The hard problem of epistemology

[Someone here]

 

A fundamental question I wanna tackle here is :  how do we know anything at all ?

And if you study existence you will only find one thing .which is your conscious sense of being. You are conscious directly of yourself and the world .

So that's the basis of all knowledge. It starts from the senses as Kant would say .

But the question that is still troubling me : can we know using thoughts?  Reason? Logic?  Deduction?  Is here anything other than direct consciousness to know things ?

Imagine that everything there is to know has been known or will be known by someone or will be somehow remembered by the universe by the physical arrangement of some particles in a book or harddisk or someone’s mind or whatever.

There is a Zen poem that says, "If you ask where the flowers come from.. even the God of Spring doesn't know."

Idk . 

Share your thoughts please .

[Moksha]

Science seems to have made enormous progress mapping out the rules of the cosmos. Still, our collective knowledge as humans after 13.7 billion years of evolution is a grain on the infinite shore of relative reality. The pursuit of knowledge has proven how malleable subjective reality is. At least we've realized that time and space aren't fixed dimensions, but depend on the perspective of the observer.

Absolute reality can only be realized directly, beyond the senses, by the absolute.

[Leo Gura]

One of the best questions you could ever ask.

And answer.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Leo Gura

[UnbornTao]

What's knowledge? What does It mean knowing something? Is perceiving something the same as knowing what it is? Are senses reliable? Can the senses provide direct knowledge of what something is? What is an object? What is a chair?

Having set all perception and "knowledge" about anything aside, What is actually "there"? What is being there? What is? This is the domain of ontology -- metaphysics.

Edited June 30, 2023 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

2 hours ago, Moksha said:

Science seems to have made enormous progress mapping out the rules of the cosmos.

And will continue to do so infinitely. Science's job is producing indirect, fact-based knowledge. I don't think science will ever "arrive" when it comes to the nature of things. Again, that's not its job. How could that occur? It'd be like trying to capture reality in a thought.

Is direct consciousness a possibility? What is it about?

Edited June 30, 2023 by UnbornTao

[Moksha]

25 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Is direct consciousness a possibility? What is direct consciousness?

It is absolute awareness withdrawing from its misidentification with an illusory form, and realizing its essence. The light of god is direct, and beyond physical sensation and mental perceptions.

[Ulax]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument

[Ajax]

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

But the question that is still troubling me : can we know using thoughts?  Reason? Logic?  Deduction?  

Nope. Thoughts are creations. Symbols if you will. You take some data that you observed in the physical world, process it, analyze it, quantify it and turn it into facts. The more you know, the more the facts change.

What is the most known scientific law and principle? Newton's Laws? Thermodynamics? They are not exact, and there is no way of knowing if it is 100 percent true because we haven't studied every single planet, every single galaxy everything. 

The first thing that science teaches is doesn't know anything for sure. You can only make educated guesses based on experiments and observed or examined data. Science is not about knowing or even discovering Truth.

Quite honestly, you have way too much false data to be able to really know, you have to keep deleting data that is false in your mind. The main road to knowing is deleting thoughts. You are getting way ahead of yourself. Focus on deleting the nonsense. Then you can worry about existence.

 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Ajax

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

But the question that is still troubling me : can we know using thoughts?  Reason? Logic?  Deduction? 

Of course you can.

You know how a doorknob works using thoughts. Don't take that for granted.

If you can figure out a doorknob, you can figure out GOD. GOD is just a giant doorknob.

Edited June 30, 2023 by Leo Gura

[UnbornTao]

1 hour ago, Moksha said:

It is absolute awareness withdrawing from its misidentification with an illusory form, and realizing its essence. The light of god is direct, and beyond physical sensation and mental perceptions.

The questions were mostly meant to elicit wonder, but thanks for the answer.

[Moksha]

2 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

The questions were mostly meant to elicit wonder, but thanks for the answer.

I'm glad you asked, even rhetorically, because it bears directly on understanding absolute reality. God is not a giant doorknob to be figured out; it is the inconceivable, paradoxical reality imagining the doorknob, while being beyond imagination. It directly realizes itself, or not at all.

[Dan502]

What we, when identifying as people, normally experience as our existence could be thought to take the form of distinctions and unifications. In other words, separations and connections. It might seem that out of this contrast, every thing arises, or of this type of contrast every thing consists.

When we ask a question, it's because we've realised separation and are seeking a connection. When we receive an answer it's because we've realised connection and in time we will seek separation again in the form of another question.

I wonder if the fact that you're asking a question about the essence of questions, and how it's related to you, makes it seem fundamental.

[Sempiternity]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

GOD is just a giant doorknob.

One of my great regrets in life is not making a thread of Leo quotes taken out of context. 'GOD is a giant doorknob' is comedy gold.

[Jordan]

You understand or believe things with concepts but you only know things through directly being conscious of them right now. Some people use the word "know" when they mean understand or believe. 

[Yimpa]

2 hours ago, Sempiternity said:

One of my great regrets in life is not making a thread of Leo quotes taken out of context. 'GOD is a giant doorknob' is comedy gold.

I think he also holds the world record for most edits made on a forum 

GOD is a microscopic banana

Edited July 1, 2023 by Yimpa

[StarStruck]

Why ask a question that you know you will never know the answer too. Perhaps there is more beyond the senses. And perhaps not. We will never know. 

[Moksha]

50 minutes ago, StarStruck said:

Why ask a question that you know you will never know the answer too. Perhaps there is more beyond the senses. And perhaps not. We will never know. 

Awakening is direct knowledge, beyond the senses.

[Someone here]

16 hours ago, Moksha said:

Science seems to have made enormous progress mapping out the rules of the cosmos. Still, our collective knowledge as humans after 13.7 billion years of evolution is a grain on the infinite shore of relative reality. The pursuit of knowledge has proven how malleable subjective reality is. At least we've realized that time and space aren't fixed dimensions, but depend on the perspective of the observer.

Absolute reality can only be realized directly, beyond the senses, by the absolute.

I Agree that what we know is no nowhere near even 1% of all there is to know .

But what do you mean that absolute reality can only be realised directly?  Aren't the senses direct? I'm not talking about perception where there is a perceived and a perceiver (subject &object ). Sensory data is absolute truth .

[Someone here]

15 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

What's knowledge? What does It mean knowing something? Is perceiving something the same as knowing what it is? Are senses reliable? Can the senses provide direct knowledge of what something is? What is an object? What is a chair?

Having set all perception and "knowledge" about anything aside, What is actually "there"? What is being there? What is? This is the domain of ontology -- metaphysics.

These are the questions that I am asking. 

Like I said the only certain source of knowledge is sensation. 

Reality appears to be a bunch of separate objects with clear boundaries between them .but that's like a mirage . If you zoom into any boundary It will dissolve.

[Someone here]

14 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Of course you can.

You know how a doorknob works using thoughts. Don't take that for granted.

If you can figure out a doorknob, you can figure out GOD. GOD is just a giant doorknob.

But isn't thought secondary?  And direct consciousness comes first ? 

How exactly I know how a doorknob work using thoughts?  I know it using accumulated experience. I have to first experience how to open a door then it becomes a memory (thoughts). So direct experience comes first . And thoughts are secondary.