/lit/ - Literature

>>11433232
From what I remember from Plato, "opinion" is what's in the middle of knowledge and ignorance.

>>11433253
I remember that too but that doesnt help too much

I mean, is "2+2=4" an opinion before it shown to be true and justified, becoming knowledge?

>>11433232
Dig that MAGA hat

>>11433261
Yeah, I'd say it goes like this:

>Ignorance: "1+1=X" And I don't know X
>Opinion: "1+1=2" But I don't know why
>Knowledge: "1+1=2" And I know it because of pic related

Although I barely finished with the greeks so take my post with a grain of salt

>>11433232
I guess another way of asking this is, is opinion synonymous with belief?

>>11433291
Thats what I was imagining when considering how much work had to go into the arithmetizing of mathematics or like when Russell attempted to create the foundations of mathematics.

Like I asked here,
>>11433293
Opinion seems to mean the same thing as belief, as its an assertion that is believed, or a proposition that is believed, even though the proposition may be about something that may not be able to be proven

>>11433311
>Opinion seems to mean the same thing as belief, as its an assertion that is believed, or a proposition that is believed

Also belief and opinion seem to mean the same thing as assertion, since you can discuss an assertion without believing in the assertion, and the same is true about opinions or beliefs.

Theaetetus is a good quick read/reread where plato differentiates doxa from episteme.

Can you have knowledge without belief in said knowledge?

An opinion is a personal opinion that cannot be proven with evidence
2+2=4 is not an opinion as it can be proven to be true

>>11433419
I know this is what everyone says, but cant opinions be assessed to be true? It seems to mean the same thing as belief

"Foxes are bad", takes the form of asserting something to be true or false, it doesnt need to be believed, and it is different from "I believe foxes are bad" or "it is my opinion that foxes are bad"

"Foxes are bad" seems to be an assertion, opinion, and belief, and not an attitudal report

>>11433419
What if I believed 2 + 2 = 4 but for the wrong reason? Would that also not be an opinion?

>>11433418
no you would need belief

>>11433456
saying foxes are bad is an opinionated statement as it has your perspective to it. But if i say that foxes are animals then it is true because that can be proven as such.
>>11433459
If you believed the sky was blue because the blue man group shit on it doesn't change the fact that the sky is indeed blue. The reason why you think it is blue is an opinion though.

>>11433459
Im not him im OP, but I think that mixes things up

"I believe 2 + 2 = 4" is different from "2 + 2 = 4", where belief is not necessary for the later while the former implies belief from the speaker. The former is about what the speaker believes, the latter is about arithmetic.

However, I still dont see why "2 + 2 = 4" isnt an opinion, just like its an assertion

>>11433232

Opinion is another way to state "belief", specifically it is any belief which is not currently undergoing processes of doubt or inquiry. Peirce's "The Fixation of Belief" outlines a good model of this concept and is quite short.

>>11433232
Wow y'all suck at epistemology

>still thinks JTB are the necessary conditions for knowledge.

Go read the 4 page Gettier paper you autists.

Opinion is just another word to describe a doxastic disposition, like 'believe'

Saying that you know something says that you have met JTB and not been Gettiered.

>>11433477
> is an opinionated statement as it has your perspective to it

But thats not true, we can talk about opinions that no one has. It isnt necessarily an attitudal report, I think, just like an assertion can be discussed without anyone believing in it

If a statement becomes an opinion, or an opinionated statement, only because the speakers perspective is in it, then this doesnt line up

>>11433486
Oh come on, Peirce has some good stuff with regards to logic, especially the abduction/induction distinction, but his epistemology is pretty lousy. There's much better papers about belief

>>11433489
>still thinks JTB are the necessary conditions for knowledge.

I dont think this, I just wanted to use some basic terms before digging into that since I dont know if this is just a dumb question that doesnt require opening that up. As of right now it doesnt call for that anyway

>Opinion is just another word to describe a doxastic disposition, like 'believe'

Is it another word for assertion?

>>11433497

I have yet to find a superior alternative to the belief-doubt-inquiry-belief process, would you kindly recommend pieces which argue for a good alternative?

>>11433505
Ah sorry for being a prick. It's all good

>is it another word for assertion

Well we tend to think of assertions as having to be asserted, whereas one could hold an opinion without ever asserting it. One could also make an assertion that one knows x, and be right. So, when epistemologists talk about the rules of assertion, they mean roughly the laws of saying stuff out loud, which is why it is taken to be separate from say, logic.

Twice two makes five.

>>11433530

fuck off commie red scum

>>11433527
>Well we tend to think of assertions as having to be asserted

Right but is this just a casual inference that doesnt hold up? I can think to myself about assertions, I do that all the time working on math problems and or logical propositions

I mean, what about mathematicians who are at the top of the field right now. They argue with each other and go over each others works, not sure exactly what is true or false. They hold assertions when they are working on something, show it to others when "asserting" it, in the same way they hold their opinions to themselves, then express or argue them to others

It just seems odd that it is fine to say 2 + 2 = 4 is an assertion but not an opinion, when that doesnt hold for things we are still working, just by ourselves or for any given community of experts

>>11433510
Ah my bad about being rude, not sure why I was feeling riled up.

Anyway, I like the Roderick Chisholm stuff about belief, I cannot remember the name of the paper at the moment, but if you go to his sep page I bet you can find it.

>>11433547
Huh, I must have not been clear, I think 2+2=4 is an opinion, it's just a true one. And when one believes something, it's true, they're justified, and they haven't been gettiered, then they know it.
Here I'm using belief and opinion interchangeably.

Right, you can think about assertions, but they're not assertions until they're asserted.

I'm not sure quite what you mean to show with the math stuff.
Here's how I imagine high level math profs operating:
1. Oh, here is a proof for some theorem that we like to use
2. Publishes proof
3. some other math prof objects to the proof

I'm not sure exactly where assertions are relevant in this. Mathematicians typically aren't concerned with the rules of assertion. They are in the business of seeing what follows from what.

>>11433550

Ah, unfortunately my degree program didn't cover many 20th century philosophers. I was lucky to have taken a class on the American pragmatists, but I've had to subsist on peer recommendations for anything new beyond articles from sci-hub. Thanks, I'll look into his stuff.

>>11433572
>I think 2+2=4 is an opinion, it's just a true one

This is what I was arguing. I was only bringing in belief since it seems to operate exactly like opinion, and I was trying to see if opinion is synonymous with assertion, so I was using belief as a middle term to get there, because I havent found papers on what opinion is, but I have found papers on what belief is and it seems to mean the same thing

I was also only bringing up assertion because I thought it was a given that "2+2=4" is an assertion. So if I could show opinion, belief, and assertion mean the same thing, I could get to "2+2=4 is an opinion" and then add "it's just a true one"

The show with the math stuff was just there to make the case that it seems natural to say that mathematicians hold opinions about math since they arent quite certain about them yet but they may later be shown to be true, and contrast it with "2+2=4 is an opinion" since that seems unnatural

That it seems natural to do it in one case but not the other shows a problem with how the word is used casually

>>11433572
>Mathematicians typically aren't concerned with the rules of assertion

Theyre not?

>>11433620
Yeah so, let's go down this rabbit hole.

The whole assertion stuff comes from the fallibalist/infallibalist debate in the 90's.

In short, fallibalists think that knowledge does not not require certainty, so statements like
"I know that it's raining but it might not be"
or formalized, "I know P but maybe not P" are well formed, and just what we mean when we say I know P.
The infallibalist says that this is all silly and of course knowledge requires certainty. They think "I know P but also maybe not P" is really good evidence that one doesn't know P.

So the laws of assertion is what the fallibalists have come up with to distinguish ill-formed attributions of knowledge from good ones.


I'd be happy to point you in the direction of some papers if you're interested.

>>11433620
Sorry, one more thing...

Mathematicians don't have this complicated of an epistemology.
What contemporary mathematicians do is largely similar to what contemporary logicians do. Which is to say that they take some axioms or theorems to be true and they see what follows from those axioms.

That being said contemporary logic is super interesting.

>>11433654
Yes please
>>11433669
Thanks for that

So one last thing, is it odd, or wrong headed, to say that "2+2=4" is an opinion, just also a true one? If someone didnt believe me, could I point them to somewhere in philosophy that says this?

>2+2 =4 is true
What a bunch of entry-level mongs this board became filled with.

>truth is an opinion justified by another opinion through more opinions.
wow, really makes you think if anyone in this board actually thinks and reads anything besides their own shitposts

>>11434489
Im pretty sure you didnt understand what I was asking

I didnt present a theory of truth, and you could take a few of them and easily apply it to what I am saying, but its irrelevant as far as I can tell

>2+2 =4 is true

Youre the only one in the entire thread to make 2+2 =4 redundant by adding, is true, to the end of it. Congratulations

>>11433232
Opinions are like assholes, kid: everybody's got 'em.

>>11434558
Thats what I said

>>11434550
>Still didn't got it
My point exactly.

But wait! Now you'll ask yourself "What didn't I got?". No worries kiddo, I'll give you a clue.

"2+2 =4 redundant by adding, is true, to the end of it"

Consider this my parting gift because you clearly never read anything that analyzes epistemology (neither did anyone else in this thread for that matter).

Have fun watching your animes!

opinions are spooks

>>11434569
your rhetoric isnt fooling anyone

have fun

>>11434550
I think he was implying that the statement of "2+2=4" isn't actually true, Anon, and not the other way around. Check this thread out

>>11434607
ups forgot the thread:
>>11433437

>>11434607
I was in that thread

Like I said to the other anon, im not bringing in a theory of truth. Im only asking if words such as opinion or belief are synonymous with assertion. If turns out that assertion doesnt lead to truth, so be it, what I would wonder about would be what I just said, does the same hold for belief and opinion. I dont need to deal with theories of truth before showing that they are synonymous or being shown otherwise, at least thats how it seems

>>11434607
also about the redundant part

Its the assertion that it is true, thats what is redundant

Simply asserting something to be true is not the same as proving something is true, which is what that other op is thinking about

>>11434626
assertion = "an opinion through criteria provided by logic."
opinion = a take on what Is that isn't essentially connected with any criteria but has some rationality in it.
belief = an opinion but without any rational substrate. you just feel like its right to follow it.

>>11434633
>Simply asserting something to be true is not the same as proving something is true, which is what that other op is thinking about
Hmmm?

>>11434652
Take proposition x

We do not know that its true, or that its false, because its just a variable right now. The other op was saying, this can never be true

Fine. That has no bearing on x being a thing capable of being true or false. It asserts something to be the case, even if it was always doomed to not be the case

>>11434646
Yes but the criteria seems the same for assertion and opinion

A question is not an opinion. An exclamation is not an opinion. An opinion must assert something

As far as what you said for belief, im not so sure. A belief still seems to fall within this criteria, in that it asserts

>>11434709
what OP was saying was that we cannot know what is true because we're imperfect. everything is subjective and therefore artificially made, thus fiction or a product of our "intellect". its is not that that "can't be true" but more of "we can never know if that is true".

>>11434722
A question and and exclamation are opinions. they affirm an affection towards something through symbols

>>11434725
Sure, however youd like to put it is fine. Again, they seem to be seperate issues. Again

Proposition x. We agree we can never know its true. Sure. None the less, it is a thing that asserts something to be true, doomed as it is

>>11434730
Ive never heard someone say that, where are you getting that? Genuinely curious

It honestly seems to me like a question is not an opinion

>>11434733
Not really. It doesn't assert to be true it asserts its chance at being true. its not about being true its about trying to be true.

>>11434738
????

(get it? [what about now?])

>>11434738
Don't forget: the same say words are symbols for ideas, punctuation is too. The difference might be that the first is probably less vague than the second

>>11433419
>an opinion is an opinion
Woah...

>>11434762
>It doesn't assert to be true it asserts its chance at being true

This is the same thing. An assertion carries within it the possibility of being true or false, we just have the practice as putting things forward as true rather than flase.

As far as the, ???, that doesnt help. You have to explain it since it seems clear to me that what you are doing is not expressing what people generally mean as an opinion, and what I take it to mean.
>>11434768
I follow that, but "ideas" that are given through ?, does not seem like an opinion. It seems like a command, where it just has a different function in language just like exclamation does, all different from opinion which seems to fall under declarations/assertions

Where are you getting this from? Does this just seem evident to you in the way it does to me? I could at least point you to articles about belief, since belief seems synonymous with opinion