We know essentially nothing - Expanding the mind with philosophy

[CHA0S]

The more I think and ponder things, and the more I come to know, the more I realize how much I don't know...and how complex reality really is...a rock isn't just a rock...what we see isn't all there is...what our conscious mind tells us lacks most of what the subconscious mind knows.

 

Just think...really think...how much do you know about reality...how long have you been here...how long has anything existed anywhere and what existed before that...what the hell do we really know about anything at all...we are in the infant stages of development...we are an infant species, yet we think what we see is what we get...reality is reality...if you aren’t with it you need a slap back into reality because your a crackpot...

 

We think everything is so simple and easy and we just know it all...a rock is just a rock after all....or is it...we really have no idea at all about anything...reality isn't all dandy and easy to understand...straight forward...what is at the edge of the universe...what is beyond that...what was before the big bang...did time just start...but what was before that…is the universe eternal or infinite…what is time…what is anything? Where did everything come from and why is it here? When you ponder these philosophical questions...you begin to see we really know nothing and we have no idea how things really work...we are only looking at the surface of reality with what sensory intake equipment mother nature gave us....an illusion essentially...we get only what we need to keep things simple and easy to understand, letting us survive most effectively, but hiding the true nature of reality...and we accept it as all we get because it's so simple for our primitive brains to understand...a rock is just a rock...and it makes sense...it's just made of some matter...it just sits there...lifeless...on this planet...in the galaxy...in this one and only universe...and everything started at the big bang...because it's a neat and easy to understand format isn't it?

 

What if I claim Aliens exist? Are you sure Aliens don't exist, are you sure Earth isn't just part of an Alien experiment...an Alien ant farm? Or is reality but an advanced computer simulation...computerized reality...a hologram in a way...or I claim we are but the dream of a much more complex being…or that reality is fractal in nature, and that I am part of, and have more intelligent beings living inside of me...and you call me a crackpot? What do you really know? What does the human race know about reality...what do we really know about anything? As soon as one starts to talk of things not known, or little understood by science, it's instantly made a mockery of...claims of blasphemy and lunacy are made as if we know absolutely all there is to know and we couldn't possibly be wrong about anything...science is quickly becoming the new religion in its tendency to state what's right and what's wrong in relation to things scientists really don't have a clue about...the tendency to consider anything they can't explain in a materialistic fashion or can't physically measure with current scientific tools, just doesn't exist at all in their opinion...and since we're so sure it doesn't exist, we'd rather just laugh about it and ignore serious study into the subject all together. We just figured out we are actually 99.99999% empty space and the matter that makes us up is popping in and out of existence and can also be directly modified in extreme ways simply by observing it and that there is no such things as particles..but merely vibrating energy...it's called modern physics...and it's the beginning of us understanding that we really know nothing...and a lot of what we know is very wrong in some aspects...we can't handle that at this stage...but we will...eventually…

 

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” - Albert Einstein

Edited January 7, 2010 by CHA0S

[Galindo]

Perhaps there are other levels of consciousness that we as humans have forgot over the years? Or perhaps some of us know how to achieve higher levels of consciousness and other's simply don't.

[the tree]

Okay, first you need to need to chill with the ellipses, you're using them for the wrong reason and they are making your writing incredibly hard to read. Then try to focus on one thing at a time.

 

It's true that the sum of human knowledge is barely a drop in ocean of potential knowledge and even then it is one polluted with uncertainty and formed out of clouded interpretations - but scientists and philosophers and statisticians and engineers and historians are all working on it.

 

Now, to some scientists a rock may just be a rock - though to a geologist or a palaeontologist it may be the closest thing they have to a record of millions of years worth of exciting history. Scientists aren't all that likely to see something and say it's just what it is, especially when they have the tools to learn something from it.

 

Now as it happens, if you are willing to take the leap of faith to accept inductive empiricism and all that - then it turns out that we do know an awful lot and the fact that it pales to insignificance when pitched against the whole universe should not be discouraging but rather a reason to go on learning with all the more enthusiasm.

[michel123456]

No panic. You can't say we know nothing. Maybe we know little, but we know something. Many valuable efforts and improvements have been made these last 5000 years. A certain difficulty arises when we are asking such existential questions as yours. IMO the difficulty is here: "A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe" said Albert, and he is right. The difficulty is that we are inside the universe. The phenomena we call "universe" is not only something we are looking at, it is a phenomena we are part of.We are not outside of the box, we are inside. Worse, the phenomena is inside us also. The universe goes from infinite big to infinite small transpiercing our own existence."A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe"

 

After you realize that, you can proceed, and as Tree said, focus on one thing at a time.

With a little optimism, I think most of the questions are reachable.

[Galindo]

What if he's right? What if we do know nothing? Or everything we believe is wrong?

[the tree]

What if he's right? What if we do know nothing? Or everything we believe is wrong?

One thing that DeCartes got right (amongst many things that he got so very wrong) was cognito ergo sum: so long as we can consider the possibility we can be sure that somehow, somewhere, something is going on - so we have a definite starting point in reality. Then we have a priori and axiomatic reasoning that we can build a sort of knowledge from (albeit vacuous), so we know something. And if everything we believe about the world turns out to be wrong then that's not a massive problem, we'll just scrap what we've got and start again - we've done that before and called it the enlightenment but we can always do with another one.

[liarliarpof]

The statement, "Humans know nothing", is a logical antinomy. The simple use of the word 'know' self-negates the proposition ab initio.

[the tree]

The statement, "Humans know nothing", is a logical antinomy. The simple use of the word 'know' self-negates the proposition ab initio.

Well, you can squeeze around that "I speculate that Humans know nothing" or "I, speaking as a Martian..." &c.

[Drewticus]

Incredibly ignorant to say we don't know anything. We may not know as much as we seem to think we do, but considering that we are so insignificant in size and are but one small consequence of circumstances present in such an immense universe... I find that the amount we know is impressive.

[the tree]

I doubt the OP meant it literally.