Poll: but, I KNOW the earth is flat!

[chuckman1]

I'll just say this.
"There's known knowns and there's known unknowns but there's also unknown unknwows you know shit that we don't know that we don't know." Also "Simply because you don't have evidence something does exist doesn't mean you have evidence something doesn't exist."
First person to identify what I'm quoting gets a cookie.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

As for the examples you gave- I suppose I can't KNOW who my parents are. Perhaps I was adopted at a very young age.

As for whether I KNOW that I am reading this, and what color my computer is- I do know that beyond a doubt because I am witnessing it empirically.

Which of your senses is telling you this? HOW DO YOU KNOW your senses are not deceiving you? Look at optical illusions, for example. They show just how easily our senses can deceive us.... we cannot be certain of anything, only relatively certain.

I recognize what patterns are able to produce optical illusions and act accordingly. A plain gray laptop is not an illusion- it is reality. Furthermore, I know I am reading because I am absorbing the information you have provided. I know that you, a fellow user, indeed posted this information for me to read because I understand how a forum works.

I had very similar views of nothing is certain- perhaps nothing is real. When I was 12. I've sort of abandoned that train of thought since and accepted the reality of what me and many others can directly witness in our daily lives with no assumption.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

You've touched on the fallacy of "I think, therefore I am", your thinking may be just some computer simulation, or the thoughts inside another's brain, you may not truly exist.

Actually that's exactly my point. I (note the "I" there) know that I exist because I think. You (once again note the pronoun) know that you exist because you think. Do we know for sure that the other exists. In no way because we don't know if the other is thinking or just the creation of our mind. Other people reading this don't know if we exist or not because they only know for sure that they think. They do not know if we truly think. Thus to them we could just be creations to their minds just as they could be creations of our minds. In conclusion the only thing that you can prove to yourself is that you exist. It is impossible to truly prove anything to anybody else.

Yes, however I would argue that you couldn't prove to yourself that you exist. I could consider that my thoughts could just be the creations of another mind, my thoughts could merely be a controlled simulation, I might not in fact exist.

But the fact that you ARE thinking means you have to exist. Your mind would have to exist before anything else can put thoughts into it.

 

[ScruffyTheJanitor]

I stick by the "don't know, don't care" policy. We'll never find out, and if we do,it may seem pessimistic, bu it will probably just be disappointing anyway. Best just to get on with "life" as it is.

 

[The_Decoy]

being a psychology student we kinda know that nothing is ever proven

Except, ya know, maths and everything.

 

[Corialos]

Here's my answer. Reality is the canvas of the universe, and our perceptions of it is the paint. Ergo, reality is determined entirely by the minds of those who exist to perceive it. To put a commonly cliched quote into effect, "I think, therefore I am." All we can truly know for sure is that we ourselves do exist. In truth, it is impossible to determine whether our reality and our world exists. However, it is generally taken to be so because we perceive it. If that is the case, then it would be feasible to change and reshape reality at will using our minds, since if it truly doesn't exist, then we should be able to be as gods. It also works the other way, too. If reality, however indeterminable, truly does exist as a concrete thing, then that would mean that we truly are stuck in this universe as it was made.

And thus I conclude that the only thing that can possibly be assumed to be an irrevocable truth is that we do exist, and beyond that, it's impossible for us to really "know" anything.

 

[Sewblon]

There is one question with an undeniable answer: religion is false when it comes to Science.

EDIT: Please don't quote me with the sole purpose of "no."

The Old Testament explained how to quarantine the ill. OT I have to say that the only true wisdom is knowing that we know nothing.

 

[Goldeneye1989]

being a psychology student we kinda know that nothing is ever proven

well, to an extent. we learn through patterns and experiences. so we THINK we know how the world works. but really our mind is just thinking "well, when I do do this, the result is NORMALLY this" we may not completely know things, but we know enough to get through the day

Oh yeah but im going to get you up on the word proven , we can have astrong correlation suggests, but we can never have proven

 

[EricII]

Alright, this is where philosophy gets a little annoying, considering its just a bunch of questions like "Well how do you KNOW X is really Y?". The point is, we make up many things, we invent symbols and names to describe what is around us. You can question each individuals experience with their surroundings, but in general, I'm pretty sure everyone just experiences the same things. Blue is still blue when viewed by another person.

- You don't know how many times my brain stopped while writing that.

 

[Hussmann54]

Nihilism is Bull$#!*...... I know its completely off-topic but....

A philosophy prof sits his class down on the first day of class and says
"I know I have to teach on Nihilism because the school says so, but let me just say this. Its wrong."
A student says "Well What if I say its right?"
The prof responds "All right smart ass get up here."
The student walks up to the front and the prof, anticipating this argument, draws a wooden baseball bat from his bag.
"Would you like me to relentlessly beat you with this bat?" The prof says.
"No!" the student replies.
"Why? it doesnt exist, neither do you or I nor does the pain you supposedly feel. So why do you resist? Why cant I mercilessly bash your brains in like babe ruth?"
Student is silent.
"So Johnny Mcgee here thinks nothing is real and yet is afraid of 'nothing'. What does that make him. It makes him either a great coward or an even greater fool."

 

[d3structor]

We use the best working model using the evidence that we have available to us now. That is the extent of our knowledge and we act as if that model is the truth until we find more evidence at which point we revise or eliminate the model.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

ACK I'm too tired to try and wrap my head around this right now. Ask me again when this college semester is over.

 

[Regiment]

Which of your senses is telling you this? HOW DO YOU KNOW your senses are not deceiving you? Look at optical illusions, for example. They show just how easily our senses can deceive us.... we cannot be certain of anything, only relatively certain.

Occam's Razor. What is more likely, that the world is as we perceive it, or that the world is an extremely convincing fantasy that makes perfect consistent logical sense and appears identical to all people?

Then there are the things that are defined by our senses. For instance, how do you know something that appears blue is actually blue? It's the definition of the thing. A blue item is blue because... it appears that way to us.

 

[Good morning blues]

"Cogito ergo sum" is a correct statement ? the only thing that we know for sure is that we exist; we could be deluded about everything else, and there is no way that we could ever find out. Wondering whether what we see is "real" isn't a very fruitful area of thought, however. By definition, we will never be able to prove anything either way; if we continue to function under the assumption that we are undergoing a subjective experience of an objective reality, we can at the very least hope for the illusion (or delusion) of progress. If we question it, we can't hope for anything.

 

[Allan53]

From what I've seen, most people have missed the point of the OT. How do we know what we know? Well, fundamentally we don't. Descartes tried to prove the existence of the self (working on the idea of if I exist, then I can work from there), but there are many issues with his work (from what I can tell, not a philosopher).

We don't know anything, not for sure. And if you want to study how and why people think they know something, you're going into psychology, rather then philosophy.

Interesting, though. Keep it up, good to ask the big questions!

 

[Viptorian]

We can't be certain, but we're as close as we're going to get on a bunch of stuff (I think. Heh.)

 

[Chrinik]

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I think it would be best to focus on the abstract form of "nothing" rather than the physical form (which your second argument is almost correct on; the physical form is the lack of anything else there, but nothing still has a definite measurable volume and density; the physical form is still very important for spacing of energetic particles without which we wouldn't exist). The abstract form of nothing is most typically represented as "0" and not only exists directly, but is extremely important on modern mathematics and digital logic. Again, this form of nothing does not physically exist and cannot be measured directly, but does exist abstractly.

Uhm, no, because i was talking about the physical form of nothing.
Because i was talking about the room the universe expands into, which isn´t a "0" on a piece of chalkboard...

And which density and volume would that be? 0? Even in space, scientists believe there is the so called "dark matter" surrounding everything, that weakens light over distance for example, and not sheer nothingness.

BTW, since you seem to know a thing:
I´ve heard in a documentation that ran a few days ago that TV antenna can recieve waves(signals whatever) from space ( just forgot what kind and i think it was about the "sound of the big bang") which we see on screen as the black and white frizzle.

 

[klakkat]

Uhm, no, because i was talking about the physical form of nothing.
Because i was talking about the room the universe expands into, which isn´t a "0" on a piece of chalkboard...

And which density and volume would that be? 0? Even in space, scientists believe there is the so called "dark matter" surrounding everything, that weakens light over distance for example, and not sheer nothingness.

BTW, since you seem to know a thing:
I´ve heard in a documentation that ran a few days ago that TV antenna can recieve waves(signals whatever) from space ( just forgot what kind and i think it was about the "sound of the big bang") which we see on screen as the black and white frizzle.

Ok, the physical form of nothing is most visible in the spacing between objects. Most of this contains particles that prevent any area from truly being empty (due to wave forms). As for dark matter, I can only say that that theory is so far unproven, but there are definitely quantum effects that can generate real particles even in nothingness (one particle has a real energy while the other has a negative energy in this sort of production, resulting in a net zero energy when you sum the two particles. This is also the reason for the Hawking Radiation that is supposed to destroy small black holes).

The fact remains that most of the universe is simply nothing; matter and energy as we know it requires a lot of open space to interact like it does. Regardless of if there is still energetic particles in that particular space, the space itself is nothing (this is counter to the 'Ether' theories that were postulated in the 19th century and were disproven). Basically, if raw space wasn't "nothing" then much of what we know about relativistic and quantum physics would not hold in reality.

As for the second part, about TV antennas, I can't say for sure if that is true; I do know that a significant amount of cosmic radiation gets to earth (my senior design project in college actually had to do with cosmic rays... unfortunately, not the detection portion). Your TV antenna can pick up some cosmic rays, since it can detect charged particles hitting it and radio frequency EM waves. However, most static is generated by thermal effects in the circuitry, and generation of EM waves by nearby objects; any electronic object, including your brain, produces an EM field that changes as the object moves or the current through it changes (and most devices use AC power, which is constantly changing). I am not sure what cause has the greatest effect on static on your TV, but I would think the thermal and local EM noise causes would be more significant.