Calvan

Hi John Page,

John Page: "I believe I am 100% correct in saying I know that one can never be absolutely sure whether one's beliefs constitute certain knowledge."

Skepticos: “I see that you were careful here, John! You state that you BELIEVE that you are 100% correct in saying that one can never be absolutely sure whether one's beliefs constitute certain knowledge. Of course, your statement presupposes a certain meaning of the term "knowledge". What is your meaning here?"

John, I would agree with the connotation of your statement. But I would argue that your usage of “believe” is misleading. I would suggest that you don’t “believe” you are 100% correct, you really assume or know you are 100% correct. I humbly suggest that these words may be applicable and "believe" may be inapplicable because you have employed extensive thought and empirical experience to validate that conclusion. I would hold that you did not simply stumble over it.

It may appear that I am trying to be either clever or just plain obnoxious! Actually, I have a reason for making the above statements and would be very interested to see if you validate what I think.

Thanks, Calvan.

Keith Russell

Greetings:

'Reasoning' is a specific mental process of evaluation, and I think evaluation must involve the comparison between at least two entities; claim vs. fact, or fact vs. fact, or claim vs. claim, etc.

Seeing a squirrel run across a road is an observation, but unless one sees something else happen that one thinks (based on previous observation) shouldn't have happened, I don't think one is 'reasoning', just because one is observing.

Keith.

Calvan

Greeting Keith,

Interesting question Keith. I wonder what one is doing when one is internalizing the stimuli that come from seeing the squirrel run. Is it possible that evaluation is occurring between the time that such stimuli enter the brain and when they are provided with meanings? Is it possible that evaluation is occurring when these meanings are compared to other meanings that reside in memory thereby providing additional meanings that the squirrel has been previously observed or that this current experience is congruent with previous experience?
I would assume that the evaluation process occurs in all of the above circumstances, if they in fact exist. If it is true, and I cannot think why it would not be, that reasoning is a specific mental process of evaluation involving at least two entities, I would say that the processes indicated above would qualify as reasoning.

Calvan.

John Page

Calvan - nice reply. Some thoughts.

A belief is phenomenon of mind and the process of the mind is a dynamic and changing one. It is quite feasible to (truly) believe one thing at the start of a sentence and (truly) a different thing at the end. e.g. "That horse is going to win, no, this horse is going to win".

A belief appears constant when we repeatedly test it and find it to be true over a wide range of situations. This can give an illusion that such beliefs are universal truths whereas they are merely working assumptions with limited scope. From this I suggest that an "absolute truth" is merely a belief that is believed to operate over all space and time. Of course, nobody can test such a proposition so it remains a god-like theory.

I believe that a continuum is in operation here with gradations from conjecture through hypothesis to belief, common sense and various types of truth. Furthermore, these conditions (belief, truth etc.), however defined, are conditions of the mind - our brains' effort to tell us what really matters (pun intended).

Does this make sense?

Cheers, John
P.S. Less of the humble next time.

Calvan

Cheers John Page,

Yes, John, It does make sense to me. The only idea that I would question is whether belief is on the same “continuum” as “common sense and various types of truth?”

Calvan.

[ November 18, 2002: Message edited by: Calvan ]</p>

Kim o' the Concrete Jungle

I concur with John Page here (not for the first time).

You can hold a belief with varying degrees of certainty. You can state your belief as a syllogism, to determine whether or not it is logically sound. You can test your belief through observation, and varify it empirically. So it is perfectly reasonable to believe that the sun is going to rise tomorrow, because that belief is both logically sound and empirically testable.

But philosophically, it is best to stop short absolute certainty, otherwise you run into what is called the Egocentric Dilemma.

At the heart at the egocentric dilemma is the idea that there is no other way to hold a belief except in your mind. And since your mind is function of the physical structure of your brain, it is reasonable to assume that your beliefs conform to the mechanical processes in your brain that cause you to understand things. So, presumably, your beliefs a formed, in part, from impressions you get from the outside world, but also, in part, from the way your brain causes you to understand.

Hence the dilemma. How do you tell what is the truth about the universe outside your brain? How do you distinguish absolute truths about the universe from things that merely seem true, because that's just how the mind works? Obviously, you can't step outside of your own brain to test your beliefs objectively, so there is no way to tell for sure.

Besides which, the human brain is notorious for making mistakes and misremembering things. So, philosophically speaking, it is always better to stay away from absolute certainties.

It is largely a Christian habit for people to want to make their beliefs into absolute truths about the universe beyond themselves (sadly, a habit that the recently deconverted have considerable trouble letting go of). They want to believe that they can know God's absolute truths, in spite of the difficulties posed by the egocentric dilemma, and in spite of the fact that faith in their absolute certainties will lead them down the path of fanaticism and utopian idealism.

But in practice, the existence of uncertainty doesn't make a huge amount of difference. In practice, you only need a degree of certainty that is sufficient for the task at hand. In practice, 2+2 still equals 4 regardless of whether or not there is a definitive mathematical proof for mathematics itself. In practice, you can usually achieve all the precision you want through logic, logical inference, and objective observation of empirical data. In practice, the level of certainty you need before you can say a belief is reasonable is always less than 100%.

If you cultivate a degree of intellectual humility and admit that, yes, there is an outside chance -- no matter how minute -- that you might be wrong about anything or everything, then, at least, you won't be in the vanguard of the next fascistic idealogy that shows its ugly head in the world.

Kharakov

Your mind's perception that 'your mind is a function of the physical structure of your brain' is a function of the physical structure of your brain. I run into problems understanding circular dualism because my mind has not created structures in my brain to interpret circular dualism.

John Page

ROFLMAO. Why not so? Is that not exactly what it is doing right now - structuring the physical functioning of the brain into thought patterns that provide some understand of circular dualism?

Perhaps it is now creating the structures that contain/embody the concept of a mind/brain that really understands itself (subjectively, of course).

One might argue that dualism exists in the mind of the thinker, its just a matter of where you wish to draw a dividing line. Wasn't it the Greeks started out with fire, earth and water as the three elements....

Cheers, John

Kim o' the Concrete Jungle

So how is this "circular dualism" any worse than the (unsupported) bald assertions of rationalism?

Rationalist: "I know that there are certain fundamental axioms that are true of the entire universe, absolutely, always, and forever."

Me: "How do you know your fundamental axioms are true?"

Rationalist: "Because they are logical."

Me: "But I know many things that are logical but not, in fact, true. For example, you could logically build a space ship that travelled faster than light, provided that you built it with two engines, and one of them had infinite thrust. Another example -- you could extend the square footage of your house without taking any extra real estate by converting the back bedroom into a four dimensional tesseract. Both of these things are logical, but in practice, untrue. So how does being logical make your fundamental axioms true?"

Rationalist: "Oh, because it just bloody-well does, okay."

Me: "Do you believe yourself to be an omniscient God, who directly perceives the whole and absolute truth without the need for eyes, ears, and other sensory organs, and a brain to interpret them?"

Rationalist: "No, of course not. But I can deduce the truth of a proposition from first principles using logic."

Me: "Well, hang on. Logic, when used in isolation, leads to philosophies like medieval scholasticism. So tell me, how many Angels do dance on the head of a pin?"

Rationalist: "Obviously, our logical arguments have to refer to reality. Limiting ourselves to observable reality is how we avoid the pitfalls of scholasticism."

Me: "Uhuh! So you admit that logical argument must be tempered with empirical observation."

Rationalist: "Empiricism was never at issue."

Me: "So tell me. Who makes all of these empirical observations?"

Rationalist: "Scientists, philosophers, ordinary people. Everyone really."

Me: "Do these people have brains?"

Rationalist: "I would assume so, unless they're religious fundamentalists "

Me: "Do their brains have structure?"

Rationalist: "Yes."

Me: "And have you ever known people to make mistakes?"

Rationalist: "Yes."

Me: "Well then, you agree with me. What is it, exactly, that we are arguing about?"

Rationalist: "We are arguing because your brand of dualism leads to circular arguments."

Me: "How would you define a circular argument?"

Rationalist: "A circular argument is any argument that uses its conclusion as one of its premises."

Me: "But I never argued that you can't receive -- via your senses -- certain impressions about the outside world. Or that you can't use those impressions in logic. All I have said is that these human processes of perception and understanding can produce errors (a proposition, I might add, that is empirically verifiable from the existence of optical illusions). My completely non-circular argument goes like this:

(P1) Perfect objectivity requires the complete removal of human bias from an observation.
(P2) One cannot completely remove human bias from an observation.
(C1) Therefore, one cannot achieve perfect objectivity.

When you take into account the fact that the human mind works only within certain limitations, and that human beings can make mistakes, then the above argument would suggest that people who claim that they know the way, the truth, and the light are talking through their asses."

Rationalist: "But we need certainty."

Me: "Why?"

Rationalist: "Because if we don't have absolute certainty about anything, then we fall into solipsism."

Me: "Not true. I have already stated that we can observe things and know things with varying degrees of certainty -- so long as that degree of certainty falls short of 100%. And I have said that, in practice, a degree of certainty somewhat less than 100% is usually sufficient for the task at hand. It doesn't matter, for example, that DNA finger printing cannot achieve absolute certainty in any match, just so long as the probability for a DNA fingerprint matching someone else other than the target is sufficiently small."

Rationalist: "But I want to be certain. I must be certain. The truth -- the absolute truth -- is mine. Mine, I tell you!"

Me: "Well, why don't you try on this nice uniform. You see, it has lots of pretty, shiny medals on it. Good. Now here's your tank; Poland is that way."

[ November 18, 2002: Message edited by: Kim o' the Concrete Jungle ]

[ November 18, 2002: Message edited by: Kim o' the Concrete Jungle ]</p>

Kharakov

Yeah.