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The Perfect Knowledge Fallacy

Posted by dbhalling 9 years, 7 months ago to Philosophy
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This fallacy comes up quite often in the gulch and in any epistemological discussion. It has come up recently again in the gulch with someone thinking they have found the ultimate objection to Objectivism.

The perfect knowledge fallacy is common among religionists, but also Kant and the German counter enlightenment as well as Hume and the Scottish counter-enlightenment. The argument is that if you do not know one thing, then you do not know anything. The tactic of these people is to say since you do not know x, then you can't know anything.

This argument is based on a false definition of knowledge. They will argue that a man 3000 years ago who thought the Earth was flat had no knowledge. Note however if you are building a small house, even today, we assume the Earth is flat and this is fine. This does not mean we do not have knowledge. Knowledge like mathematical equations has bounds or regions in which it is valid. Knowledge is information (facts and concepts) that are accurate within the accuracy necessary for the question being posed and within the region the question is being asked. Note, we still don't know the mechanism for how gravity works, that does not mean that we do not have knowledge about gravity. There are also open questions about mass and inertia, not to mention question about calculus. This does not mean we do not have knowledge.

I have to admit that the perfect knowledge fallacy usually sneaks up on me and it takes a while to see that this is the other person's argument. However, it is used quite a bit so it is worth remembering.

All Comments

  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Knowledge is power, is it not? So the more knowledge one has, the more resulting power. The ability to act is in turn dependent on knowledge: being able to predict outcomes.

    Knowledge is key to being able to identify one's self separate from any other object or body in the universe.

    Knowledge is key to being able to identify other agent identities.

    Knowledge is key to being able to identify non-agent identities.

    Knowledge is key to being able to identify properties and characteristics of other identities, both agent and non-agent.

    One can not "be" without knowledge. The fundamental flaw in your argument is proclaiming that at some point in the acquisition of knowledge that one ceases to be. That's absurd by any stretch of the imagination. Far more logical to conclude that as one's level of knowledge expands, one is better positioned to distinguish one's self from the rest of reality - not worse. One would become more concrete and grounded in reality - not less.
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Here is a longer excerpt including that sentence:

    "Do not say that you’re afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little that you know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error." http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/fai...
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes but not in that post. There is a lot of garbage in there, but not explicitly that. But he did do it previously (and a lot more). He's a stock religious apologist trolling the forum with "innocent" questions looking to maneuver and undermine people in "traps" pushed along with sophistry. He ran into a lot more than he could handle and his mask slipped. He's a disingenuous religious nihilist. Truly evil.
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  • Posted by blackswan 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I don't have any trouble at all. I just tell them I'm Jewish. That usually ends the conversation. Try it, and see if it works for you.
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Knowledge can employ approximations, but it is not an "approximation" to reality. The notion of knowledge as "approximate" by nature accepts the Platonic doctrines of intrinsicism and the myth of the cave. So does omniscience as a goal whether or not it is regarded as attainable. The whole idea of trying to base any of this on "the complexity of reality" is just as bad. Complexity is a measure of our ability to comprehend and how much it takes by our conceptual, objective means. It is not metaphysical.
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  • Posted by teri-amborn 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes.
    When I can answer the questions: Why? and: What for? ... I am on my way to uniting knowledge.
    Certainly in principle we are all capable of the pursuit of omniscience and I think that eventually we will arive at a united basis of the knowledge of our reality...only to go into the next "string".😜
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  • Posted by ProfChuck 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Feel free to use it. However, I doubt that the notion is original with me. Knowledge, like belief and truth tends to be more of a metaphysical concept. I prefer the notion of understanding. For example, I "know" that two plus two makes four, at least in linear discrete mathematics with the proper choice of radix. But it is more important that I know WHY two plus two makes four and under what circumstances it is a valid statement. The point I was trying to make before was that if it can be shown that the complexity of reality is finite then omniscience (which actually means infinite knowledge) is, at least in principal, a possibility.
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The quest to learn more has nothing to do with omniscience or any other form of mysticism. Of course you can't comprehend omniscience. Mysticism, including omniscience, is not "advanced". Unlimited "knowledge" is just as meaningless as any other notion without regard to identity. To be means to be something, which means to be something in particular, which means definite and specific in every respect, which is identity, not unlimited without identity which is the opposite. This is not a matter of subjectively "looking at omniscience as meaningless if you choose". There is nothing to "look" at. knowledge is not a "middle ground'" between nothings and no one said that rocks are or are not ignorant. You introduced that yourself.
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  • Posted by teri-amborn 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I like the Venn diagram analogy.
    Omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence are separate and equal...
    and only unite ocasionally in a rational mind.
    Thank you for that metaphor. Mind if I eventually use it?
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  • -1
    Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Ignorance is a lack of knowledge to some degree or another. But it also is predicated upon the ability to learn - the ability to become knowledgeable, and only a conscious being has that capability. One does not refer to a rock as "ignorant" because a rock exhibits no ability to change its state: no ability to comprehend or act on its own behalf.

    You can look at omniscience as meaningless if you choose. To me, it is a state more advanced than I can even comprehend right now, knowing nothing more than that it is a state beyond what I am currently at. My main point is that we should not be satisfied to rest on our laurels at any point. Much remains to be learned, to be explored, and to be understood. The quest is to keep going, building upon what we know and revising where necessary.
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Knowledge is a grasp of reality by consciousness through specific, human means, not an "approximation" to it, a "subset" of it, or a "model" of it. Omniscience is a meaningless impossibility, not the goal of a quest. What we know is always definite and specific, limited to what it is, and always will be no matter how much more we learn. Knowing more and striving to know more does not a mean a road towards a meaningless omniscience.
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  • Posted by ewv 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Knowing what we know by specific means limited to what they are is not a "middle ground". Complete ignorance is a non-human lack of consciousness. The notion of "perfect omniscience" is meaningless non-identity, "infinite" knowledge not limited in any way to what it is and therefore not consciousness either. Neither are a meaningful standard at a so-called extreme from a "middle ground" between nothing..
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  • Posted by livefree-NH 9 years, 7 months ago
    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.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 9 years, 7 months ago
    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.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 9 years, 7 months ago
    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."
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    We not only accept it is part and parcel of Objectivism which calls for constantly reviewing reality in view of new information and tested facts.

    Sorry I forgot that part and edit time is over..
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  • Posted by vandnbg 9 years, 7 months ago
    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"
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