The Big Questions

We cannot know anything with absolute certainty. Ultimately all our knowledge must derive from external stimuli or internal processes or ‘hardware’, and there is no way of guaranteeing that either of these sources of information represent reality. In fact, they often do not: illusions and delusions are examples of unreliable external and internal information, respectively.

We cannot even know for sure that there is a reality. In the film ‘The Matrix’, the reality that the main characters had taken for granted was illusory. The world as they knew it, including their own bodies, were representations created by artificial stimulation of their brains, which were in fact their only organs. The movie is disturbing in part because we have no way of ruling out that the scenario is real: We simply cannot know whether the reality we see around us everyday really exists.

However to conclude from this that all is hopeless and that nothing can be known would be too pessimistic. Our senses seem to confront us with reality on a daily basis, and the best we can do is to build on what our senses tell us. But because there is measurement error, the sense of certainty we have about a certain statement should increase with the number and quality of observations. This is the principle of the scientific process: We should put the most faith in those claims about reality which can be independently verified by any of us.

This means that statements that can be reliably verified any number of times and have never been contradicted should be given a high level of knowledge, whereas the unverifiable experience of a single person much less so.

Look here for the best places to buy iPod in the UK.