what do you know

[Reciprocality]

What do all the things you know have in common?

If we know something then isn't it about something else? "I know that my cat eats fish til there is only bones left!"

 

But what does the above example have in common with every other kind of knowledge, what separates the knowledge from the thing that the knowledge is about?

Edited September 15 by Reciprocality

[ici]

It depends on what you focus on, how you interpret a word, the context and also data compression.

Saying “fish” means that you focus on the meat of the fish, not the bones. 80% of a fish is meat. It’s more optimal for humans to talk like that.

You don’t have to say “cat is eating the meat of the fish”, you could just say “fish” without having to expand on that. It’s the consumer’s job to decompress the meaning of the sentence.

This focus creates an information leak. This 20% is what you’ve focused on now.

[Reciprocality]

12 minutes ago, ici said:

It depends on what you focus on, how you interpret a word, the context and also data compression.

Saying “fish” means that you focus on the meat of the fish, not the bones. 80% of a fish is meat. It’s more optimal for humans to talk like that.

You don’t have to say “cat is eating the meat of the fish”, you could just say “fish” without having to expand on that. It’s the consumer’s job to decompress the meaning of the sentence.

This focus creates an information leak. This 20% is what you’ve focused on now.

@ici I am trying to get to the character or distinctness of all "knowing about", there really is no room for ambiguity here and therefore no need to interpret beyond the obvious, contexts, data compression, information leak and percentages simply are other topics.

That which is known about something is surely within a context, but some things are so general that their only context could be universal and therefore not really be contextual at all, I am asking about the kind of thing it is that which is known about something else, I am not asking you to just attach a label to this kind of thing but to possibly discover what kind of process all knowing about is part of and potentially necessarily so, this process being so universal that it would be non-contextual.

[PurpleTree]

all i know is that i know nothing 

[ici]

You say that there is no room for ambiguity yet you talk in abstract terms which creates ambiguity.

Can you give concrete examples or another analogy?

[Reciprocality]

1 hour ago, ici said:

You say that there is no room for ambiguity yet you talk in abstract terms which creates ambiguity.

Can you give concrete examples or another analogy?

@ici I know about the straw that it bends, I know about the thing that it has properties, I know about the house that it it higher than me, about the object that it looks like a chair.

There is something that can be said about the "knowing about" which is not ambiguous even though it is a generality, the ambiguity simply dwells in your mind and I Insist that instead of blaming me for it who goes through all this effort precisely to induce forth the distinctness (which i opposite of ambiguity) of "knowing about" try to take ownership of it instead. 

My answer to my question is that what is known about something is either personal or impersonal, where the former employs past experiences that now is sufficiently similar to present experiences and that this form of knowledge is a developmental necessity already at infancy, while the latter kind of knowledge is the condition for the former and distributes over the domain of which the objects or situations of the former kind of knowledge is composed, such as relative movement. The implications are rich and interesting but I wont go there now.

[Reciprocality]

@ici To differentiate between contexts and situations is the easiest thing in the world which is why so many insist on doing it even where it could never produce any insight or value..

To differentiate what is mistaken as the same is a labour for everyone who with good conscience considers themselves philosophically inclined.

We are resolving ambiguities here not creating any, if in the process there are ambiguities we have to deal with that is simply the nature of the game.

 

If when you ask me what is the difference between plural and several I require a minute to figure it out that attests to how indistinct I conceived those concepts, does that mean that just because they are fairly abstract their ambiguity can never be resolved? Edit: Because stating that "abstractions create ambiguities" implied so, and certainly in that context.

Edited September 15 by Reciprocality

[Someone here]

@Reciprocality I think i can only know my sensory experience.  Anything that i can experience directly via my 5 senses is all that I know for certain . Anything else is fantasy land .

Good questions btw . 

Edited September 15 by Someone here

[Reciprocality]

8 hours ago, Someone here said:

@Reciprocality I think i can only know my sensory experience.  Anything that i can experience directly via my 5 senses is all that I know for certain . Anything else is fantasy land .

Good questions btw . 

@Someone here I am glad you see the significance of the questions.

Everything besides sensory stimuli certainly is not sensory stimuli, and if your criterion for certainty is that it must be a colour or a sound etc then what service does it do your position to categories everything beside stimuli under one category when the subtle differences between mental categories are made to relate to sensory stimuli in those various ways that is actually possible?

Fantasy is to my knowledge the type of imagination which create films of images that you can not find an equivalent of in the real world. But it is doubtless that the mind also possess images without which you wouldn't know that an object looked like a chair, thus bearing an entirely different relation to the real world of sensory stimuli.

Now that we have hopefully clarified a few misconceptions, is it entirely impossible that things can be known for certain without being impressed on us as a stimuli?

[Someone here]

8 hours ago, Reciprocality said:

Everything besides sensory stimuli certainly is not sensory stimuli, and if your criterion for certainty is that it must be a colour or a sound etc then what service does it do your position to categories everything beside stimuli under one category when the subtle differences between mental categories are made to relate to sensory stimuli in those various ways that is actually possible?

There is nothing but sensory direct experience.  Check and see . Even thoughts and imagination is certainly felt or experienced..but just more subtle or ethereal if you will. So you have to understand that only sensory experience is absolute truth and the only thing you know because there is nothing else .

You could say but we can apply scepticism to even sensory experience because when we dream at night we Experience sensory stimuli but its illusory..but in my opinion and worldview dreams are NOT illusory. They are identical to the waking state .

You made me crave fish btw 🤣. I want sushi but I have some tuna in the fridge. 

[Reciprocality]

20 hours ago, Someone here said:

There is nothing but sensory direct experience.  Check and see . Even thoughts and imagination is certainly felt or experienced..but just more subtle or ethereal if you will. So you have to understand that only sensory experience is absolute truth and the only thing you know because there is nothing else .

You could say but we can apply scepticism to even sensory experience because when we dream at night we Experience sensory stimuli but its illusory..but in my opinion and worldview dreams are NOT illusory. They are identical to the waking state .

You made me crave fish btw 🤣. I want sushi but I have some tuna in the fridge. 

@Someone here All you are doing is asserting again and again that your criterion for the concept of being is that it is sensory experience, that is a very personal business with no clear benefit other than to avoid the taxing efforts of distinctly identifying abstract concepts.

But if we investigate what being is we find that only "nothing" could be opposed to it, which means that nothing is opposed to it thus everything is being, this of course is not profound but only an explication of what is obvious.

 

We have good reason to state that sensory direct experience is primary and that everything besides it is a consequence of it, that would include all our memories, knowledge, relationships, self-impressions, desires and concepts. But that does not mean that these other things are "nothing", that would simply create ambiguities of language and likely cause you some ongoing stress thereby.

The following two statements are borrowed from the quote above.

(a).  There is nothing but sensory direct experience.  

(b). Even thoughts and imagination is certainly felt or experienced.

 

If you were consistent with your terms you would state not only that thoughts and imagination are felt and experienced but that they were direct sensory experience, which is absurd and the reason why (a) is false. The only intension that could produce (b) that relates to the assertion of (a) would be that somehow (b) substantiates (a).

Edited September 17 by Reciprocality

[Someone here]

9 minutes ago, Reciprocality said:

@Someone here All you are doing is asserting again and again that your criterion for the concept of being is that it is sensory experience, that is a very personal business with no clear benefit other than to avoid the taxing efforts of distinctly identifying abstract concepts.

But if we investigate what being is we find that only "nothing" could be opposed to it, which means that nothing is opposed to it thus everything is being, this of course is not profound but only an explication of what is obvious.

 

We have good reason to state that sensory direct experience is primary and that everything besides it is a consequence of it, that would include all our memories, knowledge, relationships, self-impressions, desires and concepts. But that does not mean that these other things are "nothing", that would simply create ambiguities of language and likely cause you some ongoing stress thereby.

The following two statements are borrowed from the quote above.

(a).  There is nothing but sensory direct experience.  

(b). Even thoughts and imagination is certainly felt or experienced.

 

If you were consistent with your terms you would state not only that thoughts and imagination are felt and experienced but that they were direct sensory experience, which is absurd and the reason why (a) is false. The only intension that could produce (b) that relates to the assertion of (a) would be that somehow (b) substantiates (a).

All of that is thoughts . Which are experienced as such . Therfore my point holds.🙂

[El Zapato]

@Reciprocality Interesting, the first thought that occurs to me is that the notion of nonduality comes into play.  We could consider Einstein's Theories of Relativity and the nature of time, quantum physics' theories of Entanglement, Newton's theories of actions/reactions, and, of course, all of the philosophical notions of social connectedness. 

That's all I got.

Maybe this could be an example of the separation:  Existential fear is about something that does not exist, so in effect, it is something about nothing.  Say whaaa'   

Edited September 17 by El Zapato