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Thu 10 Jun, 2010 04:51 am
The title of this forum is 'able 2 know' as if to imply that there is an answer to be known. In modern philosophy, rarely do philosophers really know the answer at all. All that philosophers do is bouncing arguments off of one another. Case in point are the debates between scientific realism, and anti-realism in the philosophy of science, or Platonism, and Nominalism in the philosophy of mathematics. If you ask philosophers 'what is the agreement by the community of scholars?', then answer is 'there is none'. Surely, there is agreement in the style of doing philosophy, but those are, well, styles. Different ways of doing philosophy changes with time. The general nature of philosophical problems are in general, non-empirical, and thus, non-verifiable. No definite answer can be given, and we should not expect philosophy to give us any definite answers. Some who buy into the late Wittgenstein view will say that philosophy is all about untangle conceptual confusion by making clear how certain words are used. I think it is completely bullshit. If i don` t buy into your interpretation, we are going to debate. There is no definite answers, and that is the nature of philosophical inquiry.
able to know does not, however, equal "to know for sure". it is about the potential, the exploration, the journey.
welcome aboard.
@TuringEquivalent,
A2k is an unfortunate name for this place, and it does not represent what we do here. It was probably the product of some hair brained idea for a website that is long buried.
WHat you can do here is bounce your ideas off of smart people with a wide range of life experiences in order to better enable you to arrive at the truth...see what reality for humans is. Truth is the intellectual understanding of reality correct? Seeing if your reality matches with other peoples reality has value towards arriving at the truth correct? What you can do is present your ideas to a group where you know going in that many probably will not agree with you, and will try to explain why they think that you are wrong.
Being able to know does not mean that one automatically knows the answers to questions, but being able to formulate the correct question, and having the tools to work towards the answer. Some of the tools philosophy provides are logic and the perspectives of the tradition from the Presokratics to Heidegger and beyond. It is by knowing the questions and answers of past thinking that one's own question is either answered tentatively or deepened by showing entirely different or novel approached to it. In another sense, the philosophical toolbox includes as well the important habit of mind of independent and critical thinking, of subjecting what "everyone knows" to scrutiny.
@jgweed,
And, to quote a very old saw,
the unexamined life is not worth living.
@jgweed,
Can you give an example, Jgweed? The example i gave in the example between Platonism, and nominalism in the philosophy of mathematics. What occur in this debate in not at all atypical of modern analytic philosophy.
If the board were only about Philosophy, you'd be right. However, in many other fields, things are actually known.
i don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies
@TuringEquivalent,
Often we will trust the person who convinces us the best (usually the 1 with best rethorical skills), but also pice together an answer by peoples views on the matter, that way we can reflect our thoughts and put things into perspective.
Usually I don't expect a direct answer, but a pointer to the answer.
@Brandon9000,
Must not have enough co2 in your mother belly.
I would say that one can know something without having to know that one knows it in the absolute sense.
I may know X is true due to such and such reasons and if it turns out that X actually is true in an absolute sense, then I indeed did know X.
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