Below is your compilation followed by mine. I’ve gathered some ideas from your posts and made a few changes to mine as well! Please let me know if the order of certainty is correct for you.
I welcome any contributions for other lists!
PatrickHenry’s types of “knowledge” and valuation of certainties:
1. Revelation: Spiritual understanding divinely communicated.
2. Faith: Belief in a revelation experienced by another.
1. Internal emotional state: I feel I'm happy, or I have empathy, compassion or sympathy for you. This is pretty nearly the only thing I am certain of. It's certain even if I am deranged or on drugs, or both. In this category I would place my knowledge of morality, which for AG seems to be expressed as revealed knowledge.
2. Sensory perception of something external to me: I see my dog is lying at my feet. I am aware that this has limitations, but what choices do I have? I learn the limitations and live with them.
3. Personal memory: I recall I had breakfast this morning. Same limitations apply, except that they are more frequent and serious.
4. Logical conclusion: I can prove the Pythagorean theorem is valid and true. The trueness may be unassailable, but the conclusions of axiomatic reasoning are only as true as the axioms, which may be arbitrary. Outside of pure logic and pure mathematics, axiomatic reasoning drops quickly in my estimation of usefulness. People who argue politics and religion from a "rational" perspective are low on my list of useful sources.
5. Prediction from scientific theory: I calculate there will be a partial solar eclipse this week. I am not aware of any scientific theory that I understand which has failed in a major way. Some theories, of course, make sharper predictions than others. Eclipses are pretty certain.
6. Conclusion from evidence: I conclude from the verifiable evidence that ... Oddly enough, "facts" are less certain in my view than theories.
7. Acceptance of another's opinion: I provisionally accept the opinion of X (an individual or group) as knowledge because (a) I haven't worked it out for myself; and (b) I have what I regard as good reason for confidence in X.
This whole subject of "knowledge" is probably worth a vanity thread of its own. If more attention were paid to it, perhaps a lot of confusion in many areas could at least be understood better. Many disagreements are probably the result of different "knowledge priorities" rather than pure stubbornness, as often seems the case. Alas, all this work is somewhat lost here at the end of a thread with an unrelated article.
... nothing physical which sense experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words.His position didn't prevail at the time. Since then the Church has quite literally modified it's certainty index, as can be inferred from this Papal document:
I had the opportunity, with regard to Galileo, to draw attention to the need of a rigorous hermeneutic for the correct interpretation of the inspired word. It is necessary to determine the proper sense of Scripture, while avoiding any unwarranted interpretations that make it say what it does not intend to say. In order to delineate the field of their own study, the exegete and the theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural sciences.I'm rather confident that you accept the solar system. Nevertheless, to routinely rank the interpretations of others regarding revelation ahead of what we actually observe can generate conflicts of this nature. Or so it seems to me. Anyway, that's why I put theological issues in a separate ranking.
Public release date: 10-Apr-2005
Contact: David Reid
david.reid@iop.org
44-207-470-4815
Institute of Physics
http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/mathematics.php
Sacred constant might be changing
Scientists discover one of the constants of the universe might not be constant
Physical constants are one of the cornerstones of physics ? sacred numbers which we know to be fixed ? but what if some of these constants are changing? Speaking at the Institute of Physics conference Physics 2005, Dr Michael Murphy of Cambridge University will discuss the "fine structure constant" ? one of the critical numbers in the universe which seems to be precisely tuned for life to exist ? and suggest that it might not be constant after all.
Dr Murphy has used the largest optical telescope in the world, the Keck telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, to study light from distant quasars. This light has been travelling across the universe for billions of years, and seems to show that the fine structure constant, often known as "alpha", may be varying over time.
The fine structure constant governs the electromagnetic force which holds all atoms and molecules together. Scientists have known for many years that if its value was slightly different, life could not exist. Only the very tiniest changes over time could be tolerated, and most scientists believe that alpha today is the same as it always has been.
The constant also affects the absorption fingerprint of atoms, which can be detected when light shines through gas clouds. Murphy has used quasars as incredibly distant light sources, whose light encounters gas clouds on its way to Earth. The light takes time to reach Earth, so he sees the fingerprints as they were billions of years ago. By comparing these fingerprints with those obtained in experiments on Earth, he concludes that alpha has changed by about one part in two-hundred-thousand during the last 10 billion years.
Other researchers have published results which suggest that alpha does not change. However Dr Murphy's work is the most detailed survey ever performed. He says that the internal checks in his method, which other research groups did not use, make this the most reliable measurement to date.
Murphy is careful not to claim that the case is closed, and he says that nobody can really say that alpha varies until another type of experiment has confirmed it. "We are claiming something extraordinary here," says Murphy, "and the evidence, though strong, is not yet extraordinary enough."
Dr Michael Murphy is a Research Associate at the Institute of Astronomy in the University of Cambridge, and a Research Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.
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Contact Details: Dr Michael Murphy, Tel: 0122-333-7505, Email: mim@ast.cam.ac.uk
Michael Murphy's research website: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~mim/res.html
Dr Murphy is available for interviews: Contact David Reid, Institute of Physics, 44-207-470-4815 to arrange an interview.