If nothing can be known, — Cidat

then the rest of the sentence cannot be known.

Why do you suggest nothing can be known? There is certainly a qualitative difference between sleep and awake, but it's interesting that philosophy and science has pretty much ignored this very important aspect of human existence.

If nothing can be known.....how is the question possible?

Surely, it would be going too far to say that nothing can be known, but simply that many aspects of life are rather uncertain. But, we are not just in a deep black void, and, if nothing else we know so much based upon our experiences, which are central to existence. What more can we ask for really?

Our experiences gives scope for imagination and speculation and, perhaps, waking up from the sleep of not knowing as much as we would like may not be preferable ultimately. It may be that if the answers all became apparent oneday it may become so disappointing, and our quest would dissipate. We might truly be stuck in a narrow tunnel, or rut, of restricted meaning, or even meaninglessness.

Would you even be able to tell the difference? Then being awake would feel no different to being asleep. — Cidat

But being awake does feel different to being asleep.

Therefore, the assumption is wrong, and there are things that can be know.

Would you even be able to tell the difference? Then being awake would feel no different to being asleep. — Cidat

I think therefore I am. Isn't that all we can know?

I think therefore I am. Isn't that all we can know? — Down The Rabbit Hole

I know this is my hands in front of me. :clap: (waving and clapping). I am not thinking anything.

Crows don't have hands.

In possible world, they do. Everything is contingent.

I think therefore I am. Isn't that all we can know? — Down The Rabbit Hole

That idiot had it backwards and the effects of his idiocy continues till today.

I AM, therefore i think. I AM is antecedent to everything and to every experience, This is so simple to see.

I know this is my hands in front of me. :clap: (waving and clapping). I am not thinking anything. — Corvus

You'll laugh that you said that when you get out of the experience machine.

There is no evidence that supports reality over simulation.

In general, all one can ever be certain of is , I AM.

To exist is to be distinct. To be a separate thing. Take the law of the indiscernability of identicals. Or that is to say that if two things are identical, then they share all of the same properties, and there aren't two things at all, but one thing.

Like, superman and Clark Kent. Every time superman raises an arm, so does CK, when superman smiles so does CK. Nothing can be said of the one that can't be said of the other.

Once you see this, you see that it makes no sense to say that any discernable thing doesn't exist, because if it didn't, then there would be nothing to talk about not existing in the first place, no distinction could be made, no thing could be highlighted.

What is almost always the mistake is confusing physical extension with existence.

You don't have to be able to define knowledge in order to possess knowledge. Everyone on the planet knows a lot of things (which usually correlates to the ability to act successfully in various contexts).

You don't have to be able to define knowledge in order to possess knowledge. Everyone on the planet knows a lot of things (which usually correlates to the ability to act successfully in various contexts). — Pantagruel

Access or reconstruct knowledge, not possess it. But otherwise, yes.

This is a difference between asleep and awake. The knowledge we can access or reconstruct while asleep is different to what we can access or reconstruct while awake. That counts for something.

‘What if everything is an illusion? In that case I definitely overpaid for my carpet’ ~ Woody Allen.

Access or reconstruct knowledge, not possess it — Possibility

Using knowledge is possessing knowledge.

Nothing can be known.

Would you even be able to tell the difference? Then being awake would feel no different to being asleep. — Cidat

Non sequitur!

‘What if everything is an illusion? In that case I definitely overpaid for my carpet’ ~ Woody Allen. — Wayfarer

:rofl:

Using knowledge is possessing knowledge. — Pantagruel

I agree and by observation we should conclude this state is not nothing.
You could also consider what knowledge is.
1. Is knowledge physical matter? no.
2. Is knowledge non-physical? no. Because non-physical is by definition non-existent.
3. Is knowledge brain contained mental content? yes. This seems to be the only viable option of how we can know things.
This state of brain contained mental content could be the root of dualism.

non-physical is by definition non-existent. — Mark Nyquist

No it isn't, you just defined it that way now!

Ok, but in the context of this problem that is how I think of it. Do you disagree that the non-physical is physically non-existent? And can the physically non-existent exist in an unsupported form. It seems as the conclusion should be option 3.

Do you disagree that the non-physical is physically non-existent? — Mark Nyquist

Well, that's the whole question, is physicality equivalent with existence? I see no reason to assume there aren't more all-encompassing categories than physicality.

I see option 3 as all-encompassing since mental content covers the non-physical. I'm drawing a blank on what other categories there could be. If you are thinking the non-physical can exist in some extra-physical state you should explain how that works. Or if you are a physicalist you should explain how mental content can exist. If nothing else option 3 is pragmatic.

Would you even be able to tell the difference? Then being awake would feel no different to being asleep. — Cidat

Nonexistence is a lot different than being asleep. If you've ever had general anesthesia, that's the closest you can get to "experiencing" nonexistence. You are literally not there. Sleep is nothing like that. You dream, you're aware of unusual noises, you toss and turn. Under general anesthesia they turn you off and then turn you back on again when they're done. And believe me, it's a hell of a lot different than being aware of your existence. I don't understand questions like this. When you're awake and aware you experience stuff. When you're dead or nonexistent you don't.

There are articles about the philosophical aspects of general anesthesia, for example

https://pubs.asahq.org/anesthesiology/article/84/5/1269/35549/A-Philosophical-Approach-to-Anaesthesia

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5193047/

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/what-anesthesia-can-teach-us-about-consciousness.html

https://mindmatters.ai/2021/02/what-is-your-soul-doing-when-youre-under-anesthesia/

ps -- It occurs to me that during general anesthesia you certainly exist. I think I refuted my own point. Still, anesthesia is a very interesting state of being.

Let's suppose these things are actually so. Suppose we don't know anything and also we cannot tell the difference between sleeping and waking or between existing and not existing.

Now what? Our lives have not changed. Still got to pay the rent. Still don't know if Riemann hypothesis is true. Still might catch a nasty flu-like bug that's been going round.

Wittgenstein used an image of 'language going on holiday' and another one of a cog in a machine that does not connect to any other part of the machine so we can just whirr it around for fun. These suppositions are pastimes for the mind. Are they philosophy? Are they worth-while? Well... that's another debate.

I think where philosophy comes in is asking 'does it make sense to suppose these things?' Suppose I get the sack this month - how am I going to pay the rent? That's a supposition. 'Suppose nobody ever knows if they are dreaming or not?' That sounds like a supposition but it may just be a form of words that has a poetic and emotional force and only appears to have a sense. It may be like the meaning of the second word 'red' in the phrase 'my love is like a red, red rose.'

Information, for example, exists independently of its physical instantiation. Exactly the same information can be held by a variety of physical media. Mental phenomena exist, and as far as I'm aware no one has reduced those to physical (although lots of people claim to do so). Our normal experience is of a world that encompasses both mental and physical phenomena and so saying that existence is physical is just a non sequitur, or an invalid inference. Existence is a more all-encompassing category than physicality; physicality is a species of existence.

So what is the basis for nothing being known? A philosophical position, sleep, incapacitation? It seems by observation that knowing things is necessary to function.

You can't reduce a physically instantiated non-physical to a non-physical. It can't exist in that form. It's always a two part relation and irreducible.