true. yes, until such time as you have sufficient reason to think otherwise



good point.

---------- Post added 04-16-2010 at 11:22 PM ----------

good point....agreed

If what you claim to know is true, then even if you have good reason to suppose it is not true, it is still true. But, in that case, your belief that it is true is not justified. So, although what you believe you know is still true, if you have sufficient reason to think otherwise, you then no longer know it is true.

yeah that's why I added the comment

but one can think one is justified but not actually be justified.....that's why I mentioned one making the assumption that ones justification IS actually sufficient....

yeah that's why I added the comment


but one can think one is justified but not actually be justified.....that's why I mentioned one making the assumption that ones justification IS actually sufficient....

I don't think there are any "assumptions" being made here. Either one is, or is not, justified. And one's belief is or is not true. I think the point Kennethamy and myself are driving at, here, is that a person does not need to know that one's justification is sufficient in order to be sufficiently justified in believing that P.

The latter form of knowledge is called "1st-order knowledge that P." The former is called "2nd-order knowledge that I am justified in believing that P." One knows different things in each case, here, so that the latter does not require the former in order to be a justified belief that-P.

Yes, the most important example of this is the KK principle. Namely, the principle that knowing implies knowing that you know. The KK principle is false, since it say that knowing that you know is a necessary condition of knowing, and, as Spinoza pointed out, on the contrary, knowing is a necessary condition of knowing that you know. You have to know before you can know that you know (if you can know that you know).

That sounds right--analogously--just as P is true is a necessary condition for knowing that P. Funny, though, I've never heard it construed as the "KK principle."

Interesting...would you diagnose Cartesian methodological doubt, then, as a way of trying to provide a positive answer to the false KK principle?

It certainly seems Descartes' epistemic problems would have been brought about by his implicit adherence to this principle.

Yes, I think so. In fact, that may be one of the things that is meant by, "certainty", knowing that you know. Spinoza refuted the KK principle, but, being a Rationalist, he said that nevertheless, when you know, you know you know. Like all Rationalists, he thought the being in a state of knowing was like being illumined from within. That it was a kind of luminous mental state that you could not doubt you have when you have it, and when you have it, you must know you have it. I suppose like pain. The Oxford philosopher Harry Prichard (1920 or so) in a most interesting essay, "Descartes' Meditations" tells us that: to be certain of something is to know it. And "When we know something, we either do or can directly know that we are knowing it, and when we believe something, we know, or can directly know that we are believing it....." (I thought I saw this essay on the Net somewhere or other, but I can't find it now. It is one that is collected in a book of critical essay on Descartes by Willis Doney). I think the notion that knowledge is a mental state that can be directly know by the knower is what lies behind the view that knowledge must be certainty.That when you know, you know that you know. (It is interesting how, although Spinoza repudiates the KK principle, he nevertheless insists that when you know you know you know).