Well vrael, on post 15 it looks like you tried to counter everything I said, buy you pretty much stated what I intended to state. I can't tell if you read my post properly, but what I was referring to was that you can disprove any of the statements you replied about in post 15, buy simply showing that they are self-defeating.

E.G. someone says "All truth is relative." Meaning what is true for you may not be true for me. To show that this statement is self-defeating, ask this person in response: "Is that a relative statement?" The word relative used in this context was meant that truth changes from viewpoint to viewpoint.

Anyways, it looked like you tried to counter claims I made, when I actually meant the same things you did.


Again Vrael, I was in opposition to the idea that sense perception leads to absolute uncertainty. Now, according to the idea that sense perception is the only means of gathering info, the only information you would ever receive come from only the senses. If someone thinks about the number two, you are right, that is not using sense perception directly, although any information you used to think in the first place was only made possible by information that you received through your senses. So what about "two"? Well, if you hadn't received any information through sense perception would you be able to think about "two"? Probably not. In any case, remember, I don't agree with the idea that the only means of gathering information is through sense perception, and I tried to show that this idea is self-defeating as well. Although it seems to have just confused you =[

Let me rephrase my counter to the idea that the only means of acquiring info are through the sense:

In order to know that the only means of obtaining information is through our sense, then you would be able to see something BEYOND what your senses can tell you. That "something" would be the idea that the sense are the only means of obtaining information. Therefor, it is impossible to know that the only means of gathering info are through the senses, if the only means of gathering info are through the sense, making any claims like "the only means of gathering info are through the senses" meaningless. This is what I tried to portray in post 14.


I really must have done a terrible job of explaining what I meant. I meant to say that these 3 statements were illogical. Let me show how the statements I provided were self-defeating:

"Truth is relative" I probably should have originally written this statement like this to avoid confusion: "All truth is relative from person to person" This probably clears up ambiguity as to what truth is relative to. Now, this statement is making a truth claim. A truth claim, as defined by myself, is a claim to a fact which is regarded as truth (remember my original definition of truth). This statement is claiming to be true in that all truth is relative from person to person. If all truth is relative from person to person, then that statement itself would be relative from person to person. If that were true, then that leaves room for absolute truth to exist, and the statement completely destroys its goal.

"What is true for you may not be true for me" Well, this is just another way to rephrase this sentence: "All truth is relative from person to person" and I have already shown that this statement is self-defeating.

"You can't know anything for certain!" Here is a claim to a truth that there is no certainty. If this statement were true, then nothing can be certain, including that statement. If this statement may not be true, then that means there is room for absolute truth to exist, and the statement is shown to nullify itself.

I also agree with how you showed the differences between truth claims and opinions, like this:

Here would be an opinion:
I think that the moon is green.

Here would be a truth claim:
CecilSunkure thinks that the moon is green.

Here is another truth claim:
The moon reflects light at exactly 530 nm (also known as green).


About disproving 2 + 2 = 4. Well, here is definition of math: Mathematics: a science (or group of related sciences) dealing with the logic of quantity and shape and arrangement (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn).

This means that 2 + 2 = 4 simply is because we have defined it to be that way. If I created a statement and said that a Gumpler mixed with a Redmogg makes a Pillgooth, and I created a definition of each of the two components and the product, then my statement would be true. My statement would be true because it is what I defined it to be. So arguing that 2 + 2 != 4 is really only arguing against the definition that 2 + 2 = 4. If you want to disprove that 2 + 2 = 4, then you will simply need to create a new definition and superimpose the new one upon the old one, though I doubt very many people will want to conform to that definition you create.

[Edit] I know people stated the above tow paragraphs already, but I wanted to try to say it in a clearer way if possible for others who are reading this.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 30 2009, 4:05 am by CecilSunkure.

Having knowledge that a statement is true is not possible, unless that statement is negative. That in itself is in the roots of logic, and how it works. We can only see results of actions, and therefore we can only know if a given theory about the cause of such events is false or not. Essentially, if event A must cause result B, and result B happens, we cannot say event A happened, but if event B doesn't happen, we can say that event B never happened. In fact, provided our first assumption is true, we have absolute knowledge that event B did not happen. That being said, nothing in existence will be able to prove that event A did cause result B.

Many people take the fact that you can't have absolute knowledge to mean that anything anyone says is ambiguous, and that they can brush off whatever they want using this ambiguity. This is, however, a gross misrepresentation of the idea of skepticism or relativism. As an example, one may say that all morality is relative, and therefore I can't say you are wrong based on moral grounds. Say, then, that Joe says that the government should not interfere with people's personal lives as long as they don't affect anyone else, but then says that people shouldn't be allowed to have sex with dead chickens in the comfort of their home. Joe is wrong, and not in any sense but an absolute sense. This is because Joe has contradicted himself, and at this point, even the argument that morality is relative cannot save him from being wrong. This is basically what categorical imperative ethics is based on, the idea that some things are tied together, and that we cannot accept one without the other. Anyways, that's how we get knowledge and make arguments while not making knowledge claims we can't back up. Proof of contradiction and proof of negativity.

Properties are defined, however the basic physical occurrences that cause the properties are "scientifically true" or true to the point where they cannot be proven false (which may not be absolute truth, but its close enough). Red light is defined to be light consisting of photons of a certain energy, and nobody, not even the color blind, can deny that red light is indeed red.

As I said earlier, this argument is false because knowing a positive and knowing a negative are different things. Just wanted to clear that up. If you want to call knowing something is false to be knowing an absolute truth, go for it, but really it's not a big deal. Even with that, Descartes' argument that thinking implies existence on a personal level is also something to consider, because no one has been able to prove that it is possible that they do not exist.

Also, as an IB grad this year, good program choice. It's very rewarding.

Well I really just gave me 2 cents on those statements, I wasn't specifically trying to counter you.
That's what I was really responding to.

Actually, that does not clear up the ambiguity. It still doesn't give the standard by which truth is measured, unless you actually mean that each person decides for themselves that something is true or not, and that truth is not independant of our whims. I know yoou aren't claiming that, just if someone was, that's what I would say.

This is quite interesting. What if someone was born blind, deaf, dumb, and unfeeling. Would they then be incapable of thought?

And my reply:

Or, unless we validate it empirically.

Empirical validation is not true validation... did you read the first half of my post?

I meant that each person decides for themselves that something is true or not.


That is pretty dependent on what I would define thought as. I would say that they wouldn't know anything, except maybe a feeling that they existed. Other than that, I'm not really sure.


If I understand correctly, then that statement itself is not a negative statement. I can't see any missing "B's". Is it truth then?


What I tried to point out is that every single statement I have come across claiming you can't know anything for certain has been self-defeating. Say someone is a complete skeptic on everything. One day this person ponders on what it would mean to doubt skepticism. Wouldn't that just be reverse skepticism? Doubting doubts? Wouldn't that lead to certainty?

Someone claims that you can't know anything for certain. That claim is a claim to an absolute truth, even though the claim is claiming absolute truth doesn't exist. That renders the claim invalid, useless. That isn't just a fluke in the english language, it seems to be just how things work. You can't be absolutely sure that you can't be absolutely sure about anything. This isn't calling something false to be known as truth, its showing that you can't even claim truth doesn't exist without making a truth claim. That would be like arguing with someone about how you aren't arguing. During the argument you say you aren't arguing disproving your claim while you make the claim. The same goes for any claim to uncertainty I have come across, including yours about positive and negative statements.

He's right. Empirical validation is based upon probability, and no matter how good that probability may be, it isn't certain.

Yeah I agree, I meant the best thing you could do to "disprove" 2 + 2 = 4 would be to do something like.. Redefine 4 as 5, and then superimpose your new "4" upon the old one. That really doesn't do too much, because of the quote above from Vrael.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 30 2009, 6:51 am by CecilSunkure.

I suppose I feel your "therefores" are drawn from weak analogies and/or forced analogies that don't provide a "therefore" moment. Its hard to explain really. Looks like you delve so deep into thoughts and scenarios that you forget to double check it against common sense.

I'm not going into every instance to show you were, there are obvious enough examples if you wanna find them yourself.

Is that to clear up the common fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc?

Of course I read the first half of your post, just the claim that we can't validate something empirically is absurd. If I push a block off a table, what caused it to fall? It is quite obviously and observably, my hand upon the block which relocated it from the normal force of the table. I would certainly agree that if all we witnessed was the falling of the block, we couldn't really have any knowledge of the cause of the falling beyond speculation, but if we witness the actual cause, then we can say so. I challenge you to show that we cannot know it was my hand upon the block which caused it to fall. I think this either involves showing that something else made it fall, or that it didn't actually fall perhaps, but feel free to try whichever approach you like. (This is meant to be a reasonable challenge mind you, we all know that "technically" gravity caused it to fall, and that our sense data can be imperfect if the situation is contrived against us, but let us just consider this normal human being with a table and a block upon it and his hand pushing it off the table, no one's using fancy mirrors to decieve us, and whatnot).

No, actually. Being skeptic about your skepticism is actually truly being a skeptic, because then you're being skeptic about everything. Likewise, I think this is what Jabok means about the whole absolute uncertainty isn't really an absolute truth. It could be, that the whole "if uncertainty is absolute, then there is an absolute truth that all things are uncertain" is really just a property of language that confuses us, since by uttering the statement it appears to contradict itself. Or, it could be that the sentence is incomplete. "All things are uncertain, except that uncertainty is certain."


You don't even have to go into every instance, Jello, but please try and add some substance to your posts. Simply stating critiques without any reasoning is not helpful to the topic, especially in the form you used, which can be broken down like this, however crudely:

"Your post was bad, but I'm not going to tell you why because it's obvious and you should see it yourself."

Additionally,
indicates to me that you are violating the rule cited above. "I feel" indicates that you have put no effort into reasoning, or thinking about what you're typing, and your lack of evidence for why you don't think the post was good correlates with my suspicion that you're just blabbing. If you have something to say, take a few minutes to write it out nicely. We're not talking term papers here or award-winning essays, and your punctuation/typing is already fine, but add some substance to your posts, or don't post. It doesn't take that long to write out something good, even short posts can be constructive if they contain the right stuff, you just have to give it a little more than 15-20 seconds of your time.

See this
The claim says nothing about Truth. It states only that we cannot, on a fundamental level, ever know whether we're in the middle, or rightward sections of the diagram. We can hit the middle, we just have no way of proving that we have.
Which could be the case.
Also, perhaps you didn't get a chance to see it because I had updated my post after you had responded, but see:
"and then there's insanity... here's an interesting one. Can't remember the name, but I was trying to find the article for a disorder by which a person believes that they still have a limb which has been by some means lost - i.e., they may believe that they are shaking your hand, despite no longer having arms."
Is it impossible that the whole crowd of people and block on a table are non-existant in the first place?

Ok, back to what I said before, the chair example is weak and awfully conditional(i say conditional, because if you sit and watch the only entrance and assure there is no tampering, then it WILL definitely be there, whereas if you leave and allow tampering, you are simply guessing, not stating knowledge) and the triangle example is flawed.

Ps it takes far more than 15-20 seconds to read one of your posts alone, not to mention analyzing and formulating a reply.

Claiming that you can't know anything for certain is a truth claim. This means that the statement is making a claim to some sort of truth, that truth being that certainty doesn't exist. In other words, the claim is claiming with 100% certainty (as it says "anything") that nothing can be 100% certain.

Furthermore your statement of "It states only that we cannot, on a fundamental level, ever know whether we're in the middle, or rightward sections of the diagram." is also a claim to a truth. If you can not know if you hit middle, then is this claim 100% certain itself? If this claim isn't 100% certain, since the claim says certainty doesn't exist ("we cannot, on a fundamental level, ever know whether we're in the middle, or rightward sections of the diagram") while saying with 100% that certainty doesn't exist, this statement is self-defeating.
I disagree. A claim claiming that nothing is certain with 100% certainty is contradicting and therefor destroys its own claim, and you can not use "It may be a problem with the language" as a reasonable way to defend a statement as it uses a priori based mode of thinking. A priori would be "involving deductive reasoning from a general principle to a necessary effect; not supported by fact; "an a priori judgment"" (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn).
That statement doesn't show what being a skeptic about your skepticism means and what the outcome is. If you doubt doubts that means you are leaning on certainty. If you are skeptic about skepticism, then that means you are uncertain about skepticism, which means you aren't sure if your doubts are valid. Now, even the claim "I'm not sure about my doubts" is a claim to certainty, that certainty being that you are 100% sure that you are uncertain as to whether or not your doubts are valid.
Well, then can you prove that that statement "hit the middle"? If you can't then that statement isn't a truth because it is self-defeating.

Here is a definition of self-defeating: "Something, such as a plan or action, which contains elements that will cause it to fail"
(en.wiktionary.org/wiki/self-defeating).

As I stated, it need not be. You need to prove that it is impossible for it to be impossible for it to prove anything certainly in order to prove something certainly.
For example, if it is possible that someone had interfered with your experiment while you were not looking, you cannot know, with certainty, that your experiment was unflawed. It is possible that it is unflawed, but what you need to do is prove that this is the case.
A statement does not need to be proven to be true. All "proof" is is demonstrating that something is, beyond any possible rational doubt, on the left side of the "Truth/Knowledge/Belief" graph. Until it is proven, its location is entirely indeterminate.

To give an example, using Vrael's chair:
Our statement claims that someone who believes the chair must still be in the room is false.
Even if he opens the door, and finds that the chair is still in the room, it will have been a belief that the chair was still present, not that the chair must have still been present, that was validated, as for me to have found some way to destroy it, he could have been made wrong, despite his belief of certainty.

Or, to sum up in a short phrasing:
""Absolute certainty" is impossible" makes claims only regarding proof, which have no effect, and do not prevent anything, including itself, from being in the left or middle regions of the "Truth/Knowledge/Belief" diagram.

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on May 30 2009, 7:41 pm by EzDay281.

I understand, but that doesn't deal with the idea that you can know with certainty, that you can't know with certainty that the chair was moved.
Right, beyond any rational doubt is still an opinion and has no affect on where in the diagram the subject lands. But that just pertains to opinions. What I tried to show, is that "We can hit the middle, we just have no way of proving that we have." is a claim to an absolute truth. The "we have no way of knowing that we have" part defeats itself, as if it were true then you shouldn't have a way of knowing that "we have no way of knowing".
That is making a claim to an absolute truth that "absolute certainty" is impossible. The statement "Absolute certainty is impossible" is not making any claim to proof. If it were making a proof claim, it would be maybe something like: "Absolute certainty isn't empirically verifiable, and therefor isn't true!". Although I disagree with that statement as well, because that statement itself isn't empirically verifiable.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 30 2009, 8:18 pm by CecilSunkure.

No, it means you don't "have a way of [proving] that "we have no way of knowing".
"Absolute certainty" is simply the result of having proof. The basis of the claim that we cannot establish anything with absolution is that we cannot prove anything.

The statement is a negative statement. I'm taking the set of knowledge claims that are not negative (and not that double negative or wordplay crap) and stating that they cannot be validated by any means, which is a negative statement and therefore not part of the set of statements I am stating cannot be proven to be true.

You're using the false premise that skepticism can be doubted. This is because of the following logical procedure: If you can conceive that something may not be true, and you have no means of proving your conception of untruth false, then that thing cannot be known to be true. By that regard, it is impossible to know anything for certain if there is a rational counter-example that cannot be proven false. Say I am a skeptic, I see a table, and I say: This table may not be real, it may be imagined, or created by some illusion. Therefore I cannot know for certain that this table exists, as any experiment I attempt can be explained by means of blaming it on illusion. If I now take your question of doubting doubts, I may now doubt that there is really an illusion, because the table may be real. Therefore I have two explanations and I doubt both of them, and I have no knowledge at all. Reverse skepticism is part of skepticism itself. That being said, it is impossible to doubt that you are doubting, because the knowledge that we can think is some knowledge that we actually do have.

Well, first off you haven't been able to show that my claim about positive and negative statements is invalid, and I doubt you will, because doing so would prove that logic is invalid, using logic. You can in fact be absolutely sure that you can't be absolutely sure of things, but you do need to take a step back from wordplay and look at the actual meaning of the arguments you're claiming to disprove. In short, the only thing you know is that you can't know anything save that you don't know certain things. The issue is that you're getting in to semantics with how you define truth and knowledge, and then assuming that everyone else is as focused on semantics as you are chosing to be. This is because there is, practically, no such thing as absolute truth, and if you look at things yourself without being determined to prove arguments wrong, you may come to that conclusion on your own.

If you aren't going to put forth the effort, then don't post. It's that simple.
That said, thank you for improving the quality of your latest post in the topic.

But I am not 100% sure as to whether or not my doubts are valid when I utter that statement. I may merely think that there is a chance that I should be doubting, but there is also a chance that doubting everything is wrong. It needn't be 100% one way or the other, and if it were, then I would either be completely sure of my doubts, which would further imply that I now have knowledge that those doubts where correct, or I can be sure that I shouldn't have doubting, which further implies I now have knowledge that the original thing I was doubting is true. If I doubt my doubts, then I am claiming uncertainty still.

And nevermind that this isn't a negative statement

DIng Ding Ding! At this point in the thread, I think much of what you were looking for has been lost, Cecil. Threads like this often become a back-and-forth nitpick over tiny inconsequential details or slightly ambiguous wording due to the nature of posting, and no real further value is created. To salvage the value in the thread, if you are truly serious about the topic, I suggest you stop and attempt to create some sort of new foundation to build from. The first post obviously opened the topic, but for future readings, I suggest that you do a few things:
1). quote a thing or two from the 1st post to help us back towards the topic at hand
2). define the major arguments that have been presented so far (both sides mind you, and perhaps list form may be best so you could refer to "argument 1" or something)
3). start building a set of precise terminology, to prevent possible irrelevant arguments based on ambiguity
4). clearly define the goal of the conversation
5). in future posting, relate the arguments shown back to the goal, or some subset of the goal, for example
Our Goal is X, and for X to be true we need Y Q and P to be true as well
"argument goes here" and this shows that P is true

This is just if you actually want to get somewhere with the thread, and not required or anything.

Sorry to go back to something from way earlier in the topic, but:


Phantom Limb Sensation.

It's not truth either, though, nor it is a statement. I probably should have noted that arguing that "I think therefore I am" is a statement or knowledge claim is invalid because you can only use it to prove to yourself that you think, and it can never apply to others. As such, I have knowledge of my own ability to think, but you could doubt that I have the ability to think and I wouldn't be able to prove you wrong. However, if I am correct in assuming consciousness is the same all around, you would also be able to prove to yourself that you have the ability to think, but could not prove to me that I have the ability to think. Effectively, it is a positive statement and fits my assertion that such statements can't be validated. That being said, few people will argue that Descartes was wrong, because its impossible to do so if you think, which is why I would quote it as knowledge that we do have, despite the fact that the only person who can really have it is the person it's practically useless to. In short, the statement "I have knowledge of my own existence" is ambiguous, but asking someone else to perform the same thought experiment and hopefully come to the same result for themselves, validating the claim of "you exist" from the perspective of the subject is perfectly valid.

Edit

Guess I should also note that the set of positive statements and the set of negative statements aren't the entirety of the set of statements, as any ambiguous statemement can be written as either, and can't really apply.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 31 2009, 5:30 am by JaBoK.

Well, it's certainly a statement, but I see what you mean about the applicability to others. I haven't read up on my opposition to Descartes, but as for arguing against the whole "I think therefore I am" thing, it seems completely obvious to me that it's a rather un-rational and highly empirical statement (in terms of classifying philosophy into rationalists and empiricists, I don't mean to say that it's illogical). Naturally one has to think to exist, but you can't validate a premise through logic, and the premise is that one thinks. Any further premise taken to logically validate the premise of "you think" would further have to be validated empirically, and this leads us right back to the circle of no knowledge, since it's only natural that our empirical observations are subject to illusions and mirrors and whatnot. Of course, Descartes goes on to say something like "if I am being decieved, I must still be thinking something since I can't be decieved without existing" (not exactly, just along those lines), but this just falls down on what I was saying earlier about empirical validation. Perhaps he is neither thinking nor being fooled, and the only way to tell if he is, is to observe it, but if we don't accept the observation as necessarily true than "I think" or "I am being decieved" is not necessarily true. (And lol, it doesn't help his case that he started out from his existence to prove his existence, if you read his meditations you might pick up on this if you haven't read them already.) Of course, I am not actually of the opinion that we don't think, and I would argue that in certain cases empirical observations can provide true knowledge, when we combine the observation with rationality to determine the true cause and effect relationship.

The way I plan on ending my speech in my class on this debate/topic, is with a concluding statement that goes like this: "The only absolute truth is this statement."

I have thought about this statement for a while now and I can't find any solid way around it. Jabok and his statement: "Absolute truth doesn't exist, unless it is a negative statement." Uses the same tactic as the statement above as it was modified to allow itself to exist while making its claim. All the earlier statements I brought into the conversation were self-defeating, and each one needed to be modified slightly to allow itself to abide by its own claims.

But I just don't quite understand how this is works:
Could you explain this in a clearer way for me? I don't understand how the statement "Absolute truth doesn't exist, unless it is a negative statement" is a negative statement. If you explained it in more detail I'm sure I could use it in the speech of mine.

[Edit]: And where, Jabok, did you first hear about this whole idea of positive, negative, and ambiguous statements? Or did you come up with it?

Right, its a rather pointless claim (that the only way of knowing anything is through the senses).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 31 2009, 8:27 pm by CecilSunkure.

Er... what's a "rather pointless claim"? And where did 'senses' come in?
Sorry, pronouns without explicit antecedants get confusing when used during long chains of conversation, and my memory tends to fuzz up after around two posts. I tried reading back, but just got confused. xP