We are all wrong from time to time, even on matters about which we have absolute confidence, alas. In your lifetime there can be any number of occasions on which you may be absolutely certain and yet absolutely mistaken. Thus I posit.

If you were held captive by a malign fiend which deceived your senses, of what if anything could you be certain?

If you inaugurate a method of doubting everything, you could thus be reduced to the simple conclusion that because you are concious, and aware of your own thoughts, you could not plausibly doubt your own existence. You see its a simple "I think, therefore I am.", it sounds so trivial, until in context.

"I'm real! I exist! And upon that rock, I shall build an edifice of reason!"

But I digress, in this case, my point is truth is slippery. Although that slipperiness is a disadvantage in some situations, it is also vital to the way we live. The wrong truth at the wrong moment causes housing markets to plummet and nations to growl at one another.

But to make matters worse, I suggest now that human beings are incapable of knowing truth, or anything at all, in an absolute sense of course.

We believe. We theorise. But we have no direct perception of whether our belief is matched by the objective universe.

But, what if this is a role we fill?

If the Heisenberg stuff is literally true, we as conscious beings have a sort of role in the ongoing creation of the universe. We cause tiny indecisions to go one way or another, just by looking at them. So the one has to ask:

If we learned to appreciate the universe directly and without the possibility of error, would we inaugurate a cascade?

What if our way of existing is contingent on these little uncertainties in the fabric of out world? And thus, what if knowing this entails knowing that, which implies that, and so on and so on until there are no open questions any more, and every choice is made as a consequence of every other, and finally we become little clockwork people. And wouldn't that rather mean the extinction of intelligence?

12 years ago*

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This comment was deleted 11 months ago.

12 years ago
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Hats?

12 years ago
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welcome to epistemology...oh wait puzzle...

12 years ago
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TB(old);DR

12 years ago
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Closed 12 years ago by SuperFluffyKitty.