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Assessing the Usefulness of Knowledge Part I: The Affirmative Case

Pursuing knowledge, as with pursuing many things in life, requires a commitment of precious and limited resources such as time and energy. Nonetheless, the pursuit of knowledge that is sufficiently valuable is unarguably a highly worthwhile endeavor. What makes knowledge valuable is itself an intractable question but, at least for purposes of this post, suffice it to say that one criterion that makes knowledge valuable is its usefulness (it should be parenthetically mentioned that while knowledge and information mean different things in technical philosophy, this post will use both words in their ordinary, plain-English language meaning and, therefore, interchangeably when appropriate). As can be expected, judging the usefulness of any given unit or piece of knowledge is also quite the trial. Human beings, as mere mortals, have limited abilities and tools to accurately or reasonably predict what the future holds, what types of circumstances one could find themselves in, what types ...
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Delineating Ignorance from Uncertainty through Epistemic Precision

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Though “I don’t know” and “I’m not sure” are sometimes the only wise answers one can provide, there is a substantive difference between the two that people going through the motions of life do not meaningfully understand, much less appreciate. The importance of being able to mark one’s position in uncertainty versus one’s position in ignorance is such that it allows for the realization of when one answer is categorically correct, or at least more appropriate, over another. While the decision regarding whether one is unsure versus ignorant is not rigorously mathematical and is ultimately a personal judgment, I believe that it has a core objective basis. The delineation of ignorance from uncertainty is essentially an epistemological inquiry because the judgment is primarily contingent upon one’s limits of knowledge. Obviously enough, ignorance is the consequence of one having little to no knowledge regarding a given matter whereas uncertainty is a consequence of one having insufficient k...
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What Does it Mean to be Self-Taught?

Philosophers throughout the ages including many of the most preeminent ones such as Rene Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and John Locke were keenly interested in the epistemological inquiry of how best to gain knowledge. It’s very much in this vein that I have, despite having meritorious thoughts on the matter, often struggled with the question of the meaning of being self-taught. To better round out my understanding, I recently had the opportunity to propose this question to my philosophy club at our most recent meeting. As always, we enjoyed a spirited discussion which involved different and differing viewpoints. What ensued not only helped me better clarify my thinking on this question but also helped me reach a personally satisfying conclusion. The basis of my dilemma on this question is that, at least in general parlance, individuals who independently obtain knowledge in a given area outside of a formal setting are referred to as being self-taught. Such individuals may obtai...
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Novices and Veterans: Divergent Conclusions Regarding the Applicability of Stoic Principles

It was through dabbling in stoicism that I gained a better understanding of how I, like so many others, have a hard time excusing other people's bad behavior. Another thing, that I will later in this post relate to this understanding of my tendency, that became apparent to me after joining a stoicism study group was the pattern of divergence in the conclusions formed by novice versus veteran practitioners of this branch of philosophy. I think that while both the approaches of the novice and the veteran help preserve one's tranquility, only the veteran’s approach leads to practical wisdom beyond mere inner peace. Now, for purposes of only this post, allow me to make, and use as a basis for further reasoning, the grossly oversimplified claim that stoicism teaches extending the benefit of the doubt to other people. For example, if someone has broken a previously-made promise or commitment, stoicism would advocate contemplating the possibility of unforeseen circumstances outside of...
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The Epistemic Qualities of Foundational Knowledge

It is obvious enough that the mastery of foundational knowledge is a sine qua non to understanding and obtaining advanced knowledge in any given field or discipline. This not only makes foundational knowledge a highly efficient form of knowledge but also makes it indispensably worthy of pursuit. Though this much is intuitive, the significance of foundational knowledge can be better appreciated by an epistemic understanding of its qualitative features. It should first be mentioned that foundational knowledge is highly efficient in the sense that its fundamental principles within any given field are broadly interrelatable to not just other principles within the same field but often also to the fundamental principles of other fields. Naturally, foundational knowledge within a given field will have a great degree of interrelatability within the same field; it will not only be interrelatable to adjacent fundamental principles but in many cases also to intermediate principles within the s...
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Knowledge of the Law as Analytic A Priori

The thorough understanding, tactical acquisition, and prudent application of legal knowledge to specific factual instances can be greatly enhanced through even a rudimentary epistemological understanding of the different classes or types of knowledge. Knowledge gained from interpreting legal rules—depending on their verbiage, scope, context, and implication—can be of different types. Much can be made of this topic but for purposes of this post we will limit ourselves to only considering how legal knowledge fits into one such type of knowledge: analytic a priori . Before we delve into any particular type of knowledge, it behooves us to first more precisely define the generic word knowledge within the context of legal interpretation. The classical philosophical definition of knowledge is “justified true belief” (JTB). Though the JTB framework can be used for the purposes of our discussion without any serious distortion in the classification of the type of knowledge we are concerned with...
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The Indispensability of the Subjective-Objective Divide

I have a tendency to comprehend most philosophical topics in straightforward and practical ways. This is no different in the case of discerning subjective from objective matters, an issue that philosophers routinely concern themselves with. My basic stance on the subjective-objective divide is that if something is a matter of personal taste, opinion, or preference then it is subjective. As an example, consider the following subjective statement: “Pistachio ice cream tastes better than vanilla ice cream.” The above statement is representative of my personal opinion, based on my taste, and other people are free to, with equal legitimacy, adopt different positions regarding these two popular ice cream flavors. On the other hand, if something is a matter of fact (or dare I use an often-reviled term in informal philosophy circles, truth ) then it is objective (see the example of an objective statement, infra ). This is not to say that I necessarily have a simplistic way of comprehendi...
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