn't know it's true or justified. So much for truth-seeking. . –  Mar 16 '20 at 09:16
  • Sorry, @Ted Wrigley, but I did not consider myself to be "calling out" your post- your posts are impeccable.. And you will note that I included your hashtagged name in it to advise you that I had mentioned it, in case you wanted to chime in. Clearly I could have asked Q w/o referencing your post at all -only Wittg. Moreover, I included the full quote and link in the comments above. Finally, as you suggested in your answer, the question you answered was clumsily formulated (cf J D's answer) --such that it would have only served to infect and obfuscate my query. My apologies, though. – gonzo Mar 17 '20 at 18:07
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    @gonzo: I only meant 'calling out' in the literal sense of referencing (need to be more careful of my language). nothing untoward was implied. And then I deleted that comment anyway and added a link to it myself. it's all good. – Ted Wrigley Mar 17 '20 at 18:10
  • @Ted Wrigley. Cool. Though, your "need to be more careful of my language," is interestingly fitting in this context. Anyway, so take a crack at answering the embedded question about how the naive FOLK relativism of the culture's pundits (not objectivity but only lived experiences have epistemological currency) has deposited the culture in the realm of "post truth" In part, I believe, because the bar for knowledge/truth has been, so to speak, set so high as to be unachievable--so anything goes. (cf Putnam's criticism of Rortian epistemology, where its ALL about conversational descriptions). – gonzo Mar 17 '20 at 18:52
  • @Conifold -- we cannot establish "actual truth" for any empirical issue, we can only establish a well justified guess. Hence the question -- can we then not have any knowledge unless actual truth is something we can access, and the questioner assumed that we can at least get to actual truth in the case of logical necessities. – Dcleve Mar 17 '20 at 21:28
  • gonzo, I did not address the "post-truth" part of your question, as speculative sociology seemed too far out of bounds of what I could provide supported justification for. My speculaiton, is that philosophy does dramatically influence culture, in a simplified version, about 2 generations after it becomes philosophically widespread. Russell was an outspoken advocate of uncertainty about everything, and the post-truth movement took off among intellectuals, and Soviet propagandists in the 50s, about a generation and a half later. We are several more gens now, so lagging behind my model. – Dcleve Mar 17 '20 at 21:39
  • @Dcleve Think the schools of post positivism/post empiricism, and radical epistemic skepticism in the context of, for instance, theory choice in the philosophy of science (Quine, Kuhn, Goodman, Sellars, Rorty etc), ultimately morphing the enterprise of epistemology (philosophy of knowledge) into a species of sociology (the sociology of knowledge). Or Cf Wittgenstein's evolution from the Tractatus to the Investigations to On Certainty. All of this culminating in academic postmodernism in 60s-90s bleeding into the lay pundits of the culture. etc... – gonzo Mar 17 '20 at 23:00
  • @Conifold When you use the possible world semantics personally, would you characterize your usage as a conventional metaphorical systemization of Davidson's extension to Tarskian T-sentence semantics whereby modality in the sentence is to explicitly relativize truth to context? And if not, why not? – J D Mar 21 '20 at 23:00
  • @J D please expand upon/elucidate the specific relationship to which you refer between "personally" true in all possible worlds and T-sentences. – gonzo Mar 21 '20 at 23:27
  • @Dcleve I agree with Conifold. Note that "we cannot establish "actual truth" for any empirical issue", and "actual truth is something we cannot access" are not the same thing, nor logically equivalent. You could "access" a true proposition randomly, or justifiedly, without being able to definitively establish its truth value. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 15:23
  • Perhaps we can ask the question "what are the grounds for belief and knowledge?" to understand the difference. I would suggest that beliefs are statements yet to be verified. Whereas, knowledge has been verified. Bertrand Russell's analogy of a tea pot revolving around the sun somewhere between Mars and Earth is a belief yet to be validated; hence, it is not knowledge. – user48488 Oct 12 '20 at 15:17
  • @user48488 No, the standard view is that knowledge requires belief. – Philosopher of science Oct 13 '20 at 19:45

6 Answers6

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As I see it — and keeping in the Wittgensteinian vein — The difficulty we have here is that the term 'knowledge' is vaguely defined across a number of language games, and it's rarely clear which language game we're playing when we invoke it. That causes confusion.

So allow me to go ahead and deconstruct this topic, to see where we end up. When we talk about 'knowledge,' we generally want knowledge to express 'truth.' This is the rationale behind the 'justified true beliefs' paradigm. But 'truth' is a problematic concept. 'Truth' (with a capital 'T', meaning the strongest version of the concept) is something close to a Platonic form: universal, a-temporal, irrevocable, and irreducible. 'Truth' in this abstract sense is a matter of metaphysics that we have no direct access to. We can presume that the Truth 'is out there' with proper X-Files sensibilities, but we will inevitably Mulder and Scully ourselves trying to get a handle on it.

For example, if I claim that the following statement is 'True':

1+1=2

What I mean is that in any time, place, or context — e.g., the modern US, ancient China, 25th century France, even on an alien planet in a different universe — if we have one of something and a different one of something, and we put them together, we will have a two somethings. But then, of course, I have to realize that while this equation may always be 'True' within the mathematical domain of arithmetic, not everything in the universe is subject to the rules of arithmetic. For instance, if we have one container of water and another container of water and we pour them together, we still only have one container of water (now containing twice the volume). If we have one apple and one orange and we put them together, we do not have two of anything (unless I switch conceptual frames and start talking about fruit).

The point here isn't to quibble with the nature of arithmetic; the point is that 'Truths' are generally only 'true' within bounded domains. We can say that 1+1=2 is a 'truth' so long as we understand that it is true for a particular type of thing: countable, indivisible, immutable objects of a uniform type. If we understand the boundaries, then we can say the claim is 'true', and we have something we can call 'knowledge.'

This is the case even for ridiculous claims. For instance, if I say:

"Purple-striped unicorns are superior to pink-speckled unicorns"

no one would dignify calling that 'knowledge' unless there were a particular context — say a board game or child's TV show — which provides boundaries for that claim. If there's (say) a children's TV show called 'Ultimate Unicorns' in which the purple-striped unicorn shoots a laser out of its horn while the pink-speckled unicorn sneezes up healing mucus, then my claim has truth-value within that context, and we can have a fiery, meaningful debate about whether lasers are 'superior' to healing mucus.

But notice how the nature of 'truth' has changed here. Truth is no longer 'universal, a-temporal, irrevocable, and irreducible' but exists only within a frame of reference (be it arithmetic objects or a particular TV show). And these particular frames of reference happen to be well-delimited. I can specify which objects are subject to arithmetic and which are not; I can specify that we are speaking about a particular show. Can we do the same for other contexts? Can we specify the boundary conditions for physics, climate science, ethics, aesthetics? Even physics clearly stops working at certain point — event horizons, the beginning of the universe, at the quantum level — but the exact boundaries of applicability are still something of a mystery.

Without precise conceptual boundaries, the notion of 'truth' starts to fall apart. Either we make the leap and assert a Platonic ideal of 'Truth,' or we are forced back to mere justified belief.

So now if we can go back to the main point, we can tease apart knowledge and truth, seeing that 'knowledge' has at best an asymptotic relationship to metaphysical 'Truth'. Then we no longer have to use 'knowledge' in the exacting sense of the term — meaning we no longer have to make Platonic assumptions — and merely need to recognize the relationship between claims and boundary conditions that produces practical knowledge.

Ted Wrigley
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  • Once again, you 'knocked it out of the park.' Your answer reminded me of a much beloved book I read many years ago: Michael P. Lynch's Truth in Context, where he discusses pluralism as the notion that there are incompatible but equally acceptable accounts of some subject matter. He describes the issue I pose in what I called [in comments] my "embedded question" as that of finding room for objectivity in pluralism, that is "allowing for different truths without slipping into the nihilistic position that there is no truth at all." The "slippery slope" from pluralism into into nihilism. – gonzo Mar 19 '20 at 19:13
  • Both of you will end your lives as dead lifeless bodies. That is truth with a capital 'T'. It conforms to all of the conditions mentioned in your question; it is knowledge, it is metaphysical, (real), and it is absolutely irrevocable. As for belief, belief is a purely subjective conjecture and it's status as knowledge hinges on whether you can learn something from your belief. Even if it's false or untrue one often learns the most from mistaken beliefs. –  Oct 11 '20 at 04:40
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    @CharlesMSaunders: We will end our lives as dead, lifeless bodies *within the context* of of a loosely secular-scientific worldview. Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Jews, Muslims, Christians, etc. would beg to differ (their own respective worldviews having a somewhat different context). You haven't challenged what I've said; you've exemplified it. *Prove* that people do not continue on after their bodies die, or accept that your 'knowledge' is only tangential. Knowledge is like a peach: fuzzy on the outside and squishy on the inside, but good just as it is. – Ted Wrigley Oct 11 '20 at 05:52
  • @CharlesMSaunders Saying that belief is necessarily a purely subjective conjecture goes against everything in analytical epistemology. The "True" proposition that you put forward as an example appears to be one of your beliefs. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 15:30
  • @Ted Wrigley First you said truth is universal and then you also claimed that it is trans-universal :) – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 16:32
  • @Philosopherofscience: I can honestly say that I have never used the term 'trans-universal' in my entire life, so I'm not certain what you're pointing at. Can you be more specific? – Ted Wrigley Oct 11 '20 at 16:36
  • @Ted Wrigley You said: "What I mean is that in any time, place, or context [...] even on an alien planet in a different universe". Of course it can be both. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 16:43
  • @Philosopherofscience: Ah, a pun on the word 'universal'. I'm slow today... – Ted Wrigley Oct 11 '20 at 17:49
  • @philosopher of science - Analytic philosophy 'believes' in univocality. The rest of us know that this act truncates philosophy down into a tautalogical math puzzle where knowledge and reality take a holiday. –  Oct 11 '20 at 18:08
  • @CharlesMSaunders, your example seems evocative but unconvincing. One could imagine revoking that assertion if, for example, human medicine in our lifetimes reaches a singularity point where our capacity to prolong human life outpaces our deterioration to age. This isn't just a question of mathematical tautology, but is rather a contingent possibility that may or may not, but could, ultimately come to pass. Yet it doesn't seem unreasonable to propose that, while maybe not metaphysically necessary, your statement carries the epistemological weight of knowledge, to all intents and purposes. – Paul Ross Oct 11 '20 at 22:16
  • @CharlesMSaunders What are your arguments for claiming that belief is necessarily a purely subjective conjecture? – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 23:12
  • @CharlesMSaunders It is of course false that analytical philosophy believes in univocality. Even elementary school kids know of polysemy in natural languages. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 23:38
  • Thanks, Sorry for my confusion. Cheers, –  Oct 12 '20 at 02:55
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This is an excellent question gonzo, and it highlights a major problem in contemporary philosophy. Supporting Ted Wrigley, is the SEP entry on knowledge, which agrees with him: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/#TrutCond

1.1 The Truth Condition

Most epistemologists have found it overwhelmingly plausible that what is false cannot be known. For example, Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 US Presidential election. Consequently, nobody knows that Hillary Clinton won the election. One can only know things that are true.

However, as you note, pretty much everything we "know", including the existence of the physical world, other minds, and logic proofs, WE COULD BE WRONG ABOUT! Hence, since we can't know "truth", this standard for knowledge appears to be a null set.

Pragmatically, basically everybody treats "very well supported" as good enough to approximate truth. But as you point out, this is abandoning actual "truth" as a standard for knowledge.

Dcleve
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    Of course we could be wrong about those things. No epistemologist denies this, and that doesn't contradict the truth condition. – E... Mar 15 '20 at 18:41
  • If "is true" is a necessary requirement for knowledge, and we can never know if "is true" is actually the case, then we cannot ever know if we have any knowledge. The alternative, which pretty much everyone accepts outside the SEP and most philosophy discussions is that "sufficiently well justified" is all that is needed for knowledge, and "is true" is not necessary. – Dcleve Mar 15 '20 at 18:45
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    If you know something, then you know that it is true. So there's no problem there. Whether you know that you know is a different matter, but why should that be a problem? – E... Mar 15 '20 at 18:49
  • So -- what do you mean when you say you know something? Or do you think there is no valid way to use the word because the requirement is too extreme, so you never say you know anything? – Dcleve Mar 15 '20 at 18:53
  • No, I am not saying that. What do I mean by saying that I know something? I mean that I know it. Not everything has to be given a reductive definition. – E... Mar 15 '20 at 18:55
  • @Eliran -- note the example from SEP was explicit -- it asserted absolute truth as to the outcome of the 2016 election, and then used the referenced absolute truth standard to define kn0wledge. The SEP definition requires access to the "view from nowhere", and we cannot EVER have that access. – Dcleve Mar 15 '20 at 18:56
  • No, it does not require that. You are misinterpreting the article. It does not require "absolute truth" -- whatever that means. It just requires truth. – E... Mar 15 '20 at 18:57
  • @Eliran -- crossing posts. Yes, we have the same usage. But that usage does not include "must be true". – Dcleve Mar 15 '20 at 18:58
  • @Eliran -- so "truth", without caveats, is not absolute? That is standard usage in most discussion. Unless you hold by a pragmatic "approximate truth", which is explicitly what I argue for, then truth is absolute. – Dcleve Mar 15 '20 at 19:00
  • @Everyone (except for Eliran, who got it right) No, the set is not necessarily empty, there could be tons of truths that we know appart from logical necessities. It is not required that we can definitively prove them true. All that is required is that they be true. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 15:36
  • @Philosopherofscience -- Are you able to answer the questions I posed to Eliran? Eliran appears to be assertion that his/her perception of knowledge constitutes absolute knowledge, which is pretty clearly false. – Dcleve Oct 13 '20 at 17:49
  • @Dcleve Thank you for your trust. I don't think Eliran said that. In any case, I disagree that alleged true perceptions are necessarily of something that is true. I think I am able to answer your question to Eliran (I see the last one, please let me know if there is another unanswered one). Dead-on complete truth does not have to be absolute if you consider different planes. A phenomenal truth could be a noumenic falsehood. For example, if we are in the matrix, it's true that I am eating a banana inside the simulation, but it would be false outside of it. So, it would be relative. – Philosopher of science Oct 13 '20 at 18:00
  • @Philosopherofscience -- how does one achieve a view from nowhere, to know whether one is "eating a banana inside the simulation", or "what your mother's name is"? All one can ever "know" is that the perception one has is of eating the banana when one is "in the matrix", or the code seems to say one is eating a banana, or everyone says your mother's name is Jane, or the birth records seem to show her as named Jane at birth. But all of these perceptions can be deemed likely mistaken, if/when more data is available. – Dcleve Oct 13 '20 at 18:23
  • What this boils down to, is if a view from nowhere is impossible, (and I think it is, and that is basically the view of empiricism so I consider it on you to show reason to think otherwise), then your "true" appears to be a null set. – Dcleve Oct 13 '20 at 18:25
  • @Dcleve You don't need to achieve that view in order to be able to speak about it hypothetically, which you have demonstrated by mentioning it. That does not imply that the set of truths is an empty set, arguing that is a non sequitur. You are conflating the epistemic with the ontic. The set of ravens that I know are in Brazil is empty. But I am sure that the set of ravens in Brazil is not empty. Of course all non necessary beliefs are contingent and could be shown to be false if more data were available. That is mainstream standard fallibilism. What about it? – Philosopher of science Oct 13 '20 at 19:21
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Maybe first we might apply a certain amount of charity in our interpretation of Ted’s statement?

The binding of the “don’t necessarily” in your quote strikes me as looser than I think you’re taking it. A charitable reading would say that Ted is suggesting that “false beliefs fail to count as knowledge, and this might be the case of some things that would otherwise count if they were true”, as opposed to “beliefs that might be false fail to count as knowledge in all circumstances, even if they contingently are true”.

The latter seems, as you say, too strict a requirement on knowledge in the face of uncertainty. The former, though, seems reasonable - false beliefs aren’t knowledge, even if believing them can be reasonably justified. Nobody can ever know that Nick Clegg was the British Prime Minister, even if we might tell some story about how they could quite honestly and genuinely have come to that conclusion.

Sofie Selnes
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The classical definition of knowledge, going back to Plato, is "justified, true belief." Some of the typical attacks on this revolve around what is "justified", what is "true" and what is "belief."

In this case, I think there may be some ambiguity as to what is meant by "necessarily true." Do we mean a "necessary truth," something which cannot be other than true? Not all philosophers believe these exist, and I'm not personally aware of any that argue that only necessary truths can undergird knowledge. Or do we mean that its truthfulness is "necessary" to it being considered knowledge? That much is entailed by the classical definition.

Chris Sunami
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    If the best we can ever know the "truth" is just a well justified belief, then what is the value of adding "true" to "justified belief" as a criteria for knowledge? I think this is the central question being asked. If "certainly true" rather than "well, it is probably true" is needed for knowledge, the only items that seem to satisfy that are logical necessities. – Dcleve Mar 17 '20 at 21:21
  • @Dcleve The added value is in providing an ontogically stronger definition. But epistemically and pragmatically there is no difference. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 01:45
  • @Dcleve No, there could be tons of truths that we know appart from logical necessities. It is not required that we can definitively prove them true. All that is required is that they be true. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 15:32
  • @ChrisSunamisupportsMonica What philosophers don't believe in necessary truths? Why? – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 17:10
  • You can have a justified belief that turns out to be false. I checked the bus time table, and called the bus company, and as the result I have the justified belief that the bus will leave at 8:05. But the bus has an accident and my justified belief is wrong. People get convicted because there is a justified belief they are guilty (guilty beyond reasonable doubt), and that justified belief is sometimes wrong. – gnasher729 Oct 11 '20 at 19:02
  • On the other hand, millions of people believe they will win the lottery soon. That belief is not justified but once in a while one of them is right. Their unjustified belief into something that is true by pure coincidence is not knowledge. – gnasher729 Oct 11 '20 at 19:05
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If you are talking about factive knowledge, yes. If not, no.

Factive knowledge is by definition knowledge that has to be true in order for it to be knowledge. "Factive" is simply the type of knowledge such that, if someone knows that p, then p (of course if p is true, then p is truth-apt). The traditional Platonic definition of knowledge is as factive knowledge.

Non factive knowledge can be knowledge without being true, for example the scientific knowledge of Newton is called so, even though his theory was false and has been superseded.

This is just a matter of definition. This is just to have two concepts of knowledge, so that we can say that Newton had scientific knowledge without commiting to deem it true (Newton's knowledge of Newtonian mechanics was non-factive knowledge).

An example of factive knowledge is the knowledge that 2+2=4. We can confidently say that it's factive knowledge because we see no way in which it could be false. Although, if it turns out that it is false, then we would know that it was non-factive knowledge all along.

I suppose these definitions can be used with any theory of truth.

What entitles the believer to claim that their belief is true (besides the evidence) is the need to avoid pragmatic contradiction. It would be a pragmatic contradiction to claim "p" and to claim at the same time: "I don't know that p is true" (see Van Fraassen for the concept of pragmatic contradiction). It is not Newton who is saying that his knowledge was only non-factive, it is us saying it.

But in your question I believe you are mixing two completely different things: i) the necessity of a proposition being true in order for it to be known, and ii) the necessity of it being necessary.

If it is true that my mom's name is Jane, then its knowledge is factive knowledge. But of course my mom could have been named something else.

Philosopher of science
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  • Can you add details and examples to your post? – Mark Andrews Oct 11 '20 at 00:32
  • @Mark Andrews Done. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 00:38
  • Some examples of "factive knowledge," perhaps. Keenly focusing upon the demarcation (critria and boundry between what is and what is not FN] issue. And, a second, but related issue, are we talking 'true" according to the correspondence theory, pragnmatism, what? Verification ala Ayers? Popperian falsifiability? Etc. – gonzo Oct 11 '20 at 01:56
  • @gonzo I'm already giving the demarcatory criteria. Added example of FN. Regarding my theory of truth, I'm a correspondentist. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 02:05
  • @gonzo Popperian falsifiability is not a criterion of truth. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 02:17
  • I am with you, here, good sir. But you wear your youth on your sleeve. A book that provides a relatively concise history of how traditional philosophy of science and scientific positivism devolved into the sociology of knowledge and post positivistism (and which movements were warranted and which not) in the course of the 20th C is John Zammito’s A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Post-Positivism in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour. (https://www.amazon.com/Nice-Derangement-Epistemes-Post-positivism-Science/dp/0226978621. You need to digest this ASAP. – gonzo Oct 11 '20 at 02:35
  • @gonzo No idea what you are talking about in your last message to my answer. Was that for me? Anyway, please check out my latest expansion to my answer because I think I saw what was troubling you. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 02:40
  • Forgive me, but even after googling the term "factive," and perusing this review of the definitive text, https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-factive-turn-in-epistemology/, I remain at sea as to what the term factive connotes. Truth apt? Empirically testable? I'm not getting it. – gonzo Oct 11 '20 at 04:55
  • @gonzo None of the above. "Factive" is simply the type of knowledge such that, if someone knows P, then P. Of course if P is true, then P is truth-apt. This is just a matter of definition. This is just to have two concepts of knowledge, so that we can say that Newton had scientific knowledge without commiting to deem it true (it would be non-factive knowledge). – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 12:31
  • @gonzo Sorry, I should have written "if someone knows that p, then p". – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 12:42
  • @gonzo Please see the expansions to my answer. To put it into one word, "FACTIVE" DENOTES THAT IT IS TRUE. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 12:49
  • But what, without circularity, entitles the believer to claim that s/he knows p, to say that the belief if true. Aside from claiming to know it. For instance, if you look out into your yard and see a tree (or a cat on the mat) Is it true that there is a tree in the yard, or that I perceive that there is a tree in the yard, or the proposition "there is a tree in the yard". All of the above. None of the above. – gonzo Oct 11 '20 at 14:26
  • @gonzo What entitles the believer is the need to avoid pragmatic contradiction. It would be a pragmatic contradiction to claim "p" and to claim at the same time: "I don't know that p is true" (see Van Fraassen for the concept of pragmatic contradiction). It is not Newton who is saying that his knowledge was only non-factive, it is us saying it. In your example, the proposition "There is a tree in that yard" could be true or false, as is the case of any contingent proposition. The subject could be hallucinating. Of course, the proposition that there was such a perception would be true. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 15:12
  • So a factive statement is one whose denial/rejection would result in a pragmatic contradiction. Makes sense. I've always understood the notion of a pragmatic contradiction in the context of establishing the irrationality of certain types of radical skepticism. For instance, though I did not use the term, see here: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/73659/how-do-philosophers-respond-to-global-skepticism/73713#73713. – gonzo Oct 11 '20 at 17:23
  • @gonzo No. If I don't believe p, even if p is a factive truth, denying it would not make me incur in a pragmatic contradiction. So that's not how factive truths are demarcated. – Philosopher of science Oct 11 '20 at 20:38
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Knowledge is just information, so, not necessarily, just if the belief is false, then the "knowledge" is also false and if we process false knowledge, we will have false results

If you have undoubtable proof then you have "true knowledge", you have truth, otherwise you might have "false knowledge", in case your knowledge is false, does not mean you do not have knowledge at all, you just have knowledge that is not the truth, it might not be the truth, but you still know it, you have that information, but that means you don't know the truth, you know the lie, you still know something related to the subject you examine if your knowledge about it is true or false

platinoob_
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