Tuesday 11 August 2009

Quote of the day: On ignorance

Here's a fine statement I picked up when checking out the resolutely non-Christian Open Parachute blog:
“Ignorance cannot support a knowledge claim of any sort except perhaps for the trivial claim that we simply do not know.”
In other words, you can't get knowledge out of ignorance.

It's true, you know. Think about it.

3 comments:

Falafulu Fisi said...

Funny enough, that I visited Open-Parachute blog, yesterday and I saw that quote, which is very true.

I often find it irritating debating with people who believe in faith-based practices, in which they revert to that escape clause of : we simply don't know, after I went to great length to say that there is no such thing because for the unknown to be discovered at some future point, it means that the existence as we know it, wouldn't exist (all laws of physics are being violated and break loose).

K said...

The statement is a tautalogy, which means that the statement itself is trivially true and hence contains no information.

Peter Cresswell said...

In fact, the statement identifies something true and important about knowledge.

If that be tautalogy[sic], then make the most of it.