Monday, September 19, 2022

The Hypocrisy Of Some Who Dismiss Absolute Certainty

It is impossible to not have any beliefs at all, but it is possible to have only beliefs that are true, starting with the foundation of logical axioms that cannot be false, moving from this infallible foundation to other facts that are true by necessity because of what they follow from.  This is, as deep of a set of truths as it is, rather basic, but it is already too much for the typical person to understand.  If a non-rationalist does happen to have thought about the concept of absolute certainty, he or she is almost inevitably going to call for it and dismiss it at whim in order to get out of being pressed by others about the illegitimacy of their belief system.  Those who deny or inconsistently acknowledge absolute certainty saw off the branch they sit on.

When they try to sidestep the epistemological need for absolute certainty, they seemingly either realize they just barely possess enough intelligence to see they have no fucking idea what they are talking about and thus have no basis for their beliefs other than preference and popularity or realize that the things they believe could not actually be proven, and so they are eager to make it sound as if they do not need certainty to justify themselves.  Even more pathetic is the usual hypocrisy that follows after they say that absolute certainty is unattainable and thus they are conveniently free to believe whatever they want.  In one case they might erroneously criticize a rationalist for pointing out what they were too incompetent to realize: that the assumptions that anything from sensory perceptions to conscience-based moral beliefs to memories are just "obviously" true are objectively invalid as beliefs on an epistemological level.  In another case they might dismiss certain ideas because they rightly or wrongly think they cannot be known with absolute certainty to be true.

In all cases, such a person is thinking and living only according to what will benefit or please them at a given time in their life.  To be sure (something that is impossible on their own worldview), it is true that they might not even recognize this.  Perhaps they are not doing it intentionally, but because they are simply operating on emotion without ever even developing deep self-awareness, much less deep awareness of the necessary laws of logic.  Even if they do not outwardly object to what others say in inconsistent ways, their beliefs are purely arbitrary and they will have no basis even for the ones that are both correct and provable.

Reason provides absolute certainty whether people outside of a small minority of truly authentic, willing thinkers (the few rationalists of the world) will ever be rational enough to understand how this could not be any other way.  While there are plenty of things that cannot be known with absolute certainty and therefore cannot be known at all--like whether other consciousnesses exist, whether one's own mind is the uncaused cause of the cosmos, what specific events will happen in the future, or whether the body one appears to have is one's real body--there are some things that cannot be false, meaning that there are some things that can be known with absolute certainty by those who look to reason for proof instead of to random beliefs and cultural or personal assumptions.

There is no absolute certainty in any assumption.  When a person truly comes to realize the scope of their irrationality outside of a total alignment with reason, they will understand that there is no knowledge apart from reason and introspection, as well as that it is actually those who make assumptions who are their own obstacles to resting in absolute certainty where it can be found.  For those who do not cease to be their own obstacle, avoidable ignorance, contradiction of their own beliefs, and a lack of intelligence are inevitable parts of their life even if they do not directly realize this.  Their epistemological hypocrisy might be an unidentified trouble for them, but this kind of person is not totally useless.  They can at least provide unintentional entertainment for rationalists.

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