Pope: Gayness as dangerous as the rainforest being destroyed.

[appolose]

fkusumot said:

appolose said:

I'm more answering the question "How can we know anything about reality"?  Whatever method is used to attempt to ascertain information about the "external world" has to assume something in order for the method to work.  Take, for example, empiricism.  This methods posits that knowledge about reality can be gained, or, at least, we can get close to knowledge, by the use of our senses.  But this only works if we assume our senses can be trusted, because you can't really prove empiricism with more empiricism.  This also, I think, clarifies what I mean by proof:  proof is merely any method one takes in order to attain knowledge about the external world, whether it be proof by sense data, or proof by, say, flipping a coin (heads=true, tales=false).  In both methods, there is "proof"; but something needs to be assumed in both cases for it to work (you couldn't flip a coin to verify flipping a coin proves anything; you have to assume it does first).

About proving that nothing can be proven; I mean nothing can be proven about the "external world"; my critique of methods of proof is simply a logical follow-through on them.  Logic is fine, for me (unless, of course, the law of non-contradiction is an assumption, too).

If that makes any sense, I would be amazed.

You might enjoy reading some Descarte or some Hume. Regardless, logic also fails in your scheme if it is based on false premises. How would you know when a jugdgment is based on false premises?

A more serious question then is: what do you mean by "nothing can be proven about the external world", i.e, is there some other world besides the external world and if so, what is it?

What I mean  by saying "external world" is any proposition about reality.

What I mean by "nothing can be proven" is that there is no method for gaining knowledge that would avoid depending on knowledge in the first place (or rather, looking for a method of truth already begs the question as to whether you can know a method will give you truth). Hope that's clear... knowledge is the only certain beginning of epistemology... merely because I can't analytically go any farther back.

Really, what I just said is the answer to your question as to "how do I know this isn't based on a false premise". I'm merely recognizing that by definition, knowledge will already be necessary to even posit a method of truth (it's not a premise about reality...it's the definition of words). It is a confession that any belief is already dependant on knowledge.