EPTDo you need to experience falling off a a tall building in order to know that it is highly dangerous.
If not does that mean that such knowledge is a priori?
[Philosophy] Profound prisoner's dilemma. - Page 15
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XeliN
United Kingdom1755 Posts
Do you need to experience falling off a a tall building in order to know that it is highly dangerous. If not does that mean that such knowledge is a priori? | ||
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Hidden_MotiveS
Canada2562 Posts
It's more like a riddle. We're presented with a question, and asked to answer it. But the question is poorly worded so any multitude of answers could suffice. A lot of people say that the man is identical to you, even though the question could just mean that he has the same number of children as you, has a spouse like you, and is hard working like you. If you know which of these the question is asking the question becomes much more simple, and if you the question were written in five paragraphs instead of one there would be no discussion, there would only be one clear logical answer that no one would rationally argue against. When I think of true philosophy I think of questions that people can argue on based on solid reasoning from both sides. In addition, this question is one that no one in their lives will ever face. I might as well ask you what you would do if you were suffocating in space and had only two seconds to decide whether to put an oxygen tank on your head and die slowly as the oxygen level died down, or kick it away and die faster. There is no point in answering this question because you will never have to. If some day, against the odds, you get captured by some religious/political group and put on a stretching rack and have a gun put to your head, and asked the same things as in this question, you're not going to have ten minutes to think it over, you'll act quickly and as rationally as possible under the pressure you are in. Every day I ask myself what my favorite starcraft unit is. It's a waste of time, I know it's the science vessel, but I ask it anyways. This question is the same thing. A waste of time. | ||
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kzn
United States1218 Posts
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LegendaryZ
United States1583 Posts
You DO realize a completely different universe also means a completely different set of rules, right? How can you assume that all possible universes would require 3-sided shapes to be triangles? | ||
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Half
United States2554 Posts
On July 22 2010 06:58 JinMaikeul wrote: You DO realize a completely different universe also means a completely different set of rules, right? How can you assume that all possible universes would require 3-sided shapes to be triangles? Because the definition of a Triangle is a polygon with three sides. The most you could have would be universes where tirangles can't/don't exist, but even then a triangle would still be a triangle. How can you assume that all possible universes would require 3-sided shapes to be triangles? Because the very definition of a triangle IS a 3 sides shape. Do you need to experience falling off a a tall building in order to know that it is highly dangerous. If not does that mean that such knowledge is a priori? No, but you would need to have heard about other people falling of buildings, or something similar. | ||
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kzn
United States1218 Posts
On July 22 2010 06:58 JinMaikeul wrote: You DO realize a completely different universe also means a completely different set of rules, right? How can you assume that all possible universes would require 3-sided shapes to be triangles? The rules are irrelevant. A triangle is defined as a 3-sided, 2 dimensional shape. Whether such a thing is possible in a given universe is completely irrelevant. Whether the universe has another name for 3-sided shapes is irrelevant. Whether the universe has a different meaning for the word triangle is irrelevant. The word is not the concept, and the concept of a triangle is a 3-sided 2d shape. This is a constant across all possible universes, and thus across all possible universes a 3-sided 2d shape is a triangle, even if that is not what it is called. | ||
KwarK
United States44222 Posts
On July 22 2010 06:50 XeliN wrote: Ok kzn I'm going to do something illadvised and present an argument that might seem poor to illustrate my point, but if you'll engage in abit of Socratic dialogue hopefully I'll be able to outline my point. Do you need to experience falling off a a tall building in order to know that it is highly dangerous. If not does that mean that such knowledge is a priori? That is deductive knowledge which is rooted in experience. A priori exists only in the realms of definitions, not in the world of experience. All circles are round is a priori knowledge because a round shape is defined as a circle. | ||
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XeliN
United Kingdom1755 Posts
On July 22 2010 06:54 kzn wrote: Someone definitely had to experience it for people to know its highly dangerous. You can extrapolate that its dangerous from other experiences, for instance, the experience of gravity, the experience of falling, the experience of height, and the experience of hitting the ground at speed, and guess (accurately) what will happen if you fall off a tall building, but it is impossible to know that its dangerous without experiencing something, so its a posteriori. Fine, so your saying direct experience of it is not neccesary, but certainly there must be experience either of it, or the governing factors (eg. gravity) in order to arrive at that knowledge. Let's take that same idea and apply it to triangles. You do not need direct experience of a triangle to know it has 3 sides. Yet the knowledge necessary to know that a triangle has 3 sides simply by it's definition IS dependent on experience. It depends on basic mathematical concepts, the ability to understand language, hell you even need to have the experience of the definition of a triangle. | ||
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Floophead_III
United States1832 Posts
[B]On July 19 2010 07:15 RhaegarBeast wrote: "You are a total prisoner of an unknown mage. Blizzard nerf mages they're imbalanced. | ||
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HeavOnEarth
United States7087 Posts
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kzn
United States1218 Posts
On July 22 2010 07:06 XeliN wrote: Fine, so your saying direct experience of it is not neccesary, but certainly there must be experience either of it, or the governing factors (eg. gravity) in order to arrive at that knowledge. Technically I was saying you do need direct experience to know, for a fact, that its dangerous, but even the almost-knowledge that most people have of it is a posteriori. Let's take that same idea and apply it to triangles. You do not need direct experience of a triangle to know it has 3 sides. Yet the knowledge necessary to know that a triangle has 3 sides simply by it's definition IS dependent on experience. It depends on basic mathematical concepts, the ability to understand language, hell you even need to have the experience of the definition of a triangle. This is true linguistically, in that you need experience to know that "triangle" refers to 3-sided objects, but not conceptually. However, this does make me wonder if Kant would argue that this is synthetic a priori knowledge as well. | ||
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Win.win
United States230 Posts
On July 22 2010 07:10 HeavOnEarth wrote: Whoa. 15 pages of text for what i thought to be a pretty straightforward answer. Did i miss something or is it just pages of people flaming the OP some of that, some off topic stuff, and a bunch of pseudo-profundity similar to the original post. add that all up and boom ya got 15 pages | ||
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LegendaryZ
United States1583 Posts
On July 22 2010 07:10 HeavOnEarth wrote: Whoa. 15 pages of text for what i thought to be a pretty straightforward answer. Did i miss something or is it just pages of people flaming the OP Well the OP doesn't seem to want to admit that the answer is, indeed, straightforward. He instead chooses try to convince people that there is some profound meaning or life lesson that could be attained from his given scenario. He has yet to give us any account of how thinking of this scenario has had any meaningful influence in his own life, so I remain unconvinced. | ||
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XeliN
United Kingdom1755 Posts
The point im arguing feels like quite a pedantic one although I've seen "worse" ones in philosophy  | ||
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
On July 21 2010 09:10 toadstool wrote: No offense Rhaegarbeast, but your fancy statements are throwing off your own thread. I understand English isn't your first language, but I find your posts hard to follow because there's a lot of fluff and little substance to be gained from each post purely because you go off on a tangent with wild statements which are almost unrelated (except by perhaps a thin thread). I didn't read most of the thread after the first few pages, because I personally think philosophy is a waste of time in my lifetime (but useful generations down). and also partly because I am a computer programmer. In my opinion, I wouldn't be thinking WHAT should I be doing. I would be thinking WHY. WHY am I stuck in this insane prison with this crazy mage being tortured. And through knowing WHY, we'll understand WHO we are, and by understanding ONESELF, you would understand the situation better. (what can change the nature of a man...) That's my bit from Planescape Torment done. Or perhaps I was never meant to post in this thread (computer programmer etc.) Well, the idea in Planescape: Torment is that you choose why this happened. You may choose to believe, like I did, that he is the Transcended You and he put you trough all this shit so that you may grow. Or you may choose another explanation and it still manifests. The end does justify the means, but the means create the end. The whole idea of the game is that everything is interconnected and suffering is the price you pay for the ideal that you want to manifest and that living is being is creating. One example I can think of is that if you use the pseudonym Adann too much, in the end you get to meet this Adann. Cute, eh? Profound says I.  | ||
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
On July 22 2010 03:05 Odoakar wrote: Hehe just found out that RhaegarBeast posted this same thing on Tribal Wars forum...always nice to see another TWer around;) it's funny to see that both threads have very similar comments, especially comparisons to TDK dillema Tribal Wars forum? I don't know such forum. I've posted this on 2+2 and forums.wsphere.com in Bulgarian. Is wsphere TW? | ||
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
On July 22 2010 07:10 HeavOnEarth wrote: Whoa. 15 pages of text for what i thought to be a pretty straightforward answer. Did i miss something or is it just pages of people flaming the OP You missed something. | ||
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
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zulu_nation8
China26351 Posts
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
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