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What can be known?


exogen

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Objective truth or relativism?

 

Objective truth would be something that is true independant of opinion/belief, preference or bias. someone could think they know or believe something but that by itself does not make it correct is the idea. No matter what we believ the case to be if something is true objectively it will be true anyway regardless of what we think or feel. Does such truth exist?

 

This raises questions like how does one know when one tell the diference between having the right answer vs. merely believing they do? If they have the right answer or not they still might believe it so what would be the criteria for true knowledge vs. mere belief?

 

Or is truth relative from person to person, society to society, culture to culture or historical context?

 

In philosophy the study of these sorts of questions that pertain to knowledge is called Epistemology.

 

Whatever your position is supply the reason to justify your position.

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I think it's all dependent on the question. Some things can be known with certainty while others can be open to interpretation. I know that my hair is black and that I was born on February 19, 1990. Those are certainties.

 

Or are they? how do you know aliens or god didn't stop out galaxy for 5 years when you were 10 without your knowledge?! so in reality you're 31 years old!!!!!!

Inception in a vat.

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We can know that water is composted of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

 

We don't rightly know yet what composes the atoms, we do to an extent, that being quarks, leptons, and bosons. We really don't now what makes up those, or how they work.

 

We can only assume, if you wish to be technical, what written or spoken language means; but the level ambiguity suggested by many philosopher types is bogus. To quote Bill Nye the Science Guy "A kilogram by any other name would weigh as much.". Most things have an implied level of subjective meaning, however it is not as though someone would tell you "it was a beautiful day" when in reality there was a nuclear bomb detonated. Same would go for holy texts that tell you something is punishable by death, it's very idiotic to think that what it really means is "water the roses on Tuesday".

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Or are they? how do you know aliens or god didn't stop out galaxy for 5 years when you were 10 without your knowledge?! so in reality you're 31 years old!!!!!!

Inception in a vat.

 

That's correct tsu there is reason to doubt, however as technically correct as you are in one sense, Ninty is absoluetly with 100% certainty right in another.

 

While for all you know (assuming allot of other things are true) you might be in a dream ir w/e you can't be wrong about the fact that you are having an experience of whatever you want to call it. Do you see the diference. The idea is that we usually think that our experience as being representative or some world exteiror to our perception. Not just that there are other conscious beings with experiences similar to our own but that there are objects that exist appart from our experience of them that in reality, are all that really exists. it's THAT idea that you can doubt. Because for all you know there are no such objects and hence no extierior world that can be mistaken for not being a dream.

 

but we can't be wrong that we are having an experience. The world as we experience it is ostensive, meaning grasped directly without any intermidiate inference. The idea that it is representative of being some other reality is what we can doubt but the experience itself for all other purposes, is reality.

 

With that said it's if we abandoned this notion of there being an exterior world and came up with a diferent philosophical explanation for experience we could not even be able to doubt if we were in vats or w/e because that doubt is dependant on there being a world exterior to our perception.

 

We can know that water is composted of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

 

We don't rightly know yet what composes the atoms, we do to an extent, that being quarks, leptons, and bosons. We really don't now what makes up those, or how they work.

 

We can only assume, if you wish to be technical, what written or spoken language means; but the level ambiguity suggested by many philosopher types is bogus. To quote Bill Nye the Science Guy "A kilogram by any other name would weigh as much.". Most things have an implied level of subjective meaning, however it is not as though someone would tell you "it was a beautiful day" when in reality there was a nuclear bomb detonated. Same would go for holy texts that tell you something is punishable by death, it's very idiotic to think that what it really means is "water the roses on Tuesday".

 

To the point on language the idea is that we understand each other for the most part in terms of quanity the closer we are to using a language the same. If you met a guy who spoke english but bizzar form of it then underdtanding him might start to get complicated even though he was using all the same words as you. It would be easier to understand him in person than it would be over the phone or worse yet over the internet, or even worse still reading what he wrote 1000 years from now when knowledge of his sub culture had been completly lost. You might think you are certain as to what he meant when in reality you aren't. Language is just funny that way. But this thread is less about knowing what someone has communicated and more about knowing in general.

 

You are talking about what we know through science. Indeed science is a form of knowledge but does science give us certainty? Science is inductive because every experiment adds a new bit of information to the ever growing probablity of whatever theory we are testing.This means that no matter how many times gravity has not failed all we can do is assign a probality to it because our logic model is inductive and not deductive. That is unicertainty.Also every theory must also be falsifiable which means that every theory in principle must be able to be shown through experiment to be wrong. If he data can be reinterpreted to suite the theory for example, the theory is unfalsifiable. That means that all science ever gives us is an ever escalating probablity of functional behavior of observed phenomonon.

 

Now the idea is that science is supposed to be converging on the truth ultimately and is in the process of getting at reality. This is the idea is Baye's theorum. But the problem is that an ever escalating probablity never reaches reality because the smallest probablity will always threaten to overturn the whole answer.

 

But even more relevant than the idea that the answer is only an escalating probablity is the point that who said science is getting at ultimate reality? That is an assumption made by science. That assumtion would need to be argued for seprate from the scientific method.

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  • 1 year later...

I think the world is a lot simpler place than Exogen believes.

 

But to answer your question. There is truth and there is what people believe. You can play in the street and think nothing will harm you...then you get a reality check.

 

In everything in life there will always be room to doubt and question what we hold to be true. Sometimes the results of that are good, but other times that can lead you down the wrong road.

Edited by Duronix
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Nob, don't facts have to be percieved to be "known?" I mean it seems you want to talk about "facts" as being thought of as independant of perception and conception. But while that might be the idea of it, you have no way to ever confirm that because any test or argument you could supply would be within experience, not outside of it. And if you can't confirm facts appart from perception and conception (and experience in general), how do you know there are any facts?

 

that is, your distinction relies on "facts" as being appart from experience, which is why you contrast it with "truth" which is only perception and conception. But under your own definitions, isn't all you really have is "truth" and not facts?

Edited by exogen
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