In consideration of the process of knowledge creating the experience, we are talking here about what the world offers to all living creatures with sense organs. All that life has before it is the reality that is the world as it is prior to the estimations and ideas that human thought superimposes over it. Humans tend to superimpose over nature a ’person’ who is pulling the strings.
What human being could possibly possess ‘knowledge’ that is not “superimposed” by human thought?
I would say simple knowledge comes first and becomes more complex over time. Since knowledge is the structure of thought, the repetition of the known over time also becomes more complex with individual style and modification tossed in. We impose on a child right from its birth a series of dogmas, superstitions, religious rituals, language, behavior, and a framework of morals. All this can be described as the superstructure. Thus the developing child is subjected to a series of conditioned responses that finally form PART of his thought system which you are calling knowledge.
Agreed. So then, per your example, how could that child possibly be able to consider his “knowledge” without the traditions ingrained in him since birth? One can think of knowledge as an idea and try to consider it objectively, where it likely began from a simple realization and evolved as knowledge of our environments evolved. However, aside from the consideration of such a possibility, one cannot consider his own “knowledge” without subjective influence. Our subjective versions of experience and knowledge are the only brands of experience and knowledge we can claim. beyond that, we are theorizing and postulating perceived similarities in behavior.
My wife & I went swimming with dolphins once on our honeymoon. During the whole “show”, the trainer was giving loud commands followed by very simple hand gestures. I got curious and asked if the dolphins were reacting to both forms of command or just strictly audio or visual. He said visual – dolphins aren’t believed to have the capacity to hear the frequencies omitted by the human voice. So, while it seemed like the dolphin reacted to both audio and visual commands, she was likely just watching the trainers movements (in addition to the bucket of reward fish). An outside observer may have assumed, and and subsequently theorized, that dolphins respond to audio commands, which seems “real” enough since humans can behave similarly – we can relate. However, the “reality” of the matter is more likely the opposite of what the outside observer assumed. Even though perceptions seemed similar, the dolphin perceived the trainer differently than the observer, who perceived differently than me, who perceived differently from the trainer, and so on…
Can any conceptual ‘framework’ really operate on an objective level if it is fully dependent on the subjective mind?
…not necessarily “impossible” per say. We just have no reliable method of determining when or how we’ve finally arrived at a real, concrete “truth”. Instead, we estimate, as if to say “this is close enough to suffice…for now…”
Until you answer to yourself ‘who am I’, completely, you cannot truly know reality.
Am I just my body? Do I have a soul? What really is ‘my’ awareness? Is it really mine, since I don’t recall creating it in the first place?
Can you prove that you are not just some avatar running in an alien computer game?
Can you prove that there is anything else except your own awareness making everything to appear as being outside of you?
Can you 100% prove that you kicked a stone the other day? What if you dreamt it up? What if it was a faked rock made out of plastic? What if…
That’s what Stat and I are discussing. It seems to boil down to knowledge, how it’s passed down through the generations, and if it can be trusted as the basis for true perception. I think Stat and I could agree that knowledge is significant in that it is all we can use in thought and that it plays a role in who we are through achievements when using thought. Yet, at the same time thought can be the very thing that deceives us.
There is a divisive element in thought which causes divisions in an otherwise contiguous reality. Who am I? is one example. It is a trick that thought is playing with itself. There is an ‘I’ that is inquiring into the existence of another “I’ the nature of which it does not know. But there is only one thought splitting itself in two. Thought cannot help but do that because it gives itself an extended presence in which to survive. Another way thought operates, in an effort to prolong its existence, is to create opposites and swing in its estimations between them.
If I tell you something is reality, where does that place you? It suggests a truth that you should experience, but that is not truth, that is not reality. Even if we go all the way from one train of thought to the extreme other train of thought we will not find reality. As long as we are looking for it in all these, and more to come, areas of knowledge, we will never stop to see the reality that is right there when we stop looking for it.
But I know what you mean Boyan … how do I know for sure that I am perceiving true reality even when I do look at things right before my eyes. Descarte asked that question too. The Matrix is all about that.
Hi Finishedman - well actually with reference to the Matrix movies are actually a very appropriate analogy for that tired subject object division that’s assumed by skeptics and their “refuters”
Its always posed as an isolated eye of the subject resting on some sort of medium sized dry goods in the “outside world” (chairs, pens, sticks in water and the likes!!) - this already concedes the skeptic his argument as we are already trapped in a mind with our subjective representations of “real world” objects etc…
In fact being at the movies is actually one of those extremely rare occasions when this does actually capture our real phenomenal involvement with the world - at a film we see reality projected up for our eyes and ears but we are an isolated and uninvolved observer with that classic view from no where - so yes we are enthralled to/by the evil demon of popular entertainment (maybe even more so in a 3 d film)
But our normal experience of reality is through practical experiential immediate 2 way engaged involvement and not as an all seeing eye that’s a complete stranger separated out from the world.
Heidegger’s (yea the Nazi !!) classical example is hammering. We know the hammer most profoundly when we are thoughtlessly hammering - using it.
If we miss a shot or it lands on our finger then we enter this strange world of subject and object.
We see it as a thing with properties etc - the mysterious world of Locke and Descartes.
But for Heidegger our initial, complete engagement with the world is actually the most profound knowledge we will ever get ot it. In this engagement skepticism doesn’t enter.
The skeptical position and the refutation of skepticism are actually at an estranged experience one-level removed from our real day to day involvement in the world which is pre-skeptical.
Before doubt comes belief
as Wittingstein once put it
Krosie
In general Witty is correct, doubt presupposes belief, however we can possibly conceive of a doubting which would call itself even into question - to doubt fully would be to affirm absolutely nothing at all, even the impossibility of doubting. All knowledge is absolutely impossible to obtain and reality is utterly unknowable. Yes this stance makes use of words and their corresponding beliefs in its formulation, however it might be described as a foundation or overall antithetical position against all beliefs, even itself. And no, the belief “all beliefs are meaningless and false” does not miraculously mean that that belief itself is somehow “true”. Those sorts of logic games do not apply in this context. It is not so much a game of attaching a formal “truth-value” status to x belief, rather it is a matter of a blanket affirmation, one which spans all believing and all beliefs, even, to the extent that it itself may be formulated as a belief, therefore spanning itself. But this in fact only makes the entire framework coherently meaningful, lending justification to the overall affirmative stance against all beliefs.
We might make ourselves come to affirm that ALL beliefs are meaningless and therefore by definition false, and thus reality is unknowable via belief. To the extent that knowledge supposes belief, then knowledge itself is impossible and meaningless in this contect - as is doubting itself, as is the idea that knowledge is impossible and meaningless - ALL formulations of beliefs or words would be affirmed equally meaningless, as they are ultimately all grounded within each other in a coherence framework. This affirmation against all believing, even negative belief statements regarding other beliefs (even the most abstract such as “all knowledge is. . .”) could be maintained without contradiction, because the contradiction of itself (being a member of the set “Beliefs”) only in fact upholds the premise that all beliefs are false - in otherwords, a) all beliefs are meaningless, b) the belief that all beliefs are meaningless is a belief, c) therefore the belief that all beliefs are meaningless is itself meaningless, d) c therefore supports a. While a logical contradiction is employed, this contradiction in fact affirms the original statement itself, because at the end of it all there are no beliefs left standing which we might call meaningful.
That’s quiet a brilliant post last man and not one I’m philosophically equipped to go near really!
Glamorous logic chopping at the thin edge of various degrees of nihilism almost.
I think you may well be right. Maybe belief is a bad starting point as in the time-honoured formulations of knowledge justified true belief.
Funnily enough most of the knowledge wars seem to be on the nature of justification.
Maybe the starting point shouldn’t be knowledge at all
But then again what’s a philosopher going to start with or how can they even begin without it!
Maybe I confused stuff too with the Witty quote (I always call him that too funnily enough!)
At the phenomenological level (again!) experience is previous even to belief - to any conscious subjective knowledge or doubt you are just hammering or walking without worrying what they entail.
Of course philosophy (almost by definition) involves “isolated” contemplation and then (instantly) analysis, doubt and skepticism!!!
kp
The entire idea of knowledge is spurrious, demands an exactitude and absolutism which is a fantasy. We do not “know” anything at all, beliefs are only relevant to other beliefs, they do not supercede upon or interact with reality at all. They are internal to us. They are approximations, Images that we create in our minds to try and explain something, we describe it (not define it) so as to provide a heuristic basis for enhanced control over and interaction with ‘reality’ (that which we experience Physic-ally).
There is no knowledge, of anything. All there is are ideas, assumptions, thoughts. A thought is fleeting and fictitious. There are as many “truths” about any given thing as there are individuals with thoughts about that thing. . . that goes for anything you wish to think about.
Getting to any ground at all philosophically requires a total reformulation of epistemology. Throwing away the idea of certainty and knowledge, not really as impossible but as meaningless - and in fact this is a good thing! We are not left with nihilism or hopelessness, we are left with the possibility for formulating a genuine framework of ideas which are more consistent and solid. All that exist mentally are ideas, and to say they are right or wrong is pointless. We can judge them empirically only, and on that grounds they are accurate or inaccurate. The idea of some sort of external or universal Truth or Knowledge, in any sense other than a directly circumstantial and conditional empirical knowledge of the senses, is false.
Philosophy creates and refines concepts. This is not a detriment, does not represent a failing on the part of philosophy - on the contrary it is the highest calling we might have, since concepts are the tools we use to interact with our world. Thus philosophy is the highest of sciences in that it (ought to) seek the refining and further progress in how we think, concerning itself with this process and structure rather than what we think, which will always be subject to error and approximation.
The better the concept, the more useful it is. That is the standard we ought to be using in knowledge, not seeking some sort of absolutism or “justified true belief” or whatever - those are hopeless fantasies. No one has ever been able to justify a single belief or idea in any definitive universal sense totally beyond doubt, and no one ever will be able to do so. The endeavor is not so much hopeless as it is meaningless . . . so lets take a more accurate and realistic perspective, psychologically and philosophically and with the assistance of working hand in hand with empirical science, and use these methods as meta-tools to create and refine our lesser tools (beliefs, ideas, thoughts) as best we can. Letting go of the dogma of knowledge and certainty (as they are currently understood and assumed) is a first step in this direction.
There is knowing, but it’s not absolutely absolute, I mean, it’s not same for everyone. Everyone has own truth, and that truth is kinda absolute to one having/experiencing it, while it’s relative to others.
There might be one exception, one truth which is same for us all who are aware, and that is “I am” or even better to say “amness”, being aware of being aware. State of awareness varies though.
Sure but this isnt a belief, it isnt knowledge in the standard epistemological sense. You dont “know” for “certain”, because the awareness as you call it is not based on knowledge or cognition at all - it is a feeling, a sensation just like sight or taste. The proprioceptive sense is not “knowledge” or belief, it is sensation, and is not only beyond thinking but in fact comes before it. Your thoughts/beliefs about your proprioceptive/awareness sense are secondary, contrived and after-the-fact; it may entirely be the case that these thoughts and beliefs are totally erroneous and mistaken as to what is actually going on.
You can say “I know I am”, but in terms of knowledge this fails - it is pure sensation, immediate and imminent experience. It is not a belief, or a logic, or a thought. Perhaps we might say “it is true that I feel”, but formulating this in terms of a belief is just making the same mistake over again.
True, talking about knowing doesn’t yield knowing.
Pure experience of amness is knowing though, knowing of own existence,
but as soon as one starts talking about it, it ceases to be knowing.
I think you are absolutely spot on last man - so much of what passes for epistemology is a complete waste of time chasing something neither necessary or desirable!
Do you mean useful in the Nietzschian - as in useful for living or in a philosophical sense or both?
kp
I think it may be a bit more accurate to say doubt presupposes the possibility of belief.
I can doubt hypothetical without ever having trusted them to begin with. During the course of any new observation or experience one can formulate any number of hypothetical theories in an attempt to explain it. Deduction seems to be a method of doubting that actually culminates in a belief.
It seems to me that all one needs in order to “doubt” is a possibility. I wouldn’t think a possibility must rely on belief in a hypothetical situation, just simple consideration.
Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. It is like lightning and thunder. They occur simultaneously, but sound, traveling slower than light, reaches you later, creating the illusion of two separate events.
Thought is a mechanical thing and can solve only mechanical problems. But you want to use it to understand something living; that is the problem. It is not intended for that. Human problems are something living. You cannot use thinking to solve those problems.
No talent is required to reproduce. Nature has done a tremendous job in creating this extraordinary piece — the body. The body does not want to learn anything from our ideas of how to live. It doesn’t want to know anything from us. We are always interested in telling this body how to function. All our experiences, spiritual or otherwise, are the basic cause of our suffering. The body is not interested in your pleasure. It is not in interested in anything that you are interested in. And that is the battle that is going on all the time. But there seems to be no way out.
All learning, all teaching is for critical purposes. You undergo the learning process so that you can rule others with your erudite findings. It’s a game of one-upmanship. I’m not saying anything against it. I’m just saying that’s the way it is. All learning, all teachings are ‘battle games’. Winning all the time is all that you are interested in. You take segments from a sphere of knowledge that belongs to everyone; then you use your possessive thinking to protect it as if it were yours only. You charitably give out your logically ascertained premises in such a way as to make others feel you are doing them a favor with your sympathetic, understanding approach to prevent the ones that don’t possess the ‘grand’ knowledge you have from rebelling against you. It also makes you feel less guilty in your snobbishness. All do-gooders feel ‘high’ when they do good.
Why else do we keep on asking questions and entertaining them once we realize the answers will never ever be adequate. Why can’t it be finished once and for all so we may see something else, something new. is it the fear of losing what we have? What exactly do we have or what precisely is it that we want to enable reality to be experienced? If we assume there is a reality, then what is this reality that we are assuming? That is a question that came from some sort of answers we already have. There can be no questions without previous answers. You look for and find that which is already within the realm of the known, nothing can be detected outside of that. Thus, if you were to freed (erased) of the knowledge of something then for you there is no experience of that something. The knowledge and experience go together. “If this knowledge is not there, is there any other way of experiencing the reality?” You are asking the question. The question goes with the answer. So there is no need to ask questions and there is no need to answer.
the issue of existing is a living fact in any conscious mind, apparantly for anyone anything is not only devoted to death but it can be directly attacked and killed from any objective fact happening or any subjective destructive will of another
that make the issue living which rise the conscious asking about the bases of existance truth, by simple logic a conscious that do care for simple fact reality of existing, would deduce abstractly that for something to be existed really it means that it is always there, if something is destroyed it means that it is not related to what exist, and what exist stay as it is or evolve positively or decrease gradually, but those sudden moves making transformations of realities in a second cant but say that they never exist in the first place
the logic that follow is the conscious freedom about that self realisations, freedom from all objective moves for better observations to what is suppositely existing while doubting about it, the means are more to better preservation in existing logic abstraction then observing reality, that detachement from objective reality is the first step of self reality existing freedom true
many young people face that choice but few maybe take it literally, the major point that allow that detachement to be real is the conscious present in living reality its true freedom reality means, if it means being living true it would be of that choice if it really realized that objective reality is not logically existing, but apparantly most conscious free presence of living reality mean lies, and they get more attached to reality when they see how reality is not logically existing
and their sense of living as a conscious freedom is more existing there from that reality bridge with objective reality lies life
the true existing conscious detached from objective reality, would then walk slowly in the realisation that it is an existing fact and how it is the only fact existing certainty for itself when it doesnt mean to destroy itself and deal with anything that may occur according to simple facts of existance happenings that it might experience and understand
here the truth that seem to apply, is that truth exist from any freedom fact that can be also a simple conscious of existing, it is not something palpable it is an abstraction of a fact because a free reality,
then that conscious would realize that the most effective way of existing constance realisations is to deal with others conscious realities as itself existing, so it would logically look to others people that seem detached of objective realities moves too, the means of others are not the focus but more the simple expressions of free facts, so it could be simple people that never mean to think but also to gain anything from realities lives
now here there is a trap that i understand the roots better now,
the sense of existing is to live or to die, when u dont mean anything then the mean is necessary of truth which is to live, positive evolutions, the means of death are due to negative conditions of existance that the mind of true is an abstraction of which mean the knowledge of death to come as a certainty that define its free reality sense
so the sense of living of a free true conscious is weak and hypothetical according to realities lives, and that is why for sure conditions of existance mean to create the illusions in minds of positive life by stimulating positive objective happenings infront of them to move for life
now the trap i meant, is what interactions with others is the easiest way for living sense of existing free conscious reality, but here the conscious being true as stable existing free abstraction fact, would realize how that sense of living is corrupting its conscious from being fake because of lies abstractions
here the efforts made for existing free reality fact truth is to be made more for living free reality fact truth too
what others use each others to sense being living as positive sense reality move of existing fact, is always to lies in conflictual relations that clearly mean to use the other existing for its own sense of doing something, while the sense of living is more a fact of certainty to be true than the sense of existing
what is living should mean a positive certainty and not a simple free fact existing
i translate now the roots of killing living sense truth being, the appreciation of the free existing being seen by another existing move as a living one, so it is the same projection of willing to exist of lies lives that are superpose here by willing to live of existance lies
the conscious of another seeing you is accepting the lies about urself existance free reality for the sake of living sense constance
and here where the true conscious insisting to stay in positive truth facts so it can deal with its existance logically till its end, would understand that it must find another way of constance existance then to deal with other conscious existance at the same time that it realized real detachement with living wills through others and real identification of some bases to conscious free expressions meaning being truly itself existing
and here where the truth of living sense appear, from that stillness acceptance of existing fact the sense of living appear as the realisator of objective self existance reality alone in relation of course with objective reality existance that it decide to use meaning its own objective true self reality
so here the truth that apply, is that freedom move is the result of any abstract fact, and freedom move as the result of certainty abstract fact mean always absolute positive justification reality of free existance from any certainty fact abstraction being its source
that what explain the illusions of existance in lies being living, when awareness move as free with their legs and mouths they mean justifying their freedom existing absolutely positive, when conscious deal with each others by looking and talking to each others they identify their freedom justifications being living
so when a conscious stay still the freedom move occur more true according to conscious fact existance as it sources, and the moves are more clearly in depth observed happening, they start to mean objective reality as positive justification of freedom existance with the objective fact reality, and they can go to deeper translation of freedom justification move by justifying freedom in the body itself fact where the conscious is still inn
so positive truth is about freedom moves justifications absolutely, all due to the abstraction of certainty as existance truth, when the whole abstract free fact conscious is justified as positive existing reality the conscious become an abstraction of living and not existing anymore, it is a definite fact of positive existance abstractions
freedom moves justifications do operate in meaning different elements of existance fact free reality abstraction relations of sameness being positive possible perfect relation as true absolute reality , it is the way of geniun positive truth freedom moves in void
Well, you surely keep trying though 
) What you are saying above sounds as it has to be absolutely true, totally beyond doubt.
Couldn’t resist. But yes, any relative being is limited being, and thus it’s impossible to be absolutely sure of anything.
I wonder though, is sense and awareness of “I am” an exception? Isn’t it absolutely true that one who can experience “I am” that one truly exists, and knows it? (If my existence is as a thing, or just as a thought, or as an illusion, or as whatever, it doesn’t really matter.)
Well said, for practical uses of “knowledge”. But let’s not forget that personal and actual experience is what will always be closest to true knowing (own actual experience is always absolutely true to oneself, if it’s true to others doesn’t even matter in sense of defining true knowing).
Logical mistake. The fact that my expression here of how beliefs are false is itself interpreted as a belief does not undermine the meaning of my criticism, in fact it supports it. Re-read this post I made to that effect.
Personal experience is not knowledge, it is heuristics, assumptions. There is nothing wrong with this, it is the way we operate. We dont have any certainty before we perform any action. Yet we do it anyways, based on habit and learned likely outcomes. We dont need so-called “knowledge” to do anything, we never have - so the fact that this knowledge is meaningless and impossible doesnt even matter.