this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
1940 points (99.5% liked)
Programmer Humor
23531 readers
1685 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The theory of knowledge (epistemology) is a distinct and storied area of philosophy, not a debate about semantics.
There remains to this day strong philosophical debate on how we can be sure we really "know" anything at all, and thought experiments such as the Chinese Room illustrate that "knowing" is far, far more complex than we might believe.
For instance, is it simply following a set path like a river in a gorge? Is it ever actually "considering" anything, or just doing what it's told?
No one cares about the definition of knowledge to this extent except for philosophers. The person who originally used the word "know" most definitely didn't give a single shit about the philosophical perspective. Therefore, you shitting yourself a word not being used exactly as you'd like instead of understanding the usage in the context is very much semantics.
When you debate whether a being truly knows something or not, you are, in fact, engaging in the philosophy of epistemology. You can no more avoid epistemology when discussing knowledge than you can avoid discussing physics when describing the flight of a baseball.