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| Chapter 5 Clarification | ||||||||||
| Your question was "What is knowledge?" | ||||||||||
| I've already answered this question in my Clarifications for chapter 4, but I will again because I feel that I still have more to say about it. True knowledge (or belief, or perception) is impossible for humans to obtain. Even the tiniest doubts exist for everything we think we know. I think that absolute knowledge contains no doubts; is indubitable. There is another kind of knowledge, however. This other knowledge (I call it "pragmatic knowledge" or belief or conviction) allows doubt. To have pragmatic knowledge is simply to have knowledge that works. I know that if I go outside when it's raining, I will get wet. This is a bit of pragmatic knowledge (as is all human knowledge) since I have doubts about my own perception and concept of rain. What if I don't get wet in the rain, what if I only think I do? Still, if I go outside when it's raining, I will expect to get wet. It works for me to believe that I'll get wet in the rain because I perceive to. Therefore, I have a pragmatic knowledge of it. | ||||||||||
| You asked, "What is 'the truth'?" | ||||||||||
| The truth is the way things really are. When you take something, and strip away all the opinions and misperceptions of it, what it truly is will appear. As I said earlier, this true knowledge of something cannot be obtained by humans due to the faults in our perceptions. The truth is unobtainable. | ||||||||||
| In response to my claim that no true knowledge is possible, you asked me "What about the statement 'I exist'?" | ||||||||||
| How do I know that I exist? I disagree with Descartes' "Cogito Ergo Sum" (I think, therefore I am) view of it. How can I be sure that the thoughts coming out of my mind are my own? What if I am just a figment of the imagination of some higher being? What if I'm just a puppet? Wait! I still would exist, I suppose; just in an extremely different way than I perceive my own existence. I suppose you;ve caught me here. I can;t find any reason at all to doubt my own existence, though I can find many possible doubts that my existence is the way I perceive it to be. I think I'm going to have to take a complete U-turn and agree with Descartes. I just said earlier (preached, actually) that no true knowledge is possible, and I've just proven myself wrong (with your help). Maybe Descartes was right. Maybe the only thing that I can possess true knowledge of is the statement "I exist." | ||||||||||