Knowning vs Believing

This post comes out of an amazing discussion I had with someone about the nature of knowing and belief and what they mean epistemologically. What is knowing? how much do we know? and what do we believe to know, but in fact we do not know.

The main point he bought up was the fact that we infact cannot know anything, which is accurate, as we do not know where the laws of reality come from as well as the absolute definitions of these laws. Which I agree with, but is not where my argument lies.

My argument is that, if a given set of laws were presented, however it was presented or perceived, if the self is made known of this set of laws, and if the laws do not change, and this if is important the same outcome will follow a given input. Take an empty "space" with absolutely no laws or time whatsoever; now imagine we put a ball in this "space" and force a law upon it where we say anything and everything that will and can exist in this "space" will be attracted to this ball, anythign and everything will be in fact attracted to this ball, if this law in unchanged. But since we assume a space without time, there is no time, and it cannot be changed in the future as changing would require the property of time to be added there. since if we change 1 thing from 1 state to another, then we introduce a past and a present.

Similarly, if we take a mathematical equation, we then know for a fact that if a given set of axioms is repeated in the same way in the same equation the same outcome comes to be. There is no belief in this, since the word belief, exists with it's own given axiom. The fact that there can be multiple outcomes to the same input. But this would imply the original framework we established was changed somehow.

So with no connection to anything else, if a set of quantifiable laws exist, and the same quantifiable output will be outputted. since there is no probability that another outcome will exist, since the laws are as they are, unaffected. They are quantifiable laws with quantifiable outputs, and we can know that. In fact that is all we can do. Since anything else we believe beyond this would fall into the category of absolute faith.

To demonstrate this, consider a universe where there is only you and a piece of music you're listening to. There is no thought, no perceiving; all there is, is you and this piece of music. Now, there is no believing since the concept of believing will not exist there. The concept of knowing will not either, but this song is your whole reality and it is "there". To an outside observer who's only capable of distinguishing whether a certain situation is a belief or knowledge, they would, in fact identify it as a "known" as there is no other probability for what it can be. So if this person who exist in this place where there is only the piece of music and him, believes there is something other than the piece of music, it would be then faith, as there is no probability that for them, there is anything other than the piece of music.

This is akin to dimensions and the idea that there are 2d and 4d people exist. And this was an example of how it can be used to distinguish the difference when, in fact, as an outside observer, there might be many things we can understand from this.

So regardless of what you perceive through your senses or where a certain law of nature you see comes from, as long as what you perceive is quantifiable, a certain output exists to a certain input. If a ball is floating on a computer screen, that ball is floating indeed, given the definition of that "ball", that "space" those laws, it is indeed floating. quantifiable law, quantifiable output.

And whether or not we live in a quantifiable nature is not exactly up for debate, what is however, is why is nature quantifiable? since we can make an easy distinction between a tv and a puppy, these things were given quantifiable boundaries, limits, and definitions, so what remains to be explained is not whether or not reality is quantifiable but how?

Granted, we do not know what the extent of these laws are, and yes, indeed there could be things completely different than what we see, but there is a probability of said thing being there or not, and that probability is built on already existing laws you percieve.

So there are absolute knowns, and there is a time to believe, but that belief is rooted on probability, the idea that it could be different. But eachtime we question the epistemology of something, we always do it within the boundaries of epistemology.