Final-Fan said:

Justification
So you feel pain.  How do you know you feel pain?  Because you feel pain.  It’s tautological if I’m remembering the term correctly.

   In that simple explanation it would appear to be exactly what I’ve been attempting to describe. The sensation is just there. And in saying you “have a sensation” it necessarily implies its awareness (It’s part of what it means). Ergo, such knowledge came and it didn’t begin as “that which is not knowledge” and go through a process (justification) initiated by the individual to eliminate other possibilities, or rather, process of confirmation (or process of ‘connecting” in that terminology) in order to then establish the knowledge of pain. (If I must elaborate on what I’ve thought was obvious/understood, “sensation” is a knowledge – which is why I said it “necessarily implies it’s awareness”. There is not a distinction between having a sensation and knowing it. You can’t have a sensation and not know it. It is a knowledge. In our meaning of things, an unconscious person can’t experience pain any more than a rock can.)
   I don’t see how it is possible, once this is understood, to argue this. Yes it is ‘tautological’ in that sense. When I read that strange former explanation of belief-being-aware-of-a-perception-confirming-a-perception thing (whatever), besides it not making any sense to me, it seems very different from the simple thing you seem to have advocated here.
   How do you know you felt pain? Because the sensation you call pain came to you. You were aware of what you call pain. Simple as that.

You see (what appears to you to be) a piano.  How do you know you see it?  Because you see it.
But is it REALLY a piano?  That’s a question that cannot be answered absolutely by your sense data if it is not infallible.  All you know is what you see, not whether what you see is an accurate reflection of ‘reality’ (the truth).  (Similarly for “But is it really X that’s hurting you?”  The knife feels sharp, but whether it is sharp (or a knife) is another story.)

   Well there may be some ambiguity here or terminology I can’t appreciate so I must explain my understanding again of sense data vs. interpretation. Being precise, you do not sense/see(have a “perception”, in the same sense of sense data, of) a piano holistically. There is no sense data I designate as the “piano” sensation. What you see are colors (and upon some assumptions perhaps of space and such: colors or blocks of colors adjacent to each other).
   The interpretation of such sense data, the notion of what that sense data represents, is clearly distinguishable in our mind from the sense data itself. You called the sense data collectively “what appears to be a piano” and that would be a fine description – because the interpretation of a piano does match the sense data our conception of a piano would exhibit. But, without digressing to the argument on empiricism again hopefully, there are other interpretations that would match the same given sense data.
   We are both aware of other possibilities and I would hope I’m not seriously asked to numerate them (also understanding that there could obviously be things we have not yet named in considering “all possible realities”).
   The piano is not a sense “jumping into our mind” like we understand sense data, but rather an interpretation we both can understand, by way of having equal possibilities in the mind, is not counted as immediate knowledge here like sense data.
   In this way the “perception” of sense data is distinguished from the interpretation of a piano (avoiding the ambiguous use of perception here since that sounds like equivocation). I think in your terms, an interpretation does not necessarily “reflect reality”.

The perceptions themselves are proof of what you perceive,

I find that a little obscure with the use of the word “proof”. I’ve responded to this kind of thing previously by saying “the perceptions are what they are” (which of course I further understand to be knowledge) which seems to be what you’re really saying in the next phrase:

because your perceptions are ipso facto what you perceive.

Right. I find it strange to truly call that a “proof” as to “why” they are perceptions 0_o.

But your perceptions may not be ‘true’.

If “perceptions” here refers to what I’ve been describing as the awareness of sense data, then I would disagree (and thought you advocated what I agreed with at the beginning). But if you are referring to what I designate as possible interpretations (not mere sense data) (“that which is not knowledge”) then I would agree.

Certainty vs. Connection
Well, if you want to play the game of “well maybe that proof you just did was some sort of hallucination and you actually haven’t proved jack” then obviously you can’t prove anything, and thus can’t know anything. But keep in mind that whether you actually did the proof is not relevant as long as you are aware of the proof—if (unbeknownst to you) you were created five seconds ago complete with false memories of learning the Pythagorean Theorem, it’s still true and you still know it.

   I find this incredibly confusing and I’m not sure I see a clear connection with this to anything. Since I see it’s a negative response and that it seems to be some accusation of denying proof: First, perhaps you might be implying that when you gave your analogous terminology/representation of justification to show what it’s supposed to do, which we are both well aware of, you thought it was proof for your position that justification is actually useful in application and so against my argument that it “folds in on itself” (not actually useful). Next, perhaps you are trying to say here then that I responded to this by merely claiming it wasn’t proof for your position and offering no explanation as to why. Even though I don’t know how one would pull that out of what I said. Correct me if I’m wrong.
   If that is the case: I did not see how your analogous representation of justification “connecting” belief to truth made any case against the problem I presented for justification, as I’ve been asking you to do. I found it wasn’t really addressing my problem seemingly at all; rather it was merely putting the notion of justification into different terms. So instead of pointing this out, or rather, “accusing” you of this I did the more progressive thing and merely reintroduced the point I’ve been making all along, the problem, again in these new terms. Which is thus asking again: How do you get around the problem I presented? How do you know when you’re “connecting”?

Sorry, but I see this as similar to if I were to say, “How are you certain of something, exactly?  (Repeating that it ‘cannot be doubted’ is not explaining anything but simply restating it.)”

   Again I’m having a difficult time understanding what you’re talking about in this whole section. If I was to assume you’re elaborating on what I guessed you might be referring to above: I’m repeating the very relevant problem your analogous terminology/representation did not appear to sidestep.

I admit “establish” and “justify” were being used fairly interchangeably at one point but when I said “makes a connection between the belief and the truth” I think that’s a pretty basic definition of the function I’m trying to describe.  I’m not sure how it would be broken down further.

   Right, I understand this function, or definition if you will, you’re trying to get at. I think we both understand clearly what the appeal to justification is after. But my point has been that implementing a standard of justification into epistemology defeats itself (or rather, that “function” already requires that which it hopes to attain) and as you seem to disagree I’ve been asking to hear why it’s not as I explained it.
   Again I do not see how the terminology/representation you made out of justification, which I wouldn’t disagree represents the goal in mind for those who appeal to it, sidestepped my problem or made any clear reference to exposing something wrong in my explanation.

Inapplicable Conception of Justification
Oh, please.  It was a JOKE with no deeper meaning, and clearly not serious or any conceivable jab at any of your arguments.  Are you really going to claim that your remarks were of a similar nature?

   A joke? Oh ok, if you say so. Seemed to be easily read as having the same characteristics you described.

1.  I believe this was answered above—or at least the latest of MANY attempts was made.
2.  I believe your counterargument (first sentence of your response) hinges on the issue discussed in “Certainty”.

1. In my memory you explained the “mechanics” of it once and then after I asked for more clarification you’ve been basically telling me since then that I just need to figure it out. There have been some revisits to it through other responses but no direct or purposeful attempt to clarify it in response to that request and be more meticulous in explaining it in the abstract language (as opposed to the recent analogous terminology which of course I didn’t find actually addressed the issue).

Certainty
But that isn’t a reason at all!  That’s just your position, which you haven’t explained the basis for.

   Obviously if the meaning of knowledge is as I say it is then it would be a “reason”… since I’m only claiming something within that meaning. Similar to “claiming” that a bachelor is an unmarried man because of the definition of the word bachelor. If indubitibility is part of the definition of, essential for, epistemic knowledge then I’m right in saying it is.
   To me, of course, that’s not just saying so, that’s what the word knowledge in epistemology means to me. (What Descartes was clearly after in his systematic doubt. He was trying to rid himself of the possibilities making any belief doubtable. Hence he thought the argument “I think therefore I am” was self-sustained – there couldn’t be another possibility according to his inevitable awareness.)
   Any conception of knowledge I can conjure would clearly answer the question “are you certain”, with a definite yes. (If this makes any sense in terminology and context: The only source of confirmation knowledge has is itself.)

Why is it impossible for someone to have an indubitable opinion that is mistaken?

   I appreciate such a clear question. Obviously I don’t care for using the word “opinion” since that’s what I designated as “that which is not knowledge” but I wont make an issue over the word you chose.
   Indubitable means the information (-have to avoid the colloquial use of belief for clarity in this discussion I think) (although ‘information’ may sound like a synonym for knowledge) cannot be doubted. Doubt is possible in the existence of opposing possibilities (including even the mere possibility of nonexistence of the potential subject being examined). If there was only one possibility present “staring you in the face” doubt is not available and the only present possibility is self-necessitated (or rather… just staring you in the face).
   Thus, in saying doubt is not possible, it means other possibilities are not. Hence indubitable information means it can’t be mistaken for another possibility. It can’t be incorrect. Therefore it is knowledge.
   (In hopes we we’re on the same page all along about sense data – again, it would be a clear example of this. There is pain. No possibility in your mind can interpret it differently if it remains the “perception” we said it was. It comes as pain, irrevocably, without beginning as non-knowledge, a possibility, not certain in nature, which you initiate some process to eliminate other possibilities or confirmation to only then establish it as the knowledge of pain.

Gibberish
Here is my original request:  Would it be too much to ask you to take a look at my previous posts (relevant to that point) and take a stab at what you think I did mean (or might have meant)?

Now, it seems to me that BY YOUR OWN TESTIMONY you have fulfilled the first part of that request (rereading stuff), but failed to fulfill the second part (“taking a stab [AKA guess] at what you think I did mean”), and in fact do not feel able to do it at all.  So it perplexes me that you deny that “it was too much to ask”, since you yourself appear to have said that it was indeed too much to ask.  You did notice the “AND”, right?  (The reasonableness of the request is not a factor in this equation.  That is why I said “If so, fine”:  because it might have been too much to ask.)

Putting this in context:
Would it be too much to ask you to take a look at my previous posts (relevant to that point) and take a stab at what you think I did mean (or might have meant)?

“I did. I still don’t know what you mean. I’d say it comes off as “gibberish” but I would wonder if I’d be accused of being insulting.”

   My own testimony was that I fulfilled the first request to read/look at the posts again and made the attempt to understand them like the second request seemed to clearly ask for. If you were requesting I come back with a result, an interpretation of your writing I felt confident in, I surely admit I failed.
   The thing is I clearly indicated what I did, how I must have understood your requests, and my inability to find a meaning for what you said. It perplexes me how you could not understand this and go into this tirade of trying to prove that I was implying at the same time, in the same little space that I had fulfilled a request to find a meaning in what you said.
   It’s as if you’re trying to produce the words “I failed” from me whether or not you understood how I took your requests, by taking the affirmation “I did” to refer to something different from “trying to understand what you meant” as the proceeding explanation also made plain, and whether or not it’s relevant to the progression of the subject.
   Meanwhile my request for more clarity/explanation, something actually relevant to the argument, seems to have fallen by the wayside.

Where We Are
   I agree that certainty has become the issue for my position in the progression of the discussion. Although, your position requires things that I still have yet to hear an account for – granted, it would relate to certainty as I see it (because I see it as an inevitable problem for whatever you may attempt to present to the contrary). So I still see explaining the things I asked to have explained an issue for sustaining your position in the argument.

   Despite any coldness I might seem to portray in argument I’m actually a really nice guy. It’s been an interesting debate. (I rewrite this stuff a number of times before posting. I get to the last thing and get burned out).

Will it?  During human fertilizaiton, millions of sperm are released during ejaculation and only one, or at most very few, develop into a person.  Do those other 'persons' who didnt make it matter?