What is a matter of fact?

I'll save you some time, it is that we can verify personally. If I can verify it, I can say 'its true' and that 'I know it'.

But the problem is that most individuals verify very little - its beyond ridiculous how little we verify. If we see something on TV, we think we have verified it! Did we verify the film Independence Day?!

All day long, individuals will say 'I know' or 'its true'. Even though they haven't verified their assumptions, if they even know what their assumptions are. Most people's lives are based on massive, unverified assumptions. They are so big, that they cannot consider questioning them - they have to be true or they may have a mental breakdown!

Say most people 'know' that we are on a globe. How? Have they experienced the globe? How was it proven to them that this wasn't a flat plane? Do they really 'know' it, like they know the chair they are sitting on? They do not. So, when they say 'they know' what do they mean? Its a hypothesis, or a belief, or faith. They believe they know.

So, if we were honest to ourselves, and accounting for our assumptions, we should say, 'I believe' such-and-such. But we say 'I know'. What is it to do that?

If you ask me, this is a lie. We lie to ourselves and to those around us. We live in a world of lies, of false, unverified information - and yet we call it knowledge. Its actually quite amazing.

> I'll save you some time, it is that we can verify personally. If I can verify it, I can say 'its true' and that 'I know it'.

So, have you personally verified the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Is it true? Do you know it?

And, you say a matter of fact is "what we can verify personally". Is that a matter of fact? If so, how do you know that? If it's not a matter of fact, is it still true? Or is just your opinion?

I don't know the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Do you? How do you know it? If I was to sit next to you, would you be able to walk me through all the steps whereby I would be able to say that I know it too?

What does 'know' mean to you? Is it like believe, or like a hypothesis? What is the difference?

If you don't verify something for yourself, can you know it? If someone says that something is true, does that make it true, even if you haven't confirmed it for yourself? If so, who do you trust? Should you trust teachers? Do they mean well? If they mean well, is it possible that they have made a mistake and are relaying wrong information that they haven't verified for themselves? If they are relaying unverfied information as knowledge, are they liars? Are you lying if you do the same? Who has the authority on truth? Is it the schools, as funded by the government? Is it the government?

I know that is a wall of questions, but this is what I think when I hear this sort of thing. What assumptions have I made about things I think I know, where the reality is that I have beliefs of things I think I know.

PS accept my apologies if this post takes a while to appear - HN says I am posting too fast, and won't allow me to reply in my usual, more timely way. If you do want to reply to this, no problem - it just may take a while for me to respond. Cheers.

The point of my post is that your epistemology is too narrow. Trying to sell you on my epistemology was outside of my intent.

Your epistemology leads you to not "know" all of science. Even logical positivism accepted the results of repeatable experiments, and logical positivism is itself too narrow of an epistemology (which is why it was rejected in the end).

I also profoundly mistrust any philosophy that says "the only way we know is X", where that rule (about the only way we know) is not something that is knowable via X. That leaves adherents using a rule (which by their own statements they do not know is valid) to decide what they do and do not know. That's... not something I can accept. It seems self-contradictory to me.

I'm not going to wade through your wall of questions. That's a much lower level of conversation than I am willing to get bogged down in.

"The point of my post is that your epistemology is too narrow. Trying to sell you on my epistemology was outside of my intent."

Well, you either know a thing or not. Its really that simple. You know you are sitting at a table, typing, etc. I also accept the results of repeatable experiments, as long as I have verified them.

It really comes down to you. The individual. All ideas are therein. Are you prepared to kid yourself, or do you want the truth?

Often people say 'we' know to get around this. What does this usage of 'we' mean? It is trust that someone else has done the verifying, that they are trustworthy, that they are relaying the results faithfully, etc. If you are trusting though, you are not knowing.

Now, it is fine to have beliefs, and to accept other people's ideas and hypotheses. But it is another thing to say you know them to be true!

> Well, you either know a thing or not. Its really that simple. You know you are sitting at a table, typing, etc. I also accept the results of repeatable experiments, as long as I have verified them.

Marcuse and Gettier have some things to day about this (paraphrasing):

"The world is too complicated for people to verify everything themselves" -Marcuse

"Its not clear what (if anything) constitutes justified true belief" -Gettier

> I also accept the results of repeatable experiments, as long as I have verified them.

Per Quine, individual hypotheses can't be verified, only bundles of hypotheses.

Dick got a good deal closer to the answer than you have, IMHO: “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

The thing about a position of extreme skepticism, such as you are expounding here, is that if you acted consistently with holding it, you would not have anything to say.

That's a great quote, and I've enjoyed PKD's work.

As a skeptic, I would agree that I would not claim to know so much. I have lots of hypotheses though.

And, as a skeptic, you might think that there would not be much to say... but then I find myself swimming, nay drowning, in a world of unfounded opinion and hearsay. So much baseless belief. I think I can see the contradictions and unfounded assumptions in whatever narrative is being presented. In good faith, I try to point out the errors as I see them, to the best of my ability. I think of this as a service - helping to discern belief from knowledge.

But evidently it is not appreciated. I am flagged, people think I am hateful (I don't believe I am). In all, people do not appreciate the genuinely skeptical position, even if they pay lip service to it. They prefer to go along to get along - to do whatever their unprincipled, lightly considered, free-style way - whatever is most expedient at the time.

PS: 'I am posting too fast' so I cannot submit this response. Its not that I don't want to continue the conversation, but HN puts a block on unpopular opinions such as mine. Skeptical voices cannot be heard! But I will try to submit this in a few hours (it was 3 yesterday), even if the conversation has moved on by then. :)

Does it amaze you that freedom of speech to have a different opinion to others, one that I think I can reason and evidence, should prove to be something that requires censure? I'm amazed. Did you think that HN was better than this? I did.