| appolose said: By method of truth I mean any system used to gain certain knowledge (as opposed to uncertain knowledge) about the "external world" (I'll clarify what I mean by that in a moment). For example, empiricism and rationalism are such systems. They need "knowledge" at first to actually work, though. Empiricism only works if you assume your senses can be trusted. That assumption is the knowledge I'm referring to, something which empiricism cannot provide (because that would be circular). There definitely are many methods (infinite methods, I suppose) of truth; it's just whatever one chooses to say gives knowledge (like the flipping-a-coin example I mentioned earlier), but they all have to assume something in order to work; themselves, because the systems can't rpove themselves (unless they're assumed to be true already, but that defeats the point here). By the "external world" I mean whatever exists. Any other "world" (should there be others, I mean) or reality or universe would fall under the catagory of external world, because they exist. Logic and meaning aren't that type of thing to exist, so they are fine to use. It is to the external world are methods of truth applied; therefore, nothing can be certainly known (that is, nothing cannot be first assumed) about the external world. That's why I feel I can say "nothing can be proved", because I'm only referring to the external world. I can prove that methods of truth rely on assumption to operate because it's a question of meaning, not existence.
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O.K., well, you say:
1) A method of truth is a system used to gain certain knowledge.
2) Nothing can be known for certain about reality.
Since you you don't mention anything other than "reality" (or the external world, i.e., things that exist) I'm left to believe that is the entirety of your argument. If you're using logic then what what can you deduce or infer from your first two statements?
One might be "No method of truth can gain certain knowledge about reality." Would that be a fair assessment of your beliefs?
