Can We Agree On Anything?

To begin any argument, I believe there should be agreements found as to what reality is. Of course, this usually means that an argument must be had to come to said agreement. This is to the advantage of a writer, because in writing, the writer can establish a complete thought without conflict. For the reader, this thought may be resisted at its onset, resisted before fully manifested to the reader, or be completely misunderstood. The last option being a travesty, but of no consequence to the writer. The writer can do nothing about what a reader will think after being confronted by the writing. This, however, is simply a diversion from the actual topic at hand. I suppose it was to comfort me in making arguments with no one to defend. Then again, I do not intend to argue, I simply intend to state an understanding and hope that others might agree. To establish a groundwork for this understanding, we must define things like knowledge, reality, truth, and perception. Knowledge is a very abstract thought to begin with. Knowledge to me can only be accepted under conditions of relativity because all thoughts are on an infinite scale, while our perception is on a finite one. Now I am using terms that I intend to define in the definitions of others, but this is a perfect example of the structuring of knowledge that I think is best for my understanding. One of the strongest statements in my reality is that unless one knows everything, they cannot know anything. This statement simply means that without knowing everything, which is infinite, we cannot establish what we do and do not know with infinite assurance. This is important because we must therefore either change what we call knowledge, or remove the condition of truth from knowledge because we do not know if anything is true unless we know the truth of all things. Epistemology wants to argue that knowledge is true belief plus some other conditions, but I argue that we cannot know the truth of anything without knowing the truth of all things. Truth then becomes of interest because it is the definition of truth that is being attacked. How do we know if anything is true if we do not know that we know anything (not even a definition of knowledge). Truth must have knowledge to be defined, and knowledge must have truth, but I argue that we must remove truth as it is now known, and instead use the conditional of relative accuracy. Otherwise, we can change the definition of truth to mean relative accuracy in the known structure of our perception, but that is very ambiguous and can be easily distorted from reality. Of course, we then have to define reality. A saying that I find relavent is, "Perception is reality." However, I find this to simply be a good starting point. I think for the sake of each individual person's understanding, this is true, but reality is itself something that is actual. I mean, reality is the interactions that take place independent of awareness and that means all things, but the awareness of this immediately becomes perception. Thus the aphorism, "Perception is reality." In this way, knowledge becomes the interactions that we are aware of to the most relavent accuracy to that situation. This definition of knowledge may seem to be heavily dependent up on the logic and reasoning of a person because of the emphasis upon awareness, but it also emphasizes the awareness of interactions independent of the perceiver, which come by way of the senses at the most basic and fundamental level. A perception that is in conflict with reality will show itself to be incongruent, as is seen throughout history. What I purpose is that we find an understanding of this understanding. To find a way to better implement new knowledge in a way that is least pervasive, ever-approaching reality, and able to adapt to future input. It may seem like an idealistic mission statement for some company, but it is simply the most accurate assessment of the concept I am trying to express. That is all I have time for right now.

So I Have This Theory...

A year ago, I took a class called Philosophy of Religion. For the final paper in the class, I wrote a paper that compared Sigmund Freud's Future of An Illusion and Karl Barth's The Word of God and the Word of Man. This paper spawned an idea for me. I began a theory about theory. I argued that Freud's explaination of religion as an illusion and Barth's explaination of religion as an explaination of the infinite are not much different. What gave one explaination the edge was its ability to be adapted to different facets of life, and its ability to avoid confrontation with other elements of life. To expound upon this, one has to discuss the structuring of knowledge and how a theory can maintain its integerity while being assimilated into a person's understanding, or structure of knowledge. Epistemology becomes a large factor in the understanding of this theory at this point, and it becomes the difficult task of defining key terms, and establishing an agreement of what is or is not real, or known. That will have to wait for my next opportunity to blog.