is there such a thing? In philosophy it is difficult to sate any knowledge absolutely, yet if we picture a blue ball in the minds eye, then there is that right there. If one camera films a blue ball, another device can display that at a 1:1 basis.
Can we say that there are [at least] the categories of observational knowledge; symbols and mental objects colours and what have you, and then; the category of received or second hand knowledge, whereby someone else’s blue ball is communicated to your subjective vision of that. So, interpreted and uninterpreted/observational knowledge.
Can we then put forwards a third category which pertains to when that communication is maintained correctly, and measurably so in the third party [e.g. via machines/devices]?
So that’s what knowledge is then.
Sure there are areas of variability ~ where we can’t be sure corroboration has occurred, and it is also true that further truths can be found which make the former truths fundamentally incorrect. However this usually happens when we are attempting to state that something is fundamental and not just that it is that something. Like for example, when we thought Newtonian physics were fundamental, then discovered relativity and QM. Yet Newtonian physics aren’t incorrect, they just aren’t correct fundamentally or at a fundamental level.
We should perhaps say there are no ultimate or fundamental truths, but that is categorically different to stating that there are no truths per se.
I would say visual sensory data is not knowledge at all. But of course, we never see visual sensory data on its own. Its always processed and presented in our mind based on how our brain processes the data as well as the tools, sensory organs, that capture that data and deliver it to our brain for processing.
All observational knowledge requires valid reason, empiricism, and a rudimentary, or rather base form of logic for it to be knowledge. This base form of logic being how we make sense of the sensory data, how we discern depth, form. Not in mathematical formulas being number crunched in our heads… but it is the way we make sense of the world and what we sensel, or see.
A baby who “observes” - likely would have no observational knowledge. Starting out the mind is likely attempting to process the visual data it is taking in. This takes time, it takes empiricism. Then later, it takes testing, experimentation, touching.
At a very young age we begin processing our observations in a manner that now seems inherent in how we “observe”. Our minds are now trained to take in observational data to process it to form knowledge, through our empirical testing, and reasons. I know the tree in my yard is there, based on my observation, because the tree is always there. I know the nature of a tree, vaguely at least, in order to understand that a tree would likely be there. As its planted in the ground. As its very common for trees to be in people’s yards. As they are everywhere. Its normal. Its empirical.
Observation alone doesn’t result in knowledge necessarily, I would say. Unless we can consider the nature of perception that processes the visual data as “observation”, well then, yes. But that is an important distinction to make I would say, in this case, because many may not understand how perception works. That we don’t really see what is there, we see what we process.
I am a visual thinker and so I think the visual object is truer than any words one cares to attribute ~ the thing itself in at least a representation of a truth in ‘physical’ form. I am unsure if it matters if my vision of a hammer is not exactly like it is in the world i.e. 99% accuracy of the actual object and in high resolution. Perhaps if we are agreed that there is a place where the visual thinker meets the linguistic thinker, that the ‘presentation’ is informed, then there is the same accuracy is both. It probably depends upon perspective as to accuracy, the visual feed is not unlike a camcorder and the level of instrumentation, yet words can describe how to do things, where visuals cannot be transferred/communicated so easily.
Indeed ~ for it to become knowledge. Observational knowledge does not itself require reason nor validation, it does what it says on the tin so to speak [optical illusions aside]. When the visual info is calibrated in the brain, there would I think be information more akin to data working with the electrical signals ~ like a processor. That would perhaps be how the consciousness gets the linguistic thought ‘that is a hammer’ and also gets the vision of the object, but on another channel.
I agree, in as much as I can see what you mean, but Its weird, almost as like they are switched on at birth and have to gradually form shapes and put the world together. The babies brain would be getting information, and I would also think that the babies brain is functioning like a computer we can only dream of. It is the consciousness that has to be trained and I would think in every way including language.
The infant brain will be receiving info from the senses, I doubt if it conjures things up and I am reasonably confident that you get the causality first [info presented], and then the conscious response.
Or/ there is a tree in your yard and is made of information, then that info is mechanistically transferred to a signal containing it and injected into any instrument which cares to observe it [be it camcorder or human brain]. The true info exists/existed in your brain, because that is the thing which needed to be there, for your brain to attain knowledge about it in the first place. Ones knowledge can be false but the info it came from can only be physically true to have been affecting upon physical things.
The process sees what is there, then makes an informed approximation of that to present the observer to manifest a rolling world to exist in. the process is processing the actual colours in some optical illusions, but changing them to fit what should be there by the preconceived world. Hmm I say preconceived, the consciousness doesn’t consciously affect seeing much except by closing the eyes. Preprocessed is probably better.
_
But is that it, visual or linguistic thinkers? What else is there. There’s something more, I say. Whatever we want to call it is how visual and linguistic thinking has its genesis.
They are seeing light of course, just like all of us. Their minds are forming the perception based on the sensory data. Creating forms, depth, remembering things, closing their eyes when its too bright. Trying to see what they can, to make sense of what they can. Which in the beginning, I would say, there is not much that they can make sense of. That is, unless an instinctive mind rules the roost, in which, there really isn’t thought, just procedures to follow that is written in the genetic code.
Well then I suppose you won’t be accurate with what you say and will say nonsense at times.
I do try to be accurate with what I say. As such, I will say things accurately.
I wouldn’t know why you would be engaging in philosophy if you don’t try to be accurate in what you say. Why say anything? You may as well just say nothing, or smash your hand on the keyboard a few times then his submit
Observation alone does not yield anything much. All depends on the understanding capabilities of the observer. The more capable the observer would be, the closer he would get to the reality.
This so called empiricism is nothing but a myth. The actual thing to look out for is the capacity of those means, who are processing the observed data.
yet there is actual info being measurably transferred. in optical illusions we are not party to but only present to what’s being presented. this means there is objectivity occurring, its only a question as to how much one can understand. the subconscious probably isn’t going to change anything in the instrumentation of the brain, just because the consciousness is thinking it should or et al.
Intriguing! My first thoughts are that, however different a thing is to the thingness of mind which experiences and observes, there must be a third party which ‘knows’ both and is the medium. So sound from a record isn’t like light generated from the same frequencies, and neither of those things are the same as they are subjectively experienced by a conscious observer. Yet in the first case we know through technology that electrical signals and magnetism are the medium, and we know they interact with consciousness and the information of that is also deriving in electrical signals.
Something is the glue surely? The medium between all mediums.
That’s kinda what I see the fundamental fabric of reality as being ~ akin to a philosophers stone. This because what better description of such a ‘stone’ as being intimate with all things and a universal centre/medium [not a centre in the sense of having or being a point].
Yes but the only measurable information being transferred is light. It isn’t necessarily “direct” information from the object that you’re viewing, light is the direct information we are sensing, seeing. What we are seeing is indirect information, as a result.
Is nonsense truly nonsense or only nonsense by perception that fails to see the appropriate use of nonsense? You think that by trying to be accurate that you always will be. How much time do you leave for yourself in your own life? How much time do you leave to remain mortal, to remain human, to drift back into modes of behavior that are entirely necessary at times for our health, both spiritual and physical?
Obviously, I try to be accurate with what I say, but I also take into account that I’m still learning about more than just my own capacity to learn. There is no way that I can always be accurate with what I say or whom I say it to. I wish that was the case. What is perfection? At what point, in eternity, does perfection itself become boring? And at the point of thinking yourself perfect, something bumrushes you and proves such perfection to still fall back into imperfection? At what point are you sacrificing your own enjoyment in life for the pursuit of something that might only be able to be entertained for a moment or two? If you take into account that I will speak nonsense at times, then you take into account that I might joke around, or speak sarcastically, or entertain emotion, or simply not care about how others perceive what I say, or my own fallibility, my own lack of deeper understanding of one subject or another. Furthermore, you would have to take into account your own self alongside myself and if you try too hard, then often you fail when you get caught in the stress and anxiety of being expected to perform and expect to much of yourself.
