Foundations Of Human Knowledge

[RodReynolds 87]

I'm not sure this is the right forum, but until FCP puts in an epistemology section, I guess it will have to do. If you're anything like me, you have found yourself existing. You have what you believe are memories that correspond to actual events in an external world, and you believe that there is a strong correspondence between your internal world (everything occuring in your mind) and this external world. You also have something that you refer to as "rationality". My question, or maybe just statement, is that in order to proceed in understanding yourself and the universe, you must assume these things, which I'll spell out again.1. Rationality2. A strong correspondence between the internal world of your mind and the external world.Once you assume these things, you can go about exploring the universe. In your exploration of the universe you have come to make sense of these two assumptions. Possibly you have come to the conclusion that there is a God, or possibly you have rejected such an idea. Either way, you probably have a worldview formulated that makes sense of your two assumptions, possibly even gives good evidence for 1 and 2. For example, if you are a materialist, you've probably come to accept evolution as the mechanism that brought about your existence. In order for a species to survive, it would probably be necessary that species to have properties 1 and 2. That seems reasonable enough. If my thinking is sound, this is a grand case of circular reasoning. You start with 1 and 2 and arrive at evidence for 1 and 2. I would argue (and maybe this is something everyone agrees with already, and here I am, in the 21 century exposing my views that the earth is a sphere damnit!) that circular reasoning is necessary for anyone who desires to construct a sensible worldview. It's basically just a statement of "you have to start somewhere". Once you start somewhere though, you go on exploring to see if your assumptions lead to a self-consistent view of the world. Maybe I've oversimplified things, but I think you understand my point.Questions: Is my thinking sound? Have I mischaracterized things in any way? Is it evident that I have very little background in philosophy and the study of knowledge? Discuss.

[LongLiveYorke 38]

I'm a bit hung over now, but I'll do my best.Circular reasoning comes about when one is making a proof, which we are not doing.Here, we are only making assumptions, suppositions, or whatever you want to call it.It is convenient that these turn out to be self consistent, but that does not either prove or disprove them.

[RodReynolds 87]

I'm a bit hung over now, but I'll do my best.Circular reasoning comes about when one is making a proof, which we are not doing.Here, we are only making assumptions, suppositions, or whatever you want to call it.It is convenient that these turn out to be self consistent, but that does not either prove or disprove them.

Then we agree. So, there is no such thing then, as "ultimate" proof, but only proof within a given set of suppositions. So, if person A and person B have two very different sets of suppositions, communication will be difficult indeed.How do we judge between different sets of suppositions? Am I free to choose whatever I want? You say "It is convenient that these turn out to be self consistent, but that does not either prove or disprove them", but I assume you would agree that inconsistency disproves them, yes? Is this the only guideline? I find this very interesting. If you don't, feel free to stop talking.

[LongLiveYorke 38]

In any field, one must define and fix a set of Axioms (or at least have a general idea of what they are). You've already done this with your two examples and I think that they're pretty reasonable. In order to live our everyday lives and have any ideas about the universe at all, one must first assume that he can trust his senses and must also assume that in some way there is some order in the universe (though I'm not sure that I can come up with a model of a universe where there is no order whatsoever or no way of coming up with a model to describe the universe in some way). In physics, one uses the above rules to come up with laws (in other words, we must use our senses to make experimental observations and connect these observations under the assumption that there is some underlying connection or reason).When we talk about religion, the universe, life, and other things (which I'm assuming you're trying to get to) we have to open up another set of assumptions. For example, one must decide for himself how much evidence there must be for him to believe that a certain thing is true. It seems to not make any sense to ever be able to believe anything without evidence or some sort of impulsive force. Otherwise, how would one have even encountered such a thing? So we take it a priori that a belief must have some sort of evidence (though I guess it could be arbitrarily small).I think this last part is where the confusion sets in and where people with different "assumptions" will find conversation difficult. After all, how could one ever convince another of a thing if they have different definitions of "convince" (I mean, it could be possible, but it would most likely be much more difficult).

[SilentSnow 1]

with a couple small exceptions, there are no logical proofs of the physical world.it is all based upon observation and statistical inference.also, we can never truly know if what we call knowledge and scienceis the actual world. the best we can do is come up with a model that isentirely selfconsistent and describes every known phenomenom. and there mightbe more than one of these models, but since we still havent come up with thefirst one, let's not worry about that yet.and i dont think you have to start with circular reasoning in your 2 cases or in general. you do have to start with a semiarbitrary hypothesis, and then strengthen it with observation and logic, but i dont see how this has to have something to do with circular reasoning.with respect to 1 in particular, you can test each rational model to seeif it really applies to the "real" world.with 2, we just have to assume the universe is orderly. there is noway to really test this.yes you are free to choose any supposition as long as it is self consistent. there is no inherent reason that any 2 humans wouldagree at all on which suppositions to choose. but in practice, it is pretty hard to come up with very many meaningful worldviews that are selfconsistent. also, many people will usually tend to agree on many basicobservations, which will further narrow the amount of reasonable "worlds". if you want, you could say that the entire scientific enterprise is an attempt to narrow the number of observationally supported explanations of aphenomenom. since in a well supported scientific theory the observations and logic should be noncontroversial, a rational person would pretty much have to accept the theory unless they had a real basis for rejecting basic scientific assumptions.i cant prove this, but i suspect that once you become extremely logically rigorous(only a tiny minority of people are, if anyone is at all), and also grant some noncontroversial observations, then the number of different worldviews will be fairly small. also, since there is a fairly small number, then we might still be able to communicate since we might be familiar with others' assumptions in an abstract if not phenomenological way.

[the shank 0]

cant read all that but um islam sucks man i hope thats what you were talking about