Assessing the Pursuit-Worthiness 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 practical 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, w...