As I understood it, the Objectivist position is that
while many things are unknown, nothing is un-
knowable. And the fact that you might not know
as much as somebody does not necessitate (nor
even justify) just accepting some supernatural (or other) authority on blind faith. I think Galt's
speech said, "Accept the fact that you are not
omniscient, but becoming a zombie will not give
you omniscience..."

Hello dbhalling,
Very good. I like your flat earth example... sly says I, ...with a wink and a nod... :)
Regards,
O.A.

Thanks for posting this. I will add: I think an instructive example of the principle behind the correct epistemology is that given by Peikoff on the discovery of RH factors of blood types. For reference, the conclusion was contextual: Blood type A is compatible with blood type A, when the RH factors are matched.

The phrase which sums up the concept is: "Knowledge is contextual".

Very good description Dale, Thanks.

Will Rogers said "It ain't what we don't know that gets us in trouble, but what we do know that ain't so"

Spoken like a battle-hardened engineer who has spent some years dealing with retards! :)

Very well put, dbhalling. The roots for many of the fallacies you describe are twofold. 1. Deriving an opinion by applying superb reasoning to a false premise. 2. Conflating that opinion with knowledge.

Both are demonstrably present in the "objection to objectivism" post.
-

I thought of this idea when someone was asking one of the candidates about some kind of "nuclear triad" and then all the discussion about whether or not he knew what it meant. This was the implication, namely what dbhalling states here, that "since you do not know x, then you can't know anything."

And in this case, I think they were trying to find out if he knew the current term for this, much like asking him if he knew what "twerking" meant, or what the Kardashians are wearing this week.

Riffsrunner: Yeah, I've met that kind before. Aside
from the one who would interrupt rather than let the
truth be told (her family was similar), there was the
other one who stated that everything came from
God, so no criticism of the pro-God argu-
ment was valid. He argued in a circle, trying to state his conclusion first, and then use it as
proof of his conclusion.--Whereas even axioms
must be demonstrated to be such; it must be
shown that they are inescapable; it does not do
to just arbitrarily decide on something that one
just wants to believe, and then treat it as an
axiom.

To quote Hercule Poirot, "Time and the little grey cells will solve every mystery." Agatha Christie's Belgian detective was right to a greater extent than Ms. Christie might have realized. That is the reason that the perfect knowledge fallacy is a fallacy. There is no such thing as unknowable, there is only "not yet known."

Excellent point dbhalling. Much of our knowledge of reality can be regarded as approximations. Newtonian dynamics works well enough that we can use it to navigate spacecraft from one planet to another (an application that would have astounded even Newton). However, we know that in the extreme Newtons laws of gravitation are incomplete. Einstein filled in some of the blanks that exist near the edges of Newton but even Einstein knew his theories of relativity were also incomplete. Our theories of reality provide pragmatic approximations of of the behavior of that reality.
At some point we must face a fundamental question; "Is the complexity of reality finite or infinite?".
Recent work in quantum physics suggests that reality is more complex than any of our models but we do not know if this complexity extends without limit. The answer to this question is of fundamental significance because it determines if there are limits to our understanding.
Consider knowledge and reality in terms of a Venn diagram. There is the universe of discourse which can be defined as the sum totality of all reality and there is a smaller domain which we can call "Our knowledge of that reality". That smaller domain overlaps the larger one with the intersection being that part of our understanding that is included in reality and the part that lies outside the intersection consists of what we "know" that is false.
The problem is that if the domain of reality is infinitely large it is impossible, by the definition of infinity, to ever encompass it with a finite model. If on the other hand the domain of reality is finite, no matter how large, it is possible, at least in principal, to gain complete knowledge. The consequences of this are profound because in one direction lies an endless quest and in the other lies godhood.

This is the Christian Apologetic called Presuppositionalism. The Christian says that because you can be wrong in what you know, you cannot deny a God exists. They go so far as to say that all knowledge comes from God so even asking for evidence to support their position requires a belief that God exist. They can be quite insufferable to debate with because they constantly try to derail the conversation, especially when you might have arguments that point out the flaws in their logic. One of their favorite tactics is to quote bible verse to support their positions, but when they come up against someone who is also well versed, they switch to that 'they don't do bible studies with non-believers'.

You are exactly correct in identifying the fallacy that purports one can not know anything without knowing everything. We will always exist in the middle ground between abject ignorance and perfect omniscience. The trick is to recognize that we are at neither extreme and the even bigger trick is to be able to tell how far along the path on any given topic we are. We should recognize and be proud of the knowledge we have obtained, but never be satisfied with what we have to the point of deciding there is nothing else we can learn.