Is it possible to know anything

How do I know? I'm seeing it happen before my eyes. But how do I know that my firsthand account of this is a reliable source?

Sadly I don't. I just sort of have to I'm sure we can, I am also sure that we may never know for sure what we know accuratley or not. I think Knowledge is in fact some form of JTB justified True Belief but I don't think we can ever know for sure if our so-called justification is accurate. That is to say I think we can think we are justified in our belief but we will never be able to confirm is it is true only that it is probable at best.

In summation I think we can have knowledge but i do not think we can know that we for which of our beliefs are knowledge and which are not. Post by Arvy » Fri Mar 02, am Can we truly know anything? Post by Bk2Kant » Fri Mar 02, am Like I said before, I think knowledge is just a belief that is acurate but I think the truth about reality and those things beyond reality are beyond our grasp so while we may think we know something we can never be sure, allthough we may in fact know it.

As far as the DeScartes stuff goes and the "I think therefore I am" I would agree if I didn't thikn that there was at least a little chance that i do not in fact think, that I am nothing more than a construct or an extention of a higher power. It's a little trippy but I do always have the sceptic in the back of my head shouting "beleive nothing! Post by sergioakaskyler » Fri Mar 02, pm Lots of Descartes True, I know I exist because i think. But in matters of 'knowing' things, as the initial topic asked, asking the question already implies the person's knowledge of his or her's own existence.

Knowing we each exist to ourselves, because thought is self-aware does not necessarily mean we exist to each other.

Nor does it mean anything else around us exists to us. So, and I've seen the word trust mentioned, the distinction between thinking we know something and knowing something, is simply complete trust in the source.

Seeing as how we seem to have enough trouble trusting ourselves as a 'first-hand account', it is unreasonable to expect to have complete trust in anyone else's account.

Of anything. So we each have truths that exist to ourselves. Now, is there truth that is evident to everyone?

We could definitely never find, and ask every living being in the universe about even one single simple truth, to make sure we all agree. So in order for universal, or absolute truth to exist, an omniscient consciousness must exist. Otherwise, we all must be satisfied we thinking we know. Post by BlackFire88 » Sat Mar 03, am I think it depends on how you define "knowing" something. Or do you believe you can only know something that is absolutely real and true on every level of existence?

I mean i would say that I know that if i put two jelly beans on the table with two other jelly beans sorry for the stupid examply, i'm eating jelly beans lol , there will then be four jelly beans on the table Re: Can we 'know' anything? I'm real smart! For example, I know that I am typing these words on a keyboard, but I can't prove that I'm not really dreaming or being subjected to some kind of mind-control which causes me to think I'm typing on a keyboard. This is mind working on the matter from which it was formed, having recognition of it, setting up a fragile continuum whose motions and dimensions increase with ever-increasing recognition of its source.

How do we gain knowledge, including both empirical and a priori [not experience-based] forms of knowledge? To be committed to unmitigated scepticism is to allow a contradiction to be entertained: Asserting that knowledge is not possible is stating implicitly that something can be known in the very denial of the possibility of knowledge, ie asserting that scepticism is valid.

To know anything at all is to go through a process of a series of experiences which grow from an opinion, to a belief about it, and finally to justified knowledge. As the event is tested, knowledge about it attains greater certainty. This is true in particular about empirical knowledge, where claims made about certain events can indeed be tested.

A priori knowledge by its nature is not acquired in the same manner as empirical knowledge. In this case, it is a matter of reasoning through an idea to establish its truthfulness.

A priori knowledge can also be used to reason out other truths that are not connected with observation at all. Edward De Bono conjectured that art works were answers to questions asked by artists on an unconscious level, and that they later rationalised back to what the questions had been.

Therefore set out below is my rationalisation of why I suspect that one cannot ask the question posed. Some may think it inappropriate for a philosophy magazine. I suspect the question is a little like asking someone who has never seen a football match to deduce what the game is all about from no more than the sounds heard from outside the grounds.

Furthermore, if I use a defunct television set as a doorstop, where does this leave me in relation to John Logie Baird? I know, I know After that it is all conjecture. So what have we got? And now consists of three elements: the evident substance of the material universe, photographs and other memorabilia, and memory. All are subject to deterioration; all reintroduce the past into the present; and all are subject to the interactive effect of deterioration and reintroduction.

Memory in particular is the most vulnerable because it is a biological system and therefore less stable than for example, a photograph. Photography however, although being less obviously vulnerable, is subject to developing technology and the prevailing perceptions within that technology. It is easy to date photographs within a reasonable span of time.

Photography, unlike memory, is external to the self and therefore is also part of the substance of the material world. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. He wrote that there were two types of qualities, ones that existed innately in an object or series of objects, such as size, number, or motion, and those that are wholly dependent on our perception of them , such as color or smell.

But light, heat, whiteness, or coldness are not more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna. Experience then, as long as we have an understanding of the limitations of our perception, will confer certain truths about the physical world we inhabit. Besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them and exercised divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, about them.

This perceiving … does not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived — for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived. Because our knowledge of the world comes from our perception of it, it is impossible to conclusively know the existence of anything independent of our perception. Berkeley, wrote:.

Hence, as it is impossible for me to see or feel anything without an actual sensation of that thing, so it is impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it. This line of inquiry ultimately results in the entire physical world being called into question, as Berkeley observed:. If we have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason, inferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense.

If we can not know things outside of perception, and our perceptions are entirely unreliable, where does that leave us? What these philosophies can be useful for understanding though, is that often what we consider knowledge is more of a general social agreement on a somewhat consistent comprehension of the things before us. For example, we appreciate that the color green can be perceived differently by various people, but we organize our language based on a general understanding of the color green without worrying about the particular experience of green that any individual may have.

For David Hume, there definitely was a physical world, our perception of which was ultimately responsible for all of our ideas, no matter how complex or abstract. When we analyze our thoughts or ideas, however compounded or sublime, we always find that they resolve themselves into such simple ideas as were copied from a precedent feeling or sentiment. Even those ideas, which, at first view, seem the most wide of this origin, are found, upon a nearer scrutiny, to be derived from it.

Furthermore, since all of our perceptions of the physical world are coming from the same physical world, and the nature of perceiving works more or less the same in each person, we can achieve a consistency in our understanding.

So although it may not be possible to know things with the same certainty as knowing oneself, or to be able to really describe the construct of the world outside of our perception of it, at least we can get along with each other because of a general consistency of experience. However, this experience still admits to a certain fragility. Read more: Facts are not always more important than opinions: here's why.

For example, science, history and anthropology all have their own methods for finding things out. Epistemology has the job of making those methods themselves the objects of study. It aims to understand how methods of inquiry can be seen as rational endeavours. Whatever the area in which we work, some people imagine that beliefs about the world are formed mechanically from straightforward reasoning, or that they pop into existence fully formed as a result of clear and distinct perceptions of the world.

That we do not reach such an agreement means there is something wrong with that model of belief formation. It is interesting that we individually tend to think of ourselves as clear thinkers and see those who disagree with us as misguided. We imagine that the impressions we have about the world come to us unsullied and unfiltered.

We think we have the capacity to see things just as they really are, and that it is others who have confused perceptions. As a result, we might think our job is simply to point out where other people have gone wrong in their thinking, rather than to engage in rational dialogue allowing for the possibility that we might actually be wrong. But the lessons of philosophy, psychology and cognitive science teach us otherwise.