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The Limits of Knowledge: Why it is Practically Impossible to Know Anything

An analysis of knowledge and science

By Gatlen CulpPublished 4 years ago 29 min read
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Figure 1 - Münchhausen captures a bear by smearing honey on a drawbar of a carriage.

Word Reference

(“Encyclopedia Britannica | Britannica,” 2020)

Epistemology (eh-pis-tuh-mology) – The philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge.

Nihilism (nile-ism) - Philosophy of moral and epistemological skepticism.

Truth - Property of sentences, assertions, beliefs, thoughts, or propositions that are said, in ordinary discourse, to agree with the facts or to state what is the case. (Author’s Note: Essentially, truth means accord with reality.)

Paradigm (pair-uh-dime) - Conceptual world-views, that consist of formal theories, classic experiments, and trusted methods. (Author’s Note: including axioms of the time)

Introduction

“He cannot possibly be refuting everything we know.”

I’m going to refute everything we know.

“The refutation of knowledge cannot possibly be healthy.”

The refutation of knowledge is healthy.

“I can’t believe the author is making one of those fake mini-conversations with the reader.”

I am.

Most people believe wholeheartedly in something, whether it be that the Earth is round, their family is human, or that you are physically reading this article right now. I would like to take a moment to state that no – knowledge does not exist at all. You cannot prove the Earth is round. You cannot prove that the Earth is flat. For all you know, your family is a bunch of lizard people. But none of that even matters because you can’t even know if anything around you exists.

Throughout this article, I will be walking you through a series of concepts and thought experiments bringing you from understanding the limitations of science to understanding how knowledge cannot exist at all. In part one, I will explain the Münchhausen (moonch-how-sen) Trilemma and how all chains of logic are flawed and teach you some vocabulary that will be used throughout the rest of the article. In part two, I will explain the limitations of science and knowledge. In part three, I will define reality as subjective and in parts four and five I will question consciousness, the universe, and time itself. Lastly, I will tell you why this matters and what you should take away from this article.

Join me in this adventure to question everything you’ve ever known!

Part 1 – The Münchhausen Trilemma (aka Agrippa’s Trilemma)

Author's Note: There are also three similar epistemological arguments such as the Münchhausen Trilemma known as the Five Tropes for Pyrrhonism, Fries’s Trilemma, and Albert’s Formation. Some are older than this one, but this one is the most concise in my opinion.

This trilemma is named after the famous fictional character Baron Münchhausen, a character who breaks the rules of reality.

Figure 2 - Baron Münchhausen pulls himself and his horse out of a mire by his own hair. (Das Goethezeitportal: Münchhausens Abenteuer in Bildern von Oskar Herrfurth Folge 2, 2018)

The Münchhausen Trilemma demonstrates the impossibility of proving anything to be true. If given any proposition thought to be true, one can ask for proof of that proposition. However, the same question may be asked of that proof and any subsequent proof (you can ask for proof of that proof, proof of the proof of that proof and so on). This is known as the regress problem. If the regress problem continues for long enough, it will end up falling into one of these three logical fallacies: circular reasoning, infinite regression, or an axiom/assumption.

1. Circular Reasoning

Figure 3 – Flat Earth Circular Reasoning. (FlatEarth.ws, 2018)

Anyone caught in an argument with a particularly political member of my family is very familiar with this kind of reasoning (I’m looking at you Uncle Todd). Circular reasoning is when you say that thing A is true because thing B is true, but when asked why thing B is true, it is given that thing B is true because thing A is true. Of course, these chains can grow exceptionally large, with dozens of individual links. This makes it difficult to point out where exactly the loop comes back around, but nonetheless, it is easy to see that this chain of reasoning is flawed.

2. Infinite Regression

Figure 4 – Infinite Regression. (Mx. Granger, Infinite Regression - Wikimedia Commons, 2015)

When questioning a series of proofs, it is quite possible that the proofs may go on forever. There is a famous analogy that created the phrase “turtles all the way down.” It is claimed that in Hindu Mythology that the heavens are supported by Earth, the Earth is supported by seven elephants, and the seven elephants are supported by a tortoise. (This is where the idea of the World Elephant or the World Turtle come from.) However, when questioned “what comes next?”, some of the ancient Hindus would either say “I don’t know,” or simply state, “It’s turtles all the way down.”

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

Quote 1 – Infinite Regression. (Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time)

3. Axioms (Brute Facts or Postulates)

If a chain of logic does not loop back into itself, end in “I don’t know,” or continue forever, there is but one thing left. Most commonly, it is called the axiom. It is something that is simply true. Not for any reason, it just is. It is the logical equivalent of responding “that’s just the way it is” to a child’s question of “why is the sky blue?” or “why has the goldfish been sleeping for so long?”

Axioms are nothing more than an assumption agreed upon the many. Axioms in mathematics, philosophy, and science are the building blocks of all knowledge from which more knowledge is born. Therefore, all knowledge is built on the back of assumptions. Axioms can change based on our understanding of things.

What does the Münchhausen Trilemma mean for us?

Because a chain of reasoning will always fall into the fallacy of circular logic, an endless regression, or an assumption (an axiom), it is clear that any and all chains of reasoning are flawed and therefore nothing can be proven to be true. Throughout the rest of this article, I will be using the vocabulary you learned here to explain why knowledge cannot exist.

Part 2 – The Limits of Science

Figure 5 – The black swan. (Nuclear war, the black swan we can never see - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2014)

As humans, it is impossible to understand everything the universe has to offer. Imagine, it is 80,000 CE, science and mathematics are coming to an end. We came to understand everything in our universe and could explain every phenomenon. Scientists and mathematicians everywhere are about to hang up their lab coats and sweater vests. Even if this future were true, we would not know everything because we could never know if there exist more phenomena that we do not know about. Essentially, we don’t know what we don’t know.

Take the famous example of the black swan. For hundreds of years in Europe, people believed swans to be white. They have seen countless numbers of swans and throughout history, their feathers have been documented to be white. The black swan became a metaphor for something that didn’t exist, dating back to the second century. You can imagine the surprise of everyone when Europeans discovered the black swan in Western Australia nearly 1500 years later in 1697. This is why science is based on the idea of falsifiability of theories, NOT confirmation of theories (known as the criterion of falsifiability). No scientific theory or law can ever be “confirmed” because no matter how many confirming observations are made (white swans), there may always be a disconfirming observation (a black swan). You would agree that the Europeans of that time didn’t have KNOWLEDGE of swans being white, but rather they had a BELIEF of swans being white. In that same way, we cannot have knowledge of truth in science, but rather a belief of truth in science.

To quote a conversation between Sheldon and his religious mother in the TV show The Big Bang Theory,

Sheldon: “[…] and I will spend the rest of life here in Texas, trying to teach evolution to creationists.”

Mother: “You watch your mouth Shelly. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.”

Sheldon: “Evolution isn’t an opinion, it’s fact.”

Mother: “And that is YOUR opinion.”

In this case, Sheldon’s mother is technically correct.

Within the realm of science, there have been many scientific revolutions that have uprooted the current axioms at the time. In Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he explains that science has not undergone a slow, constant accumulation of knowledge but rather there were periods of what he calls “normal science” that continue until enough anomalies build up to the point where a crises forms and people can no longer rely on the current paradigm to answer the anomalies. This leads people to examine the axioms of the field and question them. When new axioms are finally created and established, science then continues as normal, answering questions within the new paradigm. This upheaval of the paradigm is known as a “paradigm shift,” a term that Thomas Kuhn has popularized. One of the most famous paradigm shifts was the Copernican Revolution, when the world changed to believing that the Earth and planets rotated around the Sun and not vice versa.

Paradigm shifts have appeared in every established field, including the fundamental field of physics. Typically, scientists believe that their current paradigm is the right one. In the late 1800's, physicists were satisfied believing that the hundreds of years of physics were finally coming to an end. A few years later, Einstein’s contribution of relativity and Planck’s contribution of the quantum launched us into modern physics, destroying some of the axioms that were established for hundreds of years. Axioms of which, you may still falsely believe, such as the conservation of mass and the conservation of energy (the two have now been combined into the conservation of mass-energy with Einstein’s famous equation E = mc² or energy = mass * the speed of light squared). As more and more anomalies build up in the world of physics, one can only imagine that another revolution might be around the corner.

As you have now seen, axioms are just useful beliefs and are subject to change. It would be naïve of us to believe that all our foundational beliefs, even in the realm of science, are true and will never be uprooted. Now that you know the limits of science, let me question the knowledge you have within these limits in these next few parts.

Part 3 – People might not be real

I would like to introduce you to a special kind of zombie. The philosophical zombie. Don’t worry, these zombies are just as terrifying and maybe even more terrifying than a regular zombie.

We are all sacks of meat that can somehow perceive the world around us and we have absolutely no clue how we do it. As it currently stands, we have no way to understand what consciousness is. Now let us imagine that there are sacks of meat known as humans that are walking the Earth that look and behave exactly like us, however these “people” aren’t sentient. They do not have a consciousness and do not perceive the world as we do. If stabbed, on the outside they would scream in pain, but on the inside no pain or emotions are taking place. This is the idea of the philosophical zombie.

Such a zombie would be indistinguishable from a normal human being. Imagine that you, the reader, are the only conscious being in the universe. Your family, your friends, and even I, the author, are nothing but biological machines that do not actually experience the world. You could never know if this is your reality or not. Of course, when you finish reading this article, you will go back to your assumption that everyone around you is indeed sentient. The idea is comforting, though you cannot prove it. This assumption that everyone around you is sentient is yet another axiom.

If this axiom crumbles, then the logic that rests on this axiom also crumbles. Take morality for example. Consciousness is a requirement for morality to exist – if a tree falls onto a robot, no good or bad event has occurred because neither the tree nor the robot felt anything. In other words, they aren’t conscious of feeling. Now imagine this tree falls onto a helpless child, killing them instantly. If the child isn’t sentient, then was this event bad? If the child was an unfeeling biological machine while the robot was an unfeeling electrical machine, can you say if there is any difference between the two events? Extending this further, would it be wrong to shoot this child? All of us would immediately be inclined to say yes. To end a life would be wrong. However, if the child isn’t conscious can you say that the child is living in anything other than a biological sense? If the child is as conscious as a rock and it isn’t wrong to shoot a rock, then why would it be wrong to shoot the child? Instinctively you may squirm at the thought, but logically the idea seems sound. Now of course you aren’t going to go on a massive killing spree because you don’t see people as sentient. But that doesn’t mean others don’t. In fact, this is the basis of genocide. For a genocide to occur, people need to stop seeing people as conscious of feeling. They dehumanize them and make them into a pest that needs to be eradicated.

Figure 6 – Rwandan Genocide Victims. (Rwandan Genocide Memorials, 2016)

Human consciousness is an assumption. Whether or not you believe in that assumption can lead to drastic measures such as genocide. Questioning axioms can lead to something as great as advances in technology that make life better for the world or to something as terrible as mass murder. What sort of implications would changing other axioms have? Clearly, axioms aren’t just something scientists and mathematicians have to worry about, but rather, it is something everyone needs to worry about.

As you can see, you cannot know if science is true nor can you know if the basic axioms are true. I can hear you saying, “Well least I can trust my own senses.” Well buddy, have I got some news for you.

Part 4 – Does anything even exist

1. Reality is Subjective

Imagine your friend Stephen has a serious mental disorder and sometimes he sees spiders crawling all over himself. You, as a sane individual, recognize that what your friend Stephen sees is a hallucination.

Now let’s imagine that everyone else around you now see spiders crawling over Stephen. You look over at your friend Stephen and don’t see a single spider on him. As your friends scream and panic, you begin to wonder if you are the one hallucinating.

This example is an excellent demonstration of how your view of reality is determined by the others around you. If everyone else around you perceive the same things as you do, you feel sane, and can accept your collective reality as the true reality. Therefore, reality is much less an actuality than it is an agreed sense of perception. If one observes something, then that is their reality. Therefore, reality, in the traditional sense of the word, is subjective.

Figure 7 – Scene from the Movie The Truman Show, where Truman is the star of a reality TV show he doesn’t know exists in a world he doesn’t know is fabricated. (White, 2018)

2. Can we know what reality is?

You are making pasta on a Sunday evening. Suddenly, the pasta takes the shape of an unknown, but familiar face. “We miss you. Please come back.” Then and there you realize that you are in a coma…

Of course, we are all familiar with the movie The Matrix. We have no way of knowing if we are in a simulation (also known as “the brain in a vat” thought experiment). Or if that simulation is within another simulation and so on. Maybe you are trapped in a coma, reading this article and you subconscious is telling you that it is time to return to reality. You wouldn’t have a way of knowing. Maybe the world outside of this simulation has laws of physics completely different from our own. Maybe in that world we aren’t even human but rather an accumulation of energy and unknown substance. Or maybe we are something else entirely, something you nor I can comprehend because we have lived our entire lives within this simulation. The simple idea of us in a simulation is enough to prove that truth cannot exist because it uproots all of our axioms, because all of our axioms are founded in the idea that the universe itself exists. If we cannot be sure if our universe itself exists, how can we prove anything else to be true?

3. Can we know if time exists?

Imagine that the universe was created five seconds ago. Five seconds ago, you were thrown into this world with all of your current memories and knowledge – including the memory of reading the first part of this article. Though you have memories of your friends and family, you have never met them. You cannot know if the Earth is round or if your family are lizard people or really anything else for that matter if you have only existed for a mere five seconds.

If you want to take this example even further, try counting from one to ten. Once you have arrived at ten, can you know that you counted the numbers from one to ten or is it possible that the counting itself was only a memory and that you were at ten all along? You can imagine that there is no other moment in time than this one. That there is no past. There is no future. There’s only your conscious glimpse of your senses and thoughts in the now. This reality is entirely plausible and would mean that you cannot know if time itself exists.

Part 5 – Okay so now what

Figure 8 – Mike Baldwin demonstrates the solution to our problems. (Know Your Meme, 2017)

In this article, I discussed the Münchhausen Trilemma and using the ideas from it, I discussed the limitations of science and how we really can’t know if the simple things we accept for fact are true including the people around you, the universe, or time itself. If we believe nothing is true and that all the axioms are just assumptions does anything have any meaning at all? Should we just die? Not so fast. We must live making assumptions (assuming we are alive at all). We must have some axioms in order to progress in math, science, life, or anything else. It is not healthy nor practical to think that everyone around you is lifeless or that reality and time itself don’t exist. You should not accept pseudoscience simply because nothing can be known for certain. I am not making the argument that any of the thought experiments above are true, but rather we would never know if any of them were true. Using axioms, we CAN follow chains of thought that allow us to progress.

So, if this article doesn’t tell me I should die, then what is the point of this article anyways? Throughout this article, I have explained the topic of epistemological nihilism (aka radical skepticism) in which all knowledge is accepted to be possibly untrue or impossible to confirm as true. Epistemological nihilism is not a set of values, but a tool to think about the world and knowledge itself. Here are few ways you can use the tool of epistemological nihilism to make changes in your life:

1. Understanding the vocabulary and ideas of epistemological nihilism, you can much better hold your own in a debate and understand the world around you. If questioned in your ideas or while questioning the ideas of others, you can follow their chain of reasoning and determine if it leads to one of the three fallacies in the Münchhausen Trilemma - circular logic, infinite regression, or assumption. Next time Uncle Todd throws some circular logic at you during Thanksgiving Dinner, slap it into the ground much like auntie Tina’s nasty cranberry surprise.

2. To think outside of the box, one must first define the box. Using the knowledge of axioms, you can analyze your chain of logic down to the basic facts they rest upon. These basic facts are the box you have built for yourself, and by questioning them you can unleash creativity. Questioning them you might get a fuller picture of the situation around you. Axioms are important to cultures in the same way they are important to science and mathematics. By understanding where these axioms come from and what they mean, you can only imagine what society would look like if these axioms were different.

3. Understanding black swan theory, falsification, and the scientific revolutions, you can have a greater understanding of science and mathematics as useful beliefs, not facts. You can see where scientific revolutions are cropping up. By understanding the limits of science, you can then question certain beliefs that we have. Had Copernicus never questioned the paradigm of the geo-centric model, there would have never been a revolution. Had Einstein never questioned the paradigm of classical physics, there would have never been a revolution. By understanding all proof as potentially false, you can analyze whatever “facts” get thrown your way. And through questioning why things are the way they are, you may very well be the person that brings us through another scientific revolution.

4. One can use epistemological nihilism to soothe one’s fears about the world. Pyrrho, the Greek philosopher and founder of skepticism believed that if you cannot know anything to be true, then you also do not know if something is good or bad. For example, imagine if you get fired from your job. You would obviously feel bad. But imagine you get hired by another place which is even better than your previous one and there you meet your soon to be spouse. You would then consider getting fired from your job to be one of the best things that happened to you. On the flip side a seemingly good event can be bad. For example, many lottery winners end up becoming worst off because of the money they won. Pyrrho believed that if you suspend judgement about all bad things, those bad things would have no effect on you.

5. Lastly, understanding epistemological nihilism is satisfying in its own sense. Philosophy is a way of life, not simply a way to derive undeniably true answers to the things around us. It can build mindfulness and create values. It is a way to carve out an identity for ourselves and to become an individual rather than a passive player in the game of life. In short, it gives us agency.

Throughout this article, I have stated clearly that there is no truth to knowledge, however there is one undeniable truth. Your conscious experience in this very moment is the only thing that must truly exist. So while truth must exist, we will never know what it may be, but at least we have this one golden truth.

Afterword

Here are some things I decided against including in my article for the sake of making it too long.

Truth and Knowledge

Figure 9 – Truth vs Knowledge. (Philosophy... [Wisdom VS Knowledge], 2020)

Truth and knowledge are not one and the same. In the realm of philosophy, the definition of knowledge is still being hotly debated, but for simplicity let us say it is a true justified belief. If the weatherman comes on one day and says that it is currently raining outside, you can say you have knowledge of it raining. However, if you later find out the weatherman is a chronic liar and it is not actually raining, you do not have knowledge of it raining. That knowledge only stops being knowledge when you learn that it is not the truth. Even if you were to step outside and feel water raining down on you, you still cannot know for certain; all other possible explanations may be valid, no matter how implausible.

If all living creatures were wiped from the universe, truth would continue existing in one form or another. Knowledge, however, would be expunged. Knowledge is inherently human (or at least related to consciousness).

As I have explained above, knowledge cannot exist, leaving behind only a universe of beliefs. What we call “truth” or “facts” aren’t really the truth, but rather justified beliefs. Truth must exist. Knowledge, however, cannot (apart for consciousness).

Occam’s Razor

Now, assuming that certain axioms ARE true, such as everything we believe today, there is a likelihood that certain things are more probable than others. Occam’s Razor essentially states that the simplest explanation is also the most probable. It is much more probable that everyone around you is also sentient rather than mindless drones because you – a living, thinking being - look like them. Therefore, they must be like you and therefore must also be sentient. This explanation is probably much simpler than an explanation describing why your friends and family are walking meat sacks, and according to Occam’s razor, more probable. My friend Farrah Cavus gave an excellent example of Occam’s Razor in her article on determinism.

Earlier today, you found that soccer ball sitting in your backyard, didn’t you? Didn’t it perplex you as to how the ball got there in the first place? The neighbor’s kid, Jimmy, could have left it there after playing outside with his cousin, who’s visiting for the weekend. Or, perhaps it belonged to a celebrity on the other side of the country, and it got there by being lifted by a hurricane and dumped into a river, and it floated in that river for hundreds of miles until it got picked up by a hawk, and that hawk later swooped down and placed it perfectly at the top of the hill where you found it.

Occam’s razor would tell you that the simplest explanation is the most plausible in this scenario. It is much more likely that the ball got there because of Jimmy, who needs to learn how to stay off your property, than because of the ludicrous alternative I rambled about above.

Quote 2 - (Presenting Uncertainty to the Doctrine of Determinism, 2020)

I believe that Occam’s Razor helps explain the movement of atheism and science. Early on, it was easy to say that God is the simplest explanation for everything you see around us. What else could explain the wonderful animals around us and the water around to drink and the fact we have everything we need to live? Nothing. However, as we accumulated more information about the world, we begin to realize that God really is not the simplest explanation for what we see around us but rather a collection of phenomena. It seems that the progression of knowledge has essentially been growing simplest explanations for the growing amount of known phenomenon.

The Enlightenment

Many of us know the enlightenment to be an outstanding time where people moved away from the dogmas of religion and began to move towards using empiricism (our senses) and logic to make conclusions. However, the enlightenment has brought its own baggage and dogmas into the world, some of which we would be better without. Many contemporary philosophers have covered this and it could be its own article. I would just like to point out that one of the dogmas that came with the enlightenment was the absolute power of science and mathematics as well as the disconnect between these two fields and their roots in philosophy. I don’t believe we should throw away science or math, but rather respect its origins and limitations in order to make even more progress.

The Philosophical Zombie Disclaimer

The philosophical zombie, while typically used to argue for dualism, the separation between matter and mind. I only used it as an example of axioms at play.

Mathematics and Knowledge

Author's Note: Mathematics is a much harder field to examine through the eyes of epistemological nihilism. This section used to be in part 2 of this article, but I removed it because I am not well as well versed in the axioms of mathematics (ZFC) or Gödel’s Theorem to talk about it in depth and even if I were to, the contents may be too hard for the average reader to comprehend and might muddle up the article. Because I do not understand the current axioms in depth, I did not think it right of me to comment on them. I would also like to note that I do not understand Gödel’s vigorous proof, but rather an abstract version of it.

Now, what about mathematics? Surely, mathematics, the language of pure logic, is not subject to the changes of axioms and is not incomplete much like our knowledge of the universe will always be complete, right? I will begin by tackling the idea that mathematics will never be incomplete with Gödel’s (Ger-duhls) Theorem. It goes like this: currently we have a set of axioms guiding all of mathematics. Now these axioms SHOULD be able to prove any mathematical chain of logic either TRUE (2+2=4) or FALSE (2+2=5). Now let’s introduce the challenge.

Figure 10 – Gödel’s Challenge. (Numberphile, 2017)

“This statement cannot be proved from the axioms.” Something like this should not be able to happen. Remember, we should be able to prove every statement true or false with our axioms, however if we cannot prove this statement at ALL with our axioms, that must mean that whatever this statement is, it must be an axiom in itself, something that does not need to be justified per definition of an axiom. Great, we have now discovered a new axiom and we can add it to our set of axioms. Hooray knowledge! Ah, but now we can throw out ANOTHER statement that cannot be proven from the axioms and another and another on forever. This means that mathematical knowledge can never be complete.

Counterclaims Against Global Skepticism

A few others have counter claims against the global skeptic beliefs (everything could be fake such as the case of the Matrix), of which I do not wish to list here, although most of them generally say that while the skepticism ideas are potentially true, they are unimportant. Watch the introduction to epistemology below for more information. One counterclaim I respect in its methods is Descartes’s because it builds on the axiom of your own consciousness and the language that you use. His idea is that an infinite idea (that of a perfect human being) must be from an infinite source (God) and that God could not allow for such a simulation to occur, therefore we know everything is real. An infinite idea has no meaning and there is nothing to say that such an infinite idea couldn’t be implanted into your head. This counterclaim is clearly false, although I respect the angle of attack.

Self-Defeating Epistemological Nihilism

I do realize that the idea epistemological nihilism is almost self-defeating. How can you say you know for certain we cannot know anything for certain? I will admit, that epistemological nihilism has its limits and the idea itself does rest on a few axioms, the same things I spent the entire article bashing. Epistemological nihilism hinges on the belief that we cannot know everything, that the fallacies Münchhausen Trilemma are indeed fallacies (meaning all chains of logic are flawed), and that nothing can be proven to be true (in which consciousness may be seen as the refutation for, a black swan in a way). Many of the counterclaims for the Münchhausen Trilemma stem from stating that the fallacies for the trilemma are not actually fallacies. One of the most interesting being infinitism, the belief that infinite regression may be a justification to a chain of reasoning. For now, it is my belief that epistemological nihilism is true, that practically nothing can be proven other than our consciousness. And it is my belief that epistemological nihilism will never be overtaken.

Contact me!

Author, Gatlen Culp

If you are interested in learning more about skepticism and epistemology, check out the references below. And if you are interested in talking with me (if you have any questions, think I left anything out, or if you don’t agree with some of the things I said), feel free to contact me at [email protected]. I would love to hear from you.

Edited by/with help from: Farrah Cavus

Bibliography

Figures

Figures 1 & 2 - Das Goethezeitportal: Münchhausens Abenteuer in Bildern von Oskar Herrfurth Folge 2. (2018). Goethezeitportal.De. http://www.goethezeitportal.de/wissen/illustrationen/gottfried-august-buerger/die-abenteuer-des-freiherrn-von-muenchhausen/muenchhausens-abenteuer-in-bildern-von-oskar-herrfurth-folge-2.html

Figure 3 - FlatEarth.ws. (2018, November 11). Circular Reasoning. FlatEarth.Ws; FlatEarth.ws. https://flatearth.ws/circular-reasoning

Figure 4 – Mx. Granger. (2015, February 23). File:Infinite regress en.svg - Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Infinite_regress_en.svg

Figure 5 - Nuclear war, the black swan we can never see - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. (2014, November 21). Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. https://thebulletin.org/2014/11/nuclear-war-the-black-swan-we-can-never-see/

Figure 6 – Rwandan Genocide Memorials. (2016, March 26). Ricfrancis; ricfrancis. https://ricfrancis.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/in-remembrance-of-genocide/

Figure 7 – White, A. (2018, June). The original Truman Show screenplay was way, way darker. Dazed; Dazed Digital. https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/40216/1/the-original-truman-show-screenplay-was-way-way-darker

Figure 8 - Know Your Meme. (2017, August 15). Guess I’ll Die. Know Your Meme. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/guess-ill-die

Figure 9 - Philosophy... [Wisdom VS Knowledge]. (2020, March 28). Blogspot.Com. http://alengsjournal.blogspot.com/2015/01/philosophy-wisdom-vs-knowledge.html

Figure 10 – Numberphile. (2020). Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem - Numberphile [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ndIDcDSGc

Quotes

Quote 1 - Hawking, S. (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books.

Quote 2 - Cavus, F. (2020, March 27). Presenting Uncertainty to the Doctrine of Determinism. https://vocal.media/futurism/presenting-uncertainty-to-the-doctrine-of-determinism

References and Learn More

Dictionary Definitions - Encyclopedia Britannica | Britannica. (2020). In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/

Münchhausen Trilemma - IdeasInHat | What Is The Münchhausen Trilemma? (2018, November 16). IdeasInHat. https://ideasinhat.com/2018/11/16/what-is-the-munchhausen-trilemma/

Münchhausen Trilemma - Wikipedia Contributors. (2020, January 19). Münchhausen trilemma. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma

Notes on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Wikipedia Contributors. (2020, March 27). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions

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Wonderful Philosophy Podcast - Philosophize This! (2020). Philosophize This! http://philosophizethis.org/

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