From the mail:<\/p>\n
\nThanks for the kind advice re: the dark. I’m 50 later this year, so my mood could be something to do with that. I do find it wearisome that paradoxically the only reasonably secure epistemic conclusion is that we will never garner any sure knowledge re the Big Questions this side of the Mortality paywall. I do consider this an evil and was gratified to see you say so in a blog post a while back. We are doomed to aporia! How frustrating! And in a world where so many seem so sure –leftists, rightists, revolutionaries, conservatives, secularists, believers, et al. ad infinitum.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\nYour “this side of the Mortality Paywall” was a stroke of stylistic brilliance.\u00a0 And surely\u00a0 no one could say that the price of admission to the ‘content’ on the Far Side is cheap even if said ‘content’ is priceless.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n“We are doomed to aporia.” Yes. There is no way<\/em> (\u1f04\u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 , \u00e1-poros) <\/span><\/strong>forward by knowledge this side of the Paywall.\u00a0 Epistemically, we are at an impasse. <\/span>I\u00a0 am glad we agree that in this life we are and will remain ignorant about the ultimate whence, whither, and wherefore, and that this ignorance is evil<\/em>.\u00a0 There are of course dogmatists of various stripes\u00a0 who insist that we are not ignorant.\u00a0 You and I hold that their seeming surety, whether by dogmatic affirmations of God and the soul, the inerrancy of Scripture, the infallibility of the Roman Catholic\u00a0 magisterium, etc., or dogmatic denials thereof is a mere<\/em> seeming. Their convictions simply reflect their overpowering doxastic security needs. Unable to face objective uncertainty, they manufacture subjective certainty. Their critical faculties are swamped by their need for security in their beliefs.\u00a0 That they are subjectively certain cannot be denied.\u00a0 What can be doubted, however, is whether their subjective certainty connects them to reality.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe intellectually mature learn to live with doxastic insecurity. A salutary upshot of\u00a0 acknowledged doxastic insecurity is that it makes people tolerant.\u00a0 (Toleration is the touchstone of classical liberalism.) Although toleration has limits, without it there is no high civilization: what you get instead is, for example, the repressive inanition of Islamist theocracies such as the one that has been stifling the people of Iran\u00a0 since 1979.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThere is no way forward by knowledge this side of death.\u00a0 This leaves faith as a mode of reality-contact.\u00a0 \u00a0Although I cannot know<\/em> that I will survive my bodily death, I can reasonably believe (have faith that) I will.\u00a0 (Similarly and mutatis mutandis<\/em> for the rest of the Big Questions.) Suppose I do survive. Then my faith will have given me contact with reality.\u00a0 And if I don’t survive, it won’t matter that I held a false belief.\u00a0 I can’t be in error if I am not there to be in error.\u00a0 \u00a0I can’t be pained for having been wrong if I don’t exist.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nBesides,\u00a0 I will live better in the here and now\u00a0 if I do believe I will survive than if I don’t believe I will, or believe the opposite. So that’s my answer to my correspondent\u00a0 in a nutshell.\u00a0 The way forward re: ultimates is by faith.\u00a0 Of course a number of things I have stated or presupposed above, such as that faith is inferior to knowledge,\u00a0 can and ought to be questioned.\u00a0 Disagreement and contention, even unto bitterness and bloodshed, may ensue. There is no avoiding these additional\u00a0 evils born of ignorance.\u00a0 But they can be mitigated if we can learn to be tolerant.\u00a0 The space of tolerance and civilization, however,\u00a0 is defended by blood and iron.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the mail: Thanks for the kind advice re: the dark. I’m 50 later this year, so my mood could be something to do with that. I do find it wearisome that paradoxically the only reasonably secure epistemic conclusion is that we will never garner any sure knowledge re the Big Questions this side of … Continue reading “The Evil of Ignorance: A Response to a Reader”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,522,50,265],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith-and-reason","category-fideism","category-good-and-evil","category-ignorance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13847"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13867,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13847\/revisions\/13867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}