{"id":906,"date":"2013-03-24T13:52:08","date_gmt":"2013-03-24T21:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=906"},"modified":"2013-03-24T14:10:41","modified_gmt":"2013-03-24T22:10:41","slug":"on-knowability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=906","title":{"rendered":"On Knowability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Epistemology is the  branch of philosophy that asks about how we know what we think we know. I would dig it a bit deeper and ask whether it might be that true knowledge of anything, full knowledge, is truly impossible in a world of cosmic dimensions. In other words, could it be that the notion that things ever can be knowable is an illusion? I don\u2019t mean partially knowable\u2014sure, that happens all the time. Sometimes it\u2019s even mistaken, but generally, yeah, this is a computer I\u2019m keyboarding on. But is that all it is? Can we know the full implications and underlying principles and everything about anything? I sure don\u2019t claim that my knowledge of computers is very great, and I\u2019m reading a book now that has essays addressing the question, \u201cdoes the internet change the way people think?\u201d <\/p>\n

So I want to suggest that the illusion of knowledge is illusory, but people need it, just as they need the illusion of meaning or self. so folks sort of semi-consciously concede or delegate: \u201cSomeone must know.\u201d It\u2019s sort of a corollary of the instinct to not just create myths, but to really fall into a variable degree of concrete belief that what we perceive \u201cthere\u201d is really what is there, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Yet the whole truth is that it goes on far beyond what we can perceive. The truth is that what seems to be is often not what it really is, and almost always there\u2019s more to it, and more, there\u2019s even more to the more. There\u2019s an old bit of doggerel:
  Big fleas have little fleas \/ upon their back to bite \u2018em;
And little fleas have littler fleas, \/ and so ad infinitum.
      But this applies to time durations, forces, complexities of all sorts, discontinuities, patterns of order mixed with patterns of chaos or chance, etc. <\/p>\n

Thus, I want to quote one of my sprite-guides that I\u2019ve had in the background for many years:\"tolerateambig2\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Epistemology is the  branch of philosophy that asks about how we know what we think we know. I would dig it a bit deeper and ask whether it might be that true knowledge of anything, full knowledge, is truly impossible in a world of cosmic dimensions. In other words, could it be that the notion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,35,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follies","category-mind-spectrums","category-spirituality-and-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":908,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions\/908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}