Most recent published work
The value of ignorance – reflections of a new philosophy student
It is only a few months since I dipped my toe in the waters of philosophy, beginning, as I thought, a serious journey in pursuit of knowledge. Here I am, in only to ankle-depth so far, but knowledge seems further away then ever. Philosophy must be unique as the only field of human endeavour where the harder you study, the less you seem to know. Questions are answered by further questions, and answers are turned belly up and exposed for what they are: more hidden questions in disguise. Progress is not defined as steps along a linear path to a goal, but the development of shoots stretching off in hundreds of different directions at once, blossoming into a dense impenetrable bush that obscures the hope of even the tiniest glimpse of light from its centre. A surprising discovery, then, with all my hopes dashed, but not necessary a depressing one. If a little knowledge is dangerous thing, it's just as well to know how little knowledge mankind really has.
The arguments that we can know nothing, or almost nothing, I find very convincing, more or less irrefutable. It seems to me that we contact the real world (if there is such a thing) only through our senses, our memory and our reasoning powers, all working together to make sense of what would otherwise be a disorganized set of electrical impulses inside our brains. Given different imperfections in these faculties, and the wide a variety of inputs each person is exposed to, it would appear inevitable that an individual's view of the world has to be unique to that person, a view distorted by a personal veil. These perceptions are separated from reality, the objective undistorted view, by a vast chasm. Through the ages, thinkers have proposed various strategies for bridging this chasm, which I believe can be classified into three types. First of all, it is said that crossing the chasm can be achieved by trusting in a supernatural source who can take us by the hand and lead us safely to the other side. This is the way of faith, and the flaw is that we have no way of telling the true infallible guide from the charlatan. If such a guide does exist, our only options are to reject the proffered hand, or to blindly grab it and go, hoping we we haven't chosen unwisely.
The second way of bridging the gap is to rely on our reasoning powers to help us identify the veil and remove it, exposing the real world from an objective viewpoint free of distortion. But is this achievable: after all, our objective viewpoint is still our viewpoint, so at best it can only be what we imagine a distortion-free view to be. Finally, the third approach is to deny the gap exists: that what we see is the real world, or, in a less extreme version, that what we see is all that matters, that the unknowable, being unknowable, cannot be considered as existing. Just avoiding the issue, perhaps?
None of these three strategies is satisfactory, but I don't reject any, all of them are possible paths. Their inadequacy suggests we cannot be sure of knowing anything, including the suggestion itself that we cannot know anything. I suppose they are put forward because of the importance given to knowledge as something so valuable we cannot do without it. But what exactly is its value? It would seem intuitively to have an instrumental value in that , with knowledge, we are more likely to make good decisions(i.e. ones where the outcome matches our expectations) . But I haven't come across a sound logical argument which shows this is true, and the empirical evidence is equivocal. It is also claimed that knowledge has intrinsic value, but what is intrinsic value other than n unjustified claim that something (it could be anything) is worth something. But, as I said earlier, as a new student of these ideas I am not depressed.
What does depress me a bit, though, is that so many thinkers appear to be firmly convinced that they do know things. Because it appears to me that that while the value of knowledge is questionable, there may very well be some instrumental value in ignorance. With ignorance comes a lack of conviction and tolerance. There is a lot of empirical evidence of the harm being done by those who knew they were right, while is is harder to find examples of the same kind of harm being done by those who concede that they might be wrong and the other party right. People don't normally fight for a right that they're not too sure about. Ideas are powerful, and the thoughts of thinkers are readily taken up and turned into action. So I would be happier if I saw a little bit of humility in the philosophical writings I am being exposed to. They would, in my opinion, then be a lot less dangerous.
Copyright James Gault
9th September 2010
It is only a few months since I dipped my toe in the waters of philosophy, beginning, as I thought, a serious journey in pursuit of knowledge. Here I am, in only to ankle-depth so far, but knowledge seems further away then ever. Philosophy must be unique as the only field of human endeavour where the harder you study, the less you seem to know. Questions are answered by further questions, and answers are turned belly up and exposed for what they are: more hidden questions in disguise. Progress is not defined as steps along a linear path to a goal, but the development of shoots stretching off in hundreds of different directions at once, blossoming into a dense impenetrable bush that obscures the hope of even the tiniest glimpse of light from its centre. A surprising discovery, then, with all my hopes dashed, but not necessary a depressing one. If a little knowledge is dangerous thing, it's just as well to know how little knowledge mankind really has.
The arguments that we can know nothing, or almost nothing, I find very convincing, more or less irrefutable. It seems to me that we contact the real world (if there is such a thing) only through our senses, our memory and our reasoning powers, all working together to make sense of what would otherwise be a disorganized set of electrical impulses inside our brains. Given different imperfections in these faculties, and the wide a variety of inputs each person is exposed to, it would appear inevitable that an individual's view of the world has to be unique to that person, a view distorted by a personal veil. These perceptions are separated from reality, the objective undistorted view, by a vast chasm. Through the ages, thinkers have proposed various strategies for bridging this chasm, which I believe can be classified into three types. First of all, it is said that crossing the chasm can be achieved by trusting in a supernatural source who can take us by the hand and lead us safely to the other side. This is the way of faith, and the flaw is that we have no way of telling the true infallible guide from the charlatan. If such a guide does exist, our only options are to reject the proffered hand, or to blindly grab it and go, hoping we we haven't chosen unwisely.
The second way of bridging the gap is to rely on our reasoning powers to help us identify the veil and remove it, exposing the real world from an objective viewpoint free of distortion. But is this achievable: after all, our objective viewpoint is still our viewpoint, so at best it can only be what we imagine a distortion-free view to be. Finally, the third approach is to deny the gap exists: that what we see is the real world, or, in a less extreme version, that what we see is all that matters, that the unknowable, being unknowable, cannot be considered as existing. Just avoiding the issue, perhaps?
None of these three strategies is satisfactory, but I don't reject any, all of them are possible paths. Their inadequacy suggests we cannot be sure of knowing anything, including the suggestion itself that we cannot know anything. I suppose they are put forward because of the importance given to knowledge as something so valuable we cannot do without it. But what exactly is its value? It would seem intuitively to have an instrumental value in that , with knowledge, we are more likely to make good decisions(i.e. ones where the outcome matches our expectations) . But I haven't come across a sound logical argument which shows this is true, and the empirical evidence is equivocal. It is also claimed that knowledge has intrinsic value, but what is intrinsic value other than n unjustified claim that something (it could be anything) is worth something. But, as I said earlier, as a new student of these ideas I am not depressed.
What does depress me a bit, though, is that so many thinkers appear to be firmly convinced that they do know things. Because it appears to me that that while the value of knowledge is questionable, there may very well be some instrumental value in ignorance. With ignorance comes a lack of conviction and tolerance. There is a lot of empirical evidence of the harm being done by those who knew they were right, while is is harder to find examples of the same kind of harm being done by those who concede that they might be wrong and the other party right. People don't normally fight for a right that they're not too sure about. Ideas are powerful, and the thoughts of thinkers are readily taken up and turned into action. So I would be happier if I saw a little bit of humility in the philosophical writings I am being exposed to. They would, in my opinion, then be a lot less dangerous.
Copyright James Gault
9th September 2010