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Everything I know I know contingently; at best, that's objective.
Necessary knowledge is exhaustive (omniscient).
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Please give one example to each type of knowledge. Thanks.
Everything I know I know contingently; at best, that's objective.
Necessary knowledge is exhaustive (omniscient).
Why sequence questions beg a common context; we may not recognize a common context. That is why I have tried to express myself in terms I am left to believe are self-evident. Unfortunately, one cannot simplify beyond the self-evident. However, one can always ask why.
I still do not see any example. I like to know one example on each.
Here's the problem: It doesn't matter what you think is self-evident.
Human brains can deal with events on human time scales. They are connected to human senses, and so can intuitively grasp the behavior of things detectable to human sense.
The whole of the universe, the dawn of time, the ultimate nature of "existence" and "non-existence" fall outside those parameters.
What your human brain feels is self-evident about these things is irrelevant.
Contingent knowledge:
I am left to believe that I exist.
Necessary knowledge:
My existence
OK, I understand now.
In the OP, you defined two terms. Any argument about them?
I am left to believe that I exist; that is my contingent knowledge.
My contingent knowledge of my existence begs another's necessary knowledge of my existence.
But like I wrote, as a contingent being, that's what I'm left to believe. At best it's objective, but for sure it's subject to change (contingent).
Then the above post should be quite easily dismissed.
So, is there any way to know whether you do exist as a necessary knowledge?
If not, what is the purpose of the necessary knowledge?
bricklayer, I am still curious about what, in your view, existence consists in. I've already sketched in brief what I think it takes for something to exist - it must consist in matter (or some configuration thereof). I'm also curious why you think that necessary existence must necessarily be divine and supernatural existence. Your argument for the existence of some necessary cause does not show that the cause must be something of divine nature.
I never used the terms divine or supernatural. I never made such a proposition.
I will restate my proposition.
Matter is that with mass.
Space is position relative to matter.
Time is the progressive sequential increments of the matter-space continuum.
(Note matter's special relativity)
Energy is the interaction of matter in space over time.
Because no particle of matter can occupy the same position relative to the balance of matter in any two increments of time, I am left to believe that the matter-space-time continuum is subject to constant exhaustive change.
Because anything that is subject to change is subject (i.e. not-sovereign, not-necessary, contingent), I am left to believe that the matter-space-time continuum is contingent.
By definition, that which exists contingently exists contingent upon something else and cannot account for its own existence.
Because a cause effect sequence must, by definition, begin with a cause,
the contingent existence of the constantly changing matter-space-time continuum begs a necessary, metaphysical, meta-spatial, meta-temporal, efficient cause.
A few issues...
1. Why should we assume that matter as a whole (i.e. the sum of all matter) cannot account for itself and is contingent on something non-matter? There are contingencies in matter, but does that necessarily mean that matter itself is contingent on something other than matter?
2. Suppose that we subtract all matter from the universe. What are we left with? We should, on your account, be left with the necessary cause. After all the contingencies are removed, all that is left is that which is necessary. But what is it? On my account, it is nothing. It is nothing because for something to exist it must consist in matter, and because we have subtracted all matter from the universe, we are left with nothing (non-existence).
3. You did call the necessary cause "spiritual" earlier. My concern is simply that your argument does not actually demonstrate that the necessary cause must be something of a spiritual nature.
Mathematics are, in a way, concepts that exist in human thoughts, which may be physically observed as energy in the brain (however that works, I am no neurosurgeon.) Emotions, musical ideas, and philosophical concepts all physically reside within the brain.There exists a great deal that is immaterial. Mathematics and music are examples. The purely intellectual, emotional and willful actually exist without material being. The theoretical, philosophical and fictional exist apart from their material being.
As a contingent being, my contingent knowledge can be at best objective.
The contingent is, by definition, subject to the purpose of the necessary.
The necessary is, by definition, not subject to anything.
Could I simply translate your "necessary knowledge" to a word called "truth"?
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