HowDoWeKnowWhatWeKnow?

Bertrand Russell described this as the problem in Philosophy.

Question:
Have you ever had a "Deep" coversation with someone//group of people where it ended in someone saying "everything is relative, this could all be a dream, nothing has to be real." Aside from that guy being a grade-A Ashhole, he's wrong. So if you were that guy, don't be, you were wrong, dead wrong sucka.

We know things relatively speaking, because of what Russell describes as Sense Data. I know that my desk will still be here after I open my eyes from the sensation it gave to skin, the smell it has, the color of it, the taste if I was so inclined to lick it. How can we deny our sense data? There is no probable reason to and so we must accept that what we sense is real. With that though, we must accept that when our senses are cut off (blinking) we cannot know what that the obeject which exists strictly by sense to still be in existance but we can assume. Knowledge then is a conglomoration of sense datas and assumed sense datas which are to be ascribed as "real". There for knowledge, relative to our own expirences, is a history of sense datas.

Well then what about things we are told? We didn't see, smell, touch, taste, hear the Civil War.

That is knowledge by discription. Knowledge by description comes from our understanding of the reality of objects which would have existed within the described. How do we know that the Civil  War happened? Well we know people are real, we know of the existance of clothing, fields, etc. Therefore we can assume it was real.

~Now to which parts of history are true or not is another quetion, the answer from which I can not steal from my dear Welsh friend Bertrand.

History is the acceptance of truths based on singular or multiple perspectives which detail an event unfolding a specific way. Therefore history will always be "true" and "mistold" at the same time. With the passing of time, ascriptions of previous and future events and their effects on to said historical event, and from which perspective the event was looked upon (each perspective including the previous criteria), how can we know anything definite about the past. So! If everything we know besides what we expierenced is history, we know very little for sure. All we can do is assume, and you know what that does. No wonder humans have described themselves as idiots.

Bertrand Russell

Also, The Problems of Philosophy is free on Amazon.com for Kindles. Gud Reed.

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