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by JumpCrisscross 27 days ago
> Are you arguing against the existence of an objective reality?

I’d argue against absolute certainty in any knowledge. That isn’t a statement about reality, just our measure of it.

2 comments

I can be absolutely certain of my perception and recollection of what my consciousness is experiencing and has experienced.

Note that the truth of this statement does not depend on any certainty about external reality, nor does it depend on certainty that what I perceive or remember is happening or actually happened.

> nor does it depend certainty that what I perceive or remember is what is

It absolutely assumes a unitary conscious experience versus what increasingly seems to be the case, a bunch of narratives our brains thread into a cohesive story ex post facto.

Put another way, there very well may be hard limits to how much a human-like consciousness can understand itself.

> a bunch of narratives our brains thread into a cohesive story ex post facto

That is exactly the reality I am asserting, whether or not they actually describe an "external" reality

I guess my argument is you can’t be absolutely certain about what your internal reality is. Perception, as a measure, even when pointed entirely internally, is fundamentally fuzzy.
My internal reality I hope tracks external reality.

And what I can be certain about is what my internal reality is.

And if you think I cannot be sure of that, I think I can be certain about I think my internal reality is.

And if you think I cannot be sure of even that, I think I can be certain about I think what I think my internal reality is.

It's perception all the way down, recursively. The reality is result of this taken to infinity.

> I can be absolutely certain of my perception and recollection of what my consciousness is experiencing and has experienced.

There's abundant evidence to the contrary — at least as far as your recollection of what your consciousness previously experienced.

(IOW: Memory is extremely fallible.)

Way to miss the point.

I said I can be sure of what I am recollecting, not whether the my recollection actually matches what happened.

Please reread my comment — yours has two possible meanings.
There is of course absolute certainty and there is a lot of it, absolute and unquestionable
About abstract notions, maybe. About anything physical or emergent from physical processes, I don’t think so.