Time in seconds and distance in meters provide knowledge about reality.
A long debate may ensue whether or not meters and seconds are knowledge...
How "a long debate"? Meters and seconds are merely units of measurement like furlongs and fortnights. There could be debates about whether what they are used to measure constitute knowledge but that debate would be independent of the units of measurement used. The units of measurement are by definition - hardly debatable other than possibly which system of units to use.
I am referring to the tendency for folks here to go off on tangents, like 'knowledge does not exist'. The fact that meters and seconds are units of measure no and dimensions are comprised of units of measure is not accepted by a number of people here. It is scifi influence where 'dimensions' are fictional creations with a separate reality.
Steve, are you the same Steve_bank who posted here years ago? If not sorry, but your posting style recalls this person. If so, forget what I'm about to say, as you will already know.
Many years ago, in ye mistie olden dayes circa 2006 - 2010, we had many people who used to love indulging in that kind of silly debating. You could barely use the word "self", or "I", without being reminded that there IS NO SELF, NO I. We had one Idealist (in love with his recent brush with Berkeley - that's the good Bishop, not the university, for some of you readers and lurkers out there), who insisted that the Moon (our moon) did not exist before there were any beings able to perceive it. The existence of objects were totally perception dependent, and/or mind-dependent.
When I asked this guy (it was a guy) a simple question: "Does the sun exist
because you see it, or do you see the sun
because it exists?", he got frustrated, and claimed there was
no difference between the two queries (or two parts of the same query). Eventually he got upset with everyone (after touting Metzinger's
The Ego Tunnel to the point of exhaustion), and either left or morphed into a sock puppet.
We had a long period of pointless discussion in the philosophy fora over trivial and mundane things, pages and pages of it: it would fill volumes. My lengthy posts alone would fill a large book. The redoubtable and indefatigable DBT had an argument (or series of arguments) with one equally indefatigable Togo. Those discussions would fill volumes. Luckily, things don't get that way much anymore.
However, I am keenly interested in the possibility of someone agreeing with that past poster that there is no distinction between the questions:
"Does the sun exist
because you see it, or do you see the sun
because it exists?"
Metaphysically, a lot can be discovered about how one answers that. It's the difference between objectivism and subjectivism; it's the difference between Aristotle and Plato.
IMhO.
