Are There Any Definites in Philosophy?

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Tietjen said:
:hmmm:It’s definitely boring.
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That 🙂
and that nothing can ever be known with 100% certainty.

“All of reality is based upon uncertainty. Certainty is impossible.”

Peace be with you,
Archistrage
 
There are definitely definites in philosophy. If a man states that there are no definites then he has made a definitive statement. That means that his statement does not exist, but then nothing else could exist without definites. In fact this reply I am typing could not exist without definites, so there are definitely definites.
 
The Law of Noncontradiction;
Cogito Ergo Sum (and no; cogito cogito ergo cogito sum does not challenge this);
Tautologies;
Axioms can be treated as definate; even though they are not technically definate;
Individuators; (at least formally).
 
slywakka250 said:
I very often find myself doubting the Law of Non contradiction. So I say in philosophy at least, definite does not exist. we can be certain of nothing.
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What logic do you use to doubt the law of noncontradiction?
 
a_priori said:
There is at least one. Descarte’s Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. The proposition is that man is a thinking being, a “res cogitans”. This is a proposition that, in the very act of refuting, affirms itself.
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No it is NOT, with all due respect.

The flaw in Descartes’s famous Maxim lies in the fact the if you are indeed thinking, how do you know that you are REALLY thinking?

Maybe the Demon that Descartes referenced is making you THINK that you are thinking. To continue the argument, maybe what you THINK are actually thoughts that sprang from your own conscioousness are ACTUALLY thoughts that the Demon put into and allowed to filter into your subconscious to make you THINK you are thinking. Maybe you could say one has NO “thoughts” per se. maybe you are a human “machine” that is simply a vehicle by which the Demon expresses himself and uses to articulate his Own Thoughts. Maybe the whole Human race is like that.

Shades of THE MATRIX, of course. In fact, I read somewhere the Wachowski Brothers based the Matrix movies partially on Descartes’s Philosophy. Particularly the idea that another “intelligence” disseminates an illussory world through our subconscious to make us think we are living in it (“reality”).

The Only thing that “I think” really affirms itself may be in the idea that we may indeed be exercising our cognitive qualities IN A WAY so we are expressing ourselves in a way that makes us declare WE ARE Thinking.
In other words, we use our faculties in away such that we can APPROXIMATE (guess, Theorize, whatever) we are “thinking”----but that cannot be totally empirically tested, so we actually cannot know TOTALLY whether or not we REALLY ARE thinking. And we can NEVER know. Very freaky way to look at the Universe and Consciousness, but there one is.
Do you GET what I’m saying?👍
 
a_priori said:
Just because “we can be certain of nothing” (I agree), it doesn’t necessarily follow that the “definite does not exist”.
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But how can one determine that, though?

Ay, there’s the rub. 🙂
 
OrdinaryMelkite said:
No it is NOT, with all due respect.

The flaw in Descartes’s famous Maxim lies in the fact the if you are indeed thinking, how do you know that you are REALLY thinking?
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You tell me? What were you thinking about when you wrote this post? Are you honest enough to admit that you had a thought before you wrote it? I doubt that you really did think about it.
 
OrdinaryMelkite said:
But how can one determine that, though?

Ay, there’s the rub. 🙂
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You can’t. But it still doesn’t mean it isn’t true. We are locked in the “fishbowl” space & time. The same way the fish cannot discern the Steinway two rooms away from their fishbowl, we cannot rule out any reality. The Steinway does exist and the ability of the fish to know that or not doesn’t change.

Absence of evidence and evidence of absence (to steal from Nassim Nicholas Taleb) are two entirely different things.
 
OrdinaryMelkite said:
The flaw in Descartes’s famous Maxim lies in the fact the if you are indeed thinking, how do you know that you are REALLY thinking?

Maybe the Demon that Descartes referenced is making you THINK that you are thinking.
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So, “THINKING” that you are thinking isn’t really thinking? To “THINK”, or the ability to consciously activate abstractions that can be detected by one’s consciousness through the process neurons firing in one’s brain is a different process than to think?

I would argue that the ability to think exists whether or not one is merely thinking he is thinking. Thinking you are thinking is still thinking. The Matrix is my favorite movie BTW.

Interesting discussion. This is why I have a sort of a “quantum mechanical” view of philosophy. I am Catholic because it represents an area of higher probability for me on the continuum of philosophical possibilities. But I’ve pretty much resigned myself to acknowledging I know nothing and have no hope of actually “knowing” anything in this life, physical or metaphysical. That’s why faith exists I guess, to give the option of searching for that last puzzle piece. It’s comforting to believe that Jesus Christ actually does know stuff!!
 
It is definite that existence, truth, and knowledge exist because to say otherwise requires an existing, truthful, knowable statement.
 
a_priori said:
There is at least one. Descarte’s Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. The proposition is that man is a thinking being, a “res cogitans”. This is a proposition that, in the very act of refuting, affirms itself.
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A:

I believe that Descartes was incorrect. The theorem should say, “I am, therefore, I think.” And, now we have scientism

God bless,
jd
 
archistrage said:
That 🙂
and that nothing can ever be known with 100% certainty.

“All of reality is based upon uncertainty. Certainty is impossible.”

Peace be with you,
Archistrage
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Go outside and kick a big rock with your bare foot. I want to hear uncertainty then. 😃

God bless,
jd
 
alitaptap

It is definite (certain) that I have written this sentence and you are reading it.

Now there must be more than just those two definites.
 
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