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Well, then having Science being a constant revolution to find the absolute truth, my first thought of "all chloroplasts are green" is wrong and ejected by the jury, because we have found yellow chloroplasts.

So I guess the answer "Have we gotten all the facts to state that all chloroplasts are green" is no...

(Thinks to himself: Darnit!! I knew there were yellow ones too! (>.<))

The hidden key here (read amidst your eventual murder case) is, hypothesis (amongst the scientific method). Your definition of "absolute truth" imo, trips flat in it. In that situation, the one hypothesis who's proven true becomes an absolute truth afterwards (and only afterwards), since you used a "black & white" lenght of possibillities when laying that scenario.
(Just as a thought, though, don't mix those terms 'cause it can really start to confuse folks around since it isn't exactly accurate, especially non-English speaking natives.)



I can grant ya that, but adding a few stiches of my own... hey, it's me afterall.
"Is what we have an absolute truth, at the present moment." And of course, after it passed the (scientific) testing method.
We can compromise on this, methinks. *Wonders if*

I was using the Law of Noncontradiction here. The law of contradiction states "Two contradictory things cannot be true at the same time." Either he did kill her, or he didn't, right? You can't put "he sorta killed her". Now one thing you need to realize is this "In that situation". You see, first I want to bring out that absolute truths DO exist, THEN bring out the statement that all truths are absolute. By saying "in that situation", you've half-heartedly admitted that SOME absolute truths exist.

For example, either all the text in this sentence is the color we've dubbed as "white" or it isn't (it is), either Basan believes in God or not (you don't), and either there is a cow doll resting on my head or there isn't (there is). Now of course, not all hypotheses (as you have mentioned in your passage) are true, neither can ALL truths be shown to be absolute truths using this.


"Compromise".... *restrains himself from bashing Basan over the head. That is an evil word when speaking about facts. But anyways...

There is a problem with "Is what we have an absolute truth, at the present moment." You do remember that wretched Road Runner tactic don't you? Excuse me while I put that into action:


The quote above is showing that stating "is it an absolute truth just for now" is not a plausible statement. Remember the Law of Noncontradiction? It's either an absolute truth (always true), or not (not true at all, statement is too broad)

Now, for DISPROVING that there are NO absoute truths



Edit:
Conclusion#3) With all other possibilities of truth being thrown away, ALL truths are absolute truths, unless truths do not exist.
This would make Nozomu proud.

To give my personal and simpler definition - Knowledge: Power harnessed through the collective powers of the brain, which can be transformed into productive though products.

First off, what is "absolute knowledge"? Secondly, just because we can accept or reject it doesn't make "knowledge" any less valid, nor does it make that NO human can comprehend it. Third, if absolute knowledge did exist and God existed also, you can't truly say "there isn't really right and wrong". Let me build off of Lastchance's statement (and correct me if I'm wrong Lastchance):

Knowledge: Multiple hypotheses harnessed to the brain through our senses, which can be turned into productive thought products BUT are only useful if they are true. In other words, we only want to hear the truthful statements.

This is a great section in the book because later it downright demolishes any idea that there is no truth by using simple logic.

Absolute truths exist, and knowledge exist, but what is absolute knowledge?

And the Law of Non-Contradiction bickers with bivalence. Those cannot be used outside the rigor of some Sciences such as Maths. My "in that situation" was meant for it. Thus the hypothesis testing is a must.

And do you really want to know what 1st came to my mind after you exposed your situation above? There are other options to pick. The guy didn't killed her, but is involved. That makes fit in the thin line that you tried to shred with that example. *Winks and sticks out tongue (at the same time)*
We must account for all possible scenarios to be driven from a situation before stating such things all 'blackey and whithey' as you did.

Time n' time again, have stated that I'm agnostic not an atheist. Please don't make me repeat that. They're not the same, altough could be somewhat close to each other.

Yes, the hypothesis that is true after testing gets to be considered the normal pattern (aka truth) 'till a better one is found. And only afterwards I agree with the non-contradiction mambo jambo.



*Meh* Bah, I really need to see that source. Especially since the referencial shouldn't be the "Law of Non-contradiction" but instead the scientific method. From that angle it falls to dust. And I could pick just in one or two up there to show ya I'm more right than you. The scientific method is what drives me in here, not principles that can be thrown at anything possible.
"Conclusion#1) Therefore, if an absolute truth exists and is also an hypothesis, it cannot be proven right.
Conclusion#2) It would be an absurd question to ask "Is what we have an absolute truth, at the present moment?" because then you're denying the definition of "absolute truth" by claiming it is fallible."

In red (replaced your false by right) and there's the fallacy from where you began your 'logic' roundtable. Since it cannot be proven absolute by scientific terminology it's only a (relative) truth until you find another better one that fills the gaps left behind by the one used currently. Therefore it isn't absolute but relative, as in only for the time being. (Similar to that "2,0+2,0=4,0 so far". Altough personally, I doubt anyone can yet refute that one in a scientifically based manner.)

All that text to find out that the basis you took for granted is in fact a wrong one.



Eh, you've contradicted in this one when allying it to the "absolute truth" factor. Since there isn't a thing we can call as absolute knowledge, there isn't a thing we can call as absolute truth. *Meh* I hate to right...

How come they cannot be used? Is this ABSOLUTELY true??

Fine if you want to be picky then i'll just dumb it down for you. Either he did kill her DIRECTLY or didn't kill her DIRECTLY. Under "didn't kill here directly" there is "involved in the killing" or "not involved in the killing". See? You just made me add one more step. Just because there are "more options" he still either did kill her, or did NOT kill her. You are merely playing with court of law terms, since "murder" can be known as hiring someone to do the dirty work for you.
Not true; I can do 'blackey and whitey' without bringing in all the situations; it would just would be an incomplete table.

Sorry about that; I keep forgetting.

Basan, tell me ONE "either x or not x" pattern that can be considered "relative". If you cannot find one, you are at the mercy of 'burden for proof'.

Like the scientific method is used for evolution...
Basan, this is one of your lesser moments right here. This first logic piece that you have quoted above is all hypothesis. It is that 1) IF absolute truths exist. Also, I gave you the definition of absolute truth in the beginning, and ASSUMED that it was true for that SPECIFIC logic argument (not for #2 and #3).

1)Now Basan, IF absolute truths exist, those absolute truths CANNOT be changed, right? Claiming that you can change absolute truths is denying its own definition!

2) Now if we happened to make a hypothesis that ALSO happened to be an absolute truth, can it be proven wrong? NO! By claiming you can change an absolute truth is denying its own definition! The only reason for this assumption that absolute truths exist is because something can't be absolute until prove false, because by definition it would be relative, not absolute in the first place!

3)If the hypothesis CAN be proven wrong, then its not an absolute truth! If 2+2=4 can be proven wrong, then its not an absolute truth either! It's like the saying goes: "It's impossible until it becomes possible." But of course, if a truth were absolute, it would always be "impossible" and never become "possible". Understand now? This first logic statement was not to prove absolute truth, but to show the error in saying "It's absolute until its proven relative".

Ummm how??? I didn't understand his definition of "absolute knowledge". I know there is such thing as "absolute truth" and "knowledge", but then what's the definition of "absolute knowledge"? I ask this because the adjective absolute appears to have a different meaning when joined with knowledge.

And as for 2+2=4, it IS true that we make assumptions of what is an absolute truth and what isn't (if you believe in absolute truths). Of course, since assumptions are made by easily fooled humans, the assumptions can be wrong.

ADDITION:

What.. you don't trust Boolean Algebra?

"I think, therefore I am"

PLAIN AND SIMPLE

Interestingly enough, I took a class for a semester that deals exactly with this topic. It is called "Theory of Knowledge IB". We discussed the ways of knowing and what truth and knowledge were. Basically, what it boiled down to, was how accurate our knowledge really is. What was said is that anything that is concrete can be proven to exist. If I can knock on a table and pick it up, it clearly exists. Using knowledge by senses, the chair exists. It is a "big T" truth. Nothing can change the fact that the chair existed at the time that I touched and saw it.

Some people would argue that everything our senses experience may not be real, but it would be irrelevant. It we all share a false reality, does it matter if it is false? Is there anything else that is REAL? We assume that our eyes, which operate on the basis of reflected light, are without major faults, and that our brain processes the image unaltered. If I see a brown chair, everyone else may see brown as a completely different color, (although VERY highly unlikely) but it is still the same chair and color.

Knowledge is gleaned from many sources, some less reliable than others. Knowledge by authority is a relatively weak source. If your teacher TELLS you that 1+1=3, and you accept it on the basis of the teacher being a figure of authority, then your knowledge is wrong. It is untrue. Knowledge by feeling (I feel ill, my stomach hurts, etc) is a fairly reliable source, but the knowledge is only internal. You can't tell what others feel based on what your insides feel. Knowledge by emotion is another reliable sense. Like knowledge by feeling, knowledge by emotion is only applicable to others via sympathy. If you put yourself in the other person's place mentally, you can try to understand what knowledge they posess.


Too much intellectual thinking. I'm done for today.

It exsists to you, you cannot speak for everyone else when you knock on the table. And it only exsists when you know it is there, when you cannot see it or feel it or sense it in any way, you cannot be sure that the table remains in its location.
It has pretty much been proven that everyone see's things differently from other people. This is one of the reasons, it has been theorized that people have favorite colors. This does not only go for sight, but for every sense.
Normally teachers would say that 1+1=2 and we accept it because they are authority figures and this idea is supported by most people. But does that make it true, only because it is accepted by the majority of the public. Many ideas that are accepted as truths today originally were not true. Such as a round earth, today it is pretty much accepted that the earth is not flat. (although there is that one group) That was not always accepted, and probably the same could be said for every known idea.

My esteemed friends, you are reading too much into this subject. Knowledge exists by its current definition, and all of this hypothesizing and theorizing is amusing but quite without much backing at all. You can "know" something but still be wrong about it. There is false knowledge, and there is true knowledge. We should all strive for the latter. I think the topic should be what is truth and what is fiction. If you try to delve into the uncomprehendable, which is most likely false to begin with, not to mention immensely complex (which should be taken with a grain of salt here), then waste your time. I, however, will stick around with the orthodox idea of knowledge, because I have a thing called memory.

I know this goes against all logical thought whatsoever, but I was wondering the other day. What if some massive gravatic influx created the universe? Or, that is to say, the matter that would become the big bang. We know that black holes suck in matter, and it's theorized that white holes pump out an endless amount of matter. Could these strange anomalies not be helped to theorize? It's hard to recall those Stephen Hawking books that one could pore over for hours and not know what the Hell was being said, but I do remember a grid representing gravity and how it could change on a whim. I know it's uncomprehendable, at the moment, but that might be pre-big bang. I refuse to believe that the big bang was the creation of existence.

Well...Knowledge hard one i am going to use help from my dear friend Platon
i don't know if that's how u write it in english *Platon in spanish*
well my dear friend platon calls knowledge a proccess between ignorance and the ...(wow...it's really hard to translate) and the Definition of reality
according to platon the ignorance is not when you have not even a bit of knowledge according to platon the ignorance is when you accept any theory even though that theory is not approved to be real so? what's real?
real is everything that according to our ideas you can say it is something EX.

O that's a letter right? but how do you know it is a letter? it looks like a circle right? but how do you know that a circle is a circle? why isn't the letter "O" squared? why do you think they are even letters? and not...scotch Tape? huh?
so the have a definition of knowledge we have to know what ignorance is if ignorance is when you accept any theory and you don't knbow if it's real well.. you have to investigate if that theory can be real you have to make an investigation of why cats have 4 legs(some of them)
well... a cat has 4 legs becuz they have legs... and if like we have "f" that's one "f"
and if we have "ffff" we have 4 "fs"so if the cat as the last example has four "legs" and if you can actually prove it that's real and if it's real you know it's truth so now you have a knowledge about how many legs do the cats have oh one more thing the knowledge You cannot prove it by the senses i mean by watching hearing feeling trying because the senses are obsolete are invalid are not safe to trust because they can change you can now watch normal something and the next day it is another color and you say it is a diferent object but it's actually the same just that with a diferent color

ok you can worship me now ;D

Hold it! Where do we get this method of observation? How do we know if this method of observation even works? We can't use observation to prove that observation works; thats circular reasoning!

Now, I am not saying purple is wrong. What I am saying is that our simple inferences (I knock on a table and pick it up, it clearly exists) can only be true if we presuppose that absolute truths exist! Yet another believer in absolute truths. Hooray!

Thats absolutely right purple! If it is "false", would we really even know?? It's like asking "If someone misspelt a word in the dictionary, would anybody know?" Of course not! You can't claim something is wrong unless you know what is not wrong!
Well, they may call that color which they see as "purple", but you and him are still seeing the same color. I'll get more into this at your next passage.

"It is untrue". WRONG! Well, not exactly. It depends on the context. If you believe someone just because they tell you and they mean to be truthful, then yes you're a near total imbecile. But, just because they use a different word doesn't mean the teacher is exactly wrong.

Let's take a trip thousands of years back, to a hypothetical beginning of mankind. We have different tribes of people, each with their own language. One sees a stone and another stone, and thinks "X + X = Y". Another tribe comes to the conclusion that one plus one equals two; another, ichi to ichi wa ni desu. Now let's say, (for the sake of argument) that a small group separated from the tribe during the beginning of language. So of course, being humans, they forget what a stone and another stone make. Well, actually they don't "forget" this truth, they just forget what this new "idea" (language) was implemented upon the stones. So one man, trying to remember the words, remembers! "One plus one equals three!" Overjoyed, he comes to his companions and brings the ever-true fact that one plus one equals three.

Is the person who said "One plus one equal two" wrong? No. Is the one who said "One plus one equals three" wrong? Of course not. But how, one might ask, can this be possible? Language is substitute for the concrete things. That is why language is so vague. English people say "Good day", Japanese say "konnichiwa", and Germans say "Guten Tag". Just because they each have different words, they all mean the same thing! Take the example I just gave about 1+1=3. There is the Tribe language, where 2 was a substitute for a stone and another stone. In the Group's language, 3 was a substitute for a stone and another stone.
What I mean to say is that the truths are different, but a specific word may have differing meanings to people, which throws the art of conversation off balance.


Corbo, I was able to piece together your thoughts, but please don't use run-on sentences, or else chu the all-evil moderator will torture you.

Come to think of it, I agree because I could not understand what the topic-starter (who left us) meant by "absolute knowledge", since as stated above, the word "absolute" may have differing meanings for him and me.

i am still waiting for


by the way sorry if my words are messed up but in case u did not read that part
it was really hard to translate platon from spanish to english
i am salvadorean*no english in there*

It's alright, just try to remember the .'s and ,'s

That way, you'll be fine!

Hmm, I think it is complicated to define knowledge. It is definitely a word. Yet it describes something that is not really physical. I see certain words as describing something you can observe. These are the words that have pretty concrete definitions, because you can observe and find the meaning of the word.

Now then I see another category where there are words that describe things whose meaning you can't observe, something not physical. To describe words like thought, you describe it with many different words, which that ultimately lead to words whose meanings you can physically observe.

So for example, the word thought. You can define it as something in your brain. Now you just described the word thought with the word brain which is something observable. At the start of language I think people just had to assign words to things they observe. To define them isn't possible because there are not enough words relating to the thing. Definitions might really be a collection of synonyms or phrases that relate to the word.

I'm making up another example, such as water. You can say it is H2O, it is a clear liquid, and so on. Ultimately they paint a picture of what water really is. Although those words you would have to know the definitions of as well. So first I believe you must assume and assign observable objects with words, because you can easily comprehend those. Then you can use those words to define others, until you have a high vocabulary, where you can use simple words to define a bigger word, or even an idea, which is completely new.

I think the meaning of knowledge represents a large collection of different things. There is no simple definition to which you can get a clear idea of what knowledge is with like one word. The more words you can relate to knowledge, the clearer you can define it. There is no perfect definition, but the greater amount of words and phrases you can use to describe knowledge will make the meaning of it clearer.

In conclusion, I think that the word knowledge is what each of us makes it out to be. It represents something that can't quite be defined in simple terms, and must be defined by a collection of many ideas of what knowledge is, because in reality knowledge is just a word in the english language created by us to describe something, which previously couldn't be described. If it couldn't be described before, and you assign just one word such as knowledge to that idea, then how are you to describe knowledge! That is why the definition of knowledge must come from a collection of many things it relates to.

Now I might be rambling, but I'm just getting down some ideas. I'm sure someone who studies the origin or language might now how language really originates, but these are my ideas of how language originates, and how we use words to describe other words. I think this was also very repetitive

I also completely agree with what Mr.Kirbycode774 was saying, about how language is a substitute for concrete things.

Thats a good point devilisk. Everybody, think about this:

If looked upon thoroughly enough, EVERY word in language cannot be definitely defined due to the fact that there is an assumption of postulates connected to words. If someone asks me what is the definition of a pencil, I might say something like, "A writing utensil used to place words upon paper." Then they could ask "What does utensil means?" I could give them a response, then they could ask what one of the words in that definition meant, and so forth.

Language is an abstract concept used to define concrete things,
because abstract words are unable to back up other abstract words.

Wise words...wise words...

I have to slightly change that phrase because of a few holes. Time isn't necessarily concrete, but yet we describe it. Man it's hard to explain. Words back up ideas, concepts, but not themselves.

Thank You by the way i got that have a knowledge is just hmmm Crap? because it can change i mean you have a 5 cents coin wow? is that really a 5 cents coin why isn't it a 10 cents coin? having the 5 cents coin is just a "episteme" <--greek word
the point is that you can't have a real knowledge because things change and knowledge too

Knowledge exists but is has nothing to do with language... knowledge is different to everyone! For esample if I said pencil in Chinese to an English person (assuming this person can understand Chinese) He will interpret it as "pencil" But if I said pencil in English to someone Chinese, he/she would interpret it as "pencil" but in Chinese. It all depends on the person and if you really tune out to a somewhat alien mindset you can repeat pretty over and over again and you'll find that it is... just nothing... language is all different and you can't take it for granted just like an alien saying ZHOMBERG and he might not even use our letters or sounds. You might say pretty and the alien wouldn't understand but neither would you understand ZHOMBERG... Knowledge exists but language isn't exactly a solid part in knowledge even though it does have its place... Math and other stuff are more firm but still not as firm and there may be other courses out there that we don't know of yet... As I said... it is all up to interpretation...

I shortened your whole thread! (You're welcome )

Why is knowledge different to everyone? I have yet to hear the defintion of the word knowledge.

I HAVE proven (supposedly) that absolute truths exist at least.

Are you sure? absolute truths exist? read my exist yet doesn't theory posted on the thought of time thread (competition lol)

I did. Also, read my arguments of absolute truths on the second page upon this thread.

To summarize your entry kirby i give you the word....

WHY!?!?!?

YES! I did it for the minerals, but I'm still on topic so bite my toe!