Someone else mentioned Descartes - “I think, therefore I am” - which is the only thing we can know with 100% certainty. There is “is-ness” and “I exist”.
That’s not exactly what I’m talking about here, but it applies.
In practical terms, we experience predictable outcomes based on accepting certain things as being true. That’s different from those things actually being true.
You’re thinking like an academic, which is often alien and “wrong” to the broader populace, just like a properly labelled graph (according to a previous discussion on Lemmy, lol).
But I agree. In engineering one quickly learns the difference between the “perfect” and “real” world. In the perfect world, you can assume that 1+1 always equals 2, gravity always goes down, wind resistance is 0, and our scientific model (of any given time and version, choice is yours) is always correct.
In the real world nothing makes sense, nothing fits, you’re lucky if 1+1=2 within a ±0.1 error, and did you just discover the topic for another weird research project? Shit.
And does @[email protected] 's Mt. St. Helens really exist? No clue, I’ll take anyone’s word for it. One could drag me up some random mountain and tell me that’s it, but, in the end, I’d just be spewing someone else’s opinion. (which is good, agreement must be had to do anything productive, but we’re currently talking objectivity, and not agreement.)
But I do have 100% certainty that Mt. St. Helens exists. It is a feature of the “is-ness”, with a specific location that can be shared; and you too can visit it, climb to its peak (not recommended) and validate for yourself that it is an existing feature of reality.
In practical terms, we experience predictable outcomes based on accepting certain things as being true.
But Mt. St. Helens literally exists, regardless of whether or not you accept it to be true. You can accept that its name isn’t “true” since that’s more of a shared label that we all agree upon and it hasn’t named itself; but to not accept the truth of its existence has no bearing on your predictable outcomes once you arrive there and start to climb it
In the “I do have 100% certainty”, the important part is not the 100% certainty, it is the I. It is a certainty you hold for objective, but since it can only be hold as such by subjective beings like you and me, this subjectivity is transmitted to the ‘fact’.
In everyday life it is far easier to consider those facts as absolute, but we have no absolute proof of that (even when you see it, when people tell you they see it, when you read records of the thing, the thing, the people, the records could be an illusion. Though very unlikely, we cannot prove its not without relying on other things that could be illusion)
MtStH exists? Prove it. Shared experiences with other people? Prove they exist. You’re climbing it right now? No, your experience is that you’re climbing it right now, and your experience is not reality. Your experience and reality may or may not correlate; you could be a “brain in a jar” receiving inputs from something else entirely which produce in your consciousness the experience of climbing a mountain. You could be innumerable layers deep in a simulation.
Experience and reality are separate things. For practical purposes, behaving as though they correlate works, but they are distinct from one another.
Shared experiences with other people? Prove they exist.
See, this is where you lose me. When you’re out and about in the world, interacting with people, interfacing with reality, it’s not up to those individuals to prove to you that they exist prior to, during, or after your interactions with them. You don’t doubt the existence of your lunch before you eat your lunch; it is an objective fact that your lunch exists, hopefully, and if not, you are objectively hungry. Your body will suffer measurable physiological effects from your hunger. If you starve and die, it’s a fact that you are now dead.
Do you have evidence to back up the “brain in a jar” theory? Cuz we can talk about “could be’s” all day long, but what is measurable, consistent, and verifiable externally by everyone is what matters far more
Some people hallucinate that others exist all the time. Hell, I’ve done it. How can I know with 100% certainty that the people I see exist, and aren’t hallucinations?
Someone else mentioned Descartes - “I think, therefore I am” - which is the only thing we can know with 100% certainty. There is “is-ness” and “I exist”.
That’s not exactly what I’m talking about here, but it applies.
In practical terms, we experience predictable outcomes based on accepting certain things as being true. That’s different from those things actually being true.
You’re thinking like an academic, which is often alien and “wrong” to the broader populace, just like a properly labelled graph (according to a previous discussion on Lemmy, lol).
But I agree. In engineering one quickly learns the difference between the “perfect” and “real” world. In the perfect world, you can assume that 1+1 always equals 2, gravity always goes down, wind resistance is 0, and our scientific model (of any given time and version, choice is yours) is always correct.
In the real world nothing makes sense, nothing fits, you’re lucky if 1+1=2 within a ±0.1 error, and did you just discover the topic for another weird research project? Shit.
And does @[email protected] 's Mt. St. Helens really exist? No clue, I’ll take anyone’s word for it. One could drag me up some random mountain and tell me that’s it, but, in the end, I’d just be spewing someone else’s opinion. (which is good, agreement must be had to do anything productive, but we’re currently talking objectivity, and not agreement.)
But I do have 100% certainty that Mt. St. Helens exists. It is a feature of the “is-ness”, with a specific location that can be shared; and you too can visit it, climb to its peak (not recommended) and validate for yourself that it is an existing feature of reality.
But Mt. St. Helens literally exists, regardless of whether or not you accept it to be true. You can accept that its name isn’t “true” since that’s more of a shared label that we all agree upon and it hasn’t named itself; but to not accept the truth of its existence has no bearing on your predictable outcomes once you arrive there and start to climb it
In the “I do have 100% certainty”, the important part is not the 100% certainty, it is the I. It is a certainty you hold for objective, but since it can only be hold as such by subjective beings like you and me, this subjectivity is transmitted to the ‘fact’.
In everyday life it is far easier to consider those facts as absolute, but we have no absolute proof of that (even when you see it, when people tell you they see it, when you read records of the thing, the thing, the people, the records could be an illusion. Though very unlikely, we cannot prove its not without relying on other things that could be illusion)
All right, We’ll do it the other way.
MtStH exists? Prove it. Shared experiences with other people? Prove they exist. You’re climbing it right now? No, your experience is that you’re climbing it right now, and your experience is not reality. Your experience and reality may or may not correlate; you could be a “brain in a jar” receiving inputs from something else entirely which produce in your consciousness the experience of climbing a mountain. You could be innumerable layers deep in a simulation.
Experience and reality are separate things. For practical purposes, behaving as though they correlate works, but they are distinct from one another.
See, this is where you lose me. When you’re out and about in the world, interacting with people, interfacing with reality, it’s not up to those individuals to prove to you that they exist prior to, during, or after your interactions with them. You don’t doubt the existence of your lunch before you eat your lunch; it is an objective fact that your lunch exists, hopefully, and if not, you are objectively hungry. Your body will suffer measurable physiological effects from your hunger. If you starve and die, it’s a fact that you are now dead.
Do you have evidence to back up the “brain in a jar” theory? Cuz we can talk about “could be’s” all day long, but what is measurable, consistent, and verifiable externally by everyone is what matters far more
Some people hallucinate that others exist all the time. Hell, I’ve done it. How can I know with 100% certainty that the people I see exist, and aren’t hallucinations?