What is your epistemology?

[Tiberius]

Gravity is defined as the force of attraction between two objects of any given mass, we can demonstrate that this force exists regardless of "how" and "why" it works - Therefore the effects of gravity are true simply because the effect matches the description (thus far the how is true in the same way, the why is not).

Yet again, you have no way of determining whether your demonstration ever took place, or whether the observations of your demonstration actually confirmed the definition of gravity. It is true in a relative sense (relative to the definition, and your observations), but not in an absolute sense.

I believe that P. (the effects of gravity), P is true (can be demonstrated to exist as defined) and I am justified in my belief because i have a reliable methodology for repeatedly and independently testing P.

Still, not absolute knowledge due to you not being able to say whether the demonstration was an accurate reflection of reality.

Yet you claim not to be able to "know" anything about reality other than what is logically necessary, do you claim to be able to know anything outside your own mind? If not there is no difference between your perceptions being indicative of reality and your perceptions being stimulated by probes in your vat-brain.

Ok, my mistake again. I'd only come across solipsism in a certain Atheist Experience show, where the hosts (usually rational) claim that a solipsist caller believed that they were all figments of his imagination. I was under the impression that solipsism was the belief that one's mind is the only thing to exist, rather than the idea that one's mind is the only "sure" thing to exist.

In the case of the definition above, yes, I am a solipsist. I believe that my own mind is the only thing I can be sure that exists, and with that, logic, etc. I do not, however, believe that everyone else is a figment of my imagination.

Yet how would we be able to falsify the external reality if we are unable to know whether or not it exists? If nothing can be known about external reality, other than the things necessitated by the logical absolutes, then the external reality is equally un-falsifiable.

Yes, the external reality is equally un-falsifiable. I thought I'd made that point already when discussing Last Thursdayism.

This is just inconsistent - How are you justified in your belief? You have left yourself with nothing to distinguish between external and vat reality.

I haven't "left myself nothing"; it just so happens that there is nothing to distinguish between external reality and any other form of reality. This isn't down to a personal decision; it's just the way things are. As for how I have justified my belief; I make the assumption that what I experience is real, in so much as it is *my* reality. I back this up with Occam's razor, and I guess some form of reliablism; namely, that from my experience, if I do not treat my experiences as real, bad things start to happen.

Sure, notice the qualifier on knowledge? "Perfect", as in absolute certainty. Considering that priori and posteriori knowledge aren't incompatible the absolute certainty would only be relevant in terms of priori knowledge - the knowledge we have prior to approaching a problem - the knowledge gained from this application is still "knowledge".

I hold that a posteriori "knowledge" is merely relative; at most, only a justified belief. It could be true, but there is no way of knowing whether it is true or not. This is because a posteriori knowledge is gained through experience / evidence, and as I have stated before, there is no way of knowing (in an absolute sense) whether it is true or not. It is only true relative to the experience / evidence used to gain it.

This falls not on knowledge but on justification. If the justification is false then it cannot be known, however, going back to the gravity example, since I can demonstrate that the effects of gravity are true(demonstrable), and that the justification is true (unfailing and reliable), I can be said to "know" that the described effects of gravity are true.

Again, I hold that you cannot demonstrate the effects of gravity are true in any absolute way. Thus your "knowledge" is merely relative, and not absolute.

That's simply bullshit Certainty (as in credulity) is not knowledge - It is neither priori knowledge or posteriori knowledge as it has nothing to do with either truth or justification.

I never said it was. I said that if you have a justified belief, and you are absolutely certain in that belief, then you have relative knowledge. In your gravity example, you have a belief (gravity has certain effects), and this belief is justified (through experiments, etc), and you are certain in your belief, then you have relative knowledge. Relative knowledge is not required to be absolutely true, but if you have any doubts in your justified belief, I cannot see how you can claim it to be any form of knowledge. Doubt implies that part of your does not believe your claim to be true, and so any amount of doubt destroys your relative knowledge.

You keep insisting on knowledge being necessarily absolute, this is to completely ignore the concept of posteriori knowledge - I pointed out from the beginning that in terms of priori knowledge you are absolutely right, however posteriori knowledge is not necessarily certain to an absolute degree.

Knowledge simply cannot be false, this is trivially true (by definition). One can however be mistaken in thinking that they have knowledge, which seems to be what you are saying, and i would agree entirely. This all comes down to justification, if one's justifications are false then they do not have knowledge.[/quote]
There is a blatant contradiction here. First you say that knowledge does not have to necessarily be absolute, and then you say that knowledge simply cannot be false. Which is it? If knowledge doesn't have to be absolute, then it can be true or false, depending on the context it is in. If it can't be false (as you say in the second paragraph), then it has to be absolute.

If knowledge simply cannot be false, then you must accept that relative knowledge is completely useless then. You've said before that you have knowledge that gravity exists, and that this knowledge is a posteriori, however by this argument, you are saying that gravity is absolutely true, which to me seems to be a contradiction. You either have knowledge that gravity exists or you don't...if you do (as you claim), and knowledge cannot be false, then you are making a claim of absolute knowledge. I object to this claim, since you have no absolute way of proving it.

Again you keep conflating priori and posteriori. Posteriori knowledge (by definition) does not require absolute certainty. I keep getting the feeling that we aren't actually disagreeing, but that you keep refusing to make the distinction, or refuse to call the latter "knowledge" however as it is defined and as it is commonly used it is in fact "knowledge" (a justified belief that happens to be true) be it absolute or not.

I think we are actually disagreeing, more so now because I see a lot of contradictions in your reasoning. Perhaps it would be better to take a few steps back and start at the basic definitions of knowledge; whether you think that knowledge is absolute, or if it can be relative (since I have no idea what you think now...).

Here is a short summary of my views on knowledge:

Knowledge is true, justified, belief (in a simple form, ignoring any special cases). That is to say, that for you to have knowledge, you must have a specific belief, which must be justified, and must also be true.

The "truth" of a belief can either be relative to the context it is in, or it can be absolute. An absolute truth is literally the most objective form of truth you can get; that if we were able to view the attributes of reality as an objective observer, our truth statement would be in them. In other words, an absolute truth cannot be false.

In contrast, a relative truth is not subject to the same constraints; it doesn't need to be true in an absolute sense (although it might). An example would be gravity. We have a definition of the effects of gravity, and we can test these effects. Since the tests confirm the effects, we can say that gravity is true, relative to the method of confirmation. A relative truth cannot be false relative to the method that confirmed it, but it can be made false by added data (thus changing the original point of reference). If in the future, we find there are errors in our experiments with gravity, then the relative truth of gravity will change. Relative to the old experiments, it will be true, but due to the added data, it is now false.

This relative truth is partly why I equate "relative knowledge" with "justified belief". Relative knowledge need not be absolute, and so cannot be said to be absolutely true (although it might be). The same applies to justified belief, since there is no need for justified belief to be absolutely true.