/lit/ - Literature

>what is knowing

The only thing you *can* know is the Imaginary Real, which you don't even know.

>>7080243

If we were wrong many times in the past, how do we know if we aren't wrong about something now?

>>7080243

Take more coke Zizek and everything ill be fine.

>>7080284
I wrestle with this. It's the one thing that remains constant through every ideological shift I undergo. My thoughts are always that this one looks like the right one, but so did the last one. The next one will look better, but only about as good as this one looked a few months ago. I guess it's a separate secondary ideology of naivety. In time I will probably find a secondary that isn't actually that much better, but will appear to be superior. It will replace my concept of perpetual naivety thus simultaneously discarding and affirming it.

>>7080243
If you believe that you know it (awareness of and identification with the knowledge), if it is true that you know it (your knowledge actually does correspond to the state of affairs in the world), and you are justified in believing that you know it (predictive power, reliable source of knowledge that you know it, the implications of knowing it being satisfied, etc.), then you know that you know that thing.

All that you know is that you don't know nothing, for if you knew nothing you wouldn't know you know nothing.

>>7080519

>I wrestle with platos cave, a thousands year old concept

>life is hard fml

>>7080546
Wut's that?
I never read the Greeks
Also, not saying life's hard. It's fine.

If I can be sure that I know something, how do I recognize what is that something that I know?

Do I understand Žižek? I'll never know...

>>7081627

You are chained and watching a wall.

All you know your whole life are the shadows of figures dancing in front of the firelight. You come to develop an entire philosophy about those figures.

One day you realized you were never chained to your chair at all. You were deluding yourself with your philosophy. You turn around and see the real figures dancing in front of the fire light. The shadows were only a sad representation of actual reality. You see others still "chained" and watching the shadows. You are powerless to explain why they aren't real. They have to awaken and see for themselves.

God-tier consciousness: You're still in a cave, a pale comparison to the actual world out there. The limited figures in the firelight and the firelight itself are shit compared to the variety and beauty and sunlight outside of the cave.

>>7082216
The thing is, you could grow a brain tumor and start hallucinating an entirely different world outside the cave, an underwater world, lit by glowing moss, full of totally new textures, corals, with no up or down, and, guess what, you would have no way of discerning between that and the true outside because nothing in your experience or the experience of your peers helps you discern.

>>7082238

Yep, that's why it's the "allegory" of the cave. This scenario points at a deeper meaning that isn't quite so easy to describe without clever stories. We don't know anything true, whether it's a dream or "real," whatever that means. Anything beyond cogito ergo sum is a leap of faith.

Cave: shadows --> sunlight
Life: religion/philosophy --> life is a dream

>>7080284
Just go full-blown skeptic

>>7082271
>Anything beyond cogito ergo sum is a leap of faith.
I remember one of my first philosophy professors told me about how people get "stuck at descartes", and realize this truth and are unable to go beyond it, a kind of pseudo-nihilism or something, (i can't be sure of anything else, so why bother?).

>fel when you can never really *know* anything a posteriori

>>7082271
>>7082294

>Anything beyond cogito ergo sum is a leap of faith.
Not really. You can easily acquire knowledge empirically via your senses, e.g. you know that fire is hot. The problem starts when induction starts. Read some Hume if you haven't already.

>>7082311
>your senses
but my senses can lie to me!

>you know that fire is hot
How do I know the fire is even there? Who's to say that tomorrow fire can't be cold? Do you see how annoying this line of reasoning can get?

>>7082326
>How do I know the fire is even there? Who's to say that tomorrow fire can't be cold?

>>7082311
>you know that fire is hot

to you.

You can basically only make observations about how you feel in your own world. Even if you make physical laws about everything going on, you don't know if they have any permanence.

>>7082331
>r u really that stupid.jpg
did you read the next fucking question i wrote you fucking imbicile

>>7082337
>to you
good thing i am the only one

>>7082356
kek

>>7082326
>>7082337
I always feel like these questions arise rather from terminology problems rather than epistemic. For instance, if we start from the well known definition of knowledge as justified true belief (or even better, well justified true belief - fuck you, Gettier), you can _know_ that fire is hot: you have evidence from your senses, a shared belief, and justification.

The questions you posed only make sense in a solipsistic framework. Even if you can't "prove" that fire is there and is hot, you feel it, you believe you feel it, other people believe they feel it (you also can't prove they are actual people, I know, but going by this reasoning we would arrive at another solipsistic reduction to absurd), and we are justified in this belief. Tl;dr: if knowledge exists, we know that fire is hot.

>>7082367
I feel you. It's hard to know when someone you are conversing with has a similar level of nihilism (i.e. euphoria)

>>7082348
Do you really think it's possible for you to have been imagining the existence of fire this whole time in some sort of solipsistic delusion. Do you really think the laws of physics that have remained constant for billions of years would suddenly reverse in your lifetime. Are you really treating fire as a subjective experience in your first question but as an objective experience in your second question. Did you really call me an imbecile and misspell the word.

Let x be an intelligent statement
Let y be the statement that you can't kno nuffin
Let a be the following mathematic equation

(z) y implies ~x
if (a = x) then (y → ~a)
(y → ~a) → (~(z))
~(z) → (~(y) v (x))
x implies ~y
if y = x → this whole thing is a paradoxical sham and socrates was a fag

>>7082382
>this whole time
Uhh, dude how do I know my memories of the past haven't been implanted by some sort of malevelont demon?

>>7082382
>remained constant for billions of years

nice assumptions, m8.

>>7082382
>Do you really think it's possible for you to have been imagining the existence of fire this whole time in some sort of solipsistic delusion. Do you really think the laws of physics that have remained constant for billions of years would suddenly reverse in your lifetime. Are you really treating fire as a subjective experience in your first question but as an objective experience in your second question.
Did you not read the next question in my post?

>Did you really call me an imbecile and misspell the word.
Did you really ask me a question ending with a period?

>>7082397
Do you really not know what a rhetorical question is.

>>7082405
not same guy, but the point was you never really answered the question, you only attacked one of many alternatives as ludicrous to try to prove your point.

>>7082405
Did you really ask me a question ending with a period?

I agree with you, my original post was just me showing the line of thought of people who get "stuck at descartes" and do nothing else but employ excessive skepticism to everything

>>7082417
My bad, man. I misunderstood.

is the real kind of like spooks that we presume exists?

>>7082420
It's ok. But still, it's kind of fun imo to think about the fact that there's no logic *that I know of* that says fire can't be cold tomorrow. I think excessive skepticism is detrimental to philosophical growth, but you still have to accept the fact that almost everything could be a lie, unless you are aware of knowledge that I am not.

>>7082429
please rephrase your question

When you try to learn a new language when can you claim to know that language?

>>7082437
can you claim to know your native language?

Everyone lives in their own particular internal atmosphere or season. There are these sharp dream-images of places where we dwell, similar to when a song is stuck in your head, that we return to again and again. It can be a sound, a voice, a memory, a mood, or something purely imaginary. The unconscious is not as nasty as Freud made it out to be. Sometimes rationality can cool the "truth" we know in those moments when we are still in bed half-asleep to the point where we take comfort in apathy. If something fits in that dream-setting and warms you to action, it is true and something you should kindle in the iron cage of logic.

>>7082448
Not completely, I guess.

>>7080243
>How can I know that I really know something?
if you find someone who accepts your idea, then you can say that this idea was knowledge

I thought I knew something once.

I was wrong

>>7082326
>but my senses can lie to me!
no, on the contrary, the reason lies to you

the reason is what makes you say that your senses lie to you. the reason makes you say that you expect the stick to be the same in the air and in the air+water. the reason tends to the absolute, the reason destroys bit by bit the context of a perception. the reason is what refines the categories that you form from the perceptions.
the reason is what lead the try-hard realist like him >>7082367
he talks about justification, belief and perception. this is ridiculous. with the spectre of the catastrophe that would be the solipsism, very scary solipsism.

this realist completely forget that they cannot even motivate that they talk about knowledge in the first place. they try as hard as they can to cling to to some notion of certitude and of course, their little angst increases day after day as we no longer see, through our senses, any validation of their claims. Even the reason does not lead us to conclude that the perceptions turned into knowledge is indeed absolute, since whatever perception that we have, it is labelled by some time. since he is insecure, the realist tries to remove the temporal part of every perception and promote his perceptions has knowledge.


the realist have been trendy for centuries now and they remain the most pathetic philosophers so far.

TELL THEM THEY KNOW NOTHING

BREAK THEM DOWN

THEN FEED THEM THE GRUEL

WE CALL THIS THE TRUTH

WE PUT OURS IN THEIRS

SO THEIRS IS THEN OURS

HOW CAN YOU KNOW ANYTHING

YOU CAN'T YOU DON'T

KNOW ANYTHING

KNOW SOMETHING

HERE IT IS.

>>7082770
But now you know that you don't know if you know something

>>7082746
This is really stupid. No matter how dumb or unlikely an idea is, I could propably always find someone who would accept it. Therefore every vague thought I ever had is knowledge. Bullshit

>>7083273
>>7083273
>propably
yeah...

>>7082293
>tfw pyrrho

I know that zizek is the greatest philosopher to have walked this gay earth

Look at his knowing eyes

He knows

u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin u can't know nufin

>>7081643
see
>>7080537

>>7080243
you can't. knowing is logically impossible

>>7082770
How do you know that you didn't know?

>>7080243
>I have trouble with long division so no one can know anything
>I have my PhD in watching M. Night Shyamalan films
Gaaaaaay

>>7083792
I was just asking when can I be sure that I know something, m8

Like a new language for example or programming...

>>7080243
you can't

>>7083433
FUK EPIIIK MAYME

>>7080537
Would that most people know that they don't know, let alone what they don't know.

>>7080519
I gave up on that and stopped believing in anything at all.