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[–] 74 points 5 months ago (8 children)

I can't believe that this is how I find the most pedagogical counterexample I've ever seen to true justified belief being knowledge hahaha

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Yea! Wasn't the classic example some convoluted story of people moving coins around pockets or something ?

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    the one I've heard is, a farmer can't see his cow anywhere. his neighbor comes to visit, and on the way she walks past the farmer's field and sees the cow behind (from the house's perspective) a small patch of trees and brush. she doesn't notice that on the other side of the trees (toward the house) there is a bedsheet caught in the low branches that was blown off of someone's clothesline and fell in mud along the way. when she reaches the house the farmer asks if she's seen the cow, she says yes, it's over by the trees. the farmer looks out and sees the sheet in the distance, mistakes it for the cow, which he has not actually seen, and thus believes the neighbor. so the cow is by the trees, he believes the cow is by the trees, and he has good reason to believe, and yet based on the evidence actually available to him, he should not be certain

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    gettier made his whole career on his version (the coin thing) and responding to academic articles disputing it. I'm sure he or one of his acolytes used the cow story as an alternative example.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    The sheet is not the only thing that has been muddied in this questionable example. The cow is NOT where he thinks it is and therefore he does NOT have knowledge of it being there. It's near where he thinks it is but that distinction makes all the difference in the world.

    Also there's a whole slew of problems arising from the way our cognition interprets sensory information. For instance, our eyes enable us to see light in various colors and intensities but they arguably don't see objects (or subjects). In that sense we cannot hold JTB about cows, anyway, because even as a farmer we cannot be sure we've ever seen one.

    (Never mind the next problem, which is that even our sensory facilities might be corrupted by color blindness, myopia, etc...)

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    Yeah exactly, every time I bring this up (yes I'm definitely fun at parties, why do you ask?) I struggle to remember the details of the story and then once I do recall it, observe how the person in telling it to is swiftly becoming more confused by the second haha

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago

    The problem here, I think, is that if 'justified true beliefs' aren't 'knowledge' then nothing is. Which is a perfectly valid stance, but not a particularly useful one.

    Also, one might argue that the belief in question wasn't properly justified.

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  • [–] 22 points 5 months ago

    Oh fuck that means you dont have to clean before a video call... now i just need to find people to video call

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago

    I just take a photo of myself listening attentively. It fools half of the attendants and amuses the rest.

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  • [+] 3 points 5 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] [S] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

    depends, i know and work in 3d realism vfx stuff, and sometimes i get fooled if a background is real or just a render

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  • [+] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    I did this on work calls, except I flipped it upside down.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago
    [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Is this like .self in Python?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

    Well hello there Mr. Baudrillard. Are we drawing 1:1 scale maps again?

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 child)

    It's a nod to something the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote in his essay The Precession of the Simulacra.

    His entire work revolves around Simulacra, copies of real things that end up replacing reality until eventually the copy is the reality, with no original that it is derived from.

    One of his inspirations in the aforementioned essay is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges about a king who orders his mapmakers to draw him the most accurate map ever, which ends up being in 1:1 scale. An obviously nonsensical exercise, much like Mr. Rashed's endeavor to replace his actual background with an identical copy just to prove a point.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    i just use a clock set to the meeting time.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago* (6 children)

    That's not true, though. It's just a trick. If tricks are all it takes, then most magic tricks are justified and true in their intended implications. At least ones that do not need misdirection to distract from sleight of hand.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Not quite. Tricks are intended to make you believe something that is not true; in OP's situation, the other people in the meeting believe that OP is sitting in the location that the background picture is taken from. They can't actually see the background, however; instead they can see the photo of the background. Their assumption is correct, but the fact that they're looking at a fake background means it COULD be false.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (4 children)

    The room is misrepresented. If it's dirty, a clean image isn't true.

    Just because something could be false does not magically make it true not-knowledge.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    And if the screenshot was taken just before the meeting?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

    Then it's true that happens to also be unconfirmed knowledge. Until it is confirmed, it is never actually knowledge, which makes the whole premise stupid.

    It is absolutely in no way what so ever unique to have something that is presented as knowledge that happens to be false in reality.

    Otherwise EVERY food advertisement would count in the same boat: "true", but not accurately true.

    and we all know that shit is false as fuck.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Of course it's not unusual to have something presented as knowledge that is false. That's just lying.

    The distinction here is that the conclusion is true, but it is based off of inaccurate information. The conclusion that advertisements are trying to steer you towards is false.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    But the cited example is not the same as advertisement. At all. Period. What so ever.

    Advertisement is based on false presentation in addition to an outright lie in the reality of the situation at hand.

    What is literally pictured in modern advertisement is often not even edible product. It's literally, within the picture, glue or other non-edible lies.

    So by bringing advertisement into this, you're actually bringing in something even less honest than what I'm talking about...

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