When you think about it, Scientifically we really dont know anything.......

[Mazty]

SamuelRSmith said:

Mazty said:

Kantor said:
Well of course not. We don't KNOW anything in any field because technically it's impossible to ever know anything. We could all just be deluding ourselves and making the exact same logical error.

But that way of thinking is silly and pointless and so we avoid it.

The important thing is that science has given us a far better idea of what surrounds us than we would otherwise have, certainly far better than what religion has given us. And you don't need a thermometer to measure temperature; it would just melt if it went anywhere near the sun.

? Why is it impossible to know anything? From a scientific viewpoint, that's just wrong, and from a philosophical one, it's still wrong. 

You, yourself, quoted Descartes. If all that we know exists is ourselves ("I think, therefore, I am"), then absolutely nothing else has to be true. We could be being deceived by a "great deceiver".

Even if that was true though, the deception still has rules, and we understand said rules e.g. Newton's Laws. Even if this was just a computer simulation, those laws hold true in the simulation.