You claim that you know that something that can't be measured does exist. If you haven't just made up that claim, that implies that you have somehow detected the existence of that thing. What you might not be aware of is that in the eyes of a scientist that makes you into a "measuring apparatus" for the thing that you claim cannot be measured. In order for a scientist to consider something unmeasurable, it cannot have any influence on the natural world, as that would be a measurable effect. Making you utter or type a claim about the existence of something is an influence on the natural world that can be measured, so if you making that claim is actually causally connected to the thing (as opposed to made up by you), that would make the thing measurable.
I don't think you understand that you can't control what information and processes are dynamically influenced and what components are static and unchanging. The methodology of science can be subject to the same level of analytical inspection and rigor that the scientific methodology itself upholds.
You hold science as a constant and shape the world around that lens. What happens when science starts to take itself apart, when it starts to redefine itself, analyze itself, study itself?
Keep down-voting me if you like. All I really know is that I have more questions than I have answers, and I don't think that is a bad thing.
Science on science, it's a thing. Also named Theory of Science, it studies Science from a philosophical view and brings up questions like "If we have measured something to be the same 10000 times, can we be sure it will be same the 10001st time?"
What happens when you do that? Well, for me what happens is the realization of the value of being pragmatic. Truth is, like Descartes said, we can't really know anything but our own existence, and depending on your definition of existence, even that can be questioned. But what is the value in that? Now when I know I know nothing, is it a good basis to live my life upon?
My answer to that is no, it's not a good basis to stand on. Instead I choose to approach it pragmatically, or as an engineer if you prefer, "I accept my perception of reality* as real" and "a useful fact is information that can somehow be used to predict the future"
But then, I tend to like answers more than questions, I guess it comes included with my engineering degree.
* Not meaning that everything I perceive in a given moment has to be real, rather that my understanding of the world is my best guess of how things are.
I'm not sure what you are trying to tell me, but I certainly don't hold science as a constant.
Also, I didn't down-vote you. And I agree that not having answers is not a bad thing--what is bad, though, is making up an answer instead of just accepting the lack of knowledge, or insisting that current lack of knowledge means permanent lack of knowledge.
I wasn't directing that at you, just in general. I really do try to create one part of an intelligent dialogue on these forums, but it is incredibly frustrating to have experienced variations of ways of perceiving information, without having the capacity to express the issue in a way that anyone is willing to listen to, and then be down-voted on top of that, which feels like being silenced.
> insisting that current lack of knowledge means permanent lack of knowledge.
The alternative to that is that there is a limit to knowledge, that it is possible for all things to be known. And even if humanity does hit that point, I think at that point, it becomes a choice to choose whether to believe all things are known, or to believe that some things are not yet known.
I would suggest that there might be things that we will never figure out, but for which we will never know that we will never figure them out.
Also, belief is not a choice, by definition. Belief comes from being convinced. You cannot choose to be convinced, either you are or you are not, change only comes due to new information or new ideas, but never due to a deliberate decision to be convinced of something else. You can decide to pretend a different belief, but you cannot decide your actual belief.
What if my belief has always defaulted on silence, no thought?
It's just the opposite of the confidence in always yielding a conclusion. When I work with science, I ere on the side of hesitance, and I always believe that hesitence will be there.
I think some of my beliefs about believing are stronger than my actual beliefs. This conversation has become too overgeneralized to say anything useful aside from the ways the mind simplifies, reduces, and applies pattern derived from observation.
I don't understand the strong reaction in 'knowing'. I always feel like I have to know everything all at once, in order to truly suggest that I know anything, and since I can not know everything, I only have a very vague guess of knowing some things, which are continually subject to the same analytic deconstruction and reconstruction. Ideas are broken down and rebuilt over and over and not a single one of them is a complete picture. That's what I observe in my mind and in dialogue outside of my mind. I don't have to believe anything about it because it's a direct observation. It just comes down to how angry, 'strong', assertive, or authoritative people sound, and I find that ridiculous. It's like being human is a stupid joke.
> What if my belief has always defaulted on silence, no thought?
Well, if you haven't thought about something, you presumably don't believe it? (Not to be confused with believing the negation, which you presumably also wouldn't believe in that case.)
> This conversation has become too overgeneralized to say anything useful aside from the ways the mind simplifies, reduces, and applies pattern derived from observation.
Well, feel free to be more specific?
> I don't understand the strong reaction in 'knowing'. I always feel like I have to know everything all at once, in order to truly suggest that I know anything, and since I can not know everything, I only have a very vague guess of knowing some things, which are continually subject to the same analytic deconstruction and reconstruction.
I think I would agree. That's why I consider the question of knowledge (in the sense of being ultimately sure about the truth of something) ultimately uninteresting. What actually matters is what you believe (that is, what you act on) because you cannot avoid interacting with the world, and you will do so based on you beliefs, whether they reflect ultimate truth or not.
> Ideas are broken down and rebuilt over and over and not a single one of them is a complete picture. That's what I observe in my mind and in dialogue outside of my mind. I don't have to believe anything about it because it's a direct observation.
Well, I think that that's questionable. On the one hand, semantically, considering something you observed directly to be true still is a belief, even if a well-founded one. One can believe things by blind faith or due to direct observation, or for many other reasons, some good, some bad. On the other hand, I would be cautious with the term "direct observation": There is a ton of indirection between your brain thinking a thought and the "reality" outside the brain causing the thought, and conceptually there isn't really all that much difference between observing another brain by means of that brain causing the body it's in to create sound waves, causing your eardrum to vibrate, causing nerve signals in your brain, and the same with an MRI machine observing the same brain and feeding its images through your eyes into your brain, both are ultimately pretty indirect, even if one of the scenarios uses only natural machinery to achieve the result, so artificial machinery is not necessarily any worse at producing a reliable perception of the world than natural bodies, and you have to believe quite a few things in both cases, be it about larynxes, air, sound waves, and ears, or about MRI machines, light, and retinas.
> It just comes down to how angry, 'strong', assertive, or authoritative people sound, and I find that ridiculous.
I am not quite sure what you are trying to say with that, but I guess that science is the best way we know that avoids just that as far as possible by making it as easy as possible for anyone to reproduce an observation (at least that's the ideal ...).
> It's like being human is a stupid joke.
Well, from some perspective, maybe? I guess the solution is to adopt a different perspective? Like: Well, yes, ultimate knowledge seems to be unattainable--but why does that matter? It's a philosophical curiosity, interesting to think about, but ultimately it doesn't prevent you from improving your model of the world and interacting with the world. Your model predicts that the chair you sit on will hold you up, and it does, you don't get hurt and can sit comfortably--does it matter whether the existence of the chair is some ultimate truth or maybe "just" an illusion?
I already agree with you and I have from the start. I have no interest in talking, because it is obvious that I can not communicate effectively and fluidly, on the internet. Thank you for the conversation, but this is the same circle of thought as it has always been, and it never seems to change.
