Absolute Certainty Beyond Ones Mind Is Possible

Grog · Post by **Grog** » 2003-02-11 04:53pm

Philosophers assume to much

xianseeker · Post by **xianseeker** » 2003-02-11 04:54pm

Good philosophers, like good mathematicians assume as little as necessary.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2003-02-11 05:28pm

BlkbrryTheGreat wrote:
SirNitram wrote:Actually that wasn't what Decartes argued at all. He assumed that you can't go up, IE, if you are imperfect, you can't become perfect. He extended this to think that you can't imagine a perfect being unless 1) You're perfect or, 2) There is a perfect being, giving you the thought. If we assume for some crackaddled reason his assumption is right, it all works. Sadly, it's a big assumption.
Thats the stupidest idea I've heard today. Perfection is based entirely upon a given set of criteria, none of which actually have to exist in reality to be concieved. You can imagine a perfect criminal even if you are not a prefect criminal or ever saw one.

I suggest you think long and hard before you declare this the stupidest idea you've ever heard. What he used to come to this conclusion is no matter how you pour a cup of water, the amount of water moving to what it's pouring into cannot exceed what the cup held. Of course, it is not viable in his usage.

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2003-02-11 05:29pm

Ok, apparantly you don't understand what an axiom is.

From Webster
1 : a maxim widely accepted on its intrinsic merit
2 : a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument or inference : POSTULATE 1
3 : an established rule or principle or a self-evident truth

It is an axiom that existence is possible
No, that's a proposition.

Your right, that existence is possible is an extension of the axiom of my existence. The actual axiom should be that I exist.

Just because most axioms are uncertain does not mean they all are.
All axioms are uncertain by the definition of what they are.

Thats funny I dont see any uncertaintiy in the axiom of my existence, it is self evident and absolutly certain.

BlkbrryTheGreat wrote: The axioms that we begin with in my example are certain because we have defined them in a certain way, and we can be certain that the axioms are certain because we defined them in a certain way.

What? Did you repeat yourself on accident or were you trying to make a point? In any event, your axioms are only certain in the context of the system that they create. They have no basis in any language outside of that. And they certainly have no basis on the real world.

The real world, for all intents and purposes, is outside the discussion of absolute certainity. The axioms are certain within our minds because they have a precise defination and exist as concepts within our minds (which we know exist). The act of defining an axiom is conceptualizing it. However, the truth of a given relationship does not depend upon our knowing the relationship or the axioms upon which it is based.

In other words, we can define and conceptualize any number of axioms and definations. However, their relationship to one another is not dependent upon our conceptualization of them. It is fixed and absolute.

BlkbrryTheGreat wrote: Thats the stupidest idea I've heard today. Perfection is based entirely upon a given set of criteria, none of which actually have to exist in reality to be concieved. You can imagine a perfect criminal even if you are not a prefect criminal or ever saw one.

No, this isn't a stupid idea. It's a very complex theological and philosophical argument known as the via negativa. Whenever we made a statement it is a univocal predication because we have knowledge of that which we speak. When a statement is made about God or any perfect or infinite being, the predication is necessarily equivocal since it is impossible for a finite being to have conception of the infinite. Therefore we can never speak of God or a perfect being in a coherent way.

Mankind has a conceputal, mathimatical, defination of infinite. Unless you can define what you mean by perfection, finite and infinite, in this circumstance, your just muttering words without any conceptual meaning behind them. Its like me saying that since your a JALKJ being you can have no concept of a JKLAJ being since it is impossible for a JALKJ to percive JKLAJ.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-02-11 05:35pm

One of my most favorite philosophers, Daniel Dennett, who is more of a scientists then a philosopher, said that science is what you do when you know the right questions to ask, and philosphy is when you dont know the right questions to ask, because if you did you'd go out and answer them which would be science.

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2003-02-11 05:38pm

kojikun wrote:One of my most favorite philosophers, Daniel Dennett, who is more of a scientists then a philosopher, said that science is what you do when you know the right questions to ask, and philosphy is when you dont know the right questions to ask, because if you did you'd go out and answer them which would be science.

Makes alot of sense. I'm just challenging the assertion that absolute certaintiy exists only within the context of our own minds, Im not saying we should abondon science because we dont have absolute certainty of its conclusions.

Malecoda · Post by **Malecoda** » 2003-02-11 07:01pm

BlkbrryTheGreat wrote: Im saying this because the relationship remains true and valid even if you never thought of any of the concepts. They are true even if you don't realize that they are true. Basically I'm arguing that by conceptualizing concepts you are discovering their relationship instead of inventing them. The act of discovering their relationship is discovering something outside of your consciousness, their truth is not dependent upon your conceptualization of their relationship or defination.

Hmm, sounds like I've heard it before... Now where was it? Oh yeah: math class. This isn't new.

Andrew J. · Post by **Andrew J.** » 2003-02-11 08:11pm

I'm absolutely certain that this thread is boring. How's that?

Frank_Scenario · Post by **Frank_Scenario** » 2003-02-11 08:43pm

Ignoring for a moment questions of certainty, doubt, and knowledge to talk about Descartes:

I've always read Descartes as considering God, the perfect being, as being in some way akin to to Anselm's version - the being that than which there can be no greater, a.k.a. the greatest conceivable being. For Descartes, God is also infinite, and supposedly we have a clear and distinct perception of God which must have come from God himself. It's similar in structure to the ontological argument put forth by Anselm, which is why I think Descartes has a similar idea of God in mind.

Grog · Post by **Grog** » 2003-02-12 01:33am

Doesn’t absolute certainty fall because you can't be sure that you have the best arguments?

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2003-02-12 01:48am

Anselm's argument for God was garbage, probably worse than Aquinas' Five Ways. Anselm made way too many assumptions and flawed, undefined definitions of God to make it seem like the concept of an existing god = and existing god, and yet as even Descates admitted, concepts have nothing to do with the observed world.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2003-02-12 06:28am

Darth Wong wrote:I'm afraid not. You see, the concepts you describe only exist in your mind. You can conceptualize them any way you want, pretend you're thinking about something a million light years wide, but ultimately, you're talking about concepts which only "exist" because you're thinking about them, ie- they only exist in your mind.

There is no way to absolutely know anything beyond the fact that your own thoughts exist. That's why we have the scientific method, which discards the stupid and useless criterion of absolute knowledge in favour of highly accurate descriptions.

I sometimes amuse myself by musing on the fact that Pythagoreas was rather closer than most others of his era to the truth. The closest we can really get is science, or in his day, mathematics.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2003-02-12 06:29am

Ooh. Medieval philosophy and God. I'll comment on that tonight in exhaustive detail; I need to go now unfortunately.

Zoink · Post by **Zoink** » 2003-02-12 08:19am

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:Ooh. Medieval philosophy and God. I'll comment on that tonight in exhaustive detail; I need to go now unfortunately.

But I wanna hear it now!

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2003-02-12 08:49am

Darth Utsanomiko wrote:Anselm's argument for God was garbage, probably worse than Aquinas' Five Ways. Anselm made way too many assumptions and flawed, undefined definitions of God to make it seem like the concept of an existing god = and existing god, and yet as even Descates admitted, concepts have nothing to do with the observed world.

Concepts are derived entirely from the observed world. If Descates really thought that they aren't then he was truely an idiot.

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2003-02-12 09:32am

No, what he said was that concepts (ideas a mind thinks up) don't affect the observed world, something anselm totally ignored in order to declare that a thought of "an existing thing greater than anything" has anything to do with an actual existing thing. Even without taking into account that his religion's definition of god was a total asshole, it was pure bullshit for him to expect his idea to fly.

Grog · Post by **Grog** » 2003-02-12 11:04am

Why care about what somebody said some 100 years ago when you can come up with your own philosophies?

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2003-02-12 11:08am

Grog wrote:Why care about what somebody said some 100 years ago when you can come up with your own philosophies?

Lol, no shit, that's what I was thinking when I got in Intro to Philosophy. I had already gone over most of these ideas and possibilites in the last few years, and yet there's a whole goddamn college program devoted to beating the either the oldest or the most idiotic ones into the ground for kids without a lick of logic in their heads. What a mess.

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2003-02-14 12:44am

I did some more thinking today, and I just wanted to let everyone know that I realized I was wrong. Even though the validity of the arguemnts is certain, they are merely a product of your consciousness setting up the axioms upon which the validity is based, hence the validity is just as much a product of your consciousness as the concepts are. The validity exists but its who based upon the rules you set, and by that reasoning you could make any concept valid given the correct "universe" set up by axioms.

Hope you all didn't mind reading this, I certainly think it was worth a try, even if the only friut to come from it was a bit of abstact metal exercise.