Tag Archives: Epistemology

An update on my most basic assumptions.

Well some of you might recognize that what I’m about to say is a little bit different then what I’ve said in previous posts. No worries while it’s more than just a refinement it is still largely the same, just better. Also now with videos :D. I assume the rights to change my mind and further refine things later. Since this will be by no means necessarily complete or flawless. Feel free to suggest additions and corrections.

So my first premise as basically as I currently think they should go.

P1. Knowledge and the pursuit knowledge is better than to wallow in ignorance.

From here we can address the question of reality existing, the whole brain in a vat/matrix scenario.

Since we cannot prove definitely that we exist and that the world we see around us is in fact the reality we actually exist within, but if we stop there, allow for this grand ignorance to overwhelm us then well knowledge is unattainable.

the conclusion we can draw from this first premise is the following.

C1. Since the pursuit of knowledge is better then ignorance we can when be a faced with the option of ultimate ignorance, or the possibility of being wrong about everything we should choose the chance of being wrong.

From that conclusion it is safe to say that reality exists, since if we are wrong we haven’t actually lost anything (since otherwise everything is a lie or illusion).

Which leads (eventually) to the second conclusion that

C2. Reality exists, and we have some means of interaction and learning about said reality (if we didn’t gave some means of learning about reality then we are once again trapped in compete ignorance).

Now for some more basic premises.

P2. There are only natural causes for things that happen in the reality around us.

P3. There is consistency in the causes that operate in the natural world. (this could still mean that physical law change some from part of the universe to another, but so long as this happens in a consistent manner it’s still fine) This means that when we do experiments and make observations to determine the natural causes of reality these finding (should they be correct) will remain consistent elsewhere and at different times assuming all other constants remain the same.

Here is a proper account of what Natural means by Gary Edward which is very clean and helpful.


What’s lovely about this sort of basic assumptions about the world is that you can possibly determine if they accurately represent reality. Is there consistency within reality, as well it does not exclude the possibility that non-natural things exist with in reality, it just assume they don’t. Though should you prove such supernatural things would exist which you can do you will prove the assumptions that all causes are natural to be wrong. Fail state a useful addition to any axiom or set of assumptions as it allows you to know if you’re wrong. It also allows for probabilistic statement about the probability that your theory is correct.

I’ll be liking once more to Gary as he explains how Naturalism is more probable then a God claim.


Obviously he has an anti-Christian fundamentalist bend, but then again so do I.

This is a really handy explanation as to how naturalism has a likelihood greater than .5 ublike unfalsifiable claims like many forms of gods, the invisible pink unicorn who watches you while you sleep, and the Celestial Teapot. All of which have probability values of 50/50 or .5.


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