On these types of forums it’s easy to jump into an argument about the technicalities or a post or comment.
You should know, though, that there is a theory called Ways of Knowing which defines Separate Knowing and Connected Knowing. It’s been a part of my masters program I’m taking.
Separate knowing disconnects the humanity and context from what’s being said and tries to only argue the “facts”. But facts, and the things people say, don’t just occur in a vacuum. It often is the case when people are arguing past each other, like on the internet.
Connected Knowing is approaching the thing someone said with the understanding that there is a context, humanity, biases, different experiences, and human error that can all jumble up when people are sharing information.
Maybe even just knowing that there’s different ways to know would be helpful for us to engage in a different level of conversation here. I’m not sure. I just wanted to share!
https://capstone.unst.pdx.edu/sites/default/files/Critical Thinking Article_0.pdf
I would argue that having facts without context isn’t knowing. I accept the definition of knowledge to be justified true belief. Ultimately this is a probabilistic argument, Solipsism cannot be overcome so we can never absolutely know anything but phenomenologically it is best to assume our external reality exists and functions roughly the way we perceive it. With absolute knowledge out of reach we need a functional construction to serve in it’s place. Justified true belief is as close to absolute knowledge as we can achieve. In this construct belief uses it’s conventional definition, true means that it doesn’t contradict reality as we perceive it, and justified means that we can point to strong evidence in our perceived reality to support the belief. Without at least some context the belief cannot be justified so the thing cannot be known.