It sounds like you’re using the word “knowledge” very differently from the way it’s ordinarily used.
Well, sure, people say they “know” all sorts of things that they don’t actually know. It would be formidably difficult to speak and write in a way that constantly acknowledges the layered uncertainty actually present in the situation. Celia Green says the uncertainty is total, which isn’t literally true, but it’s close to the truth.
Experience consists of an ongoing collision between belief and reality, and reality is that I don’t know what will happen even one second from now, I don’t know the true causes of my sensations, and so on—though I may have beliefs about these matters. My knowledge is a small island in an ocean of pragmatic belief, and mostly concerns transient superficial sensory facts, matters known by definition and deduction, perhaps some especially vivid memories tying together sensation and concept, and a very slowly growing core of ontological facts obtained by phenomenological reflection, such as the existence of time, thought, sensation, etc. Procedural knowledge also deserves a separate mention, though it is essentially a matter of knowing how to try to do something; success is not assured.
Well, sure, people say they “know” all sorts of things that they don’t actually know. It would be formidably difficult to speak and write in a way that constantly acknowledges the layered uncertainty actually present in the situation. Celia Green says the uncertainty is total, which isn’t literally true, but it’s close to the truth.
Experience consists of an ongoing collision between belief and reality, and reality is that I don’t know what will happen even one second from now, I don’t know the true causes of my sensations, and so on—though I may have beliefs about these matters. My knowledge is a small island in an ocean of pragmatic belief, and mostly concerns transient superficial sensory facts, matters known by definition and deduction, perhaps some especially vivid memories tying together sensation and concept, and a very slowly growing core of ontological facts obtained by phenomenological reflection, such as the existence of time, thought, sensation, etc. Procedural knowledge also deserves a separate mention, though it is essentially a matter of knowing how to try to do something; success is not assured.