What do we REALLY know?

**Gary Wassner** · August 22nd, 2008, 03:27 PM

Okay, we know lots of things. Or we think we do. But what do we REALLY know? Let's hear your thoughts?

**Hereford Eye** · August 22nd, 2008, 03:29 PM

Nothing. Every piece of knowledge is provisional.

**Gary Wassner** · August 22nd, 2008, 07:59 PM

Do you really KNOW that?

**Hereford Eye** · August 23rd, 2008, 08:32 AM

No, I REALLY believe that reality is a working hypothesis subject to further revision. I come to this conclusion from personal experience. Everything I have ever been taught is absolutely true has turned out to be absolutely true under the correct circumstances. For example, when I was taught plane geometry I interpreted it as a plain geometry and no teacher managed to discover and correct this mistake. This allowed the axioms of plane geometry to appear to me to be truth incarnate. I was not devastated but I was disappointed when I discovered that it is possible for triangle to have more than 180 degrees, just not in plane geometry.
I was taught that Newton's Law of Gravity accounted for the motions of all the planets. A year later I encountered the three-body problem.
I was taught that democracy is the finest form of government possible and at 18 years of age I encountered a coup d' etat in South Korea, teaching me very quickly that it ain't necessarily so since the putative democracy had treated the people a whole lot worse than the new dictator.
I'll spare you the details of my religious upbringing and the contradictions encountered.
I encountered S.I. Hayakawa's linguistics in the 70s and then Chomsky's in the 90s.
I read the history of Einsteinian physics and the history of quantuum physics and the history of string theory and I patiently await the next revelation.
I read Campbell's take on mythology and then discovered professors such as Elizabeth Vandiver who informed me Campbell ain't necessarily so.
Every field of 'knowledge' including and fascinatingly so philosophy has posited truth only to have that truth over-turned and a new truth posited.
Concluding that all knowledge is a working a hypothesis subject to further revision including this hyphothesis.

**Gary Wassner** · August 23rd, 2008, 05:17 PM

So let's start with the simpler things. What do you really know about your self, in the epistemological sense, not the psychological sense?

A la Wittgenstein if you will....

**Fung Koo** · August 23rd, 2008, 05:49 PM

Define "we."

Then, and only then, can the question be examined. As I am not you and you are not me, do we constitute the "we" in question? Whom do we include in this nebulous "we"? If "we" choose to render the plural in singular, have "we" over generalized?

In an argument that's based on semantic hair-splitting, "we" must determine the mathematical limit of the thinnest possible hair.

Planck's Hair?

**kahnovitch** · August 24th, 2008, 06:07 AM

Originally Posted by Gary Wassner

Do you really KNOW that?

Slightly paradoxical question Gary.

"I know nothing"

"But do you really know that?"

That's like looking up the meaning of "epistemological" on wikipedia!

**Hereford Eye** · August 24th, 2008, 09:13 AM

Originally Posted by Fung Koo

Planck's Hair?

Why does that sound obscene?

Originally Posted by GW

What do you really know about your self, in the epistemological sense, not the psychological sense?

The basic question of philosophy: what can we know?
For myself, I can construct three possibilities:
(1) I am the figment of another entity’s imagination equipped with a body occupying space/time and a conscious continuum ranging from totally incompetent at birth to practically competent as an adult,
(2) I am a unique entity in the cosmos consisting of a body occupying space/time exhibiting a conscious continuum ranging from totally incompetent at birth to practically competent as an adult,
(3) I am a symbiote consisting of a body occupying space/time and an externally supplied conscious continuum ranging from totally incompetent at birth to practically competent as an adult.
Since I cannot prove or disprove any of the three until I can answer the question how it is I think and determine that it is, in fact, me doing the thinking then functionally, it doesn’t matter which, if any, actually pertains as it does not change anything about the way I conduct my life. Psychologically, one is more satisfying than the other two.

**CMBillett** · August 24th, 2008, 07:16 PM

One of the most important things I have learned over the last few years is to question everything. It gets me into a lot of trouble. Ha. But, the, I see the people who don't, and who blindly follow without thinking about anything like this, and I'm encouraged. I don't ever want to be like them!