So 'I knew' means the picture I had of X matched the way X really was. Substitute those meanings into our tricky sentences and they are safely conserved between tenses. — Isaac

No they aren’t? If you’re wrong about something.

So for instance “I know England is gonna win tomorrow”. England loses. Now I say, “I thought I knew England was gonna win tomorrow, but I didn’t”. Now the first sentence is not conserved. The picture I had of the outcome of the match did not match the outcome of the match.

This is why I prefer a degree of confidence model. Since we say things like “England is gonna win tomorrow, I just know it” all the time. And in those instances we use know to express a degree of confidence.

I hadn’t thought of sentences like: “I thought I knew England was gonna win tomorrow, but I didn’t” because I never hear anyone say that. When they want to express the idea that they were wrong they usually just say “I thought England was gonna win, but they didn’t”.

It seems we’re not entirely consistent in our usage. Sometimes we seem to be using a correspondence definition. Sometimes we seem to be using a degree of confidence definition.

I'm largely in agreement with your criticisms, but the phrase "I just know it" is an idiom. It's nonsensical to take it literally; with the exception of inductive certainty. Like, I know the sun will rise tomorrow because of the arrangement of the solar system and rotation of the planet.

No they aren’t? If you’re wrong about something.

So for instance “I know England is gonna win tomorrow”. England loses. Now I say, “I thought I knew England was gonna win tomorrow, but I didn’t”. Now the first sentence is not conserved. — khaled

I meant the the meaning of the word was conserved, not the truth of the entire proposition.

“I know England is gonna win tomorrow” is a claim - that my picture of England winning tomorrow matches the reality of tomorrow.

“I thought I knew England was gonna win tomorrow, but I didn’t” retains the meaning of 'knew' (where by 'meaning' here I just mean to be synonymous). It still means 'my picture of England winning tomorrow matches the reality of tomorrow.' - if I replace it, the sentence retains its meaning.

“I thought my picture of England winning tomorrow matched the reality of tomorrow, but it didn’t”.

It seems we’re not entirely consistent in our usage. Sometimes we seem to be using a correspondence definition. Sometimes we seem to be using a degree of confidence definition. — khaled

Yes, I think that's true (by which I mean I'm quite confident - 'True' suffers from the same problem!).

does anyone continuously hold an absolute truth — Cidat

Something exists, is an absolute truth. It's not refutable because the refutation would prove it true.

Reply to answer of your topic: Does anyone have any absolute, objective understanding of reality?

I can bring up a lot of reasons why and prove that there is no objective or absolute reality or truth. This is a "light" one:
If there were a unique and absolute reality (about anything) who would be able to tell?

I write down a number and ask people to tell me what it is. No guessing, no tricks, no cheating; actually knowing. It is impossible for anyone except myself to know, is it? But even if someone knows and says what the number is, it is only myself again that I could tell if he is correct or not, isn't it?

So, only the creator of something knows exactly, absolutely and with certainly what this something is. And if this something is the whole physical universe, this creator would be called, e.g. a "god". But this is a totally different topic ...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/567097

Do you know absolutely and objectively what language this post uses — Banno

Saying that someone knows something absolutely and/or objectively has no meaning, since if someone knows something he just knows it. Even if he thinks he knows it but in fact he doesn't, i.e. he is mistaken, he is still certain that he knows it.

Do you know what language this post uses? Of course you do, It's English. — Banno

The fact that the language used in this post and even the English language itself are not absolute and/or objective things. They don't exist somewhere "out there", outside our minds. There's no sign or indication whatsoever in the universe about the above fact or the language itself. English, like the other about 7,000 languages (as it is believed) that are spoken in the world are created by Man. And if you know and I know that we are communicating in English, it is because we agree that the language we are communicating in is English. But even if English were created by the universe, we, as humans, must first give it a name, "English", then still recognize it as such and also agree that it is that exact language. That would be not much different than a rock that has been created by nature!

Common reality, agreed upon reality is not absolute reality. Even if all the people on Earth agree upon something, that something will be common, agreed upon reality, not an absolute reality.

An absolute reality would be something that exists or occurs "out there", independently of the human perception and knowledge. But then, and this was my point: "Who would be able to tell?"

So, our reality is bound by what we can perceive. (It also contains a lot of other things but this is another topic!)

So a simple solution is to leave out "absolute, objective". — Banno

I agree! :smile:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/578896

As in other similar matters too, I find extremely important the Wording. We must be very careful with the right Wording of these questions.

Therefore we must distinguish realities. Are we talking about the absolute universal reality-truth that connects everything so perfectly chaotic? Or are we talking about human reality - truth?
So if we just put the right wording in these matters, answers become really easy sometimes.

If we talk about the first case :No we can't. At least not yet.
If we talk about the second: Yeah of course we can, but STILL not every bit of it. We are still missing parts even from our limited human reality.
Well that's what I think at least.

Good to see you starting to address the issues.

In your first paragraph and in your conclusion you agree with me that words such as "absolute" and "objective" have little if any place in the discussion. For the remainder of you post you make use of them, supposedly to show that "reality is bound by what we can perceive". That's close, but not quite right. Reality is bound by what we can say.

See Examining Wittgenstein's statement,

Reality is bound by what we can say. — Banno

You bring up just a statment as a "correction", without being able to argue why what I am saying is wrong or what you are saying is correct. Your link doesn't explain what you are stating here, either.

Anyway, even if accept your "dogmatic" statement as such, I can say this: in order that we can speak about something, we must first have perceived it (or known or thought about it). Perception always comes first. Now, if you can't refute this, it means that my statement is correct. And since you like Wittgenstein, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent". (Figuratively speaking, of course! :smile:)