Reality?

[Multi-Elis]

The more uncertainty in one's mind, the fewer decisions can be held to. By not holding to a decision, nothing gets accomplished. Extreme depression to utter dead by perishing is the result of too much indecision from uncertainty.

But is it certainty, or is it expectancy? Or convictions?
I make pleanty of decisions with no certainty, and sometimes mixed convictions. The outcome is sometimes as random as if I did know what I was doing.

 

[ReluctantProphet]

nice quote, did you come up with that yourself?

Nope. I heard it in a movie and considered it the only value for the entire film.

 

[ReluctantProphet]

But is it certainty, or is it expectancy? Or convictions?
I make pleanty of decisions with no certainty, and sometimes mixed convictions. The outcome is sometimes as random as if I did know what I was doing.

When the uncertainty only involves issues of no urgency or importance, then there is seldom much harm directly. But as more things become or are allowed to be uncertain, important issues become uncertain as well. When that happens, a feeling of insecurity builds and even panic. When that happens too often, the person succumbs to deep insecurity and fear that nothing is reliable and that all effort is pointless and without hope.

Uncertainty removes hope and houses neither get built nor maintained. The hopeless of heart are the walking dead.

 

[Sojourner<><]

Ok, enough of this nonsense. Don't worry about what reality means. Let it be enough that the world is consistent in the way that it appears, and whether or not it is the real world, it's the one in which you live. Certainty doesn't even come into the equation. Are you certain that you're hungry? Are you certain you're drunk? Are you certain you're suffocating? It doesn't matter one damn bit whether these things are real or not, because they're certainly real enough that you have to deal with them.
But seriously, don't make me barf by invoking objectivity. It doesn't really mean anything. It's a pretend word, because there's no such thing as the objective. It's a useful fiction that we use to describe our generally consistent personal sense perceptions. Once you get over that, you'll forget that there's such a thing as subjective, because everything is really, truly subjective. If it weren't, there would be a real objection to solipsism, and not just the kind of flip one I gave in the fourth post on this thread.

Yeah, what's wrong with you people... thinking that you can actually KNOW something... sheesh.

 

[Marz Blak]

Start reading at post #610 on the "Challenge to all atheists" thread in GA so I don't have to repost and re-agrue.

I don't see where the thread answers my objection.

You seem to be arguing that if one keeps subdividing the areas of epistemic uncertainty surrounding a question into arbitrarily small areas, he will eventually come to a point at which the answer to all these little micro-qu estions become known.

This is completely irrelevant to *my* point, which is that insofar as any knowledge must necessarily be gained through sense perception, and there is no way to "objectively" verify sense perception, there must *always* remain a residue of epistemic doubt, *regardless* of the question.

You seem to believe that as far as epistemology is concerned, the ability of a given model or approach to provide mutually consistent results provides warrant to believe that the epistemic approach provides certainty, or to believe that certainty is equivalent to very, very small levels of uncertainty, or some combination of both.

These beliefs are both erroneous. Please do yourself a favor and do some basic reading in epistemology.

As RecoveringPhilosopher noted, were epistemic certainty possible solipsism would have been conclusively disproven, and it of course has not been.

 

[Marz Blak]

Yeah, what's wrong with you people... thinking that you can actually KNOW something... sheesh.

And to think some of the greatest minds in philosophy have wrestled with the question of epistemic doubt literally for centuries without settling it, and you had the answer all along.

, indeed.

 

[Sojourner<><]

Alright. I was hoping for a little constructive assistance in outlining the subject since it is a little vague, but aside from a few good posts it seems that I've gotten alot of disagreement before I've even stated my argument. So if you would like to blantantly disagree on the grounds that words like 'objectivity' and 'certainty' are offensive to you, please keep it to yourself. I'd like to have an intellectual discussion and not a senseless debate over nothing.

My purpose is to find a definition for an 'average' level of certainty - that is the most basic level of certainty that the average person needs to live normally on an 'average' day. I say 'average' because it's quite obvious that a person does not need to ponder the rational foundations of his world view each time he needs to use the john. Once this is found, I have a few more questions to ask...

I'll begin by proposing a thought experiment:

Scenario A

Say that a man gets in his car in the morning and begins driving to work. He's in a familiar area and he knows the roads. He knows what streets lead where and he knows the route he should take in order to get to his destination.
​

The only way that the man is able to know where he is going is by posessing some degree of certainty that his mental image of a complex network of roads is true and accurate. It has to exist before he can calculate his position and direction of travel. If he possessed no certainty about this, his knowledge of any road system anywhere would be absolutely useless - dead knowledge.

Let me demonstrate - Loss of certainty

The man (let's call him Fred for clarity) gets in his car in the morning to go to work as usual. He drives a short distance to turn a corner only to discover that a vast portion of the landscape in his path has been swept over by a massive mudslide, completely covering portions of the road system with impassible terrain.
​

Fred still needs to get to work (given that this is not reality) but how will he get there? At this first critical moment he must realize that his understanding of the road system will not get him to work... he has lost certainty and now it must be found again before he can determine a new course.

With these questions in mind, how will Fred find certainty?

 

[Sojourner<><]

And to think some of the greatest minds in philosophy have wrestled with the question of epistemic doubt literally for centuries without settling it, and you had the answer all along.

, indeed.

Are you proposing that you know that I think I know the answer?

 

[Marz Blak]

Are you proposing that you know that I think I know the answer?

I thought it was implicit in your last 'sheesh' response. Perhaps I misunderstood you.

 

[Multi-Elis]

My purpose is to find a definition for an 'average' level of certainty - that is the most basic level of certainty that the average person needs to live normally on an 'average' day.

You mean expectancy, because the story doen't talk about certaintly, but rather what is reasonable for a fred to expect from reality.

When the uncertainty only involves issues of no urgency or importance, then there is seldom much harm directly. But as more things become or are allowed to be uncertain, important issues become uncertain as well. When that happens, a feeling of insecurity builds and even panic. When that happens too often, the person succumbs to deep insecurity and fear that nothing is reliable and that all effort is pointless and without hope.

Do you mean the illusion on certainty? Because I am obliged to make many decisions with no certainty, and it does mount up to panic, and it did get me into the psychologist's couch last week. But in these decision making where there are no certainties, trying to be certain so as to avoid getting a panic attack is simply lying to one's self and a case of defence mechanisms. I's an illusion to rationalise away the insecurities of uncertainty.

 

[Marz Blak]

Alright. I was hoping for a little constructive assistance in outlining the subject since it is a little vague, but aside from a few good posts it seems that I've gotten alot of disagreement before I've even stated my argument. So if you would like to blantantly disagree on the grounds that words like 'objectivity' and 'certainty' are offensive to you, please keep it to yourself. I'd like to have an intellectual discussion and not a senseless debate over nothing.

I take your point, but I don't think the objection is a trivial one, particularly given that at least one other poster on the thread has asserted that a metaphysical level of certainty is attainable given a certain epistemic approach.

I think that such assertions are not only completely wrongheaded but also have the potential to be very dangerous. Many very terrible acts in the history of man have been carried in the service of ideologies people believed to be supported by Truth (atheistic and religious), so whenever I see someone trying to convince me or anyone else that he has access to Truth, I get a bit nervous.

But I will grant that this objection is not relevent to your purpose in this thread, given what follows.

My purpose is to find a definition for an 'average' level of certainty - that is the most basic level of certainty that the average person needs to live normally on an 'average' day. I say 'average' because it's quite obvious that a person does not need to ponder the rational foundations of his world view each time he needs to use the john. Once this is found, I have a few more questions to ask...

I'll begin by proposing a thought experiment:

Scenario A

Say that a man gets in his car in the morning and begins driving to work. He's in a familiar area and he knows the roads. He knows what streets lead where and he knows the route he should take in order to get to his destination.​

The only way that the man is able to know where he is going is by posessing some degree of certainty that his mental image of a complex network of roads is true and accurate. It has to exist before he can calculate his position and direction of travel. If he possessed no certainty about this, his knowledge of any road system anywhere would be absolutely useless - dead knowledge.

OK.

Let me demonstrate - Loss of certainty

The man (let's call him Fred for clarity) gets in his car in the morning to go to work as usual. He drives a short distance to turn a corner only to discover that a vast portion of the landscape in his path has been swept over by a massive mudslide, completely covering portions of the road system with impassible terrain.​

Fred still needs to get to work (given that this is not reality) but how will he get there? At this first critical moment he must realize that his understanding of the road system will not get him to work... he has lost certainty and now it must be found again before he can determine a new course.

With these questions in mind, how will Fred find certainty?

If Fred is reasonably intelligent and has a resonable level of spatial ability, his mental map will not be a 'linear' one wherein he only knows his route, but it will also contain understanding of the relative positions in space of where he is and where he needs to get to. Drawing on this spatial modeling ability, Fred should be able to figure out a detour.

Of course, given Fred's presumed lack of complete familiarity with areas of his spatial model over which he has not traveled before, when he goes off his regular route he will necessarily be a bit less certain until he gets back on it.

I don't think I see quite where you are going here. I will grant you that people generally act as if they have sufficient knowledge of reality in conducting their day-to-day lives; I will even grant you that ultimate epistemic doubt notwithstanding, it is pretty much impossible not to do so as a practical matter. So...what follows from this? What is the point you wish to make?

 

[Sojourner<><]

You mean expectancy, because the story doen't talk about certaintly, but rather what is reasonable for a fred to expect from reality.


Do you mean the illusion on certainty? Because I am obliged to make many decisions with no certainty, and it does mount up to panic, and it did get me into the psychologist's couch last week. But in these decision making where there are no certainties, trying to be certain so as to avoid getting a panic attack is simply lying to one's self and a case of defence mechanisms. I's an illusion to rationalise away the insecurities of uncertainty.

I disagree. Expectancy (the meaning of this may be unclear) would be derived from some degree of certainty. For example, If I am very certain that A is true, then I may expect that B will most likely occur. I also perceive the presence of certainty to have the affect of dispelling the irrational falsities (or lies) that my mind can conjure up through a state of uncertainty. It's when I am certain that A is true that I know that C cannot be true. If the conclusion "I am certain that A is true" is a lie and I know it to be a lie then I would have defeated my own purpose for this reasoning in the first place, unless I only really wanted to lie to myself.

 

[Multi-Elis]

I don't understand how you dissagree: you can be given two options: and you don't know enough about the two options and the consequences thereof to be able to make any certain decision. All you know for certain is that you exist, and you have a difficult decision in front of you.

 

[Sojourner<><]

I don't understand how you dissagree: you can be given two options: and you don't know enough about the two options and the consequences thereof to be able to make any certain decision. All you know for certain is that you exist, and you have a difficult decision in front of you.

Sorry if I was unclear.. I was trying to demonstrate my point, not limit myself to only two options.

 

[Asimov]

All you know for certain is that you exist,

No it isn't.

 

[Sojourner<><]

I take your point, but I don't think the objection is a trivial one, particularly given that at least one other poster on the thread has asserted that a metaphysical level of certainty is attainable given a certain epistemic approach.

I think that such assertions are not only completely wrongheaded but also have the potential to be very dangerous. Many very terrible acts in the history of man have been carried in the service of ideologies people believed to be supported by Truth (atheistic and religious), so whenever I see someone trying to convince me or anyone else that he has access to Truth, I get a bit nervous.

I'm sorry to hear that.

If Fred is reasonably intelligent and has a resonable level of spatial ability, his mental map will not be a 'linear' one wherein he only knows his route, but it will also contain understanding of the relative positions in space of where he is and where he needs to get to. Drawing on this spatial modeling ability, Fred should be able to figure out a detour.

Of course, given Fred's presumed lack of complete familiarity with areas of his spatial model over which he has not traveled before, when he goes off his regular route he will necessarily be a bit less certain until he gets back on it.

I might need to amend the scenario with some more details about the mudslide. What I had in mind was a catastrophic change in the landscape which would render Fred's understanding of the road system nearly, but not completely useless. A simple turn around the corner to find a detour is just too easy to really demonstrate this.

I'm beginning to think that certainty is subjective. One of the objects of certainty would have to be objective and the other subjective. This is what I have in mind: Fred has two separate understandings involved in the scenario. One is the mental map of the road, the other is a separate understanding of how reliably his mental image adheres to the real road system that he perceives. This separate understanding is what I'm thinking is rational certainty, which was obliterated when he discovered the mudslide. In other words, rational certainty would be a kind of trust that is gained through first hand experience.

I don't think I see quite where you are going here. I will grant you that people generally act as if they have sufficient knowledge of reality in conducting their day-to-day lives; I will even grant you that ultimate epistemic doubt notwithstanding, it is pretty much impossible not to do so as a practical matter. So...what follows from this? What is the point you wish to make?

I'm just taking a philisophical walk through the park... where the path leads I do not know.

 

[Sojourner<><]

Why forget trying to define it?

We find certainty by starting with declaration of concepts then comparing them with what we observe. After that picture of probable certainty builds to a point, it begins to entrap some concepts as 100% certain despite earlier mere probabilities. In the long run (a very long run) you end up with absolute certainty of many things and most things are merely a matter of observing more.

The entrapment and the declarations are what most people don't understand and thus end up thinking that it is all just about observations and possible flaw. Realize that these ideas came into society merely as a means of creating chaos and uncertainty.

I agree with this... I think.

 

[ReluctantProphet]

I don't see where the thread answers my objection.

You seem to be arguing that if one keeps subdividing the areas of epistemic uncertainty surrounding a question into arbitrarily small areas, he will eventually come to a point at which the answer to all these little micro-qu estions become known.

This is completely irrelevant to *my* point, which is that insofar as any knowledge must necessarily be gained through sense perception, and there is no way to "objectively" verify sense perception, there must *always* remain a residue of epistemic doubt, *regardless* of the question.

You seem to believe that as far as epistemology is concerned, the ability of a given model or approach to provide mutually consistent results provides warrant to believe that the epistemic approach provides certainty, or to believe that certainty is equivalent to very, very small levels of uncertainty, or some combination of both.

These beliefs are both erroneous. Please do yourself a favor and do some basic reading in epistemology.

As RecoveringPhilosopher noted, were epistemic certainty possible solipsism would have been conclusively disproven, and it of course has not been.

To begin the answer to this, please concider the following post and reply.

I am amazed how often people argue about the question of what existence is. But as often as it gets brought up concerning God issues, it seems to be something to settle. Often the dictionary offers only an ambiguous definition or merely a substitution for the word. Word substitution might help if you’re not looking for detailed understanding, but does not constitute an actual definition.

I propose the following as the defining quality of existence.

Existence is that which has the property of affect. If something has affect, then it exists. If something has no affect, it does not exist.

Corollary; Dreams, fantasies, and lies are each a sample of things which exist as their names imply, although the characters or objects within these existences exist only as structural components of the whole. They have no other existence.

Does this work?

 

[Marz Blak]

I'm sorry to hear that.

May I ask why?

I might need to amend the scenario with some more details about the mudslide. What I had in mind was a catastrophic change in the landscape which would render Fred's understanding of the road system nearly, but not completely useless. A simple turn around the corner to find a detour is just too easy to really demonstrate this.

Indeed. Perhaps there is a catastrophic earthquake that both considerably re-orders the landscape AND knocks Fred out, so that when he wakens some hours later it is dark and nothing looks at all as he remembers, and he is also a bit disoriented and possibly had some memory loss, so that he can't exactly remember where he'd last been?

How does that work?

I'm beginning to think that certainty is subjective.

I am surprised when people say otherwise. I mean, not to say that they don't assert everyday walking around practical certainty, but when they assert metaphysical or epistemic certainty.

One of the objects of certainty would have to be objective and the other subjective. This is what I have in mind: Fred has two separate understandings involved in the scenario. One is the mental map of the road, the other is a separate understanding of how reliably his mental image adheres to the real road system that he perceives. This separate understanding is what I'm thinking is rational certainty, which was obliterated when he discovered the mudslide. In other words, rational certainty would be a kind of trust that is gained through first hand experience.

I don't think the issue is quite so clearly delineated philosophically. I mean, personally, I think of all sense experience as being continually verified empirically, but don't see *that* sort of verification as leading to the sort of metaphysical certainty you seem to be implying. Fred could have warrant, based in experience, to place a high degree of trust in the *usefulness* of his mental model. Does this fact allow him to make absolute ontological claims about the world? I don't think so. (Forgive me if this isn't the question you're trying to investigate here, as it has occurred to me (somewhat belatedly) might be the case. If it is not, then I apologize for derailing your thread. )

But then, my metaphysics tend toward the minimalist, and the sort of certainty you seem to be after is something I neither strive for nor think is possible or particularly useful, really, mainly because developing metaphysics that answer all the imponderables about the nature of existence and knowledge seems to me to invariably involve a commitment to some unfalifiable belief structure, and I just don't think it makes sense, or is particularly useful, to believe unfalsifiable things (due to considerations of parsimony, Ockham's Razor, etc.)).

But then, I've been kicking around a theory that religiosity correlates with one's relative comfort with imponderables: the more uncomfortable one is with epistemic and ontological uncertainty, the more likely he is to be religious. Just a vague sort of idea I have, nothing I'd care to argue at this point.

I'm just taking a philisophical walk through the park... where the path leads I do not know.

This is an interesting area of exploration, isn't it? There is another thread in the philosophy forum wherein people are discussing whether philosophy (by which they mean, I think, metaphysics: ontology, epistemology, etc.) is really a useful endeavor.

I'm not sure it's *useful*, but it's certainly fun.

Regards,

M.

 

[elman]

Forget trying to define it.

How do we find certainty within it?

Is certainty, once found, always subjective or objective or either?

Any takers?

I don't think we find certainty, in this life.