Certainty and the Problem of Induction

[WESGATORS]

Originally Posted by Burke

Midgets sniping at a giant.

Before long they'll call you clueless and pathetic.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

[MichiGator2002]

Originally Posted by Burke

Midgets sniping at a giant.

Yeah, you run with that. I am totes sure that history will remember an adulterous skank whose main literary accomplishment is often shelved in Science Fiction over Einstein, Hawking, any achievement in medicine or engineering (like those who put Armstrong on the moon?), or any political figures, even the Hitlers or Stalins. If you sincerely meant that top two, it pretty much negates the "rational" rep objectivism works hard to maintain.

[dangolegators]

Originally Posted by Burke

A few hundred years from now, school children will know two names from the 20th century: Neil Armstrong and Ayn Rand.

And not necessarily in that order.

I'd think the name most remembered name from the 20th century would be Hitler. Maybe Einstein would be 2nd. Then there would be some number of hundreds or thousands of names and then you would see Ayn Rand.

[jdrgator]

Originally Posted by WESGATORS

Before long they'll call you clueless and pathetic.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

Quit sniping at giants, wes

Didn't Rand invent electricity, standing in line, and the question mark, cured polio, and put man on the moon too?

[exiledgator]

Originally Posted by dangolegators

I don't think Burke has a single idea or thought that did not come from Ayn Rand.

That's simply not true.

He's had plenty of thoughts that came from Caroline Glickman and Bennie Netanyahu.

[exiledgator]

Originally Posted by Burke

IPhone battery nearly dead.

You just think its nearly dead.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Originally Posted by Burke

IPhone battery nearly dead.

God works in mysterious ways.

[Burke]

It's interesting how people go nuts when they are proven wrong about something.

Which explains a lot about what goes on around here.

[MichiGator2002]

Originally Posted by Burke

It's interesting how people go nuts when they are proven wrong about something.

Which explains a lot about what goes on around here.

Wait, someone has been proven wrong about who people will remember from the 20th century a fee hundred years from now?

[WESGATORS]

Originally Posted by Burke

It's interesting how people go nuts when they are proven wrong about something.

Which explains a lot about what goes on around here.

Perfect example of when something that appears to be "certain" ends up not being true at all.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

[jdrgator]

Originally Posted by WESGATORS

Perfect example of when something that appears to be "certain" ends up not being true at all.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

iow straw man arguments

[bluelang]

Originally Posted by Burke

Rand stated that all man's knowledge is founded on perception. And perception is absolute knowledge.

Perception isn't knowledge. Perception is acknowledgement of observation.

[Burke]

Blue,

Perception is the foundation of all knowledge, and any attempt to claim it does not give us true facts is a contradiction. If someone attempts to have conducted, say, a scientific experiment "proving" that our senses are fallible, he's left explaining how he conducted the experiment with his supposedly fallible senses and why his conclusions are any more valid than those of his test subject.

Our senses are limited in their range. We can see only within the range of visible light, for example. They can be damaged or destroyed. The many cases cited as proof that they are fallible reduce to instances in which people are really making erroneous judgments based on something they have perceived.

Kant was probably the most influential philosopher who claimed our senses don't give us true reality. He claimed that there is a real "noumenal" world completely beyond us and that we can see only an unreal "phenomenal" world. He claimed that our sensory apparatus is distorted by concepts we already have in our minds. It is processed knowledge altered by the process. Essentially, Kant claimed that perception is not perception *because* it is perception, *because* we have a means of perception. A stupid contradiction.

The absolute reliability of our senses is self-evident. We don't have to corroborate their reliability because they are our means of corroboration, our ultimate means if proving things.

In order to really understand this, one must understand and appreciate Aristotle's law of non-contradiction, that A is not non-A.

That there are no contradictions in nature.

Which is the foundation of logic.

I might add that either perceptions give us certain knowledge or we are essentially not conscious because if the are fallible, we would never know whether they were giving is the truth or not. If your senses were fallible, you would have no way of knowing that the "tree" you are looking at is really a tree or something else.

And more, you would never know that it's not a tree because you would never know anything.

[108]

what's with the Rand obsession....its getting a bit much

this is how cults are formed i guess

[Burke]

A cult of individualists is a contradiction.

Blue,

Continuing with my thoughts above

Once Kant (supposedly) invalidated perception and brought the 18th century Enlightenment attack on Christianity to an end, men were left with having to decide how they do know things. The prevailing view, of course, was to get it from God.

But Kant also opened the door to another way of thinking: that basically men just all get together and "agree" on what is true. And this is essentially the philosophical foundation for collectivism in which "society" is the source and standard of everything, truth, morality, etc.

Suppose a group of scientists decide to test a subject to see if his perceptions are giving him truthful responses. Suppose they decide they do not. What reason is there to believe that the test subject isn't right and the scientists aren't wrong?

Well, scientists are elites and they all agree.

A view that confirms the idea that the source of all knowledge is the collective.

Scientific confirmation of the superiority of the collective over the individual.

With elites representing that society.

Get the picture?

[Burke]

The history of man is largely a conflict between Aristotle and a bunch of mystics and sophists.

[exiledgator]

Originally Posted by Burke

A cult of individualists is a contradiction.

Blue,

Continuing with my thoughts above

Once Kant (supposedly) invalidated perception and brought the 18th century Enlightenment attack on Christianity to an end, men were left with having to decide how they do know things. The prevailing view, of course, was to get it from God.

But Kant also opened the door to another way of thinking: that basically men just all get together and "agree" on what is true. And this is essentially the philosophical foundation for collectivism in which "society" is the source and standard of everything, truth, morality, etc.

Suppose a group of scientists decide to test a subject to see if his perceptions are giving him truthful responses. Suppose they decide they do not. What reason is there to believe that the test subject isn't right and the scientists aren't wrong?

Well, scientists are elites and they all agree.

A view that confirms the idea that the source of all knowledge is the collective.

Scientific confirmation of the superiority of the collective over the individual.

With elites representing that society.

Get the picture?

Making up stuff is fun.

[Burke]

Understand why Gore and other leftists are constantly claiming that the threat of AGW is a "consensus"?

Agreement by collectivists is often called "groupthink."

Under the communists, it was the "party line."

For leftists today, it's "political correctness."

[WESGATORS]

You can't separate perception from interpretation. If interpretation is flawed, then the perception is said to be flawed. If the sensory receptors are flawed, then the perception is said to be flawed. The idea that perception cannot be flawed requires a greater faith than all of the mystics in the world combined. That it can be flawed gives us caution as to what we consider useful information based on what we have perceived.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

[Burke]

Just another silly contradiction, someone claiming to know with his "flawed" senses that they are flawed.

So he can claim to know anything and everything by "faith."