Purchase Solution

Absolute Certainty

Not what you're looking for?

Ask Custom Question

Is it possible to know anything with absolute certainty?
I have been looking at Descartes meditations but my instructor pointed me to epistemology.
Can I just get some directions on how to prove that there is no such things as knowing something with absolute certainty.

Purchase this Solution
Solution Summary

Absolute Certainty is questioned thoroughly.

Solution Preview

One of the most important scientist/philosophers/mathematicians in the 20th century was a man named Alfred Korzybski. He wrote an important book called "Science and Sanity" (1933) in which he spelled out important philosophical principles regarding epistemology. You would do well to read at least the first few chapters of this work.

Fundamentally, how do we obtain data from the universe? We do so by abstraction. What does this mean? Abstraction is the process by which we "abstract" data points from the observable universe. To abstract means to select a subset of the available information. Consider, if you would, a universe filled with an infinite amount of information. Now, consider yourself examining that universe. There is no way you can process an infinite array of data points, so what do you do? You select a subset that is manageable. You process that subset and then draw conclusions based on that.

We do this all the time.

After all, we only have a certain, limited number of senses by which we can abstract data from the ...

Purchase this Solution
Free BrainMass Quizzes
The World Health Organization

This quiz assesses the students knowledge about the World Health Organization. Although listed under “Philosophy” it is relevant to health care, political science, pre-med, and social scientist students as well.

Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy

Short quiz relating to Descartes

View More Free Quizzes
Related BrainMass Solutions

  • Must linear programming be used under conditions of certainty?

    The rebuttal to the plant manager should be that the decision to use LP needs to be based on whether or not assuming conditions of certainty makes it so unrealistic that LP would be of no absolute use to the manager.

  • Convergence, Divergence and Sums of Series

    In addition, if you learned already about exponent, you may notice that this sum equals 2(1/e-1) approx= -1.26424111765712 This gives you an extra certainty that you did it correctly.

  • Paternity and Blood Type

    If determining the paternity of a child is important, there are very sensitive DNA test currently available that can establish paternity to a certainty in excess of 99.99%, or exclude someone as the biological father with absolute certainty.

  • Philosophical Arguments For Proof of Existence

    Hume's mitigated skepticism, is the philosophy that informs us that we should not put total faith in our beliefs about the world around us, due to the fact that these beliefs are not entirely based on absolute universal truths that are consistent over

  • Certainty Equivalent Cash Flow

    In this example, the Certainty Equivalent cash flow one year from now is: Certainty Equivalent Cash Flow = 250/1.0747 = $232.62 Present Value of the Certainty equivalent = 232.62/1.07 = $217.40 The solution computes Certainty Equivalent Cash Flow

  • "Reality" & Cognitive Theorists

    IS THE "REALITY" ASSUMED BY COGNITIVE THEORISTS RELATIVE OR ABSOLUTE? WHY?

  • Certainty factors

    This provides several examples of working with certainty factors.

  • Comparative vs Absolute economic advantage

    Comparative & Absolute Advantage A person has a comparative advantage at producing something if he can produce it at lower cost than anyone else. Someone has an absolute advantage when they are the best at doing something.

  • Forecasting & Inventory Model

    Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) MAD = ∑ |At - Ft| / T Where T = the number of time periods MAD measures absolute error. It should be as small as possible.

View More Related Solutions