How do we know that a piece of string exists?
Because I said it exists.
Because you can use it to do what you will with.
Presumably you’re talking about the existence of a piece of string in the instance when the string is before us as a tangible object. Otherwise you’re talking about the idea of a string, in which case the string doesn’t exist, the idea of the string exists in our mind.
Secondly, in the case of the former, to answer how we know the string exists, we then ask what it means to know, which is to be aware of as a subjective perceiver, and to ask how we know the string exists we could ask what it means to exist, which is to be real and have a basis in reality.
One could call into question at this point the status of reality, and subsequently the status of existence and so let the whole ediface of knowledge crumble, but insofar as we are existing and purposive beings, what matters to us is the content, possibilities, and limits of our experience. Even if by some stroke, what we have semantically labelled reality turns out by nature not to be what we understand by convention as reality, it would only matter insofar as it impinges on the content, possibility, and limit of our experience, and isofar as it would not, it would forever remain uncertain whether it was merely a projection of thought (of which imagination is an example) onto reality and falsely reified in our understanding. In other words, it would remain uncertain whether it was just a mind conjured (a priori) illusion which we have swapped semantically for what we had previously called “reality”. (Which is not to say that discoveries cannot be made which subsequently expand what we previously acknowledged as the content, possibilities, and limits of experience.)
On the other hand, if you look at a string in another fashion, noticing what elements it is composed of, whether smaller fibers, or at the level of some atomic structure or deeper level of energy, in the sense that string theory proposes, then what we call string is a complex construct of elements revealed both to and through our mode of perception as a unitary whole and given the name “string” to signify the shared and sharable state available to our category of perception as subjects.
Or you can just remain on the level of appearance and state as the above commenters, I can see it and I can use it and that’s enough for me. The way you analyze and interpret ideas and experience is intimately connected with the purposes you have for your analysis and interpretation, or else at least the purpose you thought you had when you began your analysis whose means of fulfillment may or may not turn out later to be mistaken.
Existence is an emergent trait. A piece of string exists physically and ideologically. When an idea emerges from the eternal eye; the vacuum; point zero; the first projector; the blank slate beneath every picture, it becomes existent. Before an artist draws a picture, that picture did not exist; after the artist draws the picture, that picture then exists. Removing the idea is not possible. Information is like relationships between ourselves and this world’s creatures. You can’t erase the emergence, unless you erase everybody. We’re all walking butterfly effects.
How do I know that this thread does?
But [for me] a question like that always pales next to a question like this: How ought I to live?
Or: Why do I think what I do and not something else?
The string thing at least seems within reach.
See if it has affect.
And if they have, the affects may emulate efforts to unwind, knots.
I begin by asking who you mean by “we”. Because “we” could mean anybody or any group. How do children know string exists? They don’t, because children are largely ignorant of the world. Do you mean “we” as in a group of elders, wise men, and philosophers? Generally philosophers (we) know the string exists by first perceiving it with our minds, and then trusting our senses. My senses have evolved to aid my survival, not to deceive me, as christian philosophy and theology contends. There are many out there who believe that senses deceive them, and do not trust their own senses. Therefore the string maybe an illusion to those people. Are you including them as “we”?
I generally dislike and avoid answering “we” questions. Because females and women tend to speak in terms of “we and they”. Men speak in terms of “You and I”. I speak for myself. I own myself. I am my own authority. I control my definitions. I manipulate language, communication, ideas.
So I can define what I mean by “string”, knowledge, and existence. I cannot speak to a “we”. So specify, exactly and precisely, what you mean by “we”.
I reject your “we”.
They do. And they do. Or optionally tie knots.
If it allows you to accomplish something, or if it has consistent characteristics that affect your world, then it is significantly and meaningfully real even if the total nature of its reality is unconfirmed.
Plato would not understand the question, because hyperbolic doubt had not been introduced into philosophy or general thought. Only a madman would have thought back then to ask such a question.
Locke, being an empiricist, would tell you that your senses do not lie that a thing exists, but that which does exist must be determined by your own mind as to its identity.
A string is a “human artifact”. Popper knew they existed, and devised a venn diagram to show where such things existed in the world of reality. It is 3.3 on the diagram
And after all the words are boiled down to their simplest :
Because I said it exists
Ideas affect.
Why can’t we be friends? We’re all intelligent people…
Are we friends??? hmhmhmhm?
That is not true, the criterion for existence is not stating the existence of a thing. If you said purple aligators with the feet of dogs and necks like a giraffe’s existed, it wouldn’t truly exist simply because you said so.
We consider the existence of a thing because we are capable of knowing it through the senses.
We have not seen atoms, for example, but they are detected by an atomic force microscope, so technically it is not the “atom” exactly we are saying we know about, but the quality detected by the microscope (and other studies of the behavior of that quality). So technically it is not the atom we know but the results of studies on the way atoms should behave and the reaction produced by the device we have constructed to measure and manipulate atoms. If it wasn’t for some form of mediation or other experienced content which puts our senses in contact with the phenomenon we could not guarentee its existence so far as it is relevant to human understanding as a “real” or “existing” entity, we could on the other hand acknowledge the possibility of a thing as a theory, or the reality of a thing as an idea (ie. the idea has reality, not the thing).
If this is the criterion of something being real, we could then ask, how could someone subjected to sustained delusions and hallucinations be sure of what is real? There are two possible answers to that. On the one hand, you could rely on the relevance of your experience interacting with the hallucinated thing, if it does not produce the results expected from your experience with other natural objects you could forget it (that is assuming you are capable of knowing the ‘nature of nature’, so to speak — if you do not, you could rely on the thing’s usefulness for whatever means you devise, in which case the reality may remain uncertain but it might lose relevance), or you could rely on collective agreement, in which case you would have to assume that others also know the reality or are telling the truth.
One existing thing which fits that situation would be our own thoughts, which only we are capable of knowing, but we assume exists based primarly on our own experience and use of them, and secondarily because we collectively agree, being the same type of being, that we all have thoughts. Ironically, it was the first thing that Descartes in his radical doubt confirmed that he knew for certain. True, now with electroencephalography we can read brain activity so we can confirm that something is going in the brain, though it doesn’t exactly relate back to us the experience we know as “thought”.
I’m not really sure how true this statement is about Plato. If Plato followed Socrates in declaring an ultimate ignorance of true knowledge, then I don’t see why he would have been averse to the line of thinking. Also if he felt that knowledge was knowledge of the whole, then the true understanding of that question would be part of the knowledge of the whole. He didn’t seem satisfied with doxa or saying a thing is simply because we say or know it is so. In fact, a lot of the questioning in Plato is more radical, in a sense, than much philosophical questioning, since we most frequently today take for granted the meanings of terms we use to declare and describe the underlying essence of a thing, whereas in Plato you will find the investigation calls into questions the very meanings in themselves and often end inconclusively.
Besides that, because Plato wrote dialogues as opposed to treatises, we can’t be certain which views were his own and which were merely the views of the interlocutors. And because of the ironic nature of his most frequent interlocutor, Socrates, it also becomes doubtful what the true intentions of his speeches were.
I would be interested to see the direct reference which led you to that conclusion.
How “intelligent” people are is relative to the complexity of their environment. The more intelligent, yet disagreeing people you have, the more exponentially complex the environments becomes. Thus the intelligence of each person is reduced by consequence.
I don’t know about a philosopher but a psychoanalyst like Jung might have responded by saying: We know because a piece of string has been verified by the “concert of many voices”.
Any question which you might ask about anything has to have some reality doesn’t it? Even the concept of a “string” brings reality to it or am I wrong? Now don’t all stone me at one time. lol
My brain seems to like you a lot. Could we get well acquainted some time? The reactions I am getting from your ideologies are magnificent. You could be the very next person I need in my life to get these pieces I have together as they should be. I can tell by the way you post that you have the word power to give my ideas a better portrait to snuggle in.
For now, could you read my post I wrote in this thread? It’ll let you know if I am capable to discuss with you on a transcendent note or not. For now, it’s all choice and emergence, is it not? You could be in a really bad mood and disregard me entirely, and it wouldn’t even be real. Life is strange like that. It’s easier to let go of what matters than it is to let go of what never mattered. There are times letting go is a strength; there are times letting go is a weakness. There are times holding on is a strength; and there are times holding on is a weakness. When your conscience is unclear, the most difficult of choice is the easy future; the most simple of choice is the hard future.
Therefore total unintelligence is the consequence, with the reigning in of original chaos. Evolution leading to it’s nemesis. It must be a curve with it’s maximum, just before the decline. But, supposedly, it comes to within 1% of the assymptote, or .000000000000000000001% , where Nature will avert the critical point to be overcome. (This word seems to prop up a lot) Then, a slow recovery, and it starts over. There is no pain,natural aenesthetics insulate against all, but blueskies and running water.