What is your epistemology?

[Tiberius]

That sure is extreme agnosticism, but it seems wildly impractical.

Forgive me, it was late when I wrote the post, and I didn't explain myself well enough.

When I say I believe it is impossible to know something, the reasoning is more based on whether you can know what you "know" is true. The way I define knowledge is in the absolute sense; i.e. knowledge has to be true in reality. For an objective observer of our reality (one who knows everything), if they see me stating something as truth, say "X is purple", and they know (through their omniscience) that X is indeed purple, then my statement is one of knowledge.

The problem occurs when a subjective observer (i.e me) tries to rationalise that knowledge. From my perspective, I do not know that what I claim is true. I could have very good reasons for believing that X is purple, but no way (other than gaining omniscience) of confirming it.

Taking your keyboard pressing example; you say that you "know" that pressing the k key on the keyboard will result in it appearing on the screen, or at least result in something (say, the key moving down under the force of your finger). One objection to this as "knowledge" would be that at the point of the action, you are unable to say whether you have actually pressed the key, or whether you are simply under a delusion that you have. Relative to yourself (your memories, consciousness, etc) you know that you have pressed the key, but relative to the rest of reality, you have no solid basis of making this declaration of knowledge.

I've brought Last Thursdayism up a few times before when discussing knowledge, and I feel it is very important. Due to Last Thursdayism being inherently unfalsifiable, I see it as one of the best arguments for showing that whilst knowledge may exist, and whilst we may be able to attain it, we cannot ever be certain that what we have attained is knowledge (truth). As I stated before, this is *only* in the most absolute way of viewing things; it does not work for relative knowledge, or what you may call your own personal knowledge. However you cannot make the claim that your own personal knowledge is "truth"; only relative truth.

So when you say "I am therefore justified in claiming knowledge of the result of pressing 'k'", you would be correct if talking in a relative sense, where knowledge need not be "true", but merely your own interpretation of truth. If you take things into absolute terms, then you are justified only in claiming belief in the result of pressing 'k'.

I hope that clears some things up. I do not think it is impractical to believe one has limits though, and the way we both go about life is probably similar; the only difference is that when you claim something as "knowledge", I claim it as "belief" (or "relative knowledge").

As for logical absolutes, they are self evident truths; our basis for understanding everything is logic, and without any of the three laws, logic falls apart. They are true in the sense that if one of them were to be removed, logic would eliminate everything.