User:Achilles184

11/15/2017 Edited Turtles All The Way Down to include a relation to epistemology and a quote from Johann Gottlieb Fichte 1794:

The metaphor is used as an example of the problem of infinite regress in epistemology to show that there is a necessary foundation to knowledge, as written by Johann Gottlieb Fichte in 1794: "If there is not to be any (system of human knowledge dependent upon an absolute first principle) two cases are only possible. Either there is no immediate certainty at all, and then our knowledge forms many series or one infinite series, wherein each theorem is derived from a higher one, and this again from a higher one, et., etc. We build our houses on the earth, the earth rests on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, the tortoise again--who knows on what?-- and so on ad infinitum. True, if our knowledge is thus constituted, we can not alter it; but neither have we, then, any firm knowledge. We may have gone back to a certain link of our series, and have found every thing firm up to this link; but who can guarantee us that, if we go further back, we may not find it ungrounded, and shall thus have to abandon it? Our certainty is only assumed, and we can never be sure of it for a single following day."