What philosophers are you guys talking to in zoom? I though they were all unemployed or working at McDs
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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For your final exam for your degree in Philosophy, there is one question. How do you intend to make money with a degree in philosophy?
Don't get me wrong I'm all pro doing what you love, but commiting to it not being a heir is very bold
It is bold. Since antiquity they are getting in trouble (sometimes big trouble, like Socrates)...
The only way to get a passing mark in that question is to derail it into a philosophical discussion about the meaning of money and questioning whether or not it is really necessary to make it.
Uni professors, most likely.
During all the COVID quarantining, I had a 3 hr zoom class once a week that was unbearable. The professor required that we have our cameras on and engage in the conversation.
After seeing a Tik Took that gave me the inspiration, I recorded a 20 minute video of me sitting in the library with my mask on, shifting slightly so it looked realistic but otherwise staying still so the loop wouldn't be noticable.
I then set this as my Zoom background and covered my webcam so it wouldn't pick me up. This allowed me to relax and play video games, but respond to questions with no one being the wiser.
Wait for them to go off screen, screenshot their background, and make it your own
I loled, but it wouldn't be a justified true belief, just a justified belief.
No?
I guess it depends on whether you're talking about them believing that's his room, or them just believing his room looks like that. For the prior they'd be wrong, but for the latter they'd be right, and they'd be justified in that belief, but it's ultimately not knowledge because they can't actually see his real room.
Well believing his room looks like that would be knowledge, because the room would look like that.
If it was about the background being the actual room, then the justified belief wouldn't be true.
I think the whole point is that the difference between belief and knowledge isn't about whether or not you're right, it's about whether or not your belief has been verified and proven to be true, so in OP's example, they would be right that the room looks like that, but that belief wouldn't have been verified due to the professor never seeing his actual room. Thus, a justified true belief, but not knowledge.
I agree and understand.
And technically, sort of, yeah. I don't have a certain answer, but this is exactly what epistemology deals with.
But I think this is just sort of conflating some things for humour a bit. Humour often relies on slight leaps in "actual" logic. It's definitely close enough for a joke, I'm just pedantically discussing whether it's technically epistemologically correct, if such a thing can even be determined.
difference between belief and knowledge isn't about whether or not you're right
It sort of is. Both are beliefs, but knowledge is something that's a true belief, but also, it has to be justified. So for instance believing that antibiotics help infections isn't necessarily knowledge if your justification for having that belief is "there are miniature soldiers in the pills who fight viruses with laser guns", then it's not knowledge. Especially because antibiotics affect bacteria, not viruses. If your justification is correct though, then it's a justified true belied, and thus constitutes knowledge.
But here if the knowledge is "that is how his room looks like", it would be a true belief, but then it wouldn't be justified, because it wasn't actually the room they were seeing. But the joke I think relies on the fact that technically it is justifiable because seeing someone's room (or a projection of their room) is in everyday practice justification enough to believe what you see. But is it that philosophically? Or if it's "I'm seeing his room right now", it would be justified, but not true?
Btw I'm not making an argument, I'm making conversation.
Fair enough, and I also just like the mystery of it all; I understand that a large philosophical question can't be definitively answered in a tweet. I would say that, while knowledge requires truth and justification, there's something more to it than just the presence of those 2 factors.
If I had never seen the sky, but believed it was blue, I'd be right, but I wouldn't be knowledgeable; I'd just be a lucky guesser due to the lack of justification for my belief. But would I be justified if I had read a book that said it was blue, and based my decision off of that? It seems arbitrary - what if the book was wrong? What if there were another book I had access to that described the sky as being green, but I simply decided I better liked the blue book?
I think real knowledge requires a level of certainty that a single point of justification can't reasonably provide, and that a "true justified belief" is a step between an arbitrary belief and real knowledge. Knowledge would essentially be a belief so well-justified that it requires no "belief" at all. In the end, I'd probably say that real knowledge is totally outside of human ability, but that's not a new concept.
I would say that the meme does a good job of producing a Gettier Case, which many philosophers recognize as valid counter examples that disprove the Justified True Belief definition of knowledge, indicating that a complete definition of knowledge requires more than those three elements.
Philosophers (aside from skeptics) were mostly agreed on JTB as a straightforward and elegant definition of knowledge for most of history and they have struggled to reach a new consensus after Gettier and instead are left with a hodgepodge of competing definitions. This could be perceived as something that might frustrate a philosopher, and that I think is why the meme positions this as a sort of "prank" for philosophers.
If he believes that Zoom is generating a background for him (say... because its fuzzy around his head), without giving any thought to whether or not the background might represent the actual real room the guy currently sits in, then he does have a justified true belief. But he lacks the knowledge that it is actually the guy's room and that the background would be the same whether Zoom was acting as an intermediary or not.
Whenever I talk to philosophers on zoom, I show them a program I wrote that simulates their consciousness having a zoom call with me, so they can't be sure the zoom call is real or if they're a brain-in-vat.
Still warranted!
Even a broken clock has a justified true belief about the time twice a day, as they say.