Epistemology - Truth versus belief.

#1

I’ve been reading a lot lately on the subject of epistemology. It’s provided some very deep thoughts, and some real perspective on existence itself. I’m really starting to see what some people mean when they say that the only thing we really know is that we exist. Outside that there is nothing that can really be known.

Everyone knows the famous Descartes quote ’ I think therefore I am ’ . I pose a question for folks in this thread. Is there anything else we can really know? Is everything else just an assumption?

Can anyone provide me with solid reason to say ‘I’m not an artificial intelligence running in a simulation?’ or ‘I’m just a conscientiousness subject to stimulus that shapes my thoughts’ ?

#2

No, but it doesn’t matter. Live life how you want to live it, even if that want is just a bunch of stimuli in your brain. It makes you happy.

#3

I enjoy conversations about the deeper meaning of existence. Self discovery, and understanding interest me. So…

#4

Well my point is there is no answer, and even if there was it would be meaningless. Perhaps everything we know is an illusion, but what if it was? What would you do? You cannot cease to see it, you cannot transcend whatever limitation prevents you from seeing what reality is really like, so whats the value? There are more important problems in the world.

#5

drugs!!! drugs

#6

Just Remember… I killed a unicorn but i buried its body at sea as reguarding Unicorn beliefs and i cant show you the pictures because it would insite violence from other unicorns.

but you cant prove i didn’t

#7

What?

#8

This kind of stuff isn’t Epistemology, which is a huge field, it’s a an implication of Extreme Skepticism, which is useless and a complete whack-off.

Real, useful thought requires granting a prioi status to the fact SOMETHING is true. Even a first statement, P=P must be considered axiomatic. Extreme skepticism says, “But we can’t prove P=P”. Even cogito ergo sum is circulus in probando, so not much of a metaphysics itself.

Extreme skepticism itself creates it’s own frame and assumes it’s own axioms. For example, that a thing either must exist or not exist - the frame is of an assumed western metaphysical cleavage of “is/not is” - it’s a frame of absolute. In other words, the question it asks is not whether a thing IS, but whether a thing ABSOLUTELY IS. There are other questions to be asked, other metaphysical frames rather than the frame of Western absolute, I.E. either a thing is or it is not.

But reality isn’t absolute, which is the assumption of Extreme Skepticism. For example, material, REAL material, doesn’t exist absolutely. Sub-atomic particles, which are the ‘stuff’ of the material universe, don’t exist as absolutes, they exist as probabilities. An absolute, meaning something either is or is not, is simply one metaphysical frame that is used in classical Western philosophy, and this metaphysical frame is VERY useful as an intellectual TOOL. But it does have limited applications, and attempting to apply an absolutist frame to examine non-absolutes and then drawing some conclusion from it isn’t valid.

That this frame has it’s limits - and that’s the real point of Extreme Skepticism. Extreme Skeptics are like performance artists. They don’t REALLY think that nothing can be known, they’re pointing to the limits of that metaphysical frame. But sometimes people that smoke a lot of weed are often exposed to this Stoner Urban Myth, not understanding what it really is or what it really means, and assume it to mean “What do we really know anyway?”

BTW - I’m not trying to bust anyone’s balls here, but I want to point out something off-topic:

This is argumentum ad ignorantiam. You’re not going to go anywhere with Western Thought Systems if you don’t yet recognize the basic rules of logic. Wanting to discuss extreme epistemology without knowing basic logic is like a first grader wanting to discuss calculus when he hasn’t learned basic arithmetic yet - he’s not gonna get until he learns a bunch of other stuff first, and most of his questions about it will be answered along the way.

But I can sorta-kinda respond one question at least:

No, but you would have to know that ‘assumption’ isn’t ‘axiom’ and how we determine what is axiomatic. Is P=P true or false? Is that an assumption?

#9

If someone from another dimension could control us, then we would have some errors. Nothing is perfect, we would have some kind o…

Error 404: Syntax Error at line 4896589: “Math.Rndom” is not a valid command.

#10

Is that what you think of logic?

OK - fair enough:

“You fuck little boys. Prove you don’t”.

That’s the same structure. Recognizing this is the difference between structural or conceptual thinking and literal thinking. And there, in a nutshell, you have the basis for every social and political problem in the world.

#11

You can’t prove anything beyond your own mind. Do I exsist as another thinking, feeling being, or am I and everyone else just automated shades acting interactable parts of your lonely and solitary life? Alternatively, do the people who you see, touch and feel in your sleep and dreams have feelings, thoughts and self conciousness?

No, I think that the only thing that is provable is that nothing is provable. People who are labeled mentally unstable interact with other people that only they can see, touch and feel, but for all they know, those people do actually exsist. Or rather, for all we know, those people do not exsist.

#12

Let’s turn it around a bit. Do you have any evidence that this isn’t “real”, that it’s a “fantasy/computer simulation” a la, the Matrix, that everyone around us are mindless automatons…a sea of NPCs, as it were?

All the evidence we have available to us shows that the reality in which we inhabit is the real deal. Occam’s razor would suggest that this is the reality and a “computer simulation” (whatever you want to call it) is an unneeded complexity.

Until I see some evidence that this world, which has literal galaxies of evidence for, is not real, then I’m going to tuck the idea away into my “fiction” drawer. :slight_smile:

#13

You can’t really prove that either.

That’s solipsism.

I don’t believe that you REALLY think that.

#14

Surely. This is just conversation for the sake of it though. :wink:

#15

Sake of what? Meaningless speculation into things that probably don’t exist nor matter? The questions posed are entirely unanswerable, not even open to opinion, and as such are beyond meaningless.

#16

Well, you know, the idea that our common view of reality isn’t accurate is reflected in most philosophy. The idea of the Matrix, a reality that’s a a computer simulation and that there is some sort of ‘higher reality’ is the basis of most religions, as well as a major theme in Western philosophy.

The Matrix idea is based on The Ghost in the Machine - the classic Western metaphysical duality - which is kind of a wamby-pamby reconciliation of materialism and idealism.

Modern physics not only implies but explicitly proves that our conception of common reality isn’t correct. Reality exists certainly, but our conception of reality and what that conception means when extrapolated is in question. In other words, reality is what it is, but what it is, is the unanswered question.

Philosophy isn’t about answering questions, it’s about asking the right question. I like how Douglas Adams communicated this idea in H2G2.

C&P from wiki:

Deep Thought is a computer that was created by the pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent race of beings (whose three dimensional protrusions into our universe are ordinary white mice) to come up with the Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Deep Thought is the size of a small city. When, after seven and a half million years of calculation, the answer finally turns out to be 42, Deep Thought admonishes Loonquawl and Phouchg (the receivers of the Ultimate Answer) that “[he] checked it very thoroughly, and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you is that you’ve never actually known what the question was.”

Deep Thought does not know the ultimate question to Life, the Universe and Everything, but offers to design an even more powerful computer, Earth, to calculate it. After ten million years of calculation, the Earth is destroyed by Vogons five minutes before the computation is complete.

#17

There comes a point in examining the human condition that the results no longer matter, and much of philosophy is far within that realm. There is no value in an unanswerable question. If you could discover the correct question to discover the meaning of the universe, what use is it without an answer? None. Are we all in a simulation controlled by outside force? Maybe. Will we ever know? No. So does the question have value? No.

At the end of the day, living life is a much more important thing than any of the questions philosophy has raised throughout the years.

#18

I’ve seen props disappear under totally impossible circumstances(while I’m in the room, noticing it through a reflection) never to be seen again.

#19

So what you are saying is that meaningless conversation in not worth conversing, and you are saying this on black mesa forums? :hmph:

I guess it’s back to creating elitist stupidity in the Cafeteria instead of philisophical stupidity in the debating hall, everybody.

#20

No, I said beyond Meaningless.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.