Rise of atheism: 100,000 Brits seek 'de-baptism'

[Final-Fan]

appolose said:

Final-Fan said:

Not even if the ways to "use" or interpret the sense data were revealed? 

(I wanted to drop everything for the exchange I just replied to, but that question was too tempting to not ask.)

    If something was revealed to interpret sense data realize this would no longer be empiricism, as empiricism holds that all we need (and have) is sense data to make the correct interpretation (lol of what sense data represents).

 

    Saying a "way" would be revealed to interpret sense data sounds pretty much "a method of truth" (for the world/sense data of course). It's not much different than saying "maybe there's a method of truth you haven't realized yet".

    (*sigh* have mercy on my weary soul and don’t make me explain the following in any more depth: ) Cool, well I have one that contains the fundamental answer (or rather gets to the root of the problem in epistemology) already 0_o anything else that worked would just add an interesting specification (e.g. bananas are the source of knowledge of which is gained when eaten (good luck knowing where that first banana is to eat though).

 

    If there will be quibbling over your specified use of the word "use", I'll just ask you how you discover the meaning of someone's word you've never known using only the word itself. Revelation means to give knowledge... so that means if it helped you gain the meaning of the word in any way it would have to give you, in some way, knowledge that would give the meaning of the word to you... which is just... revelation still.

But didn't you say that absolute knowledge couldn't be gotten from sense data?  If you didn't, never mind.  But if the sense data is a form of revelation (as you suggested above), and if interpretations of that sense data can also be revealed, and if revelation confers absolute knowledge (your def'n.), then couldn't you put those two types of absolute knowledge together logically and derive more absolute knowledge from them?  Or is sense data a type of revelation that is not absolute knowledge? 

Empiricism is about taking sense data and making judgments about the world based on it.  As long as the revealed interpretations result in a consistent/persistent world and can create a working I/O system with feedback, I don't know why revelation of those interpretations would necessarily be inconsistent with empiricism.  But then again I'm pretty tired right now.