Because most philosophers in the pasts comes from a mathematics background. They are used to a a priori nature of mathematics, so it is easy for them to think that knowledge need to be certain.

Well that is one explanation. But it isn't the only explanation. And, of course, math is not certain. I make many errors when I do sums, especially long sums.

why is math uncertain? What did you drink?


Philosophers of the past worship mathematics. Some of the best philosophers are mathematicians. The people that bring us rationalism are all mathematicians. The same people they bring us analytic geometry, and calculus. Descartes and leibniz

Empiricism comes from rich english people with too much time in their hands. Hume, Berkeley, locke

---------- Post added 04-26-2010 at 08:51 PM ----------

The reason why knowledge don `t imply certainty can be ofter. Imagine a infinite series of explanation, each explanation is explained by a preceding explanation. Suppose we live in a possible world where this series do not terminate. Now, if we suppose that any explanation implies a completion of the series, then we will never be able to provide any explanation at all. This is contrary to intuition, so explanation must end somewhere. Why not end in a preceding fact? Since such facts are contingent, we would always feel uncertain.

Plato, as we have discussed previously, asserted that there were different levels of knowledge - doxa (opinion/mere belief,) pistis (scientific/mathematica), and finally noesis (knowledge of the forms and Ideas), which was knowledge of the highest and best type.

Now I already know you will be inclined to say 'there is no such thing as "knowledge of the highest type", from our previous discussions on the matter. But if you're trying to understand why some philosophers attribute certainty to knowledge, then this, I think, is the reason. They are talking of a kind of knowledge, that when you know it, it is apodictic, undeniable. An analogy: is like discovering a sense of identity, or suddenly realising something about yourself, which you had not seen before, but, once seen, is undeniably certain.

Here is a previously-quoted definition of noesis from Wikipedia This is, as the quote says, rationally intuitive or instinctive rather than discursive. This is because it is, in a sense, a form of mystical awareness. This aspect of noesis was especially emphasised by Plotinus, after Plato, but is also indubitably present in Plato.

But Plato clearly distinguishes knowledge of different kinds, though. Noesis, pistis, doxa, and so on. What do you make of those distinctions? Do you think there is anything in them? Surely, also, knowledge of the Forms - leaving aside whether these are real - is of a different kind to knowledge of (say) the name of the capital of Equador.

I, don't see how math can be certain or uncertain. I thought it is people who are either certain or uncertain.

And, as I said, I make mistakes all the time when I do arithmetic. Luckily, I use a calculator. Whether knowledge implies the impossibility of error is one thing. Why it is believed that it does, is another thing, and that is what I asked about.

Plato distinguishes knowledge in terms of what the knowledge is of. And Plato would not honor the true belief about the name of the capital of E. with the honorific, "know".

Knowledge, then, for Plato, becomes a means - in fact the only means - for salvation, sōtēria: a return to a place of unchangeable and authentic existence. Unlike Aristotle, for whom knowledge is a type of telos or 'goal' of human existence, Plato sees knowledge as a recollection or a return to a state of being that was lost through a fall; and so knowledge, which is the recognition of this primal state, becomes the salvific event par excellence. This idea, first introduced into philosophy by Plato, became the guiding ideal of that branch of Greek thought, that paideia, which found its end or telos in the Christian doctrine of apokatastasis or 'restoration of all beings,' exemplified in Origen, and mapped out 'metaphysically' in the system of Plotinus. I believe that the Christian doctrine owes its development to a more general Greek ideal of humanity, which rested upon the observation that the human being is essentially divided into two parts - a divine part and a merely 'animated' one. The tension between the two is what engenders temporal existence, as it were; and it is the philosophical and salvific struggle between these two parts that leads one to an unsullied vision of truth and goodness.

The underlying assumption of the secularization thesis is that God does not exist and that religion is merely a human construction. The idea that modernization produces secularization rests on the the notion that modernization produces enlightenment, that enlightenment reveals the truth, and that the truth is that there is no God (or at least that there is no God that matters for the conduct of human life).

But Plato clearly distinguishes knowledge of different kinds, though. Noesis, pistis, doxa, and so on. What do you make of those distinctions?

"Knowledge" doesn't describe anything consistent and definite, as far as I can see.

You should consider the possibility that this is because you can't see very far.

(Interesting to see how easy it is to push people's buttons in this area.)

You need to consider the possibility that Plato (and many other sages from antiquity) actually knows something we don't know.

Australian sociologist John Carroll turns received wisdom on its head in this brilliant, provocative, and sweeping book. Humanism is commonly credited with building Western civilization as we know it - bringing about democracy, universal rights, and prosperity. But Carroll argues that "the great five-hundred year Humanist experiment to found an entirely secular culture on earth" has been an abject failure.