Posted by J.H. on March 16, 1999 at 16:12:44 {MWKQmDRkic4cM}:
In Reply to: *****Frequently Avoided Quandaries posted by a7p on March 16, 1999 at 15:21:46:
: I reccommend Philosophy 101.
Uh, and where did you take it you say? Brooklyn Bethel?
I've done Philosophy 101 and then some, and I can say with confidence that you must have slept through the lessons about making a coherent argument. It is not my intent to insult you, but I will have to ask you to express your opinions with clear language. Use concrete examples and facts supported by rational arguments. What you do is handwaving, I am sad to say, that really has no merit in a serious debate.
; You need to understand more about what knowledge really is or isn't and what we can really know for certain.
You seem to subscribe to an extremist postmodern position known as radical skepticism, which is the denial of all knowledge.
And of course it's true that logically, we can't be literally 100% certain about anything. You may be a butterfly dreaming you are a man. Perhaps I am not writing this and you are not reading it.
The problem for radical skepticism, besides the fact that it's self-defeating, is that nobody really believes it. While it's true that the continued observing of apples falling down or snowflakes being white never completely removes the possibility that we may encounter upwards-falling apples and green snowflakes tomorrow, nobody really believes that. Even the least sane of all radical skepticists will fall flat on his back the day he sees any such phenomena.
Like it or not: When probability reaches a certain point, marginally below 1.0, we call it a fact. The denial of knowledge about such facts in daily life is pure sophistry. It's a totally world-denying irrationalism that makes me seriously question the sanity of certain elements of leftist "intellectuals" in the social sciences and (sad to admit) the humanities.
Day-to-day science takes a much more practical approach, and never bothers to find The Truth or the Certain Fact. Certainty in science can be expressed in these words: You're intellectually perverse if you withhold provisional consent from a conclusion which is supported by overwhelming evidence and observations.
When you call it a "leap of faith" to assume the virtual certainty of something supported by thousands of observations, rational arguments, experiments built on sound methodologies developed over decades and discussed throughly by the brightest men and women in the world, you are abusing the language. It is no leap of faith. It is pure common sense, like we all believe that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, too, even though a postmodernism will claim we can't "know" that!
: Physics shows us that we are walking darkly through a mystery.
Don't know much about physics either, I notice.