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Freeper Investigation: What kinds of "Knowledge" exist, and how "certain" are the various types?
4/6/2005
| Various Freepers
Posted on 04/06/2005 11:36:46 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: lafroste
There was an ancient philosopher who referred to reality in the way you do and called it ta panta.
To: Billthedrill
human knowledge is not only limited but provably so People forget this in order to simplify matters. But it is a call for intellectual humility. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex teaches the same, but it's not easy. I've read some of your posts on FR; I enjoy them.
To: betty boop; PatrickHenry
Umm.. Buddhism does not at all fixate on the precept: God is Truth. In fact, the Buddha dismissed the question of gods altogether as insignificant. His view was that people who indulge in such conjecture are like the man who has been shot with an arrow who then sits down to ask himself where the arrow might have come from and of what it has been made...
Similarly, the Tao of Taoism is not predicated by a godhead, nor is it contingent upon a godhead. Quite the contrary, the gods celebrated by Taoists are part of reality; it is not reality that is a part of them. The Tao is at its most basic "the Way" of reality; it is the pattern of space and time; and it is utterly detached from moral or normative doctrines.
The Greek and Viking gods lied, and did so quite regularly. While there was a spectrum of philosophical thought associated with each culture - too much to cover with any brevity - the gods were certainly not the source of Truth in any sort of absolute or ultimate fashion. In the former case, a swift review of Pythagorean, Platonist, and Aristotelian thought will inform you of the various strands of "truth" that were perceived within Greek thought, and none of them were attributed to the gods.
It's a gross oversimplification to condense the schools of Hinduism and the Amerindian spiritual belief systems in such a manner, but suffice to say that applying Judeo/Christian doctrine to them is no more applicable than is its application to the above.
143
posted on
04/06/2005 8:30:08 PM PDT
by
AntiGuv
(™)
To: betty boop; PatrickHenry
Here is a rather decent summary of
Hinduism - so much as it can be summarized - as it relates to the question at hand:
Within Sanatana Dharma, or Hinduism (as it is commonly called), a variety of lesser gods are seen as aspects of the one impersonal divine ground, Brahman (not Brahma). Brahman is seen as the universal spirit. Brahman is the ultimate, both transcendent and immanent; the absolute infinite existence; the sum total of all that ever is, was, or ever shall be. Brahman is not a God in the monotheistic sense, as it is not imbued with any limiting characteristics, not even those of being and non-being, and this is reflected in the fact that in Sanskrit, the word brahman is of neuter (as opposed to masculine or feminine) gender.
Yes, it is possible to transpose or impose Judeo/Christian tenets onto the Brahman, but it is a misnomer. The Brahman is not an entity. The Brahman instructs nothing. No temporal system can provide transcendent Truth. The Brahman just is what is.
144
posted on
04/06/2005 8:56:40 PM PDT
by
AntiGuv
(™)
To: Vicomte13
Thank you oh so very much for sharing your three "types" of "knowledge" and your valuation of them! I also appreciate your further explanations. And thank you for keeping the same format, as it makes comparison so much easier for all of us.
145
posted on
04/06/2005 9:03:12 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
(Please donate monthly to Free Republic!)
To: JWinNC
Thank you for bumping by! I look forward to reading your views!
146
posted on
04/06/2005 9:04:32 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl
This is right up there with "what is time?".....too deep for me.
147
posted on
04/06/2005 9:07:13 PM PDT
by
Jaysun
(I must warn you, I am a black belt in bullshitsu)
To: lafroste; PatrickHenry; b_sharp; Right Winged American; cornelis
Thank you so much for your post and for asserting your definitions and outline for a structure of "knowing"! It appears your views have attracted the attention of some of our best thinkers. Kudos, lafroste!
Next I define TRUTH as the accurate representation of REALITY.
I find the above statement interesting in comparing it to my own at post 19. In my view "all that there is" (aka "reality") is God's will and is unknowable in its fullness, that the physical realm is a manifestation of that reality. It appears we both speak to a manifestation of reality! That is good to know. Thank you!
148
posted on
04/06/2005 9:17:37 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
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To: PatrickHenry
Thanks for the Wikipedia link, PatrickHenry!
149
posted on
04/06/2005 9:18:42 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
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To: KC Burke
Thanks for the engaging excerpt, KC Burke! I particularly like this:
Often men may not realize the meaning of their immemorial prejudices and customs - indeed, even the most intelligent of men cannot hope to understand all the secrets of traditional morals and social arrangements; but we may be sure that Providence, acting through the medium of human trial and error, has developed every hoary habit for some important purpose. The greatest of prudence is required when man must accommodate this inherited mass of opinion to the exigencies of new times. For prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice sometimes may degenerate into these. Prejudice is prejudgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason.
It saddens me when, in the name of the scientific materialism, the great body of man's experiences over the ages is dismissed with a handwave as irrelevant. We see this too often in discussions of consciousness and the mind.
150
posted on
04/06/2005 9:24:55 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl
Truth. A worthy word project. Since the Pope mentioned that he would want dignity until death, I looked up the word
dignity. Then I looked up every associated word used in the definition of dignity, and every word used to define those words. Etc. until down to body parts. It is quite a constellation, similar to the constellations of meaning mentioned by Schopenhauer in 'Will and Representation.' Four hours later I had an association list, and eight hours after that I had a flowchart [Pflow, really powerful for this]. There is no meaning to dignity that is not on the chart, excepting some Derrida-esque deconstruction or Lacan-ite higher level synthesis that would not be in the usual range of common meaning.
Did this also for 'evil', since that seems to be a recurring theme lately. 'Truth' would also be worthy of the method. It needs some serious free time to work even one term. Maybe it is worth it, maybe not, but many times a term is used in a way that assumes everybody knows what is meant, while a rigorous analysis would show that use meaningless and useless.
151
posted on
04/06/2005 9:29:33 PM PDT
by
RightWhale
(50 trillion sovereign cells working together in relative harmony)
To: betty boop; PatrickHenry
I had to go eat, but I'm back! Wanted to post a bit more on a couple spiritual systems I glossed over above.
The one common trait, perhaps, between the Vikings and the Amerindians generally was that they perceived reality to have emerged more or less spontaneously from the primordial chaos. The Viking gods were not omnipotent; they were not omnisicient; they were by no means infinite or even eternal. They were certainly well beyond the capacity of men, but in little more than a sense of being "supermen" - they were all the features of humanity writ large. And not only could they die, but they would die, and then another universe would be born of the ruins, with its own reality and its own Truth.
Quite similarly, a common strand of much Amerindian philosophy was that the phenomenological world emerged gradually as a sort of nexus of all the spiritual and material entities within it. Reality was a dynamic function and the Truth was everchanging as it shaped and was shaped by the recombination and rearrangement of forms in the flux of time. One might say that it was a very holistic spiritualism, and the reality of the universe was akin to a growing, living creature.
Neither Vikings nor Amerindians would comprehend the statement "God is Truth" within the context of their pre-Christian spiritual beliefs.
152
posted on
04/06/2005 9:33:56 PM PDT
by
AntiGuv
(™)
To: FredZarguna
153
posted on
04/06/2005 9:35:22 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
(Please donate monthly to Free Republic!)
To: furball4paws; PatrickHenry; Ichneumon; StJacques; donh; betty boop
Kudos, furball4paws! You have a very engaging sidebar going with some really big thinkers. All I can add to the side discussion is that Einstein in his book Relativity gave a considerable nod to Descartes:
We shall see later, however, that the general theory of relativity confirms Descartes' conception in a roundabout way. What brought Descartes to his remarkably attractive view was certainly the feeling that, without compelling necessity, one ought not to ascribe reality to a thing like space, which is not capable of being "directly experienced". [This expression is to be taken cum grano salis.]
He continues by explaining Descartes' aversion to space being considered independent of physical objects, i.e. space without matter. And of course, relativity and inflationary theory show us that space/time is created as the universe expands. It is interesting to meditate on Descartes' sense of physical reality in light of Descartes' sense of existence cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am).
It makes me wonder how often we put the cart before the horse ...
154
posted on
04/06/2005 9:54:36 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
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To: hosepipe
LOLOLOL! What a precious response! Thank you so much, hosepipe!
155
posted on
04/06/2005 9:57:16 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
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To: furball4paws
If I had to operate with your set of valuations, I would feel very queasy about the state of the "knowledge" that I had acuumulated. I know you don't agree with this, but I just couldn't do it. You are probably correct in that many of the differences that we have on Crevo threads are due to the above lists and those differences are probably insurmountable. The bottom line is that we have to be comfortable with ourselves, even while we are in conflict with others.
Indeed, furball4paws! That is why I am finding this thread so wonderfully illuminating. The more I understand you, personally, the better I can understand your posts and engage with you productively.
156
posted on
04/06/2005 10:00:30 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
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To: StJacques
Thank you so very much for your list of "types" of "knowledge" and your valuation of them! And especially thank you for the summary of philosophy on the subject of "knowledge". Very informative, StJacques!
157
posted on
04/06/2005 10:05:28 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
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To: Pagey
Thank you so much for bumping by! I look forward to your comments!
158
posted on
04/06/2005 10:06:28 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
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To: b_sharp
Thank you so much for post!
I haven't noticed a definition of 'knowledge' put forward and agreed upon in any of the earlier posts. You separate the terms 'knowledge' and 'certainty' in your original post but are they not inextricably linked? If we simply accept any input into our consciousness without first calculating its inherent level of certainty we can not call it knowledge as opposed to say, 'rumour'.We can categorize any number of informational inputs with arbitrarily chosen divisions without statistical limits imposed but if we do are they relevant? Should we not rather first set the statistical lower boundary of certainty in the definition of knowledge and then instead of trying to specify each category's level of certainty, specify each category's relevance to our world view?
Unless of course we are just trying to compose a list of informational inputs.
Exactly. That is the point. We cannot negotiate a agreement as to what knowledge "is" but we can describe how we each view "knowledge" and how we value the certainty of it. Indeed, some may very well accept "rumors" or "conspiracy theories" or "op/eds" as knowledge. You and I might find that bizarre, but if our correspondent has that worldview, it is helpful to us to know about it.
159
posted on
04/06/2005 10:12:02 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
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To: Physicist
Let me be the first on the thread to say the word "carnal". And to think that the semblance of decorum lasted this long.
LOLOLOL! Thank you so much for your post!
160
posted on
04/06/2005 10:13:29 PM PDT
by
Alamo-Girl
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