I'm in IB classes, and one of my classes is called Theory of Knowledge, or TOK. In this class we talk mainly about philosophy and how people know what they know. I have a speech in this class in a couple days on the topic of "Is there absolute truth".

So I'll define absolute truth, and truth in my own words:

Absolute Truth: A truth that is the same at all times, in any place, for any reason, despite the opinions or beliefs of anyone.

Truth: Telling it how it is, or, in accordance to the actual state of affairs.

So, what do you think? Is it possible for anyone to know anything for certain? I'm not talking about having an opinion you believe in to 100%, but actually knowing something for certain. I hear all the time from people that "Nobody can know anything for certain", and I wanted to know if you thought that truth is what we make of it, or if absolute truth exists.

Well, one thing I think should be taken into account when thinking about this topic is: does it really matter? Much of the argument behind that we cannot know something for certain is something like the following:

Take a look inside a room, say there's a chair in there. Exit the room, close the door, plug your ears, shut your eyes, plug your nostrils (idk maybe the chair has a distinct smell), ect ect so that you can't recieve any sensory data. Do you truly know that the chair is there? No! You can't sense it at all, and the only way to know for certain it is there is to have unerring sense data of it. You might say "well chairs don't just get up and walk away" to which I could reply "well, how do you know it isn't getting up and walking away right now?" Naturally, you'd say because you've never seen a chair do such a thing. Well, that becomes a statistical observation then. Because you observe the sun coming up in the morning 1000 days in a row does NOT mean that the sun will rise the 1001st day, it just means the sun is more likely to rise the 1001st day than if you had not seen it happening the previous 1000 days. Say you work at a place and one of your co workers hasn't missed a day for 4 years. On that day in the 5th year, you'll be surprised when he misses a day, won't you? This is because it's inconsistent with what is statistically likely, even though there is no law that states your co-worker is going to be there every day.

On the converse side: What would you say if I asked you "Is the chair still in there?" Any reasonable person is going to say yes (unless you think I've tricked you in some way perhaps by that question), and if we look inside that room, I would bet a million dollars that the chair is going to be just where we left it. In fact, if the chair was NOT there you would probably be outraged at losing that bet because it's SO unlikely that the chair won't be there.

It is at this point that I would make the distinction between definition-knowledge and valuable-knowledge. We do not technically have "knowledge" that the chair is there in that room, but we do have an extremely high chance of being right, so high in fact, that the circumstances of the chair not being there fall into "extraordinary," something we tend to exclude from responsibility of a reasonable person.

This is a topic that philosophers have been debating for quite a while by the way, so perhaps I am not the right person to be explaining this, but I'll continue in the hopes that it will help you.

On the other hand, I am quite sure that we can be absolutely certain about certain things. 2+2=4, elementary. Mathematics is one area of certainty. No one will ever be able to prove that 2+2 != 4, because it is true. Another example: All squares have 4 sides. If it does not have 4 sides, it is not a square. It can't be disproven that squares have 4 sides, for that reason.

I think the bulk of this debate focuses on things like the example of the room and the chair I gave above, and to proponents of the "we can't know anything for certain" stance, I would give a hearty "So?" in reply.

Edit: bbcode fix

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 29 2009, 4:41 am by Vrael.

A related argument for the impossibility of absolute knowledge is that our perceptions are not necessarily accurate - a horde of pixies may simply be dancing on our eyeballs, obscuring light in exactly such a manner as to produce a perfectly accurate image of a chair in front of us... there's The Matrix proposition ( I don't know of any more formal term for it... ) , 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.
As to the subject of mathematics: even then, we may have degrees of theoretical uncertainty. For 2+2=4, we know that because we define it so- but then, being entirely theoretical, "definition" becomes ambiguous on a fundamental level. How do we know that we're not subconsciously imagining different definitions of "4" every second, which we simply do not notice? Of course, at that point, the entire concept of "knowledge" becomes obsolete... but in any case, we're still left at the only "absolutes" being those of definitions.
For a different example, geometry. A triangles' interior angles "always" sum 180 degrees...
Nevermind. There are cases where it can sum 270 degrees.
And different situations may allow other values. Paradoxes are fun, too, such as the famous one with the ever-intuitional set theory.
Godel's incompleteness theorem also throws in some fun on the topic. But at this point, I've little idea what I'm talking about and am just rambling. Been reading GEB:EGB, lately. xP

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 29 2009, 4:45 am by EzDay281.

Yeah but that isn't a triangle, it's a 3D section of a sphere. Triangles are 2D. You need to specify what you're talking about, if you mean a standard 2D Euclidean Triangle, the interior angles will always sum up to 180 degrees, if you mean a Hyperbolic Triangle, that's a different case, and a "triangular" section of a sphere isn't a triangle at all.

And thanks for the bbcode fix lol.

We do not define that 2+2=4, we define that 2 is the symbolic representation of the quantity known as 2, and that 4 is the representation of the quantity known as 4. You can't redefine "4" in itself, it is a single concept.

I've asked this question to a few people already in real life, and I often come up with some sort of answer like.. "Well, in order to know something with absolute certainty you need to pair two different ways of knowing in order to make a comparison in which to establish truth. Since sense perception is our only way of knowing, then how can we be certain that what our sense are telling us are true? Another method of knowing anything is needed in order to know that what our sense are telling us are indeed fact."

Here's another way to explain it: Say that I grew up eating only apples my entire life. If I were asked by someone else if apples tasted good, I would not be able to provide an answer, since I would have no other experience eating any other type of food in order to decide if apples actually tasted good or not. This represents the idea that we can't know anything for certain based on the premise that the only mode of knowledge would be sense perception.

Well I sure think it would matter. I see people often who are in some sort of debate, usually pertaining to religion, in which one side will throw out the idea that noone can know anything for certain. That could throw a wrench in many arguments, and if the idea that truth is non-existent is true, then I would say that life is pretty purposeless and could destroy many peoples' faith in religion. So to clarify, I think the topic is rather relevant to myself and a lot of people I personally know.

[Edit] I just want to clarify that I am agnostic and didn't post this with any religious agenda, and I would rather keep this topic away from any sort of religious debate since a religious debate isn't the purpose of the topic..

Your Did you take any metaphysics or just phil101 before this epistemology class?

The only absolute truths that you know are things that are true by definition, and "I think, therefore I am" Do not debate me on the latter Vrael

Uh, Cecil?
I gave that in the third post of the thread already. =P You needn't have typed those two paragraphs.

How would a lack of absolute truth result in "life is pretty purposeless"? And this argument is often one that people use to justify their faiths - if one cannot have absolute certainty in something, then they can have no absolute certainty in the non-existance of God/gods/whatever.

I never contradicted this. The point is, if we have an inconsistant idea of what "four" is, then we do not necessarily know what 4 is. I.e., prove to me that 2+2=4. You can say, "it is", but that is defining - establishing that the relation between "two" and "four" is that "two" "two"s make "four. You can count on your fingers, but you might be miscounting every time.

No, this is a required class for me to graduate HS with a diploma that I want.

Is that statement true by definition?

My wording was very imprecise, my bad. What I meant was does this really matter with respect to real life. I hope this example illustrates my distinction:

You drive to the local grocery store and start shopping for items that you need. Your mom/dad/gf/wife/bf/husband/whoever calls to remind you that you might need to buy milk (or any other item, w/e). Well, you, being the smart fellow you are, remembered to check your fridge before you left and saw that you had plenty of milk in there. Well, being so far away, you really don't know that you have milk in your fridge, do you? You can't sense it. You knew the milk was there, but maybe your refridgerator exploded or your brother/roommate/ect came home and drank the whole thing after you left. What do you do!?!?! Do you stand there and ponder whether or not you can really count on that milk being there? Do you buy an extra gallon just in case? Do you have a lengthy debate with who you're on the phone with over the liklihood of the milk still being there when you get home? No! That's ridiculous! When you get home, the milk will be there.

I've sat in on a few of the religious debates where topics like this have come up, and I think I've come to the conclusion that they're not worth my time. If someone throws this at you in a religious debate, chances are they're not trying to get to the truth of the matter, they're just trying to throw off your argument. I suppose I have a bit of disdain for this sort of thing, it's really just sophism all over again. The people I have seen who engage in this sort of debate are already set in their ways and not willing to compromise, using these concepts only as tools to gain a "higher ground" in the philosophical battle. If you're surrounded by these sort of debates, then I suppose yes, this is quite relevant to you, and you should learn it so you don't get "defeated" on a philosophical battle ground, but if your purpose is to "know" or "learn," then the question "does this really matter" will overshadow the relevancy it has. Best of luck if you're arguing with these types of people, some of them really know their stuff too so don't get to irked if you "lose."

NO. Making it the only synthetic thing you will ever KNOW in your life about anything in the universe.

Vrael: Does it 'really matter' if it "really matter"s? It is, on rare occasion, fun philisophical debate ( though, having first been prompted into thinking about this stuff in third grade, 'rare occasion' has been very rare compared to how long I've gotten to be bored of it ) .

Is this what you mean?
You think 2 = ...
I think 2 = ..
So for me, 2+2=4 or .. + .. = ....
For you, 2+2 = 6 or ... + ... = ......
If this is what you mean, then that's merely a trivial definition discrepancy.

As for you CAFG, are you willing to claim that 2 plus 2 can equal something other than 4?
Or did you just mean don't debate the "I think therefore I am" part?

What about your last statement? Is that one a synthetic truth as well? I hope you see where this is going O.o

Since a mini consensus seems to have been formed saying that you can't know anything for certain, I'd like to oppose that view.

For those who said that we can't know anything for certain since our sense perception is our only true way of knowing: In order to know that the only true way of knowing were indeed sense perception, you would have to be seeing something outside of your sense perception to realize that fact in the first place. Even if your sense perception were the only way of knowing and you defied logic realizing that fact with ONLY sense perception, you would have a contradiction. If sense perception were your only way of knowing and you realized this, then your realization would be negated by your own claim to uncertainty, leaving room for absolute truth to exist because of your uncertainty to your uncertainty.

Let me phrase this in another way that doesn't use the words "sense perception" so much:

Say someone claims: "You can't know anything for certain!" Just ask this person, are you certain? If they say yes, then they have just completely contradicted them self. If they say no, then that leaves discrepancy in the original claim "You can't know anything for certain!" leaving room for absolute truth to exist.

The same goes for similar truth claims to uncertainty: "Truth is relevant relative", "Truth is what you make of it", "What is true for you may not be true for me" And so on.

What I would love to know, is if anyone has anything to say in opposition to this logic.

Well, the first thing that comes to mind: what logic?

I can say that a square has three sides, but that doesn't make it true, and it doesn't automatically make it logic because I say it is. If we analyze that statement logically it looks a little more like this:

Claim: A square has three sides
Logic: An object cannot be a square if it has any quantity of sides other than 4
Outcome: The claim is false

That's not a "formula" or anything for logic, just a nice organized layout of the analysis involved.

As for the other claims:
"Truth is relative"
Well, relative to what? First off, just because something is "relative" doesn't make it "false" or "unknowable." Secondly, you can't just claim that something is "relative." It has to be relative to something. There must be some standard by which to measure it's relativity. Thirdly, truths aren't relative. They are either true, or they are false. There is no in between for a truth or false. A concept or thing which is partially true can always be divded up into its true sections and false sections, for example:
The sky is blue because the ocean is blue. "the sky is blue" is true, but "because the ocean is blue" isn't. (I think it was CAFG who informed me of my error in this in some other topic about the cause being the blue oceans )

"Truth is what you make of it"
All this means is that you can accept a truth and still act opposite. The sky is blue, but I can damn well say the sky is green if I want. It doesn't make me right, but if I say it loud enough and persistently enough, people might even listen. This also is not logic, it's a claim. Logic is what you apply to a claim, to decide the properties of the claim, and not the claim itself.

"What is true for you may not be true for me"
Well, duh. This only applies to certain cases, but:
Bob: I believe sea gulls are awsome. (true, because bob actually believes that)
Frank: I believe sea gulls are awsome. (false, because frank does not actually believe that)

With respect to the above claim, it is important to categorize the case, because something like 2+2=4 will be true for both of you, because you are not relevant to the validity of the equation, but in a case where you are relevant to the validity of a claim, then the "what is true for you may not be true for me" applies.


It is important to note that people can say anything they want: it doesn't automatically qualify as a valid claim or as logic. Sometimes, the use of an illogical statement can "stump" you simply because you don't realize that it's illogical, kind of like the 3 claims above. I think (but could be wrong) that you fell into this trap, Cecil, because you said "similar truth claims to uncertainty" at one point, then called it "in opposition to this logic" later.

What about the realm of "concepts"? For example, you cannot "sense" some two. Two is not a thing or object. If you show me two shoes, I would say you have a pair of shoes, but that isn't "two" Two earrings isn't "two", it's a couple of earrings. Maybe "Two" is pretty rare then, so instead show me some "one." So you show me a single piece of cheese, or a shoe. Well that isn't "one," that's just a piece of cheese, or a shoe. Can I smell some "One"? Taste it? Touch it? Maybe I can hear it. You rap on a door, but that isn't just some "one", that was a rap on a door. One or Two is a quantity which can be applied to objects, but is not itself an object which we can perceive through our senses. Rather, it is rationalized. I struggle to find the best terminology for this, and perhaps the best analogy I can think of is comparing it to counting all the points on the line segment between 0 and 1 on an axis. You know all the points, but you can't count them, because there are infinitly many. Same with One or Two, you can't make them physically, but you know it conceptually. You can represent all the points by writing [0,1], and you can represent 1 or 2 by a shoe or pair of shoes, but you can't actually show every point on [0,1] or "1" or '2"

I think if you want some straight up truth, ask someone to disprove 2+2 = 4. If there are no truths (or the only truth is that there are no truths), 2+2=4 must be able to be disproven. And I wouldn't accept some BS answer like, well 2 dogs bang 2 other dogs and have 14 puppies, so 2+2=18, I want someone to show that if we juxtapose a quantity of 2 and another quantity of 2 that we don't have a sum of quantity 4.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 29 2009, 7:24 am by Vrael.

We cannot have an inconsistent idea of what 4 is, because it is merely a mathematical result of a set of definitions. Meaning that 4 is not an idea that is dependent on the real world. It just so happens that our initial definitions are set in such a way that 4 happens to effectively represent quantities of the observed environment. '4' is only dependent on the definitions that caused it to exist, therefore if you are to argue that our ideas are inconsistant at any point, the only point you should be arguing against is the starting point.

The "logic" behind most of these posts isn't logic at all. Be more effective in your analogies, please.

Be more specific in your objections.

So does "four" actually exist? Is "four" only a property that can be measured by the senses? Or is "four" a property of something that can be measured by the senses? (as in, count the number of ducks in the pond, and there are "four?") Does something else need to exist for "four" to exist? YES to the last question.

And what is "red" then? You can look at an apple and say it's "red," but in actuality the apple is not "red" because the pigments absorbs every other color exept "red"-- the apple only reflects "red" light waves? Does that mean completely color-blind people are have truth by declaring the apple as "not red," because it has no color?

By these examples, properties don't actually exist, or at least cannot exist on their own. Despite the fact many of properties can be percieved by human senses, they cannot be directly, exactly measured (unless you can prove me wrong).

CAFG is right, Jello. Your post is useless because you have not identified within any degree of reason the non-logic you spoke of, or the uneffective analogies. In the future, post more constructively.
CAFG, while you were right, your post was also useless because you did not provide any remedy or reasoning for the problem. Same goes for you.

Why does some non-four entity need to exist for four to exist? "Four" is completely independant from every object in existence. You may argue that if nothing existed, four would not exist because there is nothing for it to be applied to, but you can have 4 without having 4 objects, so I would argue that concepts like "four" are independant of the physical world. If no one was around to conceptualize "four," or add 2 and 2, the equation 2+2=4 would still hold true. On a related note, "four" doesn't "exist" anyway. You can't show me some "four" (or some "One" or some "Two", if you had read my earlier posts).

The same goes for your example of "red" (well, the case of "red" is actually different as I explain in a moment but the same principles apply except for 1 important difference). If everyone in the world was color blind, "red" would still exist, we just wouldn't know it, so why does it matter if there is "anything" around to recognize "red" at all? (Actually, in this case, red is a physical property, and is intrinsically tied to objects. If there were no things there could be no "red" because all red things wouldn't exist, and red cannot exist independantly of things.)

It looks to me like your examples really support the opposite of what you claim, because they show that these properties are completely independant of the things they are applied to. Even the "red" case supports this to a limited extent, because it's independant of the people who observe it.