![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The meaning of "knowledge"
Hypothetical:
In Town X, a burglary is reported to the police. They investigate, and their investigation leads to Bob, who has previous convictions for that sort of thing. They find the stolen goods at Bob's house, Bob is questioned, he confesses, it goes to trial, Bob pleads guilty, the jury is convinced by the evidence, and Bob is sentenced accordingly.
In fact, Bob had not committed the burglary. In fact, he had a provable alibi - he was out committing another burglary (of equivalent severity) elsewhere in town at the time. The original burglary was done by a friend of his, and he was just storing the goods at his house. Given that demonstrating his alibi wouldn't have saved him any prison time, and would have involved fingering his accomplices (which would have damaged his standing in the criminal underworld), he felt that the simplest thing to do was to take the rap for the original burglary.
This is all to illustrate a philosophical point about the word "know" (and "knowledge" etc). A poll:
(ETA Note that the previous convictions don't count when I'm asking whether the legal system knew Bob had committed burglary... I meant to ask "...committed burglary on that day" or something similar. This ETA is before anyone but me has answered this, so all the results reflect this ETA)
In Town X, a burglary is reported to the police. They investigate, and their investigation leads to Bob, who has previous convictions for that sort of thing. They find the stolen goods at Bob's house, Bob is questioned, he confesses, it goes to trial, Bob pleads guilty, the jury is convinced by the evidence, and Bob is sentenced accordingly.
In fact, Bob had not committed the burglary. In fact, he had a provable alibi - he was out committing another burglary (of equivalent severity) elsewhere in town at the time. The original burglary was done by a friend of his, and he was just storing the goods at his house. Given that demonstrating his alibi wouldn't have saved him any prison time, and would have involved fingering his accomplices (which would have damaged his standing in the criminal underworld), he felt that the simplest thing to do was to take the rap for the original burglary.
This is all to illustrate a philosophical point about the word "know" (and "knowledge" etc). A poll:
(ETA Note that the previous convictions don't count when I'm asking whether the legal system knew Bob had committed burglary... I meant to ask "...committed burglary on that day" or something similar. This ETA is before anyone but me has answered this, so all the results reflect this ETA)
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9
Did the legal system know that Bob had committed burglary?
Was the outcome just?
View Answers
Yes - Bob committed a burglary and served a sentence for burglary, your point?
4 (57.1%)
No - Bob was punished for a crime he did not commit.
2 (28.6%)
I don't believe in punishing people for burglary anyway, so No
1 (14.3%)
Furthermore
View Answers
This is a completely ridiculous hypothetical and the legal system wouldn't have acted that way
0 (0.0%)
This is reasonably realistic, at least in terms of how the legal system acted
2 (25.0%)
Ummmm...
6 (75.0%)
no subject
(Is the underlying question about "knowledge" that isn't actually true and may be falsified, despite following best practice to be sure of that knowledge?)
no subject
There was an incident in an RPG I was once playing. In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, there are psykers - people with psi powers. We were playing a group working for the inquisition. As far as we were concerned, psykers came in two types; sanctioned and unsanctioned. Sanctioned psykers were OK, we had one in our party. Unsanctioned psykers... there's a procedure for sanctioning them, but for those without the authority to do so, it's kill on sight.
In our party, we had the Assassin, the Scum (basically a con-man character) and the Sanctioned Psyker. Previously there had been incidents that caused the Assassin to hate the Scum. Also the Scum got corrupted by Chaos, and mutated, and developed psyker abilities, which he kept secret. Then there was a fight with some space dwarves. The Sanctioned Psyker used an ability, and had a freak psychic accident that caused him to swap minds (well, bodies - the bodies stayed in place and the minds switched) with the Scum. The Sanctioned Psyker, in the Scum's body, then proceeded to use a highly visible psi power for self-protection. The Assassin saw this, shouted "Unsanctioned Psyker!" and proceeded to try to gun the Scum down. And I thought: I've read web pages on philosophy that deal with this sort of thing.