• BodyBySisyphus [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    “The Unknown,” of course, is implicitly situated within the observer - the Americas were unknown to their European “discoverers” but well known to the existing inhabitants. Thus, the blanket Unknown can only apply to that which we can confidently state is outside any being’s understanding. Within and surrounded by that vast and unknowable Unknown, we have the noosphere: the universe of things that can be known but which is only imperfectly accessed by the senses. Although “seeing is believing” in the sense that we must accept the testimony of the senses - of ourselves, of others, or even of machines, who can sense to us things otherwise outside our noosphere but present them to us in a way that they can be understood - seeing is only necessary and not sufficient for believing. A fly can see a couple kissing, but it does not understand the kiss. The kiss is outside its noosphere. It has no way of comprehending what a kiss is. And so it only witnesses the interactions of two objects, objects it may “know” as potential threats. And so I say to you, our machines have witnessed, and they have presented, and from that presentation we may form beliefs. But, as a belief is but the suggestion of an understanding, the representation of the knowledge that we can witness but not understand, I ask you, have you, in your seeing, come to know? I cannot know exactly what it is that you know - the exact state of your mind is beyond my noosphere, and so I can only see what you represent to me, and from that seeing form beliefs, and from those beliefs come to partially know. But I cannot know what you know, only you can. But I know that you have seen. So I ask you: having seen, do you know?