We often times will speak with certainty towards opinions and conclusions we have come to, we make truth claims about reality based on our subjective interpretation of the perceptibly acquired data in decisive statements formed and justified by the rational faculty of the mind. We are confident in our ability to recall certain content that we have come to understand as it appeared to us within the gaze of consciousness, yet, this very gaze, and the data in which it consists, is mediated by a biological system of perceptibility, which has been formed and modified according to not only our immediate environment and biological imperatives, but by the totality of experience and genetic influencers which direct specific significant content to be presented in a certain way. We may be justified in the practicality in acting upon this manifest content in its utility to us, as that is necessarily the method in which its significance and our response is modified by, yet, in accurately representing the truth of the phenomena which we purport to be certain of, we make an error due to the underlying biases and mediation process in which the content of our conscious articulations is modified in accordance with. We ought to be confident in our perceptions, insofar as they are useful to us, yet in strictly making truth claims about the objective world, in a philosophical sense, and even the objective truth of content that is subjectively appearing, we ought to withhold absolute certainty upon our interpretation or judgement, and maintain a fallibilistic point of view in regards to the facticity of the appearance of content on which we are “certain” to have internalized.

When we receive information through our sensory experience, and retrospectively analyze the content phenomenologically, we have a certainty as to what passed through consciousness, yet in all cases lack a certainty as to the alignment between the contents appearance and what it truly is, i.e. we can become aware of reading, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, seeing, thinking (experiencing) something, and we intuit a certainty in regards to our ability to state that our experience of consciousness in regards to such content felt a certain way (we interpret it as being something), yet appearances are fleeting, phenomena can be deceiving, and our brains often fall short of correctly comprehending something. There are lies and there are tricks which nature can impose on the conscious subject enabling them to experience something in a way which comprehends the phenomenon so as to be at odds with factical reality. We only truly know our experience of consciousness, and its contents therein, as to their alignment with reality we remain ignorant, as the point of reference which is our conscious gaze is nothing but a mediator between the actual content and our subjective experience of it. We only can experience, learn, know, what consciousness presents to awareness, and what enters awareness within the moment. We can never truly see outside of the confines of the mediator. This isn’t to say we can’t pass rational judgments upon the state of reality, it is merely a recognition that all content is perceived through a system which itself only internalizes, and presents a limited scope of perspective.

We are aware of our propensity to be deceived in perception through examples in Gestalt Theory, optical illusions, the color spectrum, the sound spectrum, our own ability to falsely represent ourselves, all make clear the limitations and potential fallibility our perceptive system contains. We can make predictions, and logical models of how we believe reality to be, in short, we can believe, we can state with certainty what we believe to be true, or what we have rationally concluded is true, or what we have as evidence to explain phenomena, but this is only stated using language, words, which always are symbolic representations of content which is itself higher resolution than the content of which thoughts, concepts, and the mind, can express or internalize. Thus we are certain of our experience, and hold beliefs that are logical, perhaps based on evidence, perhaps actually in alignment with which we mentally conceive “reality” to be, but the most we can truly state is this, that we are limited and that the state of our experience is not one which is capable of absolute certainty in a formal sense, in an ultimate sense

In the best case our certainty upon truth claims is that which language is best able to communicate using our logical, rational, and experientially intuited faculties, yet always are mediated and never are an experience of the content within itself. The thing which helps us test our certainty upon which language is able to describe phenomena, is science, which enables language to interpret data beyond our sensual capacities, and confirm or deny that our mode of describing phenomena, and the definition of said language, is in accordance with that presented by the acquired data. But for any of this, including the interpretation, we rely on memory, we rely on the brains ability to make sense of content, we rely on our certainty upon our comprehension of our experience, which is the only thing we can truly be certain of. To say more, to claim more, we must do so with an air of fallibility which must always be present to us in our current state, being ourselves a mediating organism between the actual and our experience or awareness of consciousness’s representation of it.

Practical truth, or that which is practically useful to us, still shows itself to exist in its application in the actions we make. Wisdom remains important, and we are wise to base this upon our judgments upon reality, regardless of how we came upon them, the best option we’re aware of is still the best option for us. The problem we have is in philosophical abstract representations of reality, or our ability to understand what it is that truly exists. To understand being itself. We can describe it, using symbolic representation, whether its mathematical, philosophical, scientific, evidence based, experience based, these can be filtered using reason and logic and found to be non-contradictory and in alignment with what “knowledge” (see – “Truth Claims and their Corollaries”) is previously acquired. This is what we can do, but any step we make with certainty past this point is a step into waters which we literally cannot take, and this must be accepted as a consequence of the human condition, as a condition of life itself, perhaps just as a condition. Why can’t we claim that 2+2=4 or that the earth is spherical and not flat? We can claim it, and it is true, conventionally. Yet what we are doing is thinking, or reading, or speaking, using symbols – generally understood, and yes, in alignment with reality (as we see it) yet it is at a resolution that is not all inclusive as to the intricacies of reality itself. It is true from a perspective, yet it is in infinite ways untrue as to the content which it fails to describe in relation to said claims, which make up the reality in which the claims are being made, and thus the picture is always lacking a universal all-encompassing explanation, and this is okay, but it is something we must come to terms with, if we are to be honest about the condition which we inhabit, and our truth claims in relation to it.

Being, space, time, are all left out of claims. The wealth of information within these concepts is surely too large to be contained by our language, mediated by our mental capacities, at anything but a rudimentary low resolution depiction. The highest of high resolutions, the Absolute truth of the matter, is out of our grasp. As an extremely strange yet possible example, our understanding of physics, and the science it purports to be true, is based upon rules of logic and upon laws which govern the universe as we currently know it in this moment in time. Yet we are ignorant as to the validity of these laws in the future, or the past, in their applicability and existence in other regions of space in the universe, or even as to their underlining foundational properties giving rise to them. The why behind the representation of something which surely works in order for us to make predictions and models and all sorts of practical achievements. Yet they are merely this, a working symbolic representation about a specific moment of time, they do not span into historical past farther than we are able to probe or experientially predict (using our current knowledge), neither are they universal in regards to time as a changing nature of the present. The future, as a present moment yet to arrive, and the laws and physics, and math, and evidence and symbolic representation and human experience of it, is yet to present itself to us.

All in all, to be honest, is to be fallibilist, to be fallibilist is to be realistic. The more realistic we become, using the science and philosophy we are able to comprehend, mediated by the mind and its use of language, the more we are able to utilize these faculties to be used towards a representation that better encapsulates the Truth as it Actually is. We must be wise in making truth claims, and we must strive towards higher resolution depictions of reality, that is, if we seek the truth, yet we must be humble as to our limitations and we must be honest as to the state of things, and the state of our Being in which we find ourselves in. We must not be discouraged by discovery or reason or logic that threatens to impose a limit as to the reaches of our understanding, science marches on, we march on, and if we march in the right direction, we become closer to the truth itself.

As an example of this line of reasoning taking place in real life – on certainty – the question is posed “what is the greatest country on earth?” Now apart from the problems of establishing a definition of greatest (I’d take the meta-ethical approach of moral realism based on suffering and wellbeing), and apart from our knowledge and experience, we all can say with certainty as to what we believe/think is the greatest country, yet we cannot objectively state an answer. We are certain of what we believe it to be, yet if we’re honest, we are ignorant of the multitude of factors going into answering the questions, namely, time spent in other countries, growing up in other countries, the content and type of people (ignorant of the totality of every individual and experience within that country) namely we are ignorant of so much, what time we are referring to, which set of present moments we’re speaking in reference to, etc. The more knowledge we have into the intricacies of such a question the more we are aware of our ignorance and inability to comprehend a factual answer to it.

Even our conception of the physical laws which make up our universe, we express using language and mathematical formulas which are rational and practical within this current moment, without reiterating them to all of existence, not to mention other possible scenarios. Still at base level it is a Symbolic representation applicable, Now, and nothing more can be said about past or future or additional “constants” or “conditions”. The way in which we articulate our conceptualization truly matters, and the mode of being certain is revealed as being a hindrance to further development. The better articulated we become in aligning our thoughts and our manifestations in alignment with reality, the more equipped we are to deal with real world problems. By better being able to articulate situations we provide ourselves with a better ordering of chaos, a better depiction of the matter-at-hand, and by doing so, are better able to find a method in navigating it. In the same way we must apply proper articulation to truth claims, and abstain from being certain, as this only works to limit us from a greater representation of the truth, and urges us to falsehood.