Raymond Tallis - How Do We Know What We Know?

[@johnbrown4568]

One of the most important things I learned from Ray here, is that I definitely need a beard to better present myself as perhaps someone with something worthwhile to say. Thank you sir for your ideas as well as contemporary grooming guidance.

[@browngreen933]

You will also need a proper Brit accent 😅

[@johnbrown4568]

I totally agree 👍

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

*"One of the most important things I learned from Ray here, is that I definitely need a beard to better present myself as perhaps someone with something worthwhile to say"* ... I heard that a pipe can add ten points to one's I.Q.

[@simonhibbs887]

@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLCI already wear glasses. That’s got to count for something!

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

@ *"I already wear glasses. That’s got to count for something!"* ... Only if you take them off and hold them out in front of you when making a salient point.

[@fearitselfpinball8912]

One of my favourite thinkers on the channel. I find myself relating to nearly everything he says.

[@archonphilosopher8221]

Aware of being aware is the second step to sentience, and being able to communicate this is the third, while being aware is the first. "Being aware of being aware is the first step on the road to science." - great line. Metaphysics may be the "queen of sciences", but epistemology is king.

[@janhoogendijk8604]

Thank you so much for hearing wise words full of knowledge.

[@123sensu]

More Tallis please. I hadn't come across him before but he has clearly thought long and deeply about these issues.

[@Paul-v8v4j]

There are things that we know; there are things that we don't know; there are things that know that we don't know; there are things that we don't know that we don't know; there are things we think we know but don't know them at all

[@scotchhollow]

I believe our conscious perception is the practical baseline of everything because everything is filtered through it. We can’t get outside of it to confirm or deny anything. With that said, I believe it’s imperative to navigate said experience with science.

[@qo4kh]

Finally a philosophy who acknowledges the simple truth that we are inherently unable to deny our existence. What was not mentioned is that the perception of everyday (immediate) reality reduces the endless possibilities of the dream state by grounding consciousness in the here and now. Excellent interview.

[@LuuLuong-bn8iy]

😅😂😂😂😂

[@chyfields]

There is an hypothesis that we are in an eternal cycle of death and renewal; alternating between the default forms of animal, vegetable and mineral physicality. Having already thoroughly explored all known universes and dimensions, we ALL agreed that this current metric is the most comfortable and the least terrifying way for managing our collective infinity.

[@vincentkeller4725]

That's so wacked out! You been smokin dmt hu

[@Arunava_Gupta]

Where are all those people who say philosophy is useless. Philosophising on the facts of reality leads to great insights into the nature of existence. Science by itself cannot do the job. Its job is merely to supply the facts.

[@TheTroofSayer]

2:03 - "Part of our escape, of course, is through the community of minds that we belong to, historically deep... mediated largely by language." This is culture, and the *association of information* , in culture, that is integral to our identities. This is the downward causation that wires neuroplastic brains. This is why *embodied cognition* is so important - human agents with hands & vocal chords are predisposed to complex language in culture. Noisy animals with fur or feathers or scales and paws or wings or fins, by contrast, are not... they are agents in much simpler cultures where simpler sounds and body-language form the basis for their worlds, albeit just as rich in meaning. 3:12 - "When we dream, almost all the time, we don't know that we're dreaming." A scary thought to contemplate: When we reincarnate into our next lives, how will we know whether we are dreaming or not? We won't. We enter our next lives with the same innocence that we entered this one. In a very fundamental sense, reality is illusion. Reality begins anew, and we become subject to whatever language-governed myths our new homes enculturate us with. These become the heavens and hells of our own creation.

[@michellebrown5672]

I was hit with a bolt of energy when walking around on my floodplains land. I understood instantly that as long as I cared for it's plant's, animals and insects, I would survive. The bad guys are buying up ancient protected floodplains asap

[@michellebrown5672]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/gpi8qIBribeWo7ssi=CH5rJafEYNRINNCe

[@rb9628]

There is an incessant knocking noise that permeates the interview. Annoyingly so. My sense of hearing tells me it's real, but I have no means to investigate it for the cause remains out of sight. Is someone tapping their feet? Is a table rocking back and forth? Or is it an artifact of an unknown cause? But I'm a realist and something or someone is making that noise. I know it though I can't see it.

[@kimsahl8555]

We know what we know at the consciousness.

[@Maxwell-mv9rx]

About true proposition in philosophy, physic are unpredictable definitions from consciousness. It means brains make up how to figure out random knowledge.

[@anteodedi8937]

Nice and clear interview. I greatly enjoy Tallis. He is one of the best guests on this channel.

[@theophilus749]

I always think that to deny blunt realism is to come as close to clinical insanity as one can get without attracting the attention of psychiatrists. This is avoided by the proponents of anti-realism only by the trick of calling themselves philosophers. Some knowledge is basic and foundational, requiring no basis in anything else. I just simply _know_ that I have just seen the above video. I require no evidence of any other sort to confirm it. The fact that one can sometimes be misled is no more than a diversion. Yes! I (logically) _could_ be mistaken but I just know that I am not.

[@anteodedi8937]

“…by the trick of calling themselves philosophers.” That was a good one, haha. These days you encounter many philosophers considerably divorced from common sense as if that's supposed to be smart!

[@theophilus749]

@@anteodedi8937 Indeed! I was trained as one - but I've repented of such sin.

[@simonhibbs887]

So when you ‘just know’ something and it turns out you actually didn’t, that doesn’t count?

[@theophilus749]

​@@simonhibbs887 I have already conceded that one can make mistakes, that one can be sure on some occasion and yet not be entitled to be sure. What this sad fact signally does not indicate, however, is that one is so likely to be mistaken on most occasions of claimed 'just knowing' that it is always more reasonable to doubt them all (including the example I gave) than to accept them as examples of genuine knowledge. One has to have a more solid reason for doubting that one really 'just knows' such things. The mere logical possibility of being wrong won't cut it. In any case, due epistemic humility is one thing, allowing that to metastasize unconfined into a global scepticism that, in turn, threatens to become nihilism is quite another.

[@simonhibbs887]

⁠​⁠@@theophilus749Fair enough, but it’s not a straight choice between blunt realism, and global skepticism and nihilism.

[@allauddin732]

It's like you only know

[@S3RAVA3LM]

I study texts people consider as nonsense. Such texts state: only when both ignorance and knowledge become one does such a man see the truth. For what truth is there in the minds default by contradistinction between what's large and small, tall and short, bright and dark, hard and soft, right and wrong. It's stated: the moment Truth is circumscribed to words does it lose its essence. If one sees only God, while precluding the world as illusion only, he then see's not God appropriate. If one sees matter alone, and God as mere phantasm, then he is lost. For when both the world and Brahman are seen together and as one, does one truly see. This is the revelation of the veda concerning God. There is no natural phenomena and then a supernatural. There's only That! and without name; to give name to this is to predicate, to opaque, to remove the Truth of, therefore loses its essence. The truth of the veda is Brahman and the world are not 'other thans', for God is one and without a second; nor could the world be seen as a second. When you see the divine light shine forth and through all things, one is most near. For the 'Rope/ Snake' metaphor depicts this perfectly. A man went outdoors at night and became scared to death by what he conceived to be a snake. In the morning, the light revealed the supposed snake as only to have been a rope. Where acharyas go wrong with this is when they consider or acknowledge the snake as illusion, and the truth of it is a rope. Sure, it was wrongly conceived as a snake, but it really is something, it is a rope. For many modern gurus again and again, state: all this is an illusion, it's not really happening, it's a dream. This is wrong. Because this is happening, it is real, but what we perceive it to be is a misconception, and that's materialism. To deny the world as illusion i.e., that it's not real, even to negate the substance itself of phenomena, which is the substrata, the numena, is to negate Brahman even; for there is no other next to Brahman. All of this is BRAHMAN. It's not that all this is the illusion, it was my conception of all this that is the illusion. Do away with name and form. Even the india people and their acaryas can not reach this realization. They always are reifiying again and again like every other person with beliefs. How can ignorance and knowledge be one, though? Can you have one without the other? "The more i know the more i realize i don't know. To know of an object to only a certain degree is by predication, utilizing contradistinction. True Knowledge, that which is Brahman itself, is had by Unknowing all that has been known objectively in phenomena. Remove this conditioning renders one innocent, and that is who sees Brahman, but this realization of Brahman is not an objective knowing like phenomenal things. Therefore, both ignorance and Knowledge, the divisions and contradistinctions is Unsaid, done away with and Brahman alone is. Renouncing the world is a prominent practice and might be, by mistake, also renouncing and negating Brahman with it. Only when the world and Brahman are seen as one does one reach it. They say worldly desires remove one from truth. That is true. An error, too, might really be when one believes such joy and happiness in the world are in the material things alone, as if caused by them. It's the realization that all the good and joyous things of phenomena, through the material things, really it's the divine light that shines forth and through all things. There's been many misunderstandings and too many people who think they know. Question everything. Believe nothing. If you can't prove it yourself, you're not to believe it. To think we know what we know reveals that we don't really know what we think we know. To Know God is to Unknow everything we think we know. Book: mystical languages of Unsaying, by Micheal Sells.

[@DragonDude233]

@@S3RAVA3LM What is your Religion?

[@S3RAVA3LM]

​@@DragonDude233 religion in the context of re-linking with the Divine, might I liken myself to Brahmayana(path to the absolute). Religion in the context of a singular denomination - I have no part in.

[@tedgrant2]

How do we know that God knows everything ? Does he know what I will be doing tomorrow ? Such as what time I will go to the bathroom.

[@archonphilosopher8221]

The reason why we can know the "other side of the cup" appeals to Kant's Categories of Thought, that is the human cognitive structures. These mirror the Laws of Physical Nature. Thus, within the macrocosm, the shared lived-in world, there is spatiality as a Law, and in the microcosm, the individuated sentient creature, there is also spatiality allowing that sentient creature to exist. This allows the sentient creature to effect access of its individuated consciousness to the metaphysical features of the lived-in world, time, spatiality, materiality, others, extrapolating from limited perception to intellectually include the necessities of the share lived-in world. The intellect (formerly known as reason) does transcend the material world: materialism provides important but sorely incomplete knowledge of the lived-in world. However, knowledge is tempered by the Law of Unintended Consequences and is not, and should not be expected to be in this universe, 100%; rather it only needs to be secure enough to allow sustainability of the species. Thus, if you do not know enough to pick the baby up off the floor and put it back in the cot, then sustainability is unlikely. [I love how he puts skin-in-the-game in his example here.]

[@tTtt-ho3tq]

It's about solipsism, a brain in a vat, t think therefore i am or Theo of Matrix. Theres no way around it, no way out of it logically. That's the first assumption wed have to take in faith, otherwise we won't go nowhere. It seems that's what is practically real to us anyways though. So now, there're i, you, he, she and everyone else, not my imagination. There's this physical world outsuof me. However there's still one thing we can't get out of. That is there's no we, there's only I. It's not how do we know what we know, its how do I i know what I know. A mind thinks, wonders, questions and reasons. My mind is mine, not yours nor hers. I can't read your mind, so you can't mine nor she can. My mind and my experiences are mine and mine only. We communicate to each other to confirm what we, each one of us thinks what we know. Here goes scienn, logic. Something like that, I think.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

(4:20) *RLK: **_"What is the fundamental element that you tie your epistemology"_* ... My position is that our internal knowledge is a result of four interconnected factors: conceivability, awareness, value, and truth. *Conceivability* determines what we are able (and not able) to be aware of; *awareness* is how we can recognize whatever it is we conceive, *value* is the criterion for how we organize whatever our conceivability has made us aware of, and *truth* is the highest value what we assign to something conceivable that we've placed in our "spectrum of value." *Example:* Guitar solos are conceivable. I am aware of David Gilmour's guitar solo in "Comfortably Numb." I place Gilmour's solo in a "spectrum of guitar solos" based on value along with solos from Jimmy Page, Mark Knopfler, Eddie Van Halen, Prince, and others. I then assign the highest value to Gilmour's solo with all others falling somewhere lower in the spectrum. ... This process establishes my own subjective "truth" that Gilmour's solo is the best. At the _universal level_ (Existence), the truth I've just established by using my "spectrum of guitar solos" is then compared to everyone else's truth that they established from their own guitar solo spectrums. Existence then establishes a *universal truth* that's based on consensus of all of our guitar solo spectrums. Only "Existence" knows which guitar solo is the very best at this level.

[@fearitselfpinball8912]

I affirm your right (and obligation) to think deeply about David Gilmour’s guitar solos.

[@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC]

@@fearitselfpinball8912 *"I affirm your right (and obligation) to think deeply about David Gilmour’s guitar solos."* ... Honorable mentions are Foreigner's Mick Jones' live guitar solo in "Starrider" and Nils Lofgren's "Live in NYC" guitar solo for Springstein's "Youngstown."

[@fearitselfpinball8912]

@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC Nice.

[@LuuLuong-bn8iy]

​@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC😂😂😂😂

[@supernaturalabilities]

Human potential allows us to access knowledge beyond the limitations of our five physical senses. One fascinating example is the ability to perceive while blindfolded, a supernatural skill demonstrated by practices such as 'Merpati Putih.' This unique ability, rooted in heightened awareness, even extends into remote viewing, enabling individuals to perceive distant or unseen locations. Such capabilities highlight the untapped power of the mind. Moreover, through profound insight and intuition, we can unlock knowledge that transcends conventional discovery, accessing ideas or truths that have never been uncovered before. These abilities challenge our understanding of reality and human perception.

[@jentihom]

The matrix is binary. on-off and in between. We're just like and old reel to reel tape deck. Rewind.

[@kallianpublico7517]

Knowledge is not understanding. Without understanding there can be no knowledge! Without the desire to know is knowledge something else? Animals of every sort “seek” food and water and procreation without knowing why. Hunger, thirst and concupiscence are not knowledge, they are instincts. Can we generalize that any desire that spurs us to behave in a certain manner, without knowing why, are instincts? Is addiction instinct? No. Addiction is a warping of desire and, therefore, understanding. Addiction prevents knowledge from growing, if not from being accepted. Why? The existentialists have some clues. The Buddhists and Hindus claim answers. There comes a point where knowledge becomes too fading. Its acquisition vain and impermanent. At this point the understanding balks and knowledge becomes “meaningless”. Merely a sideshow in a bid to stave off death that continually eludes. Where does the understanding come from? An instinctual remnant? Some long lost desire from a vestigial organ no longer extant? Like a tail or appendix? An evolutionary mutation of genes? A development of digestion? A design in Nature that calls to each animal in different ways? Whatever the case, how we know seems posterior to why we know. If we knew why we knew, would that confirm free will or determinism?

[@simonhibbs887]

Many animals go beyond instinct though. For example many birds, and animals such as squirrels and cats are able to investigate mechanisms and solve problems and puzzles. They are able to firm theories of how something works, test those theories, and eventually know how to reliable dive the problem. Furthermore they can then apply techniques they learned solving one problem, to more quickly solve a similar but different problem. So these are skills they can develop, adapt and improve.

[@kallianpublico7517]

@ The actions of animals are guided by “theories”? Action is action. Thought 💭 isn’t just the possibilities of actions. Neither are the possibilities of action thought. The impulses of instincts like hunger may dictate the actions we impute to thought.

[@simonhibbs887]

@ Hunger is a motivation to action, in animals and in ourselves, but neither we not animals can directly use hunger to learns how to solve problems. That takes reasoning and learning.

[@kallianpublico7517]

@@simonhibbs887 Yes, that is my point. Human understanding motivates us, but what is its source? Where does language and reasoning come from? Why can we “know” and memorize what we know? Do we possess a special kind of memory? One that promotes understanding? Or is understanding something that promotes the memory of meaning we call knowledge?

[@simonhibbs887]

@@kallianpublico7517 I think evolution through natural selection seems to offer a sufficient explanation. We know that intentional problem solving systems can be developed through evolutionary processes. We use this fact in the development of modern neural network AI systems such as language models, Alpha Zero and several types of machine learning systems.

[@MushyPeas-q5m]

Your head is in your head.

[@SandipChitale]

Wt*. Our perception consists of incoming sensory data in real time + our memory. What is the big deal that a cup has other side and weight when we look at it from one side. We know this from our experience when we move around an object and when we lift it with our hands. This is a great example of how philosophers make simple concepts unnecessarily difficult.

[@LuuLuong-bn8iy]

two dude 😅😂😂😂😂😂