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Question I am a 16 year old and i have been asking myself the same question for a very long time but only recently was able to finally word the question.. Isnt it true that there can not be a certainty of anything outside a person's current observed world? It still sounds very wierd but if i am sitting in a room in a building that i walked into myself, i saw all of my surrounding as i entered the building and the room. The door is closed and there is no way for me to observe anything on the outside of the room. I can say that i know exactly what is outside that door because i saw it as i came in the room, but in reality i have zero way of being competely certain of anything i cant see or hear outside the room. I could, potentially, be in a room floating in space and have no way of knowing, givin there isnt any ovservable evidence of my location. It may sound strange, but i believe it could be related to particle physics, etc. The fact is that i have no certainty of anything outside my personal observed "picture": the surroundings in my field of vision and what i can hear around me.

Accepted:
August 2, 2012

Comments

I congratulate you on your interest in philosophy at the age of 16 -- in this case, your interest in epistemology (the theory of knowledge) and, within epistemology, the issue of skepticism. You posed your question in terms of certainty. I said in response to Question 4721 that the term 'certain' works in a way that allows you to be certain that some proposition P is true even though it's logically possible that P is false. But you raised a harder question: Can you be certain that P is true when the evidence you now have is the same evidence you'd have if P were false? This question is hotly debated: there are plausible grounds for answering "No" and plausible grounds for answering "Yes." You might start your investigation by reading Peter Klein's SEP article on skepticism. It's long and challenging, but I think it will reward your patience. I recommend paying particular attention to Klein's discussion of the concept of evidence. (By the way, I don't think particle physics has much to say on this topic that's relevant. I recommend focusing on what philosophers have had to say about it.) Best of luck!