Essentially the claim that nothing can be known and that our senses lie all the time, that reason tends to favor our desires. Some people claim that and say they maintain a matter of suspending judgment on just about everything.
They call it Pyrrhonism and try to apply that non judging attitude to all of life. It claims that much of strife is based on human belief and opinions. That when we value what is good we suffer if we don’t have it and struggle to hold it when we do, I’m guessing valuing something as bad works the same way. So by maintaining an attitude of permanent indecision you “free your mind” from worry and find tranquility. Seems somewhat like Buddhism and that religion is pretty large. But I have to wonder how sound that is and whether or not it is practical? It has some points to it though, our senses are easily fooled so why believe them? Reason tends to be influenced by our desires and emotions. Can what we get from such things really be called knowledge?
The entire point behind Pyrrho's argument is that the proper ethical way cannot be known because for every single opinion, someone else has a contrary opinion, and both of these have equal claim to validity, undifferentiated by logic, and it's impossible to know which is true.
Except that's absurd. It's essentially, "Seeking the truth is hard, therefore I'm going to throw my hands in the air and say, 'Nope, it's impossible.'" It's intellectual laziness.
Yes, sometimes which argument is better has no clear answer with everyone disagreeing with one another. This does not mean the answer doesn't exist, or that reason doesn't. We can very definitely use reason to assess arguments to be objectively false or logically inferior.
But I have to wonder how sound that is and whether or not it is practical?
It's not practical.
There's nothing wrong with throwing up your arms in the air and saying, "**** it," every now and again. We all have an attack of the lazy every now and again, and that's fine, we're only human. However, that shouldn't be considered the grand secret to life.
Reason tends to be influenced by our desires and emotions.
NO. Our ability to see reason can be clouded or outright blinded by our desires and emotions, but reason is not influenced by our desires and emotions, merely our ability to understand it. Very important distinction, and part of what is fundamentally wrong with this philosophy.
Essentially the claim that nothing can be known and that our senses lie all the time, that reason tends to favor our desires. Some people claim that and say they maintain a matter of suspending judgment on just about everything.
They call it Pyrrhonism and try to apply that non judging attitude to all of life. It claims that much of strife is based on human belief and opinions. That when we value what is good we suffer if we don’t have it and struggle to hold it when we do, I’m guessing valuing something as bad works the same way. So by maintaining an attitude of permanent indecision you “free your mind” from worry and find tranquility. Seems somewhat like Buddhism and that religion is pretty large. But I have to wonder how sound that is and whether or not it is practical? It has some points to it though, our senses are easily fooled so why believe them? Reason tends to be influenced by our desires and emotions. Can what we get from such things really be called knowledge?
I find that the entire result of skepticism is not to resolve one's life to reservation because of the problems of absolute knowledge, but to make consideration of absolute knowledge to be mostly irrelevant. Which is to say, it leads the way to a focus on pragmatic knowledge. This is not to the detriment of values but based on them. Without values, there is no meaning to knowledge. There is no meaning to any decision- things just are. But with values, we can craft something purposeful out of the static.
And there are values, because we have them whether we like it or not. We simply can't not have them. It is a condition of the human mind. There is therefore meaning to us, there is a point to trying to make sense of the world and trying to live a fulfilling life in it. If we ignore the perception of values, and say 'how do we know they are there', 'how do we know our mind is there'- we are giving up any hope of meaning, knowledge and fulfillment, only to fulfill a fear of uncertainty and being wrong. It is to give up all positive only because you are afraid of a possible negative.
Essentially the claim that nothing can be known and that our senses lie all the time, that reason tends to favor our desires. Some people claim that and say they maintain a matter of suspending judgment on just about everything.
They call it Pyrrhonism and try to apply that non judging attitude to all of life. It claims that much of strife is based on human belief and opinions. That when we value what is good we suffer if we don’t have it and struggle to hold it when we do, I’m guessing valuing something as bad works the same way. So by maintaining an attitude of permanent indecision you “free your mind” from worry and find tranquility. Seems somewhat like Buddhism and that religion is pretty large. But I have to wonder how sound that is and whether or not it is practical? It has some points to it though, our senses are easily fooled so why believe them? Reason tends to be influenced by our desires and emotions. Can what we get from such things really be called knowledge?
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
You've pointed out that our senses and reason aren't 100% accurate. Okay. It does not follow from this that they are useless. An instrument with a 99% reliability rating is still a hell of a lot better than nothing. Especially if we act scientifically: make repeated observations and compare notes with other observers. The results of this can absolutely be called knowledge. Knowledge is not the same thing as total certainty. We may not be correct about everything, but we're correct about enough things to, e.g., build airplanes that fly. So why on earth should we just sit on our hands and gaze at our navels while we wait for perfect information to come along? We have mountains of evidence that we don't need perfect information to get things done. In the face of that evidence, how is indecision rational?
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Indecision is supposed to lead to a mind that is unperturbed and bring you tranquility by not making the judgments (if that's even what happens and not losing your mind).
But the though that our senses and reasoning being fallible seems to be reason enough to not cal what we get from them knowledge. So they hold nothing can be known.
Indecision is supposed to lead to a mind that is unperturbed and bring you tranquility by not making the judgments (if that's even what happens and not losing your mind).
But the though that our senses and reasoning being fallible seems to be reason enough to not cal what we get from them knowledge. So they hold nothing can be known.
That depends entirely on what you call "knowledge". As Blinking Spirit points out, most of the world doesn't assert that knowledge requires 100% certainty.
But if it's not then how can we call it knowledge?
For the same reason that we call anything by any word: that's the standard accepted definition of what the word means. When somebody tells you, "I know how to drive stick", you can safely assume that they're not telling you they possess absolute metaphysical certainty about the reality and nature of stick shifts. They're telling you they know how to drive stick. It is a very different, and much more practical, statement.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
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There is an entire branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge, epistemology. That's the stuff we mean when we say "knowledge", even if the speaker isn't versed in the philosophy behind it.
That doesn't seem very satisfactory. If we can't know for certain then why bother calling it knowledge? Wouldn't he be right then?
Your question is kind of nonsensical. "Why bother calling [that which we define as 'knowledge'] knowledge?" Knowledge isn't defined as being absolutely certain, so why would you need absolute certainty for knowledge?
That doesn't seem very satisfactory. If we can't know for certain then why bother calling it knowledge? Wouldn't he be right then?
Your question is kind of nonsensical. "Why bother calling [that which we define as 'knowledge'] knowledge?" Knowledge isn't defined as being absolutely certain, so why would you need absolute certainty for knowledge?
Wouldn't a better question be why it DOES NOT require absolute certainty? I mean, how can one act on imperfect knowledge?
Wouldn't a better question be why it DOES NOT require absolute certainty? I mean, how can one act on imperfect knowledge?
You're doing it right now. You know your computer exists, you know my computer exists, you know I exist, you know English, you know I read English, you know your computer can transmit English words to my computer... and so on. None of this knowledge is absolutely certain, but you have a high enough degree of confidence in it to act on it. And that confidence is justified, because the universe you observe continues to behave in a manner consistent with your knowledge. You're receiving a message from me in English that is coherent as a response to what you wrote. You are not watching your computer turn into the giant disembodied head of Edgar Allan Poe and roll away. You expected the former result to be much more probable than the latter, and you were right. Good job!
So given all this, whatever makes you think you can't act on imperfect knowledge?
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Because confidence isn't a measure for knowledge. I don't know it exists or that you do, I assume that and you cannot assume anything in philosophy if you want truth. There are no givens.
Confidence is additionally a poor use for knowledge and it doesn't prove anything. You can be confident in just about anything. So I'm not acting on knowledge but belief. Plus I believe the whole "justified true belief" bit was slaughtered already.
Because confidence isn't a measure for knowledge. I don't know it exists or that you do, I assume that and you cannot assume anything in philosophy if you want truth. There are no givens.
Confidence is additionally a poor use for knowledge and it doesn't prove anything. You can be confident in just about anything. So I'm not acting on knowledge but belief. Plus I believe the whole "justified true belief" bit was slaughtered already.
You're kind of equivocating here. You are trying to hold a theory of unabsolute knowledge up to the standard of absolute truth- that's not the relevant standard. Instead, what people are proposing different ideas as giving some kind of clear meaning to conceptions, and therefore create knowledge, outside of absolute knowledge of them. I have proposed that unabsolute knowledge derives from the predisposition to place personal value in apparent perception leading to perceived reality as the null position, not a lack of all inclination. Under this idea, there is no difference in the standing of absolute truth complete to complete nihilism, but instead the difference in the maintaining of value, and the decision to structure oneself around that value in the absence of perfect conception. The point of debate here is the significance of value and perception outside of absolute knowledge.
Blinking Spirit seems to be arguing something fairly similar. Confidence without absolute knowledge is about predisposition. Value placed in perceptions leads to the building of confidence in ideas supported by our perceptions. Part of this value is in the ability to determine action and response, something inherent to perception. It's good enough to act on, so it means something; it's a claim that means something, so we consider it knowledge.
I'm embarrassed to say that I don't understand what you are saying there.
What about the claim that by not judging anything as good or bad you don't suffer as a result of craving it, mourning the absence, and being afraid to lose it? That seems to be the supposed benefit of following that school.
All I know is that uncertainty has left me stuck. I can't move because I don't know for sure whether things around me are real and exist. I don't know how to treat people so I avoid them, and now my eyes and brain are giving me this weird sense of "unreality" because of it.
Because confidence isn't a measure for knowledge. I don't know it exists or that you do, I assume that and you cannot assume anything in philosophy if you want truth. There are no givens.
This is begging the question. You are using the conclusion you wish to reach -- that we don't know anything unless we know it perfectly -- as your premise. We do in fact know that things exist, and it has been explained to you how this is the case. If you keep repeating that we don't, you are simply arguing in circles and wasting everybody's time here.
Confidence is additionally a poor use for knowledge and it doesn't prove anything. You can be confident in just about anything. So I'm not acting on knowledge but belief.
You can be confident in just about anything, but empirical reasoning allows us to determine what it is rational to be confident in and what not. It is not rational, for instance, to be confident that you will win the lottery: all the evidence you observe leads to the conclusion that winning is highly improbable. But it is rational to be confident that the sun will come up tomorrow: every observation you and the rest of the human race has made is consistent with a model of the universe where that happens. So yes, you can be confident in both propositions, but the two confidences are not equivalent. You do not know you will win the lottery. You may believe it, but your belief is neither justified nor true. But you do know that the sun will come up tomorrow. Your belief is justified and true.
Plus I believe the whole "justified true belief" bit was slaughtered already.
Um... no. "Justified true belief" is the standard (shorthand) definition of knowledge in epistemology. Yes, there are puzzles and problems in the details, as is always the case in philosophy. But if you think you've "slaughtered" it, then you've made a bona fide breakthrough. And I hate to burst your bubble, but you haven't.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
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I can't move because I don't know for sure whether things around me are real and exist. I don't know how to treat people so I avoid them, and now my eyes and brain are giving me this weird sense of "unreality" because of it.
As has been mentioned several times, you have no means of leaving this virtual reality even if that is the case. Considering you're stuck here, why not be practical and treat it as real?
Because I keep cycling back to how if this isn't real then nothing that I do matters. It doesn't matter how I treat others or how they feel towards me. All the things I would have done if it were real would be rendered moot. It would just be me, painfully aware that I know I exist but I can't be sure about everyone else. It's a lonely prison from which escape seems unlikely.
Because confidence isn't a measure for knowledge. I don't know it exists or that you do, I assume that and you cannot assume anything in philosophy if you want truth. There are no givens.
This is begging the question. You are using the conclusion you wish to reach -- that we don't know anything unless we know it perfectly -- as your premise. We do in fact know that things exist, and it has been explained to you how this is the case. If you keep repeating that we don't, you are simply arguing in circles and wasting everybody's time here.
Confidence is additionally a poor use for knowledge and it doesn't prove anything. You can be confident in just about anything. So I'm not acting on knowledge but belief.
You can be confident in just about anything, but empirical reasoning allows us to determine what it is rational to be confident in and what not. It is not rational, for instance, to be confident that you will win the lottery: all the evidence you observe leads to the conclusion that winning is highly improbable. But it is rational to be confident that the sun will come up tomorrow: every observation you and the rest of the human race has made is consistent with a model of the universe where that happens. So yes, you can be confident in both propositions, but the two confidences are not equivalent. You do not know you will win the lottery. You may believe it, but your belief is neither justified nor true. But you do know that the sun will come up tomorrow. Your belief is justified and true.
Plus I believe the whole "justified true belief" bit was slaughtered already.
Um... no. "Justified true belief" is the standard (shorthand) definition of knowledge in epistemology. Yes, there are puzzles and problems in the details, as is always the case in philosophy. But if you think you've "slaughtered" it, then you've made a bona fide breakthrough. And I hate to burst your bubble, but you haven't.
By slaughtered I was referring to the Getier problem which dealt a big blow to the idea of "justified true belief".
You say that we know that things exist what has been said is that we interact with them and therefor we know they exist. But as I said, this can apply to dreams, and the things in dream don't truly exist even though you interact with them. Not to mention that would muddy things further by not being able to prove one isn't dreaming (another problem with skepticism).
I don't know the sun will rise tomorrow. I assume it does. I don't know this isn't a dream but I'm trying to assume it isn't. The same way I assume other people exist (or am holding onto that concept) so that I can speak about these things. I even have to assume the Big Bang and all that is true because I cannot know that the universe didn't just pop up with all the memories and knowledge in it five minutes ago.
Empirical data is based on flawed senses that we can't be sure are being deceived at this very moment. Skepticism can argue that such knowledge is useless because it is obtained by imperfect means and is more opinion than knowledge. They argue the same about our evaluations about good and bad and say that our suffering is based on chasing and holding onto good and avoiding bad. Even reasoning is inseparable from emotion as they say. Descartes tries to get around their doubt of all things but could only conclude that thought occurs and that cannot be doubted.
Given that nothing can be proven for certain, it seems that just about anything can be called "knowledge". Confidence can be used to justify anything and it wouldn't be knowledge. The Gettier problem addressing this bit quite well.
There haven't been any strong solutions to the problem, otherwise I would agree with the justified true belief course. But it just seems like the skeptics have better arguments here.
Because I keep cycling back to how if this isn't real then nothing that I do matters. It doesn't matter how I treat others or how they feel towards me. All the things I would have done if it were real would be rendered moot. It would just be me, painfully aware that I know I exist but I can't be sure about everyone else. It's a lonely prison from which escape seems unlikely.
Again, as has been pointed out to you already, you have no means of knowing that it isn't real, and therefore you cannot know that "nothing that I do matters." There is no point in acting upon a hypothesis that is merely not epistemically impossible.
Even if this is all a dream, your actions still have consequences within the bounds of this dream. It is in your best interest in the setting of the dream to behave in a way that follows the rules of the dream as though that dream is forming some reality for you to exist in. You have said previously things to the effect of effort spent in a dream is effort wasted, but if it's actually a dream you're only wasting time, not effort. Further, since you have no means to wake up from this supposed dream, you have no way to avoid wasting time. You're stuck in this reality, so act like it.
You say that we know that things exist what has been said is that we interact with them and therefor we know they exist. But as I said, this can apply to dreams, and the things in dream don't truly exist even though you interact with them. Not to mention that would muddy things further by not being able to prove one isn't dreaming (another problem with skepticism).
People can believe false propositions. This should not be surprising to you. People can even be justified in believing false propositions. I might look at the clock and justifiably believe that it's three o'clock, when in fact it's four and the clock stopped an hour ago. I think I know that it's three o'clock, but because my belief is false, I don't actually know that. However, if the clock is working and it actually is three o'clock, then I do know it. (The third possibility, that the clock is stopped but by coincidence it happens to be three o'clock anyway, is one of those fun little philosophical puzzles about JTB theory.)
Your concern about dreams runs through the same analysis. Given the general reliability of your senses, you are justified in believing that what you perceive is real. If you are in fact dreaming, the belief is justified but false, and you do not have knowledge. But if you're not dreaming, the belief is justified and true, and you do have knowledge. In short, the possibility that you're dreaming doesn't mean you can't have knowledge -- it only means you might not have knowledge. Is this a perfect situation? No, of course not. But as I keep reminding you, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Our knowledge is good enough to get stuff done. Our lives would not be improved by sitting around moping that we're not absolutely certain what we perceive is real.
I don't know the sun will rise tomorrow. I assume it does.
An assumption is a belief. You believe it. Your belief is justified because you've observed the sun coming up every day of your life, and everyone else you talk to or read about has observed the sun coming up every day of theirs, and the consensus scientific model of the solar system based on still more observations tells us that the sun has come up every day for the past five billion years and will continue to come up for five billion more. And we can now say with the confidence of direct observation that your belief is true, because I wrote that yesterday, it's now tomorrow, and the sun in fact came up. So you have justified true belief. You have knowledge.
Could all these observations be the result of a dream or hallucination? Yes, we can never rule out the possibility completely. This does not undermine justification, in the same way that the possibility you will win the lottery does not undermine justification in believing you won't. It would be a coincidence of the most spectacular degree for every observation you make to be consistent with living in a rules-governed physical universe when this is not the case.
I even have to assume the Big Bang and all that is true because I cannot know that the universe didn't just pop up with all the memories and knowledge in it five minutes ago.
Physicists don't take that possibility seriously. Like Schrödinger's Cat for quantum uncertainty, it is a deliberately absurd thought experiment used to illustrate just how incomplete our understanding of entropy is.
Empirical data is based on flawed senses that we can't be sure are being deceived at this very moment. Skepticism can argue that such knowledge is useless because it is obtained by imperfect means and is more opinion than knowledge.
It does not follow that knowledge is useless when it is obtained by imperfect means. I have been arguing throughout that knowledge can be useful despite being obtained by imperfect means. You need to stop fixating on the imperfection as though it were the end of the story. It's not. Empiricism works. All your protestations of uselessness ring hollow in light of that basic fact. Rather than repeat empty denials, you need to address it.
They argue the same about our evaluations about good and bad and say that our suffering is based on chasing and holding onto good and avoiding bad. Even reasoning is inseparable from emotion as they say.
Kant is not normally very quotable, but he does occasionally turn a poignant phrase:
“The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. Likewise, Plato abandoned the world of the senses because it posed so many hindrances for the understanding, and dared to go beyond it on the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of pure understanding.”
Descartes tries to get around their doubt of all things but could only conclude that thought occurs and that cannot be doubted.
Descartes concludes that the world we perceive is real and that our senses can be trusted. You may not agree with his reasoning in getting there -- I certainly don't -- but you're misrepresenting him in claiming that doubt is his conclusion.
Given that nothing can be proven for certain, it seems that just about anything can be called "knowledge". Confidence can be used to justify anything and it wouldn't be knowledge. The Gettier problem addressing this bit quite well.
I'm afraid you're revealing a basic misunderstanding in a couple of areas here. Firstly, confidence is not used to justify anything. Confidence is the result of justification. If a belief is justified, we may rationally be confident in it; otherwise, we should not. Secondly, the Gettier problem does not address issues of confidence or indeed any of the objections you are making. The Gettier problem explores what happens when you treat beliefs as straightforward propositions of classical logic and apply certain counterintuitive properties of conjunction and disjunction to them. That's not what we're talking about here.
But in regards to dreaming, there is simply no way to know that you aren't dreaming. We already know pain is possible in dreams, which was a main counterpoint in the past. Even that quote (I forget who said it) stated that he dreamt he was a butterfly. Upon waking he couldn't tell if he was himself dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreamning it was human. You cannot know whether you are still dreaming or not given what we know about dreams. You can only know it's not real after waking, but during the dream you believe it to be real. Given that, you cannot know you are currently not dreaming.
I don't see how that quote by Kant really adds anything here.
It doesn't mater whether physicists disagree on that point (assuming others people even exist which can't be known). The point is they can't prove that isn't the case.
And the Gettier problem essentially drove the nail in the coffin for justified true belief, to the point that JTBF isn't a sufficient basis to evaluate knowledge anymore. The objections to the problem haven't had any success in overcoming the conclusions.
But in regards to dreaming, there is simply no way to know that you aren't dreaming.
So what?
You're right, we cannot disprove the negative. But that's meaningless. It's almost impossible to disprove a negative on anything, and the inability to disprove the opposite of a statement does not have any bearing on that statement's validity. The fact that you cannot disprove that you're not dreaming does not make the statement "I'm just dreaming all of this" true, nor does it make the statement, "This is real and not a dream" false.
The fact is, as has been repeated to you over and over again, you have zero reasons to believe that the world around you isn't actually real.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhonism
They call it Pyrrhonism and try to apply that non judging attitude to all of life. It claims that much of strife is based on human belief and opinions. That when we value what is good we suffer if we don’t have it and struggle to hold it when we do, I’m guessing valuing something as bad works the same way. So by maintaining an attitude of permanent indecision you “free your mind” from worry and find tranquility. Seems somewhat like Buddhism and that religion is pretty large. But I have to wonder how sound that is and whether or not it is practical? It has some points to it though, our senses are easily fooled so why believe them? Reason tends to be influenced by our desires and emotions. Can what we get from such things really be called knowledge?
The entire point behind Pyrrho's argument is that the proper ethical way cannot be known because for every single opinion, someone else has a contrary opinion, and both of these have equal claim to validity, undifferentiated by logic, and it's impossible to know which is true.
Except that's absurd. It's essentially, "Seeking the truth is hard, therefore I'm going to throw my hands in the air and say, 'Nope, it's impossible.'" It's intellectual laziness.
Yes, sometimes which argument is better has no clear answer with everyone disagreeing with one another. This does not mean the answer doesn't exist, or that reason doesn't. We can very definitely use reason to assess arguments to be objectively false or logically inferior.
It's not practical.
There's nothing wrong with throwing up your arms in the air and saying, "**** it," every now and again. We all have an attack of the lazy every now and again, and that's fine, we're only human. However, that shouldn't be considered the grand secret to life.
NO. Our ability to see reason can be clouded or outright blinded by our desires and emotions, but reason is not influenced by our desires and emotions, merely our ability to understand it. Very important distinction, and part of what is fundamentally wrong with this philosophy.
I find that the entire result of skepticism is not to resolve one's life to reservation because of the problems of absolute knowledge, but to make consideration of absolute knowledge to be mostly irrelevant. Which is to say, it leads the way to a focus on pragmatic knowledge. This is not to the detriment of values but based on them. Without values, there is no meaning to knowledge. There is no meaning to any decision- things just are. But with values, we can craft something purposeful out of the static.
And there are values, because we have them whether we like it or not. We simply can't not have them. It is a condition of the human mind. There is therefore meaning to us, there is a point to trying to make sense of the world and trying to live a fulfilling life in it. If we ignore the perception of values, and say 'how do we know they are there', 'how do we know our mind is there'- we are giving up any hope of meaning, knowledge and fulfillment, only to fulfill a fear of uncertainty and being wrong. It is to give up all positive only because you are afraid of a possible negative.
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You've pointed out that our senses and reason aren't 100% accurate. Okay. It does not follow from this that they are useless. An instrument with a 99% reliability rating is still a hell of a lot better than nothing. Especially if we act scientifically: make repeated observations and compare notes with other observers. The results of this can absolutely be called knowledge. Knowledge is not the same thing as total certainty. We may not be correct about everything, but we're correct about enough things to, e.g., build airplanes that fly. So why on earth should we just sit on our hands and gaze at our navels while we wait for perfect information to come along? We have mountains of evidence that we don't need perfect information to get things done. In the face of that evidence, how is indecision rational?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
But the though that our senses and reasoning being fallible seems to be reason enough to not cal what we get from them knowledge. So they hold nothing can be known.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Wouldn't a better question be why it DOES NOT require absolute certainty? I mean, how can one act on imperfect knowledge?
So given all this, whatever makes you think you can't act on imperfect knowledge?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Confidence is additionally a poor use for knowledge and it doesn't prove anything. You can be confident in just about anything. So I'm not acting on knowledge but belief. Plus I believe the whole "justified true belief" bit was slaughtered already.
You're kind of equivocating here. You are trying to hold a theory of unabsolute knowledge up to the standard of absolute truth- that's not the relevant standard. Instead, what people are proposing different ideas as giving some kind of clear meaning to conceptions, and therefore create knowledge, outside of absolute knowledge of them. I have proposed that unabsolute knowledge derives from the predisposition to place personal value in apparent perception leading to perceived reality as the null position, not a lack of all inclination. Under this idea, there is no difference in the standing of absolute truth complete to complete nihilism, but instead the difference in the maintaining of value, and the decision to structure oneself around that value in the absence of perfect conception. The point of debate here is the significance of value and perception outside of absolute knowledge.
Blinking Spirit seems to be arguing something fairly similar. Confidence without absolute knowledge is about predisposition. Value placed in perceptions leads to the building of confidence in ideas supported by our perceptions. Part of this value is in the ability to determine action and response, something inherent to perception. It's good enough to act on, so it means something; it's a claim that means something, so we consider it knowledge.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
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I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
What about the claim that by not judging anything as good or bad you don't suffer as a result of craving it, mourning the absence, and being afraid to lose it? That seems to be the supposed benefit of following that school.
All I know is that uncertainty has left me stuck. I can't move because I don't know for sure whether things around me are real and exist. I don't know how to treat people so I avoid them, and now my eyes and brain are giving me this weird sense of "unreality" because of it.
You can be confident in just about anything, but empirical reasoning allows us to determine what it is rational to be confident in and what not. It is not rational, for instance, to be confident that you will win the lottery: all the evidence you observe leads to the conclusion that winning is highly improbable. But it is rational to be confident that the sun will come up tomorrow: every observation you and the rest of the human race has made is consistent with a model of the universe where that happens. So yes, you can be confident in both propositions, but the two confidences are not equivalent. You do not know you will win the lottery. You may believe it, but your belief is neither justified nor true. But you do know that the sun will come up tomorrow. Your belief is justified and true.
Um... no. "Justified true belief" is the standard (shorthand) definition of knowledge in epistemology. Yes, there are puzzles and problems in the details, as is always the case in philosophy. But if you think you've "slaughtered" it, then you've made a bona fide breakthrough. And I hate to burst your bubble, but you haven't.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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By slaughtered I was referring to the Getier problem which dealt a big blow to the idea of "justified true belief".
You say that we know that things exist what has been said is that we interact with them and therefor we know they exist. But as I said, this can apply to dreams, and the things in dream don't truly exist even though you interact with them. Not to mention that would muddy things further by not being able to prove one isn't dreaming (another problem with skepticism).
I don't know the sun will rise tomorrow. I assume it does. I don't know this isn't a dream but I'm trying to assume it isn't. The same way I assume other people exist (or am holding onto that concept) so that I can speak about these things. I even have to assume the Big Bang and all that is true because I cannot know that the universe didn't just pop up with all the memories and knowledge in it five minutes ago.
Empirical data is based on flawed senses that we can't be sure are being deceived at this very moment. Skepticism can argue that such knowledge is useless because it is obtained by imperfect means and is more opinion than knowledge. They argue the same about our evaluations about good and bad and say that our suffering is based on chasing and holding onto good and avoiding bad. Even reasoning is inseparable from emotion as they say. Descartes tries to get around their doubt of all things but could only conclude that thought occurs and that cannot be doubted.
Given that nothing can be proven for certain, it seems that just about anything can be called "knowledge". Confidence can be used to justify anything and it wouldn't be knowledge. The Gettier problem addressing this bit quite well.
There haven't been any strong solutions to the problem, otherwise I would agree with the justified true belief course. But it just seems like the skeptics have better arguments here.
Even if this is all a dream, your actions still have consequences within the bounds of this dream. It is in your best interest in the setting of the dream to behave in a way that follows the rules of the dream as though that dream is forming some reality for you to exist in. You have said previously things to the effect of effort spent in a dream is effort wasted, but if it's actually a dream you're only wasting time, not effort. Further, since you have no means to wake up from this supposed dream, you have no way to avoid wasting time. You're stuck in this reality, so act like it.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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Your concern about dreams runs through the same analysis. Given the general reliability of your senses, you are justified in believing that what you perceive is real. If you are in fact dreaming, the belief is justified but false, and you do not have knowledge. But if you're not dreaming, the belief is justified and true, and you do have knowledge. In short, the possibility that you're dreaming doesn't mean you can't have knowledge -- it only means you might not have knowledge. Is this a perfect situation? No, of course not. But as I keep reminding you, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Our knowledge is good enough to get stuff done. Our lives would not be improved by sitting around moping that we're not absolutely certain what we perceive is real.
An assumption is a belief. You believe it. Your belief is justified because you've observed the sun coming up every day of your life, and everyone else you talk to or read about has observed the sun coming up every day of theirs, and the consensus scientific model of the solar system based on still more observations tells us that the sun has come up every day for the past five billion years and will continue to come up for five billion more. And we can now say with the confidence of direct observation that your belief is true, because I wrote that yesterday, it's now tomorrow, and the sun in fact came up. So you have justified true belief. You have knowledge.
Could all these observations be the result of a dream or hallucination? Yes, we can never rule out the possibility completely. This does not undermine justification, in the same way that the possibility you will win the lottery does not undermine justification in believing you won't. It would be a coincidence of the most spectacular degree for every observation you make to be consistent with living in a rules-governed physical universe when this is not the case.
Physicists don't take that possibility seriously. Like Schrödinger's Cat for quantum uncertainty, it is a deliberately absurd thought experiment used to illustrate just how incomplete our understanding of entropy is.
It does not follow that knowledge is useless when it is obtained by imperfect means. I have been arguing throughout that knowledge can be useful despite being obtained by imperfect means. You need to stop fixating on the imperfection as though it were the end of the story. It's not. Empiricism works. All your protestations of uselessness ring hollow in light of that basic fact. Rather than repeat empty denials, you need to address it.
Kant is not normally very quotable, but he does occasionally turn a poignant phrase:
“The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. Likewise, Plato abandoned the world of the senses because it posed so many hindrances for the understanding, and dared to go beyond it on the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of pure understanding.”
Descartes concludes that the world we perceive is real and that our senses can be trusted. You may not agree with his reasoning in getting there -- I certainly don't -- but you're misrepresenting him in claiming that doubt is his conclusion.
I'm afraid you're revealing a basic misunderstanding in a couple of areas here. Firstly, confidence is not used to justify anything. Confidence is the result of justification. If a belief is justified, we may rationally be confident in it; otherwise, we should not. Secondly, the Gettier problem does not address issues of confidence or indeed any of the objections you are making. The Gettier problem explores what happens when you treat beliefs as straightforward propositions of classical logic and apply certain counterintuitive properties of conjunction and disjunction to them. That's not what we're talking about here.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I don't see how that quote by Kant really adds anything here.
It doesn't mater whether physicists disagree on that point (assuming others people even exist which can't be known). The point is they can't prove that isn't the case.
And the Gettier problem essentially drove the nail in the coffin for justified true belief, to the point that JTBF isn't a sufficient basis to evaluate knowledge anymore. The objections to the problem haven't had any success in overcoming the conclusions.
You're right, we cannot disprove the negative. But that's meaningless. It's almost impossible to disprove a negative on anything, and the inability to disprove the opposite of a statement does not have any bearing on that statement's validity. The fact that you cannot disprove that you're not dreaming does not make the statement "I'm just dreaming all of this" true, nor does it make the statement, "This is real and not a dream" false.
The fact is, as has been repeated to you over and over again, you have zero reasons to believe that the world around you isn't actually real.