What do you mean by ‘truly know’ as opposed to ‘know’?

Hi again, 180 Proof.

The sole non-trivial reason for taking time to think about such things is little more than the pleasure of pursuing knowledge.

Regards, best wishes to you and yours.

Hi, Rogue AI

For what it's worth, I assure you that I'll continue to live my life as if I'm in a real world, not a simulation.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

Hi, Astrophel.

As the quote from Anna and the King of Siam goes, "Is a puzzlement."

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

Science starts with assumptions rooted in worldview, so any scientific assertion is conditional. Same for most statements that are held to be known.

Hi, I like suchi. [Sorry to say, I don't.]

You've touched on another interesting line of thought -- degrees of 'knowing'. We know some things in the absolute sense -- the whole is greater than a part of it, for instance -- but those things we know with absolute certainty don't, as far as I know, lead to any great revelations.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

Hi, frank.

Yup. As a retired scientist, I know that at bottom science rests on an axiom: the outside world is knowable.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

I know that at bottom science rests on an axiom: the outside world is knowable. — Torus34

Yes, a metaphysical position, really - ontological realism. But I suspect it is two presuppositions 1) that there is an outside or 'real' world and 2) that humans can come to understand it.

Hi, Tom.

Yup! That sums it up. On the subject of outside world, I like to think of science as describing our outer reality while art writ large describes our inner reality.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

We neither live in a simulation nor a ‘real’ universe, if ‘real’ here means an environment unaffected in its meaning by linguistic and material interactions among humans and between humans and that world. We co-construct the sense of the real through social interaction as well as via individual perspectival practices. The real is enacted, not passively observed.
— Joshs

And yet what you don't know can still kill you — jorndoe

If you absolutely don’t know it, it can’t do anything to you because it has no existence from your perspective. How you know something determines the way you construe what it does to you.

Science has no idea how brains produce consciousness. — RogueAI

Suppose there is a scientist alive today who fully understands how consciousness emerges in the brain.

Do you think that you would be able to understand that scientist's explanation without having studied the relevant science yourself?

A more accurate and nuanced statement than yours above is that scientists have developed and are continuing to develop more accurate understanding of aspects of how consciousness emerges from brains. Criticisms arising out of anti-scientific ignorance don't even reach the threshold of mildly interesting after awhile.

Suppose there is a scientist alive today who fully understands how consciousness emerges in the brain.

Do you think that you would be able to understand that scientist's explanation without having studied the relevant science yourself?

A more accurate and nuanced statement than yours above is that scientists have developed and are continuing to develop more accurate understanding of aspects of how consciousness emerges from brains. Criticisms arising out of anti-scientific ignorance don't even reach the threshold of mildly interesting after awhile. — wonderer1

I posted just this sort of thing the other day: suppose aliens or an advanced machine intelligence figured out consciousness. Would we be able to understand the explanation, or at least be able to ask a bunch of questions that would give us the gist of the answer? For example, we could ask the aliens/machine intelligence "Does consciousness come from matter? Does the type of matter make any difference? Is consciousness related to information processing?" Etc.

In short, yes, I think we could understand a great deal about the explanation. If that's the case, there's nothing stopping us from figuring out those answers ourselves, so I think mysterianism is a copout.

Hi, Rogue AI

For what it's worth, I assure you that I'll continue to live my life as if I'm in a real world, not a simulation.

Regards, stay safe 'n well. — Torus34

Can you address the point I made about consciousness emerging from switching actions? Do you think that's possible?

The only things we know with ‘absolute certainty’ are items contained in abstract realms (ie. 1+1=2). Outside of abstractions there is no ‘absolute certainty’.

I came to the conclusion that what is observed is necessarily apparent because it can be brought into question NOT because we know it with ‘absolute certainty’.

Hi, Astrophel.

As the quote from Anna and the King of Siam goes, "Is a puzzlement."

Regards, stay safe 'n well. — Torus34

Cheerio, old chap!

... the pleasure of pursuing knowledge. — Torus34

Science "pursues knowledge" and AFAIK philosophy does not (but rather makes explicit and interprets (for flourishing) what we do not – perhaps, cannot – know). In either regard, "The Simulation Hypothesis" seems to me an idle thought-experiment.

Yup. As a retired scientist, I know that at bottom science rests on an axiom: the outside world is knowable. — Torus34

That's a good way to put it. :up:

Hi, Rogue AI.

I'm sorry, but I don't have enough knowledge on this to form a defensible position.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

It has recently been shown, rather convincingly [for me, at least,] that we cannot distinguish between living in a simulation and living in a 'real' universe.

That brings into question whether we can truly know anything at all.

Comments? — Torus34

I guess the empirical cases would be:

1. Someone somewhere knows something or
2. Nobody anywhere knows anything.

It seems pretty self-evident to me that 2 is false. By whatever criterion or standard of knowledge you might pick, it must be the case that somebody knows something. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that everybody knows something.