Of course I understand that there is an objective reality. Our impression of that reality may or may not be correct, though.

Omniscience is the state of obtaining all knowledge. Knowledge IS, while omniscience is a characteristic assessment measuring the possession of knowledge by an intellectual being. Ignorance is anything short of omniscience and may be applied per subject or in general and is the range of everywhere from abject ignorance (0% surety) to confident surety (99%).

But there are actually two standards at play - not one. The first is the ultimate standard itself: omniscience or 100% surety. The total portion short of 100% is made up of faith (the belief that something is true) but we should also be cognizant of the non-omniscience implicit within these assertions.

The second standard is what measure of surety is sufficient for a specific task, which you correctly point out is usually not 100%. We may not need to know whether or not our house will withstand a magnitude 6 earthquake or be infested with termites within 10 years, but if one satisfies himself with less than 100% surety, he inherently accepts the portion of faith that makes up the remainder!

In physics and chemistry, we track precision and accuracy (different concepts with regard to measurement) because inherent in every measurement we make is _uncertainty_ - or incomplete knowledge due to limitations of instruments, our own intelligence, etc. We can assert that 2 + 2 = 4 with better than 99% surety because of the sheer number of times it has been asserted successfully, but there will always be a minute portion of that which remains ambiguous because perhaps we haven't yet tried to assert 2 + 2 = 4 within a black hole or some other obscure or trivial circumstance. It is the age-old caveat: "as far as we know".

Thus knowledge is not a characteristic of a person at all - surety is. And surety is a measure of the amount of applicable knowledge one has obtained.

No what you are arguing is not math, it is philosophical skepticism. You do not understand that there is an objective reality.

I guess coming from a math background I have a stronger threshold for the word 'prove'. The person building a house can consider the world flat but that does not mean it has been proven to actually BE flat.

In your objection to omniscience, are you contending that you could consider something true and an omniscient entity would know to be false and it would actually BE true, as opposed to you being wrong?

I guess you are pushing me in the direction of Popper.

Do not confuse knowledge with omniscience.

That is Popper nonsense. Of course you can prove something is true. Popper is confusing omniscience with knowledge.

Here in Northern New England we get only one crop of hay per field pre year. With 2-3 degrees warming we will get two crops and change the basis of agriculture dramatically for the better. Now if we could only learn to eat rocks.

The study of the mind is indeed an interesting thing. How much of what we do and think is a result of actual physical deformity (autism, Down's Syndrome, Asberger's, etc.) that prevents us from certain methods of thinking, and how much is self-imposed irrational behavior? What are habits? Nothing more than beliefs we turn into actions that become our natural behavioral patterns. In large part, we _do_ determine our own capacity to think, to reason, and to act and that the more we do something, the harder it is to change those neural pathways. We can choose to literally infect our own minds with pathways formed by habits that become physical deformities.

One of the benefits of even the slight increase in warmth and CO2 we have seen is that it opens new agricultural opportunities. I did a happy dance when I discovered that there were vineyards again in Southern Britain.

I have recently discovered (by some online research) that the 'old vines' (which had been mostly exterminated by the Phylloxera blight) still remain in a few vineyards in France...but mostly in Chile. I have a fondness for Chilean wine. I wonder if the vines planted in England were the old variety, since they had not had Phylloxera there.

Jan

More formal study of Objectivism might answer some of these questions for you. As I already posted, "The Primacy of Existence" by David Kelley addresses the subjectivism of needing perfect knowledge. It's a long talk but it is very interesting, there's lots of humor and interesting analogies. You can download it to a stick and listen to it in the car while you're in traffic. :)

You take the viewpoint that it is failure not to understand everything and you place success in your own mind of paramount importance. So you limit your own definitions in order to place your goal of "success" within reach. I understand what you are doing - it has everything to do with goal setting and feeling of accomplishment. That being said, however, your definition of knowledge is self-limiting, and I don't accept it. Knowledge simply IS and it out there for us to obtain.

I choose to recognize where my sphere of knowledge begins and ends knowing two critical things: that it is not the summum bonum and that it is highly likely that it ever will be the summum bonum of the matter. And that is OK. What I do not accept, however, is that my current sphere - limited though it may be - is my end goal in the matter. At some point is that sphere "good enough" to get certain tasks accomplished? Absolutely. One doesn't need a master's in fluid dynamics to unclog a toilet. But to design a better toilet?

What if one wants to know why all the dinosaurs died? What if one wants to solve Grand Unified Theory? What if one wants to build a terraformer for Mars? For these types of endeavors, the concept of limited knowledge is self-defeating. One MUST be willing to step beyond his or her preconceived notions not only about what they think exists around them, but about their own abilities as well.

Good enough means sufficient for the purpose at hand. We frequently simplify the world. A typical high school physics example might involve the work involved in moving up stairs. You have a horizontal and vertical vector, frequently they just want the vertical calculation.

But humans move up stairs in an up and down stride which means that you actually go up a lot farther than the height of the stairs. On another level there is the variation in gravity as you move away from the earth. Your weight changes as you inhale and exhale.

We don't solve problems with the perfect answer, we do good enough for the purpose.

lol. Nice one.

Truth be told, probably Heinlein. But I liked Road to Surfdom. Interestingly he seems to separate a free market from a social welfare state. He doesn't mind taxation and welfare as long as it doesn't attempt to control the market.

Haven't read any Von Mises -- little formal philosophy actually. But my reading list is growing. I was sent off to look into Karl Popper based on your comment yesterday.

To sum up what I got from the "Cliff's Notes" (i.e. Wikipedia version). You can prove something false, but not true. As you say, you can still work with knowledge you haven't proven true. Of course that implies the "science is never settled" .

You are confusing what knowledge is. Knowledge is an understanding of the world in the context of what you are trying to accomplish. If you goal is to understand everything in the Universe you will always fail, but if you want to understand the tides, then Newtonian gravity works almost perfectly.

If you are not a liberal, become one to achieve perfect knowledge. I marvel at how brilliant they think they are and how they have solved the mysteries of the universe. It must be nice to have every question answered by your favorite bureaucrat.

Environmentalism is a mental illness not a religion.

Agreed. We can either seek for a perfect knowledge (total, all-encompassing, zero-ambiguity knowledge) of a thing, or we can content ourselves with "good enough" as dbhalling proposes. Was Niels Bohr's concept of the atom "good enough"? Was Einstein's general theory of relativity "good enough"? If so, what is the point in seeking "grand unified theory" since what we have is "good enough"?

Inventors are never satisfied with "good enough". Business entrepreneurs know that without continual improvement, their product and service offerings will eventually be surpassed by their rivals. What is the point of technological improvement if we are satisfied with "good enough"?

As in the mold of Hayek and Von Mises?

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll add those to my summer reading list. In a few weeks, I'll have a little time for reading, but mostly I need to publish some articles that have been sitting too long on the back burner.

Nice to meet you, DriveTrain!

I've read Atlas Shrugged a couple of times, watched the movies, read a number of articles, listened to interviews Rand. I've got a couple of long time objectivist friends. I've generally considered myself a libertarian for 30 years.

There are interesting people to discuss things with.

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Jbrenner, if you like Clancy and Flynn, you really - and I mean **really** - need to buy (Objectivist guru) Robert Bidinotto's first two Dylan Hunter novels, "Hunter" and "Bad Deeds."

The subject of "Bad Deeds" is radical environmentalism, with the villain of the novel being an "Earth First!/Humanity Last!" militant type, who's backed by a cabal of D.C. ... - well, just read the novels. Given the subject of this thread and the context of Objectivism, this should be considered must-reading, and, again, some "homework" to cheer about. I think I should do a separate recommendation post - if not a new thread dedicated to Bidinotto's writing on its own - because these are two phenomenal books, and Mr. B. is reportedly hammering out the third of the series as you read this.

They should be read in order (so far,) because there are references in "Bad Deeds" to events in "Hunter," and that is a happy assignment, because "Hunter" is a phenomenal debut (no accident that it shot to the top of all of Amazon's "Thriller"- and "Romantic Thriller"-related bestseller lists within weeks of publication.)

Here are the Amazon reviews by some guy ( :whistles: ) for both of the books:

Hunter:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2NNLQGU1DY...

Bad Deeds:
http://www.amazon.com/review/RNQSO403SZT...

I also highly recommend author Stephen England, whose work in turn Bidinotto recommended to me. England is not an Objectivist, but last weekend I just finished reading the first of his Shadow Warriors series, "Pandora's Grave," and was duly stunned - particularly given that England began writing "Pandora's Grave" at age 19 and finished it two years later. It's the kind if thing that makes you want to pinch yourself and say stupid things like "No way..." Way. 8^] I haven't gotten the time to do a review yet, but trust me when I say that "Pandora's Grave" is better than the best action-thriller movie you've seen in recent years, ten times over. "Cinematic" is the word that springs immediately to mind...
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thanks. I know better :P

Awesome

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