forum 7: week of 27 Feb - pragmatic encroachment

I sort of agree with 1) since in certain less serious contexts you can say you know something without really being sure that you do. Without having looked at all the reasons for and against it and made an EDUCAted assertion. 2)definitely makes a lot of sense because i think at any which point there can always be doubt even if its tiny or microscopic for all the things we know we may one day be proven to be false about. The degree to which we think we know something depend greatly on the level of stake and if we are uncertain and the stakes are high this will greatly effect what we choose to do. 3) is to kind of common sense. If you know option O is best ob course you will O. The question really is how certain you are about O being best. really that is the question we are asking. And I do think how certain you are is determined by what is at stake. J and M said if the man knew the bank was open sat then he should go back sat even if the stakes are high..if he does in fact know this. I agree if u KNOW it is open then you should go back. even if the skates are high it doesn't change the fact that you know it. But the problem i think is is that knowledge is not concrete and or better yet beliefs are not concrete we can have beliefs be certain of them but maybe we can never have true knowledge because even if we think we know something we could turn out to be wrong and could we ever say we knew something and then we didn't? So the question is how certain are we right now. what reasons do we have for believing what we do right now. if the stakes are low we don't need that much justification but if they are high we need more. This clears up the bank situation at least a bit. When stakes are low he says i know the bank will be open because it was last week so ill come back butt when the stakes are high he says well they could change the hours or maybe he could even be mistaken so the evidence is no longer good enough with the high stakes so he goes in to the bank. did he ever know? did he know in the high stakes that the bank was open on sat? i think he knew on some level not a level high enough though....so i guess i think knowledge is more of a continuum and less a binary category.