and this matters.
One may of course lack adequate opportunity to know, so such ignorance is innocent. However, one may also willfully refuse to acknowledge what is adequately warranted and accessible, but which is unwelcome. The latter is manifestly a violation of intellectual duties and virtues; sometimes it is termed willful obtuseness.
Type II ignorance, is anything but innocent, and is pernicious as it involves setting up crooked yardsticks in the place of sound ones.
Where, when one makes crookedness his standard, then what is genuinely straight, upright, accurate will never pass the false test of conformity to crookedness. Such corrupt, debased thinking has a second effect, as there are infinitely many crooked lines connecting two points A and B: brand lock-in. For, each form of crookedness will lock in its adherents and polarise them against other incompatible crooked yardsticks. Hence, the value of naturally straight and upright, plumb line truths:
Sadly, some can become so debased in thinking, that they will reject self-evident, naturally upright plumb line truths.
(Self evident truths are such that once one has an adequate basis of experience to understand them, one sees that they are and must be true on pain of immediate, patent absurdity. For example, try to deny that 2 + 3 = 5, or that error exists, or that one is a self-aware, conscious creature. Such SET's are never enough to frame a worldview, but they provide a chest of tools to test soundness.)
This instantly exposes the gross error of our time, selective hyperskepticism.
For, obviously, global skepticism implies or invites the claim, one knows that one cannot know.
Instantly absurd.
However, one can try to pose on the idea that what one does not like is ill-founded nonsense and easily makes claims like, you must scientifically prove X, or that for some subject, Y, there are no knowable truths. The former is the error of scientism, the notion that science monopolises knowledge, which -- being an epistemological [so, philosophical] claim -- instantly self-destructs.
The latter is commonly applied to morality. But of course, it is precisely, a claimed objective truth about morality, and self destructs. As a more concrete self-evident moral truth, I take an unfortunately real life case: it is manifestly wrong and monstrously wicked to kidnap a child on the way home from school, then bind, sexually assault, torture and kill the child for one's sick pleasure. One who denies or evades this simply exposes himself as a monster and/or enabler. (And this is another type of absurdity.)
More generally, we can see -- pardon some algebra:
The truth claim, “there are no [generally knowable] objective truths regarding any matter (so, on any particular matter),” roughly equivalent to, “knowledge is inescapably only subjective or relative,” is an error. Which, happily, can be recognised and corrected.
Often, such error is presented and made to seem plausible through the diversity of opinions assertion, with implication that none have or are in a position to have a generally warranted, objective conclusion. This, in extreme form, is a key thesis of the nihilism that haunts our civilisation, which we must detect, expose to the light of day, correct and dispel, in defence of civilisation and human dignity.
(NB: Sometimes the blind men and the elephant fable is used to make it seem plausible, overlooking the narrator's implicit claim to objectivity. Oops!)
Now, to set things aright, let’s symbolise: ~[O*G] with * as AND.
This claims, it is false that there is an objective knowable truth, on the set of general definable topics, G. Ironically, it intends to describe not mere opinion but warranted, credible truth about knowledge in general.
So,
~[O*G] is self referential as it is clearly about subject matter G, and is intended to be a well warranted objectively true claim. But
it is itself therefore a truth claim about knowledge in general intended to be taken as objectively true, which is what it tries to deny as a possibility.
So, it is self contradictory and necessarily false.
In steps:
PHASE I:
Let a proposition be represented by x
G = x is a proposition asserting that some state of affairs regarding some identifiable matter in general including e.g. history, science, the secrets of our hearts, morality etc, is the case
O = x is objective and knowable, being adequately warranted as credibly true
PHASE II:
It is claimed, S= ~[O*G] = 1, 1 meaning true
However, the subject of S is G, it therefore claims to be objectively true, O and is about G where it forbids O-status to any claim of type G
so, ~[O*G] cannot be true per self referential incoherence
=============
PHASE III: The Algebra,
translating from S: ~[O*G] = 0 [as self referential and incoherent cf above]
~[~[O*G]] = 1 [the negation is therefore true]
__________
O*G = 1 [condensing not of not]
where, G [general truth claim including moral ones of course]
So too, O [if an AND is true, each sub proposition is separately true]
================
CONCLUSION: That is, there are objective general, particular and -- as a key case -- moral truths; and a first, self evident one is that ~[O*G] is false, ~[O*G] = 0.
Therefore, the set of knowable objective truths in general -- and embracing those that happen to be about states of affairs in regard to right conduct etc -- is non empty, it is not vacuous and we cannot play empty set square of opposition games with it.
In many cases, what we know about a subject is just how little we know. However, there are many, many cases where there are in fact bodies of knowable accessible truth, which we ought to acknowledge.
Which, today, too often meets with willful resistance to truth.
Sad. END
