[andrewgleave]

Perversely, this "settled knowledge" nonsense actively inhibits the growth of knowledge and just leads to the "justified true belief" swamp...

All we have is our current best explanations/understanding. We use them to make progress until we find a problem with it – something it fails to account for, something it makes an incorrect prediction for etc.

Then, we attempt to conjecture new explanations which solves the new problem while still accounting for all the useful aspects of the old theory.

That is knowledge creation, and also progress.

[Edit]

[mistermann]

> All we have is our current best explanations/understanding.

And if our forefather/mothers ran away every time they encountered a "swamp", we wouldn't have that. If you ask me the philosophical accomplishments of this era are minimal, if not negative...let's hope there's no penalty for that, for us or our children (say, the effects of climate change on a species who is unable to act).