Re: dhw--Epistemological Framework (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, January 13, 2011, 22:32 (4871 days ago) @ dhw

dhw, we'll handle my framework in another post. 
> Your demonstration refers to experiments showing that "no exterior signal has been deemed present". You've misunderstood my analogy. You argued that "if you harm the brain enough, you cease to be conscious", which you see as evidence that the brain is the sole centre of consciousness. My TV analogy demonstrated that wrecking the receiver doesn't prove there's no transmitter. If the source of consciousness isn't the brain, no-one knows WHERE it's situated. Some call death a release of the "soul" from the body (not from some station in outer space), and the implication of NDEs and OBEs is that it's normally encased in what Shakespeare calls "this muddy vesture of decay".
> 
> As regards your categories of knowledge, let me start with a few thoughts of my own. In my view, nobody can draw a clear border between knowledge and belief. If we want to use such terms, we must agree on how and on what level we use them. It could be argued that there is no such thing as knowledge, in which case the discussion ends here. Or we can adopt a commonsense approach and agree that certain things can be known ... but then we must also agree on a criterion. Your list does not provide one, so I'll offer a tentative definition: knowledge is possession of information that is accepted as being true by all those who are aware of it.
> -You're dangerously close to what I have referred to as my own "radical skepticism." You discuss Agrippan skepticism here, and a very powerful form, but I will make it unassailable. -"The only knowledge that exists is that we know nothing." This kind of skepticism underpins everything I do here on this forum. From this principle I have weighed and measured my life and my world, and there is very little that defeats it. -The only thing that comes close is the scientific method; I mentioned model building before. All scientific theories are models. The goal is to create a 1:1 relationship to reality; Imagine a set of dots to your left, and an amorphous blob to the right. Draw arrows from the dots to the blob. -In a crude way, this is an analogy of science. For each dot, we have tested and feel reasonably certain that this link holds true to the blob. (universe)-If some thing is well tested, and works reliably--then this is the point in which (yourself?) and the rest of the world takes in as knowledge. I would say that what you actually have is justified belief. -I will continue this later, I must go to class...

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"