Title pretty much says it all, I can not be 100% sure i am still in America, i am on earth. Pretty trippy stuff if you think about it, What's the guys name though.
2007-03-12 09:29:20 · 15 answers · asked by Steve 1 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
Socrates, Plato, but I think the person you speak of is Rene Descartes.
2007-03-12 10:20:50 · answer #1 · answered by Papa Mac DaddyJoe 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
A lot of philosophers have said things along these lines, but ultimately you'll find that any who attempt to stick to that conviction falsify themselves. This is because if they are claiming that you cannot know ANYTHING, but they are also claiming that they know that nothing can be known, then they are claiming to know SOMETHING, thereby defeating their own argument.
Some of the most note worthy have already been mentioned:
Plato- He asserted that the physical world is illusory, and that there is a higher, more "real" world of concepts that we cannot get to until after death. This is where, he claims, we came from in the first place. When we were in this "World of Forms" we each knew EVERYTHING, but when we came to earthly life we forgot everything. Learning, according to Plato, is the process of remembering things that we used to know in our past "life", so to speak, but have forgotten. (This is similar to the concept of heaven, but NOT the same.) This concept also appears very strongly and very often in Eastern religions.
Descartes- He developed and implemented a philosophical system which he called "systematic doubt", in which he questioned the truth of every single possible assertion, starting with the most elementary one of whether he even existed. (This is the most elementary because if he didn't exist, who is this "person" asking, "Do I exist?".) That is how he arrived at his famous first conclusion in the long series expounded in his "Meditations": "I think, therefore I am", or "Cogito, ergo sum."
George Berkely- He developed the first detailed system of empirical idealism (the theory that physical things are not real). The theory is kind of complicated, but he is generally recognized as the founder of this school of thought. The theory relates to what characteristics of things belong to the things themselves, as opposed to those characteristics which we impose on them. (He put things like shape in the first category, and things like color in the second.)
2007-03-12 10:09:19 · answer #2 · answered by IQ 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Plato was the first philosopher that claimed that you can never be sure about anything. He believed that our world and the reality we live in is not the way it looks but is produced by some other people for us. He compared our world with the shadow of the real one in a wall, we just have the illusion of reality.
2007-03-12 09:42:25 · answer #3 · answered by Natalia B 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You are mostly likely talking about Descartes. In his Meditations on first philosophy he used the sceptical analogy of an evil demon, a deceiver capable of distorting all of a persons perceptions, this thought experiment demonstrated that no one can truly be certain of anything, this was essentially the premise of the Matrix. What comes of this is something known as Cartesian Scepticism, a school of thought that denies the existence of everything except for our own thoughts.
2007-03-12 09:37:03 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
What is 100% certainty? If I whack you in the head with a 2x4, are you going to doubt the fact of being hit? When you're screaming in agony over some injury, do you doubt the pain? These are passive events of cognition. Doubt is a free, active cognitive skill. If your mind isn't overwhelmed with some passive event, you can always arbitrarily put the concepts together to construct a doubt. But then, insane people put inappropriate concepts together in what is called "word salad".
___Facts are data known to active, self-conscious egos, and are always subject to arbitrary doubt. It's just a by-product of cognitive freedom. Get over it.
2007-03-12 11:12:06 · answer #5 · answered by G-zilla 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Any number of philosophers may have brought that up.
It is the nature of philosophy. Saying you cannot be 100% sure you are in America, on Earth, alive, et cetera is not even deeply philosophical, I think. If two or more people agree on those things the problem will be solved, or more complicated.
Then where ARE we? What's going on?
Sorry, I'd have to check all of those guys to find the One.
Maybe here? http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/
2007-03-12 10:01:41 · answer #6 · answered by ♫ayayay♫ 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Hume.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume
2007-03-12 10:17:58 · answer #7 · answered by Convictionist 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I'm thinking of the Sophists. Did not Protagoras or Gorgias say something along these lines?
Alright, it was Gorgias that I had in mind:
"An example which Sextus favours is Gorgias' argument for the conclusion that nothing exists (and that if it did we could not know so, and that we could not communicate it even if we knew)."
2007-03-12 10:46:23 · answer #8 · answered by sokrates 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You are referring to the Ancient Greek philosopher Pyrrho of Elis, who formulated the classic, and pretty much irrefutable claim:
You cannot know.
You cannot know that you cannot know.
You cannot know that you cannot know that you cannot know.
2007-03-12 09:44:13 · answer #9 · answered by P. M 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
are you talking about the guy who said we only see the shadows on the walls of the cave??? That is your big hint for the day.
2007-03-12 09:37:39 · answer #10 · answered by CBJ 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋