Core Assumptions and Principles #6: Knowledge is merely a level of certainty about the truth of a statement.

The key point in this understanding of knowledge is the impossibility of complete certainty. Traditional conceptions of knowledge exist in a world in which a person can know beyond all doubt that a statement is true. This is simply not the world in which we exist. The world in which we exist is essentially a skeptical reality, one in which the possibility of error is ever present and the best one can do is strive to minimize the likelihood of errors and the impact they may have. In this situation any prior definition of knowledge is rendered useless and to hold to it would result in the statement that nothing can be known... Well nothing can be known, at least not in the classical understanding. The question becomes how one can go about living in a world in which nothing can be "known" this would seem to imply a state of constant confusion and instability. The solution to this state of constant uncertainty is to understand what while absolute "knowledge" may not be possible this does not mean that no level of certainty or knowledge is available to us.
Do you know the sun will rise tomorrow? No, you do not know that beyond any shadow of a doubt... Will the sun rise tomorrow? Yes. The chances that any of the things which might stop the sun from coming up will actually happen are so remote that they are not worth giving much thought or relevance. Do you know that the guy in the next office is named John? Well what do you mean by "Is named John"? He asked you to call him John, maybe his parents did not call him John at birth, maybe he never went into a court to make that his legal name and its not on his driver's license but hey none of that really matters, call him John and go on about your day, but no you cannot know beyond all doubt that the guy next door is "named" John in precisely the way you mean the question but ultimately it hardly matters, it is through accepting the possibility of uncertainty and considering knowledge to mean a certain level of certainty even if it is not 100% beyond all doubt... The real issue is in the social relation of the use of the term know to denote a level of certainty other than 100%. Some people may be willing to claim knowledge of those things they are 70% certain of, others may require 99%... and further some may not be able to accurately estimate their level of certainty about any given point of knowledge... This also opens up the possibility that a person might quite accurately state their knowledge of a fact which ultimately proves have been false. Does this mean that they did not know that which they claimed to know, and can you know a falsehood or only that which ultimately is true even if you cannot know for a certainty that any given statement ultimately is true. Can you state that x is true if you cannot know beyond a shadow of a doubt that x is in fact true? Ultimately this all comes down to the use of language, something which is a social construction and as such can be constructed however we all agree to use it. In philosophical terms perhaps we cannot use the terms "know" and "true" or "false" but must, as science has already done, reformour use of language to speak only of relative certainties and percentages and probablities. In everyday life we may fall back on the comfortable conventions of knowledge and truth just as we fall back on notions of God, and soul which we know on a higher level are merely comfortable constructs to refer to more complicated issues.

On inter-relationship of Subjective and Objective Reality

There is an objective reality which we all relate to in an entirely subjective way. Our various subjective realities each reflect to varying degrees the objective reality around us, but generally speaking they all are essentially accurate. The cause of this essentally reliable relationship between our subjective and objective realities is a matter of the evolution of our minds over time. Our Subjective Reality is the result of the interaction between the objective reality around us and our brain archetecture, which is the result of our genetics, which result from the evolutionary course of our species, this course having been guided by the interactions of our ancestors with the objective reality around them.
This connection between our various individual subjective conceptions of reality and the shared objective reality in which we all exist is the source of both our perceived a priori knowledge and our actual a posteriori knowledge. That which we beleive to be a priori is merely the result of our brain structure which is itself the a posteriori result of our ancestry.

I'm back!... again... this time for real... maybe... but yeah probably not really...

Once again over a month without posting to this DAILY BLOG... well what can I tell you I have no excuse nor would I accept any...

I have decided to try to write in a more aphoristic style by which I mean not put pressure on myself to write long pieces with complete reasoning but rather get the ideas out fast and furious. This of course will not work.

I have gotten to part 4 of Gravity's Rainbow which is a big deal for me having never gotten past page 250 before... If I can finish the book in the next couple weeks I might call that less than a year of reading this time around as I don't remember when I started it but am fairly sure it was not befor last spring... as a whole it has been 10ish years to read this if you count from the first time I picked it up to try to read it...

Ok Im going to go post a real post now so go read that...