Can we 'know' anything?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Atreyu
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Atreyu »

I define "knowing" as "seeing", meaning direct perception, direct experience. I know that I am typing to a philosophy forum right now because I'm doing it. I know there is a desk in front of me right now because I can see it. I might not know who or what I really am, I might not know the real reasons why I'm typing this right now, and I might not know the ultimate reality of what a desk, or anything else, is. But I feel comfortable saying I "know" the above things simply because I trust my direct perception and do not consider myself insane. If 10/10 people tell me that in fact they do not see any desk in my room, even though I say I can, I might begin to doubt my sanity. But even then I would not be sure and would become confused.

So even though we cannot "know" anything in the absolute meaning of the term, I still feel the word "know" has some real applicability in our daily lives. It may not be absolute and only relative, but it has a definite practical meaning which IMO also implies some kind of "real" meaning.
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Uriahharris
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Uriahharris »

By the way. When you said Socrates said the only thing we can know is that we know nothing, this is a fallacy. For how can you know that you know nothing, you would be knowing something, this is a contradiction.
-UriahHarris
Belinda
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Belinda »

Uriahharris wrote:By the way. When you said Socrates said the only thing we can know is that we know nothing, this is a fallacy. For how can you know that you know nothing, you would be knowing something, this is a contradiction.
We know for a fact that we can know nothing absolutely. This is because what we do know is flawed by our inevitable lack of knowledge of the entirety of what is the case. The flaws in human knowledge are not only due to our limited life spans but more so by our being limited by our inherent abilities and by the evidence of our senses. Animals other than humans are unable to express their limitations but humans can do so, and Socrates did so. This is empiricist philosophy.

There are philosophers other than Socrates who do actually believe that absolute knowledge can be got from pure reason, as if a man can divorce himself from his own subjectivity, observing as it were from epistemological outer space. This is rationalist philosophy.
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Londoner
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Londoner »

Atreyu wrote:I define "knowing" as "seeing", meaning direct perception, direct experience. I know that I am typing to a philosophy forum right now because I'm doing it. I know there is a desk in front of me right now because I can see it. I might not know who or what I really am, I might not know the real reasons why I'm typing this right now, and I might not know the ultimate reality of what a desk, or anything else, is. But I feel comfortable saying I "know" the above things simply because I trust my direct perception and do not consider myself insane. If 10/10 people tell me that in fact they do not see any desk in my room, even though I say I can, I might begin to doubt my sanity. But even then I would not be sure and would become confused.

So even though we cannot "know" anything in the absolute meaning of the term, I still feel the word "know" has some real applicability in our daily lives. It may not be absolute and only relative, but it has a definite practical meaning which IMO also implies some kind of "real" meaning.
Certainly if I use 'know' in conversation other people usually understand the meaning in context. But in a philosophy forum there is no agreed context, the applicability of something in our daily lives doesn't matter, because we don't accept what is useful is necessarily what is real.

Nor is this about some Platonic notion of Reality. I can know for a fact that although my normal understanding of the way matter behaves is sufficient for most purposes, it is not real in that it does not describe things on a quantum level. I can do the maths, I can see quantum effects, and I just have to accept that the knowledge that I derive from my direct perceptions is wrong - or at least incomplete.

Similarly, I have to accept that I do not perceive passively. I interpret sense impressions against a pre-existing framework. Sometime the framework is shared by all humans (space, time etc.) but it can also be individual. In extreme cases, we have people whose perceptions are so rare that we consider them signs of mental disorder, but the 'invisible gorilla' and other experiments reveal how we are all liable to similar effects. Nor are our memories reliable; we are constantly revising our pasts so that they fit in with our presents.

So I would argue that to believe direct perception is not evidence of 'reality' is a fact - indeed, human progress has been a progression away from the evidence of the senses.
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Belinda »

Londoner wrote:
So I would argue that to believe direct perception is not evidence of 'reality' is a fact - indeed, human progress has been a progression away from the evidence of the senses.
But what other evidence of reality could there possibly be other than perceptions ? How could advance of civilisations, technologies, and sciences(if those are what you mean by "progress")*** progress away from the senses? Mind stuff is partly the accumulation of heuristic devices which are general models of particular phenomena, as I think Londoner has claimed. Heuristic devices such as the general principles of natural and human sciences and philosophy are abstracted from perceptions and agreed by consensus and are always related to perceptions of real objects otherwise they constitute madness.

How we know anything is got from our experiences in the world of real objects and we never get to know anything in its entirety but this is not to say that an object's entirety is an unknowable noumena.

*** "Progress" is loaded with connotations of Hegelianism.
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Londoner
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Londoner »

Me: So I would argue that to believe direct perception is not evidence of 'reality' is a fact - indeed, human progress has been a progression away from the evidence of the senses.
Belinda wrote:But what other evidence of reality could there possibly be other than perceptions ? How could advance of civilisations, technologies, and sciences(if those are what you mean by "progress")*** progress away from the senses? Mind stuff is partly the accumulation of heuristic devices which are general models of particular phenomena, as I think Londoner has claimed. Heuristic devices such as the general principles of natural and human sciences and philosophy are abstracted from perceptions and agreed by consensus and are always related to perceptions of real objects otherwise they constitute madness.

How we know anything is got from our experiences in the world of real objects and we never get to know anything in its entirety but this is not to say that an object's entirety is an unknowable noumena.

*** "Progress" is loaded with connotations of Hegelianism.
I wrote 'direct perceptions' as described in Atreyu's post above (no.76). I take this to be what is otherwise described as 'sense data' i.e. 'the alleged mind-dependent objects that we are directly aware of in perception, and that have exactly the properties they appear to have' - as Atreyu put it 'I know there is a desk in front of me right now because I can see it'.

I would suggest the first example of progress beyond direct perception would be to realise that the electrical impulses in our optical nerves signal something outside our own minds, then that this something can be distinguished from the rest of the world, that it has other surfaces and perhaps an interior even though we cannot see them and so on. Fortunately, we all seem to manage this!

In due course we come to understand that although we cannot directly see them that there are 'invisible forces' like electricity, that we are moving at 67,000mph (in orbit), that solid objects are mostly voids and so on. After a lot more progress of this kind, some people (not necessarily me) are even able to grasp objects like the desk at a quantum level. This is especially difficult because those concepts are entirely contrary to how we perceive things happening on our scale.

Yes; one could say that quantum mechanics and the rest are 'perceptions' in the sense of 'understandings', or that they are ultimately derived from direct perceptions, but they are not perceptions in the sense of direct perceptions like sight.
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Bohm2 »

Londoner wrote:Yes; one could say that quantum mechanics and the rest are 'perceptions' in the sense of 'understandings', or that they are ultimately derived from direct perceptions, but they are not perceptions in the sense of direct perceptions like sight.
Yes, it is often argued that even our best scientific theories do not really tell us anything scientific about mind- independent reality, rather they can only tell us about consistencies within mind-dependent reality.
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by The Beast »

The broken symmetry. Change and decay are two Universal constants. What makes decay? Is it a bad thing? I have a religious approach to decay. The concept of the sacred is installed in a body of water in a place of darkness. This sacred water is pure. No movement. Darkness. But, there is light for the hydrogen in the water had decay and produced a photon. A toy theory is constructed by putting fish in the water. In total darkness the motion of the fish is like a consciousness. The mysteries of the Universe are told in the ripples of the water. The broken symmetry is the element of chance. A convent and the ripples of the faithful are awaiting the moment when chance will take hold on the chosen. He is now looking to name the moment before the memory change it. Free.
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Atreyu
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Atreyu »

Londoner, I was merely answering the OP, which is asking about "knowing", not what is "real" or what is not. And I covered that in my reply. I defined "knowing" not as knowing the ultimate reality of what something is, but rather just "knowing" it in a subjective and practical way.

So basically what I was saying in response to "Can we 'know' anything?" is that while ultimately we may not, we can still "know" at a certain level. And I wanted to stress that this "knowing" which we can possess is indeed related to our direct perception.

So while I may not know the ultimate nature of myself or anything in my room, I at least "know" I am in a room, and I "know" what the objects are in my room, at least in the sense of "knowing" their function in my world and of being able to classify them relative to other objects. I "know" that is a chair, and I "know" that is a table.

And that relative and subjective "knowing" which I can have is always based on direct perception --- "seeing". I can believe there is a bear in my backyard, or that there is a God, but I do not "know" until I look out my window and see the bear, or until I "see" God.
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by I_Dont_Know »

Can we truly know anything?

I don't know...
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Atreyu
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Atreyu »

I_Dont_Know wrote:Can we truly know anything? I don't know...
Neither do I, but I "know" that the closest we can come to doing that is direct perception. And that is exactly how we define it practically in life. If we think something is true, but are not sure and want to know, what do we do? How do we verify it? When do we say we actually "know"?

When we see it for ourselves, of course. And I put "seeing" in quotation marks to signify that it need not necessarily be anything visual in nature, but rather anything directly perceived. We might also say we know a plane is flying overhead because we hear it, or we know meat is spoiled because we can smell it. We "know" when we directly perceive it.

And if we are considering something that could only be known by some kind of "extrasensory perception", like "God", then we can say that a man only knows there is a "God" when he can "see" God, i.e. when God can be directly perceived, with whatever unknown faculty which could be had or acquired in order to do that.
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by I_Dont_Know »

Atreyu wrote:
I_Dont_Know wrote:Can we truly know anything? I don't know...
Neither do I, but I "know" that the closest we can come to doing that is direct perception. And that is exactly how we define it practically in life. If we think something is true, but are not sure and want to know, what do we do? How do we verify it? When do we say we actually "know"?

When we see it for ourselves, of course. And I put "seeing" in quotation marks to signify that it need not necessarily be anything visual in nature, but rather anything directly perceived. We might also say we know a plane is flying overhead because we hear it, or we know meat is spoiled because we can smell it. We "know" when we directly perceive it.

And if we are considering something that could only be known by some kind of "extrasensory perception", like "God", then we can say that a man only knows there is a "God" when he can "see" God, i.e. when God can be directly perceived, with whatever unknown faculty which could be had or acquired in order to do that.




Can we trust any of our perceptions, and senses? They often will give an illusion of truth. You may think you hear a plane but it may actually not be. You may see something in the distance that appears to be something but could actually be something completely different. Personally I take everything with a grain of salt, doubting most claims of visionary/sensory perception or any perception.
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Bohm2 »

I_Dont_Know wrote:Personally I take everything with a grain of salt, doubting most claims of visionary/sensory perception or any perception.
You would be dead if you really did that, since our survival depends on it. One can question, if there's a 1 to 1 correspondence between our perceptions and "reality" but that would be a different point. Maybe that's what you mean? If someone kicked me in the head, it would be hard to doubt my experience.
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Fooloso4 »

“Socrates famously said that the only thing we can know is that we know nothing.”

If the source is Plato’s Apology, this not what he said.

You misunderstand his skepticism. It was an acknowledgement of his ignorance. He said that he knew that he did not know, not that we cannot know. In addition, he acknowledged that some men know some things, such as the craftsman's knowledge of his craft. He did not, however, find anyone who knew anything about the highest and most important things.

“Can we truly know anything?”

What do you mean by “truly know”? Absolute, necessary, and indubitably certainty? That is not how we ordinarily use the term. The possibility that I am wrong about knowing that I am sitting here responding to your post does not leave me paralyzed by doubt. The ability to doubt does not mean there is good reason to doubt. Our lack of apodictic certainty does not represent an epistemological crisis.
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Re: Can we 'know' anything?

Post by Aleph »

Even a skeptic can know something. He knows he's a skeptic!
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