CHECK-OUT-ABLE

     I guess in part what drives me crazy about people claiming to be
perfectly certain of things that are wrong is they have separated the
state of certainty from the object that the certainty is about.

     In other words they are claiming certainty to a truth that they
can not check out.

     For example I present you with a black box and I say "There is a
red card inside this box."

     If I ask you what is in the box, and you say a red card, and I
ask how do you know, you would say "Well Homer told me and he is
trustable etc."

     But that's not a CHECKABLE CERTAINTY, because there is no
*DIRECT* connection between the observer and the card in the box.
Homer could be lying or be mistaken himself.

     Even if God came down and TOLD you there is a red card in the
box, you still wouldn't have CHECKABLE CERTAINTY because again there
is no direct perception of the card in the box.  Even God could be
lying.  Even if God COULDN'T lie and you were certain of that, you
still wouldn't have direct checkable certainty of the card in the box.

     Now we open the box and you look at the card.  You can SEE it is
red, how can you doubt what you see?  You can say it might be a
hallucination, there might not be a card there, you might be dreaming,
but we arn't talking about 'the card', we are talking about what you
SEE.

     If you SEE a red card, you can then say "Yes I SEE A RED CARD, of
this I am certain."

     Now this certainty is not just a belief, an arbitrary or willfully
chosen state of mind in the being, the certainty is CHECKABLE, the
certainty has a direct CAUSAL relationship to the experience being
observed.

     The knowledge gleaned and what the knowledge is about have a direct
causal link between them which itself can be seen!

     The observer and the observed are related by CAUSATION, the red
experience is causally responsible for knowing that it is red, the
observer isn't just being TOLD that it is red, he SEES it is red.

     Do you see the difference?

     So when we talk about perfect certainties, we aren't talking about
a mere state of mind concerning a truth, but a state of causal
connection between the observer and the observed, between the certainty
and what the certainty is about, allowing us to check the certainty for
its truth continuously in real present time.

     This is what makes the certainty perfect, can not be wrong etc,
the real time causal connection is there and the being can SEE it is
right.

     The certainty is 'check-out-able'.

     Homer

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homer Wilson Smith   Clean Air, Clear Water,  Art Matrix - Lightlink
(607) 277-0959       A Green Earth and Peace. Internet Access, Ithaca NY
homer@lightlink.com  Is that too much to ask? http://www.lightlink.com