Freeper Investigation: What kinds of "Knowledge" exist, and how "certain" are the various types?

4/6/2005 | Various Freepers

[donh]

Again, this misses the point. As I clearly wrote above, WHATEVER ITS SUBSTRATE might be -- including any variation on "dream within a dream of a superior being", the fact that thinking is taking place proves the existence of the thinker (i.e. that which thinks). Decartes 1, you 0.

Nonsense. There ain't no proof of nothing here. Descartes' claim is an assumption based on faith. The nature of a proof, whatever else it might be, is that it is something the other supposed entities in the world might verify. Your inchoate perceptions are not of that nature, they are exclusively yours--and things only you can perceive are only perceived, much less proved, by you; not to put too fine a point on it.

[Right Wing Professor]

Your personally insulting and falsely condescending tone tell me you're not a person I'm interested in instructing any further--if you're even capable of receiving it. We're done here.

Well, thank heavens for that. Now you can get back to talking to your philodendron.

[betty boop]

We all have our bad days. Mull it over a little more.

I will not stand idly by, Patrick, while a dear friend is being gratuitously abused.

Maybe you should also have a word with the "offender."

Thanks for sharing. Oh, and if/when you have that "word" with the offender, please do feel free to ping me. I will then marvel at your even-handedness in this matter.

[RightWhale]

What suffers from all this is the common life – i.e., a rational public life.

There is no public life unless the State can be said to be living somehow. Maybe it is, through its offices. As it is, our bare lives belong to the State and we also share the subdivided former king's sovereignty in our parliamentary democracy. We are individuals, but only as emanations from the whole.

[Tunehead54]

I think therefore I FReep.

---

Bookmarkmark for later - got a gal going off to THE PROM! ;-)

[cornelis]

We all have our bad days. Mull it over a little more.

"And your large speeches may your deeds approve,
That good effect may spring from words of love." --King Lear

[PatrickHenry]

I'm not going to blame anyone. I'm just going to trace the development of the situation. As far as I can tell, the problem began back in 277, when AG responded to Ichneumon's earlier post about the lists of knowledge. Ichneumon had been discussing my (segregated) list, and had said:

"(1) and (2) [faith and revelation] were obstacles to real learning for millennia ..."

AG responded, saying: "Judeo/Christian faith not only encourages discovery - it demands it ..."

AG then quoted another of Ichneumon's statements, where he had said: "Therein lies the rub -- how, exactly, *does* one separate knowledge from mere belief? That is, how do we determine which of our beliefs are true (actual knowledge) and which are false?"

AG responded to this by saying: "... in Christian faith, the Spirit Himself indwells - the "proof" is His person which abides in the believer ..."

So we have one "certainty index" in conflict with another "certainty index." That's what the thread is all about, and each person's position is what we would expect. It could have ended there. But then AG added something from the heart (which may have been impulsively worded):

"So, go ahead and apply your skeptics' tests and demand your proofs - you will never meet God that way and will only estrange yourself from Him. In the meantime, your body of knowledge will accrue to the maximum limit of your mind. I, on the other hand, will receive understanding according to God's will. My mind will form no limitation to my increase in knowledge according to His will."

So it got a wee bit heated. Differing worldviews will do that. Moving along now to 393, when Ichneumon responded to Alamo-Girl at considerable length. The part that got slightly heated was as follows:

Quoting AG: "... you will never meet God that way and will only estrange yourself from Him."

By Ichneumon: " This is incredibly condescending and presumptuous. Please keep your small-minded notions of how God may be reached to yourself."

In the next post, 393, Ichneumon responded to BB (I haven't gone back to find the number of her post), as follows:

Quoting BB: "Dear Ich, you demonstrate to all of us why it is truly said that the last "respectable" form of bigotry in anti-Christian bigotry."

By Ichneumon: "With all due respect, you're hallucinating. I have no "anti-Christian bigotry", nor was I expressing any in the post to which you responded. And I hugely resent your unfounded slur." ... Furthermore, even if I *had* actually expressed some sort of "anti-Christian bigotry", that *still* would in no way demonstrate either a) that "anti-Christian bigotry" is "respectable", nor b) that it is the "last" (i.e. only) respectable bigotry. In short, your outburst is wrong on every level."

Quoting BB: " Personally, I think you should be ashamed of yourself."

By Ichneumon: "Personally, I think you owe me a rather large apology. Or lacking that, I demand that you no longer reply to any of my messages, and no longer ping me to any of yours."

That was where I left it last night. Anyone could have walked away and left it there. But no, this is the internet, and the natural thing is to respond, rather than to leave things hanging. Today, Alamo-Girl posted 419, as follows:

By AG: "... in looking at the sum of your posts, I perceive a prejudice on your part – that “knowledge” must pass the skeptics’ test and further, that the skeptics’ test would preclude many beliefs (faith and revelation). If that is your prejudice, then so be it. It’s good to know how Ichneumon classifies and values knowledge."

It might have ended there, but it didn't. AG continues:

"Your post continued in objecting to my remarks that you are demanding proofs. And again I refer back to the previous two posts linked and excerpted above."

Quoting Ichneumon: "Please keep your small-minded notions of how God may be reached to yourself."

By AG: "Sorry. No can do. It’s a package deal for a Christian – we cannot be silent when we are compelled to speak."

Again, it could have ended there. But it didn't. Next in this drama, BB posted 429:

Quoting Ichneumon: "Please keep your small-minded notions of how God may be reached to yourself."

By BB: "That's Ich talking -- something which he is apparently unable to do without insulting someone. I wonder if he is aware he has this problem, which is starkly evident to any fair-minded observer. Or if he is, whether it might be something in which he takes pride....

"A-G, you are a saint not to respond in kind. Myself, I've come to the conclusion that it's pointless to try to have a dialog with a nabal. Though I do wish the nabal well in all things."

An escallation? Opinions will vary. Next, Alamo-Girl posted 430, addressed to BB's post 427:

Thank you oh so very much for all of your kind words and encouragements!

IMHO, one of the marvelous benefits of Freeping is that our conversation becomes archive. That which proceeds from our mouths (or in this case, fingertips) reveals the countenance of our hearts. Vision could not show this to us, and our memories fail to record every detail.

Your post is a beautiful example! Here you are wishing the best for those with whom you cannot establish a dialogue. What a beautiful heart you have, my dear sister in Christ. May God always bless you!

I donno what to say. No need, because BB then posted 444:

" Not beautiful enough, dear Alamo-Girl!!! For I am now about to define "nabal" for Ich and ALL [definition omitted]. I suppose I should have just turned the other cheek. On the other hand, if insult is de rigeur in Ich's debate style, maybe he should try what it's like to be on the receiving end of it for a change."

That's where I butted in, posting to BB at 460:

It's not my place to pass judgment, so I won't; but turning the other cheek is what I've come to expect of you. We all have our bad days. Mull it over a little more.

And at 463, BB responded to me:

I will not stand idly by, Patrick, while a dear friend is being gratuitously abused.

Maybe you should also have a word with the "offender."

Thanks for sharing. Oh, and if/when you have that "word" with the offender, please do feel free to ping me. I will then marvel at your even-handedness in this matter.

And so I end this too-long post. The matter has now been placed in sequence (but severely edited). This is not how we would like the best of the crevo thread people to behave, and you are among the best we have. I'm going to sit back and think it over.

[Dataman]

The teacher addresses the daydreaming fool who knows not why the class laughs.

[Nita Nupress]

bump for later

[betty boop]

There is no public life unless the State can be said to be living somehow. Maybe it is, through its offices. As it is, our bare lives belong to the State and we also share the subdivided former king's sovereignty in our parliamentary democracy. We are individuals, but only as emanations from the whole.

Good grief, RightWhale -- when was the last time you read the federal Constitution? The American state is formed by, for, and in the People. Our rule of law lives only in the People. The People created the "offices," and made them accountable to us -- the People of the United States of America. See the Preamble for our aims, purposes, and goals.

The Constitution says that the entire political power inheres in We the People. If the people is disordered, then the Constitution as given to us by the Framers will have no effect -- at least not the effect that the Framers clearly intended for us. And the very government itself consequently would be a ruin for the people, and a throne for the tyrant.

The Framers never regarded "the People" as an abstraction, but as real flesh-and-blood individual human beings united in the cause of life and liberty, acting together under a rule of law which we as a People approved, and approve.

On our constitutional model, Tyranny could be instantiated only by means of the people failing in their moral duty to preserve our constitutional rights. Tyranny cannot happen without our tacit approval -- or our disregard of the moral principles which lie at the very base of the Constitution's clear language and intent.

Have you gone and turned into a "Euro-weenie" on me?

Here we are probing the difference between the will of the people and the doctrine of the general will here -- the former is the American historical model, the latter, the European one. And, following its model, Europe is slowly committing suicide as a culture, right before our eyes, as we speak. Like so many lemmings inanely plunging over the cliff, into an unknown abyss....

Are you recommending that we follow them in this exercise of suicidal fatuity?

If I were a history teacher, and you my student, and your last were a test -- I'd give you an "F."

[RightWhale]

Can you guess who I have been reading? Remember, I do not post my own thought, but that of the authorities. I believe that Madison, Jay, and Hamilton would be trying to make sense of the modern State as it is evolving so rapidly under constitutional aegis and they would be in substantial agreement. Montesquieu would be disappointed to also have to agree.

[betty boop]

The teacher addresses the daydreaming fool who knows not why the class laughs.

Dear Dataman, I suspect you will understand what I mean when I say: I'll take a "day-dreamer" over an "ideologue" any day of the week. "Day-dreamers" might create a viable future; but seemingly all ideologues ever seek is to embalm a dead past -- all the while insisting on the corpse's indispensable relevance to the future. Go figure.

Or so it seems to me. FWIW.

Thanks so much for writing!

[betty boop]

I believe that Madison, Jay, and Hamilton would be trying to make sense of the modern State as it is evolving so rapidly under constitutional aegis and they would be in substantial agreement.

RightWhale, I imagine the gentlemen you name are spinning in their very graves, mourning the death of the living principles that they had strived so hard to preserve "to ourselves, and our posterity" in constitutional form....

But you didn't answer my main question: Have you turned into a "Euro-weenie?"

[Heartlander]

Betty,

Currently atheists are turning on their TV and looking here on FR and seeing; moral issues, a multitude of people paying their respect to a religious man, and a religious USA - President – and forum. Yet, they have found their sanctuary in a thread dealing with knowledge? Why?

When they ridicule those who have faith in a higher authority – they mock their own purely naturalistic science where they place their own faith based belief system. Humans need bonding and reassurance and this can come from many churches such as the church of; “Thunderous applause”, “It is after all the only rational scientific answer”, “It's the best materialistic explanation we have, therefore it's got to be true”, “If you don't accept the obvious truth of Darwinism you are anti-science and a menace to society”, “life has no target and everything is a transitional species”, or the church of “get back to me when you have truly understood science without your dogma”.

[PatrickHenry]

Having stuck my nose in this far, I'll add one thing more. I understand quite well the desire to respond in kind to what is perceived as a slight. Particularly when a response is felt to be a moral imperative. In my early days on this website, I did a great deal of insult-swapping. I'm good at it. Then the mods came, and I had to restrain myself. I'm getting better at restraint (at least I try). I have no statistics, but if I were to compute the ratio of insults directed at me -- which are many -- compared to insults returned -- which are few -- I like to think that I'd have one of the highest "insults ignored" rankings on this website.

I'm nobody's role model, and I'm not qualified to teach etiquette to anyone, but in the context of internet behavior, I sometimes quote Kenny Rogers:

You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.

[RightWhale]

What drives my search is the observation that there is no commerce or industry in outer space. Since we have obviously demonstrated that we can travel out there and do work, one might wonder what is holding up the development of outer space resources. There is tech, there are business plans, there is plenty of investment cash floating around not knowing what to do with itself.

So, what is the holdup? I am thinking it is the lack of private property rights, so why don't we have private property rights to outer space resources? All these investigations into metaphysics, tech, and political theory are directed toward not only seeing what the roadblock is but how to plant the dynamite to destroy the roadblock and open the infinite frontier.

[cornelis]

I take it your folding on 325, 328, and 330.

[Heartlander]

Ode to the festival of noncommittal martyr’s placemarker…

[Right Wing Professor]

I talked to a liberal friend tonight. He was recounting to me how Larry Summers, a reasonable, rational man, albeit left of center, is being hounded out of Harvard by the far left. The insanity is on both sides.

It brings to mind Yeats' words (and Yeats is my favorite poet)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

[grey_whiskers]

Thanks for the courteous reply.

I too went into software development after cutting my teeth on the Crays at U. of Minnesota. Gas-phase molecular scattering theory.

I seem to recall a symposium at a theoretical chemistry conference that the color of gold is due to relativistic effects on the inner electrons. Too bad I wasn't taking notes :-)

PS Love your line about a libertarian estimate.

Cheers!