Todd Suomela's Library tagged knowledge →  View Popular

The point here is that in this case, and in all ordinary
cases of incredulity, the grounds for the doubt can, in principle, be
removed. As Wittgenstein would say, doubt occurs within the context of
things undoubted. If something is doubted, something else must be held
fast because doubt presupposes that there are means of removing the
doubt.^[2]
We doubt that the bird is a robin because,
at least in part, we think we know how robins typically fly and what
their typical coloration is. That is, we think our general picture of
the world is right — or right enough — so that it does
provide us with both the grounds for doubt and the means for
potentially removing the doubt. Thus, ordinary incredulity, say about
some feature of the world, occurs against a background of sequestered
beliefs about the world. We are not doubting that we have any knowledge
of the world. Far from it, we are presupposing that we do know some
things about the world. To quote Wittgenstein, “A doubt without an end
is not even a doubt” (Wittgenstein 1969, ¶ 625).

As regards the former, skeptical views typically have an epistemological form, in that they are focused on the epistemic status of certain beliefs. For example, one common variety of skepticism concerns our beliefs about the past and argues that such beliefs lack positive epistemic status – that they are not justified, or are not rational, or cannot constitute knowledge (and perhaps even all three). Where skepticism does not have this epistemological focus, then it tends to be of an ontological form in that it is directed at beliefs about the existence of some supposedly problematic entity, such as the self or God. Here the target of the skepticism is not so much one’s putative knowledge of these entities (though it may be that as well), but rather the claim that they exist at all.

As regards the latter, one can differentiate between skeptical views that are either local or radical. Local varieties of skepticism will only concern beliefs about a certain specific subject matter, such as beliefs in abstract objects or the conclusions of inductive arguments. Since ontological varieties of skepticism tend to be concerned with the existence of particular sorts of entities, they are usually (though not always) of this local form. In contrast, radical forms of skepticism afflict most of our beliefs and thus pose, at least potentially, the most pressing philosophical challenge.

In his short 1963 paper, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?",
Edmund Gettier presented two effective counterexamples to the JTB
analysis (Gettier 1963). The second of these goes as follows. Suppose
Smith has good evidence for the false proposition






1. Jones owns a
   Ford.^[5]
   
2. Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Boston.
3. Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona.
4. Either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk.







Since (1) entails each of the propositions (2) through (4), and since
Smith recognizes these entailments, he is justified in believing each
of propositions (2)-(4). Now suppose that, by sheer coincidence, Brown
is indeed in Barcelona. Given these assumptions, we may say that
Smith, when he believes (3), holds a justified true belief. However,
is Smith's belief an instance of knowledge? Since Smith has no
evidence whatever as to Brown's whereabouts, and so believes what is
true only because of luck, the answer would have to be
‘no’. Consequently, the three conditions of the JTB
account — truth, belief, and justification — are not
sufficient for
knowledge.^[6]
How must the analysis of knowledge be modified to make it immune to
cases like the one we just considered? This is what is commonly
referred to as the "Gettier problem".

Too many employers are poorly equipped to weather the recession because they use workers’ skills and talents poorly, tie them up in rules and procedures, and give them little say over how they do their work, The Work Foundation says today.

A major new survey of the work-lives of 2011 workers found that:

• 40 per cent of employees have more skills than their jobs require.

• 65 per cent of workers said the primary characteristic of the organisations they worked for was ‘rule and policy bound’ – though just five per cent said this was their preference.

• 40 per cent said they had little or no flexibility over the hours they worked.

• 20 per cent of graduates are in ‘low knowledge content’ jobs.

‘So far in this recession employers have been reluctant to lose the skills, talents and experience of their workforces. Yet at the same time they seem to be failing to make the most of them. Many people could be doing more, but are denied the chance to do so.

‘To keep job losses to a minimum, organisations should be taking full advantage of widespread opportunities to give people more responsibility, move away from rules and procedure-based workplace cultures, and re-organise work and use new technologies to give individuals more flexibility over hours. More autonomy for people and less intensive management should be the order of the day – in other words greater use of the principles of good work. Trapping so many workers in roles in which their skills and abilities are poorly matched with their jobs is a waste both of economic potential and human possibility.’

But there is a fundamental problem here that needs to be addressed. Look at this issue from the other side. A significant number of articles, including many published in small circulation periodicals, are never cited by anyone. Think, too, of the conferences papers that fail to attract meaningful audiences, the journals that have tiny circulations and very small readerships, and the fact that most academic books are published in press runs of under 1,000 copies, despite the growth in the number of academics and university and college libraries. Put bluntly, we are researching without having an impact, speaking without being heard and writing without being read. Furthermore, our tenure and promotion procedures reward publication more than they do awareness of the field, thus pushing up conference attendance, and journal and book submissions.

We mean:





1. Epistemic rationality: believing, and updating on evidence, so as to systematically improve the correspondence between your map and the territory.  The art of obtaining beliefs that correspond to reality as closely as possible.  This correspondence is commonly termed "truth" or "accuracy", and we're happy to call it that.
2. Instrumental rationality: achieving your values.  Not necessarily "your values" in the sense of being selfish values or unshared values: "your values" means anything you care about.  The art of choosing actions that steer the future toward outcomes ranked higher in your preferences.  On LW we sometimes refer to this as "winning".

What is important is not who came up with the theory (because we know that what I will say is that the theory is emergent from the works of numerous writers) but rather what the salient points are of the theory. From the work just cited, we can identify three major points (and those who care to look will find those points repeated throughout my own writing):


1. knowledge is not an object, but a series of flows; it is a process, not a product
   
2. it is produced not in the minds of people but in the interactions between people
3. the idea of acquiring knowledge, as a series of truths, is obsolete

These point to a conception of knowledge dramatically from the Cartesian foundation or the Platonic form, a conception of knowledge that challenges even the Aristotlean categpry and the Newtonian law of nature. In particular, what seems to me to be relevant, is that the knowledge thus produced is:

1. non-propositional, that is, not sharp, definite, precise, expressible in language
2. non-discrete, that is, not located in any given place or instantiated in any particular form
3. non-objective, that is, independent of any given perspective, point of view, or experience