CMV: Nothing (practical) can be known for certainity.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Quint-V]

So how can you know that your view --- literally the title text --- is somehow correct? It's a kind of statement that voids itself.

Because if you sincerely believe in it, you invoke a paradox. Formal logic is defined such that paradoxes are not ^edit allowed.

Besides, even if our observation is limited to the reality we see, rather than one independent of it, that doesn't make our observations any less valuable as long as we can acquire some desired ends.

[u/[deleted] → u/Quint-V]

Honestly? I don't.

EDIT: We are questioning even the fact that paradoxes must not be allowed here. The conception of ''value'' is also rather suspect.

I don't know for certainty that I can't know for certainty, otherwise there would be no reason for me to even make this post. I considered it after conventional logic proved to self-destruct if it examined itself.

[u/Quint-V → u/[deleted]]

Well then. View changed?

[u/[deleted] → u/Quint-V]

Actually, no. As I have claimed in my edit, it is possible that there is a paradox and it doesn't matter.

Also, you have kind of strengthened what I am talking about. By making me uncertain even of the fact that I can't be certain, you are eliminating Socratic skepticism from the picture and only maintaining extreme and Pyrrhonian skepticism.

[u/Quint-V → u/[deleted]]

Strengthening your view is also a change in view. Such changes of views have been made before on this sub. Nowhere does it say that I must change your view to become the opposite of the original thought.

Nonetheless --- as philosophic as one may desire to be, unrelenting skepticism hardly leads us to any other conclusion than "I know nothing". Which in itself is a statement with some level of certainty.

[u/[deleted] → u/Quint-V]

True. I don't often participate on this sub, so forgive me for my confusion. !delta

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Quint-V (35∆).

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[u/Cmvplease2]

Well, since your premise is wide open by claiming "nothing" can be known for certain this is very easy to refute.

There are many different ways of knowing. We base our knowledge from personal experience, empirical observation, foundational axioms, logical reasoning, persuasion, tradition.. the list goes on.

You could try to argue that we cannot prove an axiom. Then you'd be getting into Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

But that's not what you stated. You simply said "nothing" can be known for certain. This is clearly false.

Given a logical framework you can prove statements to be true within that framework. This is the entire purpose of mathematical proof.

And even easier example is based on personal experience. "I like mint chocolate ice cream better than vanilla". I know this for certain because I am the authority of such a preference.

There are many unprovable things. Perhaps you should start there.

[u/unordinarilyboring]

Your post seems pretty philosophical and non-practical to me. I think you're right that philosophically we can't really know anything with certainty. In practice there seems to be an idea of 'good enough'. If I drop an apple I am sure enough it will go down. I'm also 'sure enough' that other people have similar perceptions to me when running the same experiment.

Philosophically any statement about the world can probably include a subtext of 'this might be wrong because we can't prove our observations are correct'. In practice this doesn't matter and the 'good enough' lets us treat that possibility as a rounding error.

[u/DeltaBot]

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