If God Ever Stopped Intervening In Nature....

That's what I said somewhere about "knowing" that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.

Yes, that's true.In that thread, I distinctly made it very clear from the beginning that I was using the word "know" in the every-day colloquial sense that actually includes this sort of asterisk.Here, we've been very clear that we're actually using the word "know" at it's furthest, 100% for-sure-sure's range. Which would obviously exclude this sort of asterisk.Such is the difference, and such is the weakness of English

No I suppose not but when you get down to the fundamentals like reality you can't say much without referencing the thing itself. I mean look at this definition of reality from Webster's

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: the quality or state of being real

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and then state

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: a way of living or existing

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and then exist

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: to have real being whether material or spiritual

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and then being

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: the state of existing

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Its all circles man. It is tautological in that it is self referencing but what other options are there? Definitions are just comparisons to other things and in the case of absolute truth and the existence of reality there is just nothing else to compare them to. This is a characteristic of reality and not a failure of logic.And so when we realize that reality is real and try to say so it may be a grammatic tautology but it is not a logical tautology.

Well there were some of them used to tell me with conviction that there is a possibility that I can pass through a wall. Insurance companies use them all the time to deal with things that they cannot control.We calculate probabilities with a vengence and they serve us well.edit probabilities are all about things that you cannot control.Edited by ProtoTypical, : No reason given.

I see two things here. One is getting down to the fundamentals of reality and the other is defining reality.When it comes to defining things, if you keep pursuing the sub-definitions, eventually you will find a self-reference. I don't think that's avoidable due to the nature of language. I don't think its tautological so much as its just a limitation. There's no infinite regress when it comes to words. Eventually, we will run out of them and have to circle back around.But that's not the same as making a tautological statement, which is the only example of an absolute truth (not reality) that we've been offered. So you assert, but maybe reality is fuzzy. The farther we zoom in, the blurrier it gets. Look at it this way: atoms are not discrete. Let's say this is the edge of a wall: There is no "point" where the edge of the wall begins. Its gradual.From this vantage, its fairly easy to consider that the edge of the wall is not "absolutely real". There's parts where there certainly is wall, and there's parts where there certainly isn't wall, but between them it get fuzzy. You cannot put your finger "on" the edge.The problem in our day-to-day lives is that we don't have that microscopic view. In our macroscopic experience, there definitely seems to be an edge to the wall that we can put our finger on. I mean, its 3.274 meters away from that other wall. I can slap the edge of the wall with my hand... How can it not be absolute?I contend that the absoluteness is an illusion. When you get down to the fundamentals, its all blurry and lacks any finite realness.

Right. All based on past performance. Very well.
Our current model of reality seems to be very close to absolutely matching whatever it may be.
Does it exactly match? How can we ever tell?
If all our calculated probabilities are off by 0.25%... wouldn't they still "serve us well" and not absolutely match reality? What about 0.000015%? What about a smaller difference?
When you say "absolute," do you mean "absolute" or do you mean "just pretty close?" I'm using the word to mean "absolute."Just because someone comes up with a number by doing some calculations does not mean they absolutely calculated the real, actual probability.If you mean to talk about practicality, I agree that we are able to calculate many extremely practical probabilities.
But I thought we were talking about mapping probabilities of absolute reality. How can we do that without knowing everything about reality absolutely?You seem to keep coming around to saying things along the lines of "but our practical applications are really good and extremely useful!"
I don't disagree with such an idea. I just didn't think that was what we were talking about.

Hi Catholic Scientist.So are you saying because of Heisenberg Uncertainty principal
we can not have absolutes?I know there is a grave in Tombstone Az that is inscribed: Lester Moore is absolutely dead no gray area there.

No, the HUP is a specific thing. I was just talking about how reality isn't discrete - so there's really no "absoluteness" to it. Sure, and "yesterday was Thursday" is absolutely true. Whether or not we can know that, absolutely, is another question though.Its not hard to come up with trivial things that are absolutely true. But so what?

What does "absolutely dead" mean? Is it the Law of Non-contradiction applied to "absolutely alive"? Then what does "alive" mean?

Apart from all the usual caveats.If one is dreaming the entirety of reality as perceived then Lester Moore never actually existed as anything but a figment of one's imagination.If the entire universe was created 5 minutes ago with everything, including memories, fully formed the Lester Moore never actually existed.And so on and so forth.Such evidentially baseless scenarios can be ignored to all practical intents and purposes and with regard to all sensible uses of the term "knowledge". But if one is fixated on absolutes then they pose something of a problem. Because there is no way to absolutely know that such scenarios are absolutely false.

Except for the fact that you cannot rigorously prove this.
All we can do is prove it beyond any reasonable doubt.What if our perception of reality is skewed in such a way that we only think Lester Moore is dead but he actually isn't?
The only way to rigorously get rid of that issue is to know that our perception of reality is not skewed that much.
The only way to rigorously know how much our perception of reality is skewed (if at all) is to compare the reality we perceive against "the real reality."Unfortunately, we cannot do that.
Therefore, unfortunately, Lester Moore is not absolutely dead and there is some gray area there.Unless you just want your version of the word "absolute" to ignore the facts of our reality.
And then, yes, of course it's "absolute" if we ignore the possibility of our error... but that's a strange use of the word absolute.What you're doing is akin to living in a small box and saying "there are absolutely no birds!"
I then tell you that birds may exist outside your box.
You then look around your entire box, look at me like I'm weird and then say "There are absolutely no birds!"...If you ignore the limits of your abilities, then of course you can say things are 'absolute' when all you mean is that things are 'absolute within the limits of your abilities'.We know our abilities have limitations.
We do not know how big those limitations are.
It is incorrect for us to say we know anything "absolutely" until we fully identify those limitations or we ignore them.You're doing the latter.Edited by Stile, : This post was absolutely perfect.Edited by Stile, : Or is it?

Of course not. Absolute reality is something you can never distinguish from anything elsenot because it doesn't exist separately (it may or may not) but simply because we cannot access that reality outside of the filter of our own experience, through which the distinction between absolute reality, if it exists, and practical reality is erased.Absolute reality and practical reality appear the same to us because they both pass through the filter of our experience that removes their distinguishing characteristics. It depends on what those doubts are. If they are merely academic and have no real bearing on practical decisions, then the rationality of the doubts is practically irrelevant because the doubts themselves are also irrelevant in practice. No one is doubting the 'reality' of any situation and no one advocates ignoring evidence. It depends on what is meant by 'the moon'. Perhaps what exists in 'absolute reality' is far different than what we perceive as 'the moon'. Perhaps if we could authentically access the 'absolute reality'unadulterated by our empirical filterwe would find it so different from what we considered 'the moon' to be that we might conclude that 'the moon' neither exists nor does not exist in 'absolute reality'. We might conclude that the 'absolutely real' entity that has given rise to our practical conception of 'the moon' does not satisfy the criteria required for it to be called 'the moon'. We might find that there isn't even a single 'absolutely real' entity behind our practical conception.So I do not see how the 'absolute reality' of 'the moon' can be decided in a binary fashion without direct access to the 'absolute reality' of 'the moon'which we do not have.To be clear, because I foresee your objection, all these things do not hold us back from living full and meaningful lives in the practical world where we accept practical evidence as sufficient and ignore frivolous debates (because that's what this is) when making practical decisions.On the same coin, the fact that we live in a practical worldwhere we make only practical decisions on the basis of practical evidencedoes not inhibit or influence the existence of an absolute reality that may indeed be precisely as described in our practical understanding; or not.This is true because, as I've said and I think you will agree, for us empirical beings there is no meaningful distinction between absolute reality and practical reality.And pointing out, and even accepting, that they are not the same does not change this fact.Jon

I agree with you that they are not the same but you are treating them the same. To say that there is an absolute truth regarding the absolute state of reality is sort of the bottom line and there are no outside reference points available. So it is not the same as saying that the red hat is red. I don't get this point. Look at the blocks of stone that make up a pyramid. Just because there is stone dust on the outside of a pyramid doesn't mean that the pyramid is not absolutely real. Or the light from a star is even better. Where the star ends is a tough definition but this does not mean that the star has no center. The fuzziness is a relic of perception and scale and there are such things as discrete particles. The macroscopic results show us beyond doubt that there are discrete particles that differ from each other and this is no illusion.

No absoluteness to it as far as we know.
However I wont kick a stone to refute thee thus. "For lack of a nail the kingdom was lost."I get what you folks are saying. I just think for now we are not able to drill down to what reality is. With the discovery of the Higgs scientist are getting closer to finding out how matter is manifest.
Rather than being inexplicable there is now a particle associated with why other particles have mass.
Arguing that reality is not discrete was already done in the twenties with introduction of quantum physic but we still do not fully understand the strangeness of it all. So for now we say things like
There are no absolutes other than the tautological and trivial.

absolutely
ˌabsəˈlo͞otlē/
adverb
adverb: absolutely1.
with no qualification, restriction, or limitation; totally.
"she trusted him absolutely"
synonyms: completely, totally, utterly, perfectly, entirely, wholly, fully, quite, thoroughly, unreservedly; More
definitely, certainly, positively, unconditionally, categorically, unquestionably, undoubtedly, without (a) doubt, without question, surely, unequivocally;
exactly, precisely, decisively, conclusively, manifestly, in every way, in every respect, one hundred percent, every inch, to the hilt; dead
adjective \ˈded\: no longer alive or living : no longer having life
: not able to feel or move
: very tired The opposite of dead.