| > knowledge isn't predicated to be correct. It kind of is, though. The field of philosophy called epistemology deals with what knowledge is and how it is obtained, and the field overwhelmingly agrees that it is necessary (but not sufficient) for knowledge to be a (1) belief that is (2) true, and (3) justified. There is some disagreement when it comes to justification, and a lot of nuance in whether every justified true belief is knowledge, but pretty much no disagreement that knowledge must be a thing that is true and involve the mental state of believing that the thing is true. Language doesn't imply belief (1), and it doesn't imply justification (2), and it certainly doesn't imply truth (3). Language is a medium in which knowledge can be expressed, but not knowledge itself (one can of course have knowledge about language, but that is not the same thing). Language is also a medium in which things that aren't knowledge can be expressed, such as falsehoods, nonsense statements, paradoxes, etc. LLMs generate language without belief, they sometimes do generate statements that are true and justified, but definitely not always. I think the terms "data" or "information" are better than "knowledge" for what LLMs are trained on and produce. (1) "The sky is green." Lying in general, are ways to use language to express something that isn't a belief. Also imperatives like "Please take out the garbage" or questions like "Did you take out the garbage?" don't seem to express a belief at all (2) "There is a planet somewhere in the universe where s'mores naturally occur without intentional assembly by intelligent beings." This might be true, and I might believe it, but there is no justification for it. Still expressed in language. Questions and imperatives come up here too. (3) See (1), or any other case of lying or being mistaken. |
The example I’ve heard of knowledge that is believed, untrue but justified is “porcupines can shoot their quills”.
A tribe that believes this fact is more likely to stay away from porcupines, and even though porcupines do not in fact shoot their quills, over time this superstition is beneficial to the tribe as their neighbors are more likely to get hurt or killed by dangerous porcupine quills.
Judaism taught long before modern germ theory revealed why it was beneficial in a purely rational sense that burying feces and ritualistic hand washing were important to please God.