Absolute Knowledge

Is it possible to know anything absolutely?

I would think the best candidate for absolute knowledge would be binary propositional logic: we can know that a tautology ("A is A") is always true, that a contradiction ("A is not-A") is always false, that a fact must be true or false ("A or not-A"), that a fact cannot be neither true nor false ("not-[A and not-A])", and that a fact cannot be both true and false ("A xor not-A").

But before it looks like I can do this infinitely, some people believe that even this goes too far. The Law of the Excluded Middle states that a fact must be either true or false, and not neither or both. In some situations it is useful to ignore this law, so the realm of the absolutely known shrinks down to the Law of Identity (A=A) and Aristotle's Law: the Law of Non-Contradiction ("A is not not-A")

The second best candidate for absolute knowledge is that which is self-evidently true. An example for this comes from Descartes. He proposed, for the sake of argument, that the whole of reality is ruled by an insatiably cruel demon, instead of a kind and loving God. This demon does everything in his power to confuse our senses and leave us in ignorance. What, asked Descartes, can we know for certain?

His answer is "Cogito ergo sum" -- "I think therefore I am." We can know that we are doubting. But many people believe that he was ill-equipped to handle the fall-out from this heightened level of doubt.

Where Descartes fails, say some, is that he was unsuccessful in bringing God back once everything had been doubted. His argument for God is so weak in comparison to the rest of his work that these scholars even suspect Descartes was a closet atheist. He never intended to bring God back: epistemology -- the human enterprise designed to examine knowledge claims and various knowledge systems -- topples revealed religion.

Metaphysics might be another candidate for self-evident truths. Can't we know, apart from experience (a priori), that everything in the universe has a cause? Can't we know that the universe is infinite?

I emphatically do not believe that science and religion are occupied by absolute truths. Any scientist worth a magic bean knows that he or she is not seeking that: absolute truths are not empirical. Science is pragmatic. It's about prediction and solving real-world problems. And religion seems to me to be mostly interested in comforting people than pursuing truth at all costs.

The last candidate I can think of is mathematics. Is mathematics absolutely known? Is anything?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/vJb3OzkA3zo/viewtopic.php

indianapolis colts joseph kony joseph kony ipad 3 release date apple store down apple live blog ohio primary