Dmytro Taranovsky
July 24, 2002
Modified: November 3, 2002
About this paper: Philosophy is the basis of
knowledge. It answers two basic questions: What is the nature of
reality? What should people do? This paper presents philosophy and
justifies the knowledge presented.
You exist and have feelings. You derive knowledge from feelings. How do you know that your knowledge is correct? The only way to know that one's knowledge is correct is to ascertain its truth in a reliable way. You may feel that your knowledge is correct, but that does not prove that the feeling of correctness is itself correct. Some power may tell you that the knowledge is correct, but that does not prove that the power is correct or that your memory of what the power told you is correct. The only remaining, and thus the correct choice (you must choose a way to decide truthfulness) is that your knowledge is verified by the correct internal process, called logic. For the method to be reliable, it cannot use mysterious transitions to claim knowledge and it cannot use unconfirmed statements. Instead, logic consists of derivations so obvious as to be contained in reasoning itself and of statements whose truthfulness is obviously the only choice.
Since logic is (by definition) the correct way of deriving knowledge, it cannot derive false knowledge from true knowledge. Thus, if a statement leads to contradiction, it cannot be true, but it is false.
Some choices may be better than others. Thus, to decide which action to choose one should obtain knowledge. Since knowledge is useful, the correct system of knowledge is workable.
If things can be arbitrarily chosen to remain unexplainable, then
the system of knowledge cannot be built since then every statement can
be claimed as unexplainable. Thus, a premise must exist against
unexplainable things. However, there is no logical way to select a
premise among those premises that leave some explainable things
unexplained--one cannot explain why this rather than that particular
explainable item should be chosen unexplainable. Since knowledge is
obtained through logic, none of such premises may be selected, leaving
only the premise that as little as possible cannot be explained.
Since logic is workable and correct, that premise must be correct. It
is through this premise that the axioms of logic are derived. The
axioms are accepted as true because their acceptance is the only
(acceptable) choice.
By definition of feelings, all information about the world comes to
you through your feelings. Therefore, a theory (that is a collection of
claims about the world) can only be tested on what feelings it predicts
for you. Thus, two theories that predict the same feelings to you
cannot be experimentally distinguished even if one theory is merely the
expression of another as relations between feelings without any
reference to the external world. Usually, however, a theory makes
predictions by using a mathematical model (an imaginary world) for an
aspect of the world and relating the model to your perception.
You use theories (such as the claim that sunrise happens once about
every 24 hours) to learn about the world, to predict the future (such as
the time of the next sunrise), and for enjoyment of using the theory.
The information is then used to make choices. How can you know about
the aspects of the world that you do not currently experience? It is
built into our minds that the world has patterns in it and that every
pattern has a reasonable probability of being true. That is, by
observing a pattern, you assume that the pattern will continue. As
stated above, a theory is experimentally equivalent to the patterns it
predicts. By observing the patterns it predicts, you assume that the
patterns will hold, that is you practically accept the theory.
How do you determine the likelihood that a given pattern will occur? What is unexplained are the pattern and the deviations of predictions from the pattern. As little as possible cannot be explained. The initial likelyhood of a pattern is based on its simplicity--simpler patterns have fewer unexplained parts and thus higher initial probability. The probability is adjusted based on the observed likelyhood of the patterns of the type of the proposed pattern (using the same method as described in the paragraph below). Then, the probability of the pattern is determined based on its explanation of the data (see the the paragraph below). The patterns are called science, and the correct process of finding them--science or scientific method.
(If you never studied probabilities, skip this paragraph.) Theory
of probability can be used to formalize much of the process. Assume
that before observation, the probability of a pattern is p0;
and if the pattern is real, the probability (before the observation)
that you would observe what you observed is p1; and
if the pattern is not real, the probability that you will observe what
you observed is p2. Initially, the probability of the
pattern and the obtained results is p0*p1. The
probability of the absence of the pattern and the obtained results is
(1-p0)p2. The probability of the obtained results
is p0p1+(1-p0)p2.
Thus, the probability of the pattern is p=p0p1/(p0p1+(1-p0)p2).
As long as p1 is in sufficiently many times larger
than p2. p is almost 1 and the pattern is
almost certain to exist.
Using this reasoning, it was confirmed that the patterns predicted
by the theory of evolution are almost certain to exist, so you should
practically accept the theory. That does not mean that the model
stating all life forms gradually evolved from primitive cells is
correct: If you believe that God created the world so as to make it
appear that the theory of evolution is correct, then you practically
accept the theory of evolution (since you accept the patterns) without
accepting the model as reality.