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Believe it or not (Posted on 2003-03-25) Difficulty: 2 of 5
Is the following sentence technically true or false?

    The sun will rise tomorrow morning.

See The Solution Submitted by Gautam    
Rating: 2.1818 (11 votes)

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my personal solution | Comment 16 of 27 |
I believe that what Gautam is trying to do in this question relys more on the definition of knowledge of the future than the mechanics of the sun rising. To explain - how is the word knowledge defined, and specifically, how can it be applied to an event in the future (I think the event of the sun rising was chosen because of its immense probability. It's hard to think of something that will happen in the future that is less likely to not happen).

Modern philosophy defines "knowledge" as a justified true belief. In light of this, we do not know that the sun will rise tomorrow. We certainly all believe that it will, and we most definitely are justified in this belief, but it is not yet true, and as it does not meet all three criteria, it is not (yet) knowledge, and cannot be given a value of true/false.

Of course, this position is based on a fairly weak background in philosophy, so my interpretation of the justified true belief may be a little more rigid than the process expects, but nonetheless, it is supported by documented arguments.

Now if Gautam was really pondering about frames of reference, it becomes a whole different question, doesn't it?
  Posted by Cory Taylor on 2003-03-26 03:58:46
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