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No, I don’t think that you know a composite fact if you only know some of its composing parts, because the whole is not the same as its parts. Simpler example:
by rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago
No, I don’t think that you know a composite fact if you only know some of its composing parts, because the whole is not the same as its parts.
Simpler example: would you tell your peers that you “know tax law” if you only know a few specific laws of taxation?
- Tainnor 3y agoYou haven't answered my question: at which point do you say you "know" Gödel's first theorem? Or for an easier example: at which point do you "know" Java? Do you need to understand all the intricacies of the class loader? Or at which point do yoh "know" English? Only when you know every word in the OED? I think your definition of knowledge is entirely unworkable. It requires you to split every fact into a million little subfacts, it doesn't account for vague recollection, for uncertainty, etc., and it makes it so that basically almost nobody ever knows anything of value. I think this totally flies in the face of how people actually know things and how people apply their knowledge. The vague and fuzzy understanding that comes with being an expert in a field - IOW having absorbed the principles without remembering the minutiae - is exactly what constitutes valuable knowledge.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago> It requires you to split every fact into a million little subfacts That's because you confused yourself with your own highfalutin. As a matter of fact this is the part of the article that I reacted to: > a fact does not exist in a binary state of either definitively known or unknown We didn't even have to talk about composite bodies of knowledge in the first place. KISS