I mean that certainty is a state of mind. I am certain that if i run in front of an oncoming bus, it will hurt. Despite that i have no interest in proving that.
yes but what did you mean the will to god? are you religious? so far all i can construe is that by will to god you mean that peoples certainty in things like faith in god are states of mind… please correct me if i’m wrong.
I am an atheist. Yes, certainty is a state of mind. Faith is a state of mind. The idea of God satisfies a desire for certainty. This desire is instrumental to survival - but once humans had some time to think past survival…Will to God. A truly theist God, that is. More primitive conceptions were closer to survival needs. Worshipping the rain makes some sense if you’re really thirsty, and so on.
I like where this discussion is going, the word “illusion” is thrown around as a dismissal of far to many valid ideas around here.
I think that certainty is the bane of epistemology. It is well established that Absolute certainty is very difficult to establish and lots of arguments are unable to get past that fact. The fact remains that we have many logical systems that are able to establish facts that we can reasonably assume to be true. In most cases we have to take some things as a given in order for these systems to work and therein lies the problem.
Geometry will not work without Euclid’s handful of axioms being true, those axioms rely on other assumptions. Most of our scientific laws rely on Geometry which in turn rely on those axioms. Any philosophical reprobate can easily assert that there is nothing we can no and go as far as saying there is no universe based on the fact that no one piece of our system of knowledge functions without aid from another part.
I think common sense got there first. Honestly, there are really philosophers around right now who think its a sound, if ineffective, argument.
Common sense often provides the most likely answer and that often is the best we can do but you can’t really claim to know something with certainty.
It is foolish to doubt things that are “common sense” but common sense does not make a thing true. It will do little to convince most skeptics. That skeptical appeals require “philosophical intuitions” (as Moore argued) isn’t a good counter-argument to this I think.
I would agree with “sound, if ineffective”. There’s nothing wrong with resorting to common sense when it’s mostly really all we got. “Proved him wrong” was a strong way to put it. Maybe “proved his conclusions wrong”?
the fundamental existence of SPACE its self . the ROOM needed for things to manifest and move about
hi ppl
Interesting first post and a good start if you want to questions “further” things.
I too would like at the start to keep “causal relationships” as pure as possible as they are so easily manipulated
by assumptions “beyond criticism” ( Derrida’s Logo Centrism)
Once there was a man dreaming he was standing before a beautiful cathedral. He admired the structure, the old weary stones and there was this “quality” thing around it like a mystical invisible sphere. He went to the entrance and pushed against the tall wooden door which looked heavy, massive, plated with iron. He had to push harder than he thought and the door opened. A different air to breath, a different light to make him look embraced him. Silent beautiful women frozen in statues, men looked upon him. He trembled before so much beauty, he had never seen in front of dark, almost pitch black such intense colors fallen across space from the colored panes above.
the smell of old frankincense, candles, fragrances and believers who had left, made him silent his mind. After moments he could not count he came back and left the church. He continued his walk int that part of the city and found himself suddenly in a bad neighborhood. His footsteps sounded hollow and fear grabbed him along every corner until he had to run for his life with his sinners behind him.
He woke up and relieved. It was just a bad dream. He stood up and sat on the side of his bed and got angry
He felt deceived, This beautiful cathedral, he remembered so well, didn’t exist. It was a fake, an illusion.
But what convinced him so well, beyond any doubt that the structure was real as real could be?
It must have been his eyes, his dream eyes in the dream who fell for the beautiful colours
It was the force, he remembered so well he had to use to push open the door with his bare hands.
The smell of frankincense and he could hear the silence as an uplifting veil. He could hear it with his ears in the dream
They all had fooled him to accept an undeniable reality.
And then Rene Descartes looked around him in his half dark moon lighted room
“Where am I”,he thought, “how do i know that this is real”?l
He found out, he could touch his bed with his hands, see the moon with his eyes, hear the silent sounds of the night and he could smell as he brought a piece of the blanket to his nose, he could smell his blanket.
“I follow exactly the same path to reality as in my dream” he thought surprised
“Exactly the same path!
How do i know that this is not another dream, that i have not yet awakened from ?”
He realized he had the utmost right to doubt any phenomena or process he experienced in this world, any observation
all of them. But he could not doubt the fact that he himself was doubting
I doubt so therefore I exist, well that does not sound very ehh scientific, so it became Cogito ergo sum
and he found out that his awareness must have been the only objective fact in whatever Reality.
ah well this is a hundreds of years old story
I cannot go against or dispute his line of reasonings.
I am… is a fact, everything after the dot is the questionable part of a beautiful game 
I think you missed the point about objects being not the proof of an external Universe
by north on Sun Mar 02, 2008 8:08 am
to repeat
the fundamental existence of SPACE itself . the ROOM needed for ALL things to manifest and move about
Is that so? How do you authorize the “fundamental existence of space” ?
I read this: " the fundamental existence of SPACE itself . the ROOM needed for ALL things to manifest and move about"
How is this a different assumption from “fundamental existence of an object” So that not-object ( SPACE) can be defined?
Space is just another observation in the physical universe
and by the way if you take objects away there is no SPACE
Space without an object is a false assumption
Also in the dream a lot of SPACE was observed
There is no standard proof that the world exists. The reason to look for one is not so that we know the world exists. It’s to determine how we know, and to possibly use that proof, or something like it, to prove just what the world is, or to show what knowledge is.
If we know anything, it is that we, and the world, exists. The question is - what is the basis of that knowledge? But the answer is always an assumption. Or two. All formal proofs are based on assumptions, or axioms. That’s what proofs are. The only way to get past assumptions is to “know” God.
That’s it in a nutshell.
If the existence of the world is readily apparent, it is so to our senses. That’s information, and not a proof.
By the way, it is readily apparent that the world exists - to our senses. Our language is based on this - and it is within language that we use proofs. Proofs are of language, and language is useless if our sensory data is not at some point reliable.
So you might as well drop a television set on your foot.
What gives philosphers a bad rap - or a good one - is that we sit around and try to prove stuff that we don’t know. Proofs only tell you what you already know - but don’t know that you know. logical proofs tease meaning from statements. But we gotta know that those statements are true some other way. We have to already know what “television set”, “drop” and “foot” mean. And we do. Even without God.
Yeah Faust has much more eloquently than i could, summed it up. You can’t PROVE an external universe. I guess that’s why solipsism survives as a theory. Nothing is certain. Even mathematics is just a language. Maybe that’s what Socrates was getting at with his ‘all i know is that i know nothing’. I guess we just have to be realistic with our claims for knowledge
Good post faust.
ill settle for “i think therefore i am”.
faust and his quest for the holy grail… ill settle for a bronze grail…
By assuming that existence is solely for us alone as people, could that possibly be the origin of creating external universal idealized realities?
ok
I agree on that one
the title of this post: “what is the standard proof”, is an invalid question
there is a hidden question within: Is there proof for an ext. universe? answered with a “yes”
The yes should be a no
“Do I exist?” must be answered with a “yes”, but that is a different topic, no?
For a subjectivist - in the weak sense (even Descartes, who is supposed to have invented modern subjectivism) - it is a separate question. To a materialist (not necessarily to exclude subjectivism, but to exclude Descartes), I am of the opinion that it is not. If we exist, we are subject to the same sensory perceptions that the external world is. Cut off your leg, and it is part of the external universe. We perceive this leg the same way we do a fire hydrant.
of course . since we dream based on the reality of the fundamental properties of the Universe
experience