On Jan 26, 2011, at 4:26 PM, Paddy Hackett wrote: > > Human knowledge is founded on instinctive belief. It is this common > sense > belief that leads us to believe in an independent external world.
What nonsense! Knowledge and belief are, and have been well recognized since before Plato to be, entirely different concepts. Knowledge *cannot* be wrong. If I claim to know something, and that something turns out not to be the case, I have to say (like the boy in the *Meno*) "I was wrong, I really didn't know." But belief can always be wrong, and if my belief about something turns out not to be the case I have to say "I was wrong" but I can *never* truthfully say "I really didn't believe." Likewise nonsensical is "instinctive belief" in an "independent external world." I *know* from before birth (and without any common sense, because my senses have yet to develop anything in common with the senses of others) my own internal world--my body--and I know my "independent external world"--my mother's body--because I am organically interconnected with it until my expulsion into an alien external world in which the whole aim and purpose of my existence is to restore that lost connection. Shane Mage "When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly. When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. Weiner) _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
