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From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Rigorous Mortis
Message-ID: <125@l5.uucp>
Date: Sun, 15-Sep-85 23:55:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5.125
Posted: Sun Sep 15 23:55:05 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Sep-85 06:21:03 EDT
References: <103@l5.uucp> <1544@umcp-cs.UUCP> <109@l5.uucp> <1697@pyuxd.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco
Lines: 47

In article <1697@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes:
>> There is nothing in:
>> 	Knowledge is true belief in the light of sufficient evidence
>> which rules out the existence of subjective truth. [LAURA]
>
>Can you call it "subjective truth"?  What basis can you use for calling it
>"true"?  Subjective BELIEFS, certainly.

Look, I didn't say that there was something in that definition which said
that there was such a thing as subjective knowledge, either. However there
are things which are true but impossible to verify. The statement ``laura
creighton is hungry''  happens to be true, but assuming that you are
a persistent skeptic I can never convince you that I am not lying. To me,
of course, the truth of this knowledge is self-evident. 

>
>> It is simply a definition
>> of (objective) knowledge. If you want to include subjective knowledge in
>> this definition, you will have a different belief in what constitutes
>> ``sufficient evidence'' than most objectivists. If you merely want  to
>> believe that this defines objective knowledge (and thus should be
>> restates as:
>> 	Objective knowledge is true belief in the light of sufficient evidence
>> you may then be able to formulate a corallery such as:
>> 	Subjective knowledge is true belief for which there cannot be
>> 	sufficient evidence.
>
>You can't just stick in the word "true" in that corollary just because you feel
>like it.

No, but most epistemological definitions of ``knowledge'' imply that
knowledge is true, whereas belief can be true or false. If what you
are saying is that all knowledge must be objective knowledge (that is
to say that subjective knowledge does not exist) then you are a hard-line
objectivist. The question to ask hard line objectivists is ``how do you
know that your definition of knowledge is true?'' I maintain that it is
self-evident. But those things that are self-evident are true in a
way that is verified differently than those things which are objectively
true. They comprise the set of things that *I* call subjective truths.
You are perfectly free to disagree with me that they should be called
subjective truths, of course. 


-- 
Laura Creighton		(note new address!)
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa


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