(December 21, 2011 at 1:58 am)genkaus Wrote:(December 20, 2011 at 5:45 am)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:(December 20, 2011 at 5:30 am)Perhaps Wrote: Simply stated, is there any statement which can be made with no fundamental assumption being made? In other words, is there a statement that can withstand the question 'why?'?
In terms of absolute certainty? I don't think so. In the naturalistic view, there will always be the assumption that our perception of reality can accurately determine the nature of reality.
I'd be happy to be wrong about this, however.
Determine as in "cause it to be" or determine as in "identify". One is correct and the other is woefully wrong.
Identify, with the caveat that we're talking about absolute rather than probabilistic certainty.
Preface all of what follows with "In my view / opinion", because that's all it is, and all it's really worth.
Please don't misunderstand me - empiricism seems to be the best tool that we have to understand the nature of reality. However, there is the underlying assumption that our perception of reality is an accurate representation of the true nature of reality.
Certainly we've created models of reality that have proven to be enormously useful - and for practical purposes, that's good enough. The gap between our perception of reality and the it's true nature certainly isn't something that needs to be filled with anything supernatural.
