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The knowledge argument

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Re: The knowledge argument

#41

Post by personlurking »

anaolykarpov wrote: post #9

One friend of mine told me once that no matter how much you read about sex, you have to practice it in order to understand it. We, as men, will never actually understand female orgasms and women will never know how ours are felt, no matter how accurate one tries to describe it. I don't know what the above means in the context of "the knowledge argument" but these are easier to understand examples than "not experiment…

Furthermore, each individual will feel it differently http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Re: The knowledge argument

#42

Post by glomph »

anaolykarpov wrote: post #9

One friend of mine told me once that no matter how much you read about sex, you have to practice it in order to understand it. We, as men, will never actually understand female orgasms and women will never know how ours are felt, no matter how accurate one tries to describe it. I don't know what the above means in the context of "the knowledge argument" but these are easier to understand examples than "not experiment…

:( don't talk as if your whole audience is men.

Re: The knowledge argument

#43

Post by ArekDymalski »

I don't understand why this is a valid argument against physicalism. Maybe I can't get it because the definition of "physicalism" seems muddy and unintuitive to me.

Or maybe because there's an actual difference between knowing how something will work (light -> retina -> neurons etc.) and experiencing it while it works. But all of this is physical: both the knowledge, as well as the memory of experience.

That's the problem with many philosophers: they create some concepts, define them in arbitral (not necessarily adequate, often misleading) way and then other philosophers discuss with these concepts. IMHO most of the time it doesn't bring useful conclusions and doesn't advance human knowledge.

Re: The knowledge argument

#44

Post by MachineElf »

glomph wrote: post #42
anaolykarpov wrote: post #9

One friend of mine told me once that no matter how much you read about sex, you have to practice it in order to understand it. We, as men, will never actually understand female orgasms and women will never know how ours are felt, no matter how accurate one tries to describe it. I don't know what the above means in the context of "the knowledge argument" but these are easier to understand examples than "not experiment…

:( don't talk as if your whole audience is men.

I am not exactly sure in what way his discourse seems as though it were addressed to an audience of men only. My political correctness meter is tingling.

Re: The knowledge argument

#45

Post by btilly »

glomph wrote: post #42
anaolykarpov wrote: post #9

One friend of mine told me once that no matter how much you read about sex, you have to practice it in order to understand it. We, as men, will never actually understand female orgasms and women will never know how ours are felt, no matter how accurate one tries to describe it. I don't know what the above means in the context of "the knowledge argument" but these are easier to understand examples than "not experiment…

:( don't talk as if your whole audience is men.

Invalid complaint. The statement was grammatically correct if anaolykarpov and the friend having the conversation were both male. In that case "we" refers to the two of them, and not to those of us in the audience to whom that conversation is being recounted.

Re: The knowledge argument

#46

Post by DanBC »

MachineElf wrote: post #44
glomph wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:( don't talk as if your whole audience is men.

I am not exactly sure in what way his discourse seems as though it were addressed to an audience of men only. My political correctness meter is tingling.

> We, as men, will never actually understand female orgasms and women will never know how ours are felt, no matter how accurate one tries to describe it.

Re: The knowledge argument

#47

Post by rplst8 »

This is slightly off topic but it reminds me of a question I've pondered for years. Does every person see red as the same color in their mind? Obviously it applies to all colors. Furthermore - do I see color as the same "concept" as everyone else. I.e. to some color is more of a feeling, while to others it's no more than a property of an object (like the surface being smooth or rough).

I've also often wondered if this is why some people like some colors better than others - and why some people are said to have good taste when putting some colors together.

Re: The knowledge argument

#48

Post by btilly »

coldtea wrote: post #10
btilly wrote: post #2

This kind of silliness is why I ignore philosophers whenever I can. It is clear that the subject of how we personally experience X is not, strictly speaking, part of the body of knowledge about X. But the reverse is also true. Learning more about how we personally experience X does not increase our understanding of X. It is a different topic. There is an important asterisk on this. And that is that we actually learn…

> This kind of silliness is why I ignore philosophers whenever I can. And avoiding this type of hasty comments are why it pays to study philogophical problems. > It is clear that the subject of how we personally experience X is not, strictly speaking, part of the body of knowledge about X. But the reverse is also true. Learning more about how we personally experience X does not increase our understanding of X. It is…

First on the personal equation, the actual measurement difference from person to person could range up to 0.7 seconds. See http://www.jstor.org/stable/1627157?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont... for verification. This was far above acceptable error for measuring the positions of the stars, and is far longer than most could believe possible.

As for "it's a different topic", well, it is. The one topic is the objective reality of how something works. The other topic is the subjective reality of how we experience that same thing.

Take the example that was given. Suppose that I tell you about electromagnetism. I tell you about the absorption spectrum of various colors. I tell you about the fact that when we process color we subtract red from green and yellow from blue so that we can never perceive a mix of those. I tell you about various forms of color-blindness, and the rare forms of tetrachromacy. I can tell you everything there is to know about how the process works, and what colors will be perceived, when. And how that differs for different people. You still know nothing about what it is like to experience it for yourself.

And conversely, learning to experience it for yourself tells you very little about everything that I just told you. For example you've been seeing in color for your whole life and likely are not color-blind. If so, were you aware that it is impossible for you to see a mix of red and green as a mix of red and green? Probably not!

Which returns me to my point. Subjective experience is a necessary filter through which we perceive the objective world around us. That experience is neither necessary nor sufficient to gain objective knowledge. And conversely objective knowledge is neither necessary nor sufficient to gain subjective knowledge. They are different kinds of things.

Re: The knowledge argument

#49

Post by MachineElf »

DanBC wrote: post #46
MachineElf wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not exactly sure in what way his discourse seems as though it were addressed to an audience of men only. My political correctness meter is tingling.

> We, as men, will never actually understand female orgasms and women will never know how ours are felt, no matter how accurate one tries to describe it.

My position is almost the same as btilly's. When he says "We, as men, will never actually understand female orgasms and women will never know how ours are felt... " anaolykarpov is merely including himself in the more general set of men, and thus communicating an opinion as an element representative of that set, regardless of the audience. The disjunction with the set of women is necessary to underline the fact that there might be a fundamental qualitative/quantitative difference in the way orgasm is felt by the two.

In fact, the statement wouldn't have been any less correct had the audience been only women.

The same applies if a woman were to say "We, as women, will never ..."

Re: The knowledge argument

#50

Post by mannykannot »

Rangi42 wrote: post #19
tjradcliffe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophers typically assume certain "fixed points" in arguments that they then refuse to budge from under any circumstances. It is a mental dysfunction, a kind of inbuilt rigidity of mind, that is peculiar to the breed. For example, there is an actual argument in the philosophy of science that is based on the supposition that there is a substance that is "identical to water in every respect" but "is not H2O but rat…

Without disputing your main point about how philosophers typically behave, I want to clarify the is-water-H2O argument. As I understand it, it's making a point about how we use language: people have been using the word "water" to refer to various puddles, lakes, oceans, beverages, etc for a long time before electrolysis was discovered. We know now that all those instances have being-H2O in common, but it's not a nece…

I have a suspicion that many philosophical arguments, probably including the knowledge argument, are ultimately about language use - in this case, words and phrases like 'knowledge', 'physical' and 'physical knowledge'. Is this what Wittgenstein was going on about?
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