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<blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5526957" data-attributes="member: 18280">No, it is tantamount to &quot;You cannot prove not-X, and you cannot prove X, therefore the truth of X or not-X cannot be known&quot;.I.e., &quot;You cannot know&quot; is not a statement that you can know X, or that you can know not-X.&nbsp; It is, quite literally, agnostic.&quot;In all cases X was preceded by Y&quot; implies a correlation, but it is not proof of causation, nor is it proof that, in the future, all cases of X will be preceded by Y.&nbsp; The acceptance that &quot;In all cases X was preceded by Y&quot; be taken as proof that, in the future, all cases of X will be preceded by Y, requires something to occur outside of pure reason.You can say this is the &quot;I can't imagine a God who would create these conditions just to deceive me&quot; (poor paraphrase) of Descarte, or the &quot;<a href="http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110210013855AAFLqOD" target="_blank">synthetic knowledge</a>&quot; of Kant, but neither of these constructions actually remove the central point:&nbsp; Something apart from reason must occur.And you miss the problem with your logic chain -- it is not that the links need be broken, it is that the links are affixed to assumptions that are not themselves proven.RC</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Raven Crowking, post: 5526957, member: 18280"] No, it is tantamount to "You cannot prove not-X, and you cannot prove X, therefore the truth of X or not-X cannot be known". I.e., "You cannot know" is not a statement that you can know X, or that you can know not-X. It is, quite literally, agnostic. "In all cases X was preceded by Y" implies a correlation, but it is not proof of causation, nor is it proof that, in the future, all cases of X will be preceded by Y. The acceptance that "In all cases X was preceded by Y" be taken as proof that, in the future, all cases of X will be preceded by Y, requires something to occur outside of pure reason. You can say this is the "I can't imagine a God who would create these conditions just to deceive me" (poor paraphrase) of Descarte, or the "[URL="http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110210013855AAFLqOD"]synthetic knowledge[/URL]" of Kant, but neither of these constructions actually remove the central point: Something apart from reason must occur. And you miss the problem with your logic chain -- it is not that the links need be broken, it is that the links are affixed to assumptions that are not themselves proven. RC [/QUOTE]

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