People can be mistaken about knowing things, yes, but that wld be a barrier to knowledge. The truth wld remain true.
So we can only assume that bigger things don't fit inside smaller things coz every time it's been tried, it's failed?
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Sokal & Bricmont acknowledge these kinds of points. We do need to go on reasonable hypotheses abt stable reality.
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Corroborated hypotheses are all we have indeed. Improving on them = growth of knowledge.
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We tentatively assume, yes. Hypothesis will get corroborated but never confirmed.
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I mentioned that in the essay but in reality, we can only obtain knowledge by assuming a system of reality to exist. Or we give up trying.
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The inability to be absolutely sure we can know anything is something that shld be acknowledged but then we have to carry on trying.
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I get a lot of solipsists (usually postmodernists) who like to use this to claim all knowledge claims equally true.
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Eg We can't be absolutely sure we or the universe even exist so evolution is no more true than creationism
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Because past observations don’t logically include conclusions about future observations.
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But this is very tedious & only needs to be acknowledged once. We can still use induction to attain usable knowledge & function.
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Even if we're actually all brains in jars & nothing is real. Assume it is & create antibiotics etc anyway.
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If £10 is enough to buy lunch, I can inductively reason that £20 is enough to buy 2 lunches & thereby function in the world.
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