Sunday, August 10, 2008

True Knowledge

Nowadays, we are pretty sure that all the facts of our daily life will happen as they occurred in the past, but this certainty is actually groundless. Statements such as objects always fall are not absolutely true.


Water of Montjuic magical fountain in Barcelona falls because of gravity


Firstly, it's stated that objects fall because of gravity, so gravity is the cause and the object's fall is the effect. This mechanism is called the cause-effect relation and constitutes almost the only source of knowledge we have. However the effect and the cause are not linked in a logical way, but in a psychological way. That is to say, we think that the effect will always happen after the cause since we are used to this has been occurring for our whole life. As a result, our knowledge is a consequence of the strong belief we feel that events will occur in the future as they did in the past, because we are used to seeing them in this way. Thus, we only have a belief instead of certain knowledge.

Nevertheless there is a kind of knowledge that is not obtained from the cause-effect relationship. This knowledge is the mathematical one, whose certainty comes from the idea that its negation involves contradiction. But this certainty disappears when mathematics is applied to the physical world. Hence, scientific knowledge can't be considered true knowledge. For instance, it can't be stated that a physical law is correct because nobody can assure us that the next event could be explained by this law.

Similary to scientific knowledge, nobody can assure that what our eyes see is what really exists. The coincidence between we think exists and what actually exists is pure chance. Even the existence of oneself can't be really assured. That is to say, the consciousness of what we have been is a consequence of our memory and the existence of a psychological time that allows us to put our memories in order. As I see it, this psychological time leads us to believe in our existence through time since a real time doesn't exist at all.



As it's explained in the movie Matrix, nobody can assure that what our eyes see is what really exists (Image obtained from wikipedia)


In conclusion, all the knowledge we have can't be considered true, but only likely, except for mathematical knowledge. So the limit of knowledge is mathematics. Out of mathematics, nothing is absolutely sure, nothing is true knowledge. Consequently, there is absolute scepticism about we can know with certainty but, certainly, this scepticism is luckily only philosophical, since it's very unlikely that daily events occur in a different way as we think. Therefore our belief is enough to live.

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