Jun’s Startup Life

Where is your car parked today? Do you know that it’s there? Do you truly know, without a doubt, that it is parked there today? Your answer will of course be “No.” Someone could have broken in, you could be mistaken, a cop could have towed it away, or a comet could have came down from the sky and hit your car sending it a mile away. All of these things are possible; therefore, you do not “know” where your car is.

An important thing to note is what my definition of knowledge here is. For this blog post, “knowledge” will be defined as “knowing absolutely without a doubt.” So in order for you to know something, there can be absolutely know doubt about it.

So my example about the car is pretty simple. Lets get a little more complex. There is a bright, red and yellow, glowing thing in front of me that is emitting heat. You say that it is “fire.” Ok, so I go up to it, touch it, and “Ouch!”, I get burnt. We do this 10 times and every time I get burnt. The next day you and I come across a bright, red and yellow, glowing thing in front of me that is emitting heat. I’m about to go up to it and touch and when you say, “Don’t touch it Jun or else you’re going to get burnt.”

Me: “How do you know that I will get burnt?”
You: “Don’t you remember yesterday? Every time you touched the fire you got burnt.”
Me: “Well who said that this bright, red and yellow, glowing thing that is emitting heat is fire?”
You: “It looks exactly the same as the ones from yesterday.  It has to be fire.”
Me: “It doesn’t have to be fire.  How do you know that this thing just looks like fire but isn’t.  Maybe its something completely different that we’ve never seen before.”

This is scenario 1.  You can’t be sure that this bright thing is fire.  There is the possibility that this thing could be something completely different that you’ve never seen before.  Remember, if there is the possibility that you’re wrong, then you can’t know it.  You can only believe it.

Lets make things more interesting.  Forget the fact that it could possibly be something else.  Lets talk about the what we’re basing our knowledge on: EXPERIENCE.  The majority of our so called knowledge comes from empirical experiences; it comes from us interacting with the world through our senses.  Now, I can ask you: “How do you know that you can trust your senses?” This would mean we’re taking a Descartes approach, but lets get even more fundamental.

You base your knowledge on past experiences.  Everything you pretty much think you know comes from your past experiences.  How do you know that gravity works?  “Well, gravity has always worked in the past.” How do you know what your best friend’s name is? “Well, my best friend’s name has always been Bob in the past.”  You get my drift right?  Everything you know comes from your experiences with the past.  So how do you know that gravity will continue to work tomorrow or that fire will continue to burn tomorrow?  Your answer is “Because it has worked in the past.”  And that’s where the circularity happens!  You cannot prove the future with the past.  In order to prove something with experience, it must have already happened; however, the future can never have already happened.  In order for you to prove something that will happen in the future, it must have already happened.  But that is impossible.  The past cannot be used to prove the future. Hopefully this makes sense to you.  Please let me know if this is still confusing and I’ll try to explain it further.

Ok, so we have proved that empirical knowledge is not really knowledge.  We can only believe in what we have learned through experience.  Now lets get even more interesting.  What about things that we do not learn through experience: arithmetic, geometry, and logic.

Can we know that 1+1=2?

Certain philosophers believe that arithmetic and logic are known a priori, or “known without experience.”  They believe that we know 1+1=2 without having to experience it through our senses.  I can argue this by asking, “Assume there is a person born into a pitch black room.  He does not have the ability to use any of his senses.  All he can do is think.  Will this person be able to come up with 1+1=2?”  Of course not.  This person must first experience the world, understand the way the universe works, and from his understanding, he will be able to deduce arithmetic.  So once we understand that 1+1=2, we are able to deduce all of math from it.

Again the same problem occurs.  The problem with deductive knowledge is that it is assuming a constant universe.  In our universe, 1+1 must = 2.  There is no possible way that 1+1 can = 3.  However, what if the universe was fundamentally different.  What if the big bang (if you’re a scientist) or God (if you’re religious) decided to create a different universe in which 1+1 = 3.  What if this happened?  What if tomorrow the universe changes.

This is why I’m a skeptic.  We can’t truly know anything.  Why do the people with power feel that gay marriage is wrong?  Its just their belief.  I bet you in 10 years, gay marriages will be completely legal.  This world is completely made up of beliefs.  What I’m trying to get the world to see is that no country is any better than another country, no society is better than any other society, no religion is any better than another religion, and no person is any better than another person.  We in the USA feel that Democracy is the “right” way to live.  The people in power try to impose our Democracy to other clients in order to “civilize” them.  Don’t they see the irony in this?  Countries have been invading other countries since the dawn of time trying to “civilize them.”  THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY TO LIVE!!! Until we realize this, we will never be in harmony with nature.  Until we realize this, we will always be destroying life on this planet.