Absolute Certainty

[NotReady]

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I think Hawking said something like this could be the case at the furthest point of the universe


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As I understand it the known natural laws didn't apply from the Big Bang and before 1X10 -43 seconds or something.

Plus, God isn't bound by them since He invented them.

[DeadlyGambit]

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I was speculating on what a complete skeptic regarding certain knowledge might claim.

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Ahhh, how coincidental. We must have the same friend. He did in fact say something close to what you mentioned. It is extremely difficult to have a philosophical discussion with a complete skeptic. He kept going back to the old "but how do you know for sure" thing. I remember him also questioning the orgin of numbers and counting when I brought up the whole math thing. However the details are a bit fuzzy now thanks to the brewhaha we imbibed during the conversation [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img].

[Peter666]

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There are the metaphysical absolutes:

- It is impossible for the something to be and not be at the same time in the same manner


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OH RLY

[/ QUOTE ] YA RLY

[DeadlyGambit]

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Plus, God isn't bound by them since He invented them.

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Are you absolutely certain?

Bringing God into this whole thing kinda f's it all up. Christians will just claim that God is absolute. Obviously this cannot be substantiated.

As an aside NR, I am a christian. For you (I presume) and I, God is absolute. But like I said, I just think the introduction of God into this debate muddles things up.

[NotReady]

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But like I said, I just think the introduction of God into this debate muddles things up.


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I think it just demonstrates how muddled we already are. Philosophy has long sought certainty and failed utterly. The reason we get muddled is because we ignore the One Absolute who IS. As Van Til said, God is the concrete universal discussed by the idealists, the solution to the one and many problem. If we show that all human thought is useless to solve the ultimate riddles of existence, it should clarify to discuss the One who solves those riddles.

I believe we do have certainty because God made our minds in His image and He made the universe rationally penetrable by our minds. We lose that certainty because we have cut ourselves off from the only possible source of certainty.

[demon102]

sure things can be absolute in a vacuum, but as soon as u add 1 variable that could have an impact of an outcome it could change a 100% certainty to a 98% certainty very easily, so In my head if something has a 95% + chance of happening its good enough for me to be absolute

[Philo]

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My friend argued that NOTHING is absolute. That is, we can never be certain that something is undoubtedly and absolutely true. However, I think that some things can be known with absolute certainty, namely those that are in the realm of mathematics and deductive logic.

-Matt

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In "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" Quine famously argued against the analytic-synthetic distinction while arguing for holism, and claimed that "the unit of empirical significance is the whole of science." On Quine's view all of our beliefs are revisable in the face of recalcitrant experience, including those of pure mathematics and logic.

My advisor recounted a conversation he once had with Quine about Quine's claim that all our beliefs are revisable. "Even the law of non-contradiction?" he asked. He said Quine thought for a while, and then said, "Ok, maybe not the law of non-contradiction."