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To know or to believe

Dootzkie Monday, March 28, 2011
From theists and atheists and their malevolent companions we came to the question what can you know and what can you not ever know. What γνῶσις you can posses and if you can posses any for that matter.

But, before we embark on the path of explaining the idea and the reality of both agnostics and gnostics, we need to look at knowledge first. The act of knowing. And it's factual manifestation of the act of believing.

What do you actually know? And what do you just believe in so much that it became a fact for you?

To know something means that you are consciously aware of a fact with ultimate certainty. This doesn't mean you accepted one form of reality that was present to you or that you adopted some form of belief.

...consciously aware of a fact with ultimate certainty...

This leads down an spiral of insanity where all these nice walls you have build during your life may or may not be so. Because, ultimate certainty is above even doubting for there is no point to start the doubt process from. Certainty is everywhere, omnipresent, ultimate and leaves no gaps for anything else.

This did lead one great philosopher down the rabbit whole out of which the famous "Cogito, ergo sum" emerged. The act of doubting is the act of conscious mind and therefor the conscious mind of Descartes existed in that moment of time. By this, the physical or physiological form of the conscious mind wasn't recognized as a fact.
On that, I would like to add the idea that if you achieve ultimate consciousness of your own mind and then recognize something outside of your consciousness, that is a definitive proof that there is at least one more consciousness out side of yours.

To quote the Weasel "...Every human being relies on and is bounded by his knowledge and experience to live. This is what we call "reality". However, knowledge and experience are ambiguous, thus reality can become illusion. Is it not possible to think that, all human beings are living in their assumptions?"

You accepted your reality, you believe it is real. A scientist believes the object of his observation is real as much as a theists believe that God is real.

But to return to the knowledge. With the REAL meaning of the world knowledge explained, we can move on to describe the groups that believe that To Know is possible or impossible.

Coming soon to a blog near you ;)

19 comments:

Yu-Gi-Oh Player said...

i also believe in the cogito ergo sum. Be it phyiscal or conscious.

Phillip J Fry said...

everyone believes they know and don't know that they are believing. I don't say i know there isn't a god but say I believe there isn't

Patres said...

Well, where to begin?
I guess in the concept of reality, as a simple action flick once stated, "what's real is just impulses interpreted by our brains". Everything we see and feel is just the result of different type of nervous stimulus. So yeah who knows what's really real (pardon the redundancy)?
And to what is a fact I have to fall back to my scientific method. A fact is a conclusion drawn from an observation of a phenomenon, which can be repeated in similar conditions by anyone.

Jay said...

my brain hurts...

Anonymous said...

The Theory of Knowledge is defined by first having a fact. Then, to truly know it, you need to believe in that fact.
When something is a proven fact, and you believe it, only then does it become knowledge.
That make sense?
This is why Religion will never be knowledge, nor science. Religion is easy to be believed, but not proven. Science is easy to be proven, but not believed.

psyke said...

I guess that sometimes there's a thin line between the two terms

Pentele said...

I think it's a matter or perspective.

asldkasd said...

I hate when I read a blog post, start googling things and lose half an hour. Stop giving me knowledge!

Unknown said...

interesting viewpoint

Patti D. said...

very interesting post.

Daniel Andrade said...

believe is the trick ;)

Meghan Moran said...

you've just philosophically mind effed me.

Ngratz said...

very interesting stuff. followed.

Jay said...

Really makes one think, doesn't it? Very interesting read.

PossessedWarrior said...

I don't believe, but I don't know.

Slamcakes said...

Dude, thinking about this makes my brain hurt

Anonymous said...

Hm, quite a decent article.

Tibble said...

My brain hurts, it took 2 - 3 reads to get my head round this post. I accept reality and take it with a grain of salt as much as I can because it only exists for me because I'm witnessing it - I cant prove any of you are actually any realer than a god, or Santa.

D. said...

Oh dear... I'm studying philosophy now, so this is kind of extension to my lectures :)
I think that if what I think I know works for me, I don't need to know the source of that knowledge, because I don't think I could ever find out What the source is. I see the world the way I see it and accept that others can (and do) see it differently.

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