Yet we don't need to talk about the computer telling the story. For all its of-then statements are programmed consciously by a programmer, and realized consciously by a user. I would argue a critical component to a true story is that conflicts and problems led a subject to a conclusion. In a scientific document we have this: problem X led researcher Y to experiment Z, and here is the conclusion.

In a tax calculating program, the if-then - which are themselves real-time conflict statements - cause the user to fill in information about their yearly taxes. I have read "this is your story of taxes" once by a tax program. But there is something very different from either of these when Frodo sojourns to Mount Doom. The tax programs use of story seems like a propaganda to make me feel romantic about taxes. The program itself seems story-like, but is just an equation. The "science-story" is also just an accounting of a process. But Lord of the Rings is a true story, with no other purpose then to tell it.

I would argue that direct information exchange is the pinnacle. Telling a story suggests other connotations, the weaving together of something which may or may not be true, but tells us something through an artistic method. What then of copy-and-paste? Strong arguments are made that we will send and receive thoughts and information via the Internet in the near future. And math itself is hardly a story but more integral to the description of any given thing.

Where do we draw the line in what we call a story? Because if the sequence of if-then statements a computer uses to understand a given problem is a story, "story" becomes a rather swollen and meaningless term, no?

But one can have an a-utility understanding. For example: you understand that Gandalf loves his Hobbits. This is true understanding, but it is also useless understanding.

I get what you're saying. I mean, I'm ignorant of interpretive dance and I don't really feel a great need to not be ignorant of it. Same with Baseball. I really couldn't give a shit about the guy going up to bat, where he's from, how well he's doing this season.

But the more I learn, the more I feel like I know the scope of my ignorance. This informs my decision making process.

Other people who seem to know less, who are then more confident in their knowledge and less aware of their ignorance often act differently then me. Look at Twitter, nine times out of ten someone has said something which came from their ignorance very confidently. Someone else is very angry, "how could you possibly be so ignorant!?" It is as if there is a profound ignorance of the implications of ignorance. The dialogues that follow are almost always unhealthy. All these people are profoundly ignorant of their own ignorance, but it's not because they haven't studied something important. It's because no one is looking at ignorance in depth.

Looking at the philosophical literature on knowledge there seems to be a heavy bias towards studying knowledge over ignorance. What are we missing by way of doing this? How can you be sure the absolute of ignorance doesn't carry heavy implications you could only know by doing philosophy on the subject? I think there are many important ethical implications to ignorance as an absolute.

@Wayfarer Did you have a chance to think about my response?

You just won Philosophy.

I think that existing-thinking implies existence. Existence implies being. Being implies the ability to be. This doesn't imply "others" but it allows for "others". And since "others are evident" and "others are possible", "others are like me/real" is a strong argument. This doesn't disprove solipsism but it does defend whatever the antonym of solipsism is, I don't know, common sense I guess.

This is a fresh thread of thought, thank you very much for that.

In another forum I mentioned wanting to think about an objective definition for philosophy. I don't want to get onto talking about what it would be, but a gentleman replied "There are no objective meanings for words." In fact, I'm a firm believer that there are objective meanings for words, it's just that there are no objective words.

I wonder - is what avidya refers to a different object-entity then what I'm referring to with "ignorance"? While the dictionary doesn't distinguish great difference between nescience and ignorance, I think we as philosophers should question that.

When investigating concepts of good and evil I came to regard there as being a difference between what we're referring to when we talk about "good and evil" and what we're talking about when we say "good and bad", sometimes. When we are talking about methods in technae (I always want to use the ae for purely stylistic reasons) we can talk about "doing good engineering" and "doing bad engineering." But we aren't precisely saying "doing good morality" and "doing bad morality" when we say "doing good" and "doing evil".

I came to think there must be two sets of clear terms: fine and bad; good and evil.

Here too I see two object entities: knowledge and wisdom. I don't think either of these are predicated on each-other, neither is necessarily inherited from each other, and neither are mutually exclusive. But we can talk about "ignorance" in relation to either in the same breath. It may be philosophically apt to say "we are ignorant without knowledge and nescient(sp?) without wisdom". Even then I like avidya better then nescience, but I wonder how would you say the word in reference to someone, "You are avidya." I would declare the comparative term to my proposed "ignorance" as "ashikshit/अशिक्षित".

But of course, I don't think the word matters, only its definition ;)

I do think science is something more than techne, which includes some acts that are techne. Consider that it is sometimes the role of a scientist to debate in defense of "round earth" against "flat earth". This debate is a techne harnessed to advance scientific interest and knowledge. But the science itself is ideally "disinterested understanding."

To know if ignorance is or is not absolute, one would have to have some knowledge, Thus the idea that ignorance is absolute is self defeating. knowing anything about anything, means ignorance is not absolute.
In the same way, asking if any truth were absolute refutes itself as having to ask the question implies that you do not know.

Respectfully disagreed. Absolute is not the same as total; you conflate absolute with total. Total refers to the whole of the thing. "Ignorance is total" states "the whole sum of knowedge-types are ignorance and not not-ignorant" or "there is only ignorance." Being absolute refers to being universally valid/never not applicable, "Wherever there is X there is also ignorance."

Therefore wherever there is knowledge, there is also ignorance.

I generally agree with you. Actually, I'd say both kinds of knowledge are important. We need some specialists and some generalists. And when we have an over-abundance of one kind, we need a revolution of the other. Right now we have an over-abundance of specialists so we need a revolution of generalists. And one day if this leads to an over-abundance of generalists, we may need a revolution of specialists.

It's interesting that I don't find much of what you said disagreeable, Wayfarer, but I do consider myself to be part of that analytic philosophy camp with the responsibility of helping science do its job, and especially doing the job of clarifying ignorance. Maybe, somehow, this almost-axiom I am proposing is the bridge between your approach to doing philosophy and analytic philosophy?

Even if we could somehow elevate ourselves to comprehend the collective knowledge of mankind, we would accelerate our capacity to learn and study dramatically... But this doesn't mean we wouldn't reach new mysteries which are proportionately more difficult to understand, and reveal new kinds of ignorance we hitertoo couldn't even reach with philosophy.

I'm wondering if you can clarify the "nescience" approach to understanding ignorance? I feel like I could distill some principle from it, but I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. Particularly I don't see how to differentiate knowledge/ignorance of theory/fact and knowledge/ignorance of insight.

Your sentiment is echoed in one of my favorite band's song "Kill your idols"

"Cosmetic photogenic
This pain is fleeting, ring out
Mechanical the passion
Your head is bleeding, slow down

Can't keep doing this
What you want me to
Marching sheep herd said
See my broken head

Live your own life
I got myself
Out of my sight
Kill your idols

It's ugly, you see
I don't care what you think now
Forgive me, forget
Don't take the easy way out

Can't keep doing this
What you want me to
Marching sheep herd said
See my broken head

Live your own life
I got myself
Out of my sight
Kill your idols"

He seems to indicate that if you're not your own hero you can't live your own life to its fullest. By giving into the mechanical passions we get from society to worship heroes we are left weak when injured, and we are left seeking out the hero, begging them "see my broken head." So if you want to be like the heroes, you've got to "kill your idols" which I suppose to mean, critique them and surpass them and you know, not ACTUALLY murder them.

I think there's a difference between having heroes and worshiping them though. Having hero worship for your favorite actor might limit your ability to be a good actor. Having a hero-worship for Aristotle may mean you'll never surpass his ideas. But I do see Socrates as a heroic and inspiring figure so I see him "heroically" and I am inspired by that heroism. I don't worship him and disagree with him on many levels, and like Wayne Static I seek to "kill my idols" by surpassing their wisdom in philosophy.

That was wonderful.

Sorry this didn't have anything else to contribute but praise... But I can't make that better.

Hey man, we all do philosophy our own way. I don't dislike getting intuitive responses, but forgive me I can only do analytic philosophy.

I think philosophers need to be able to take for granted each other's style and method, and just talk about the problems and conclusions themselves as they must and in cooperative ways.

I agree that there can't be total ignorance and I don't think total knowing could work either. But I think there's a difference between "ignorance is absolute" and "ignorance is total". I think of "ignorance is absolute" as saying "wherever there is anything, there is also ignorance." But I don't think "there is only ignorance." This allows me to say "There is knowledge; and wherever there is knowledge, there is also still ignorance." It has to work this way because if you flipped it around it doesn't work as well: "There is ignorance; and wherever there is ignorance, there is still knowledge." Because it could be said a rock is entirely ignorant and without any knowledge. But no where that there is knowledge is there not some kind of ignorance. Hence "There is knowledge; and wherever there is knowledge, there is also still ignorance."

I would agree that ignorance isn't useless. But perfect ignorance doesn't work this way. As a philosopher I come to understand that I am very ignorance of things. But I can only know how ignorant I am. I can know I am X ignorant of physics.

I can explain what I know about quantum mechanics, and I can know what the avenues of study I need to take from that. But I still am not closer to knowing what I am ignorant of in relation to what we are collectively ignorant of in quantum mechanics. I have contextualized the knowledge "I must learn more about the Planck constant."

There may be purple teapots in the dark matter, but we are all ignorant of the dark matter, so ignorance doesn't contextualize those teapots.

Are you saying that there would be no difference between the you that knows the future of your life, and the you that doesn't? You just said ignorance contextualizes knowledge. Ignorance of the future contextualizes the choices you made in Future #1. Knowledge of the choices you make in Future #1 reveals to you your future self's ignorance. That knowledge of future ignorance gives context to the new choices you know you can make. But then Future #2 emerges, and you are ignorant of the conclusions of the choices you will now make during the path to Future #2.

If the brain is a composite of parts exchanging information cyclically, it's difficult to gauge where one process ends and other begins. I have an ongoing sense of self, but my sense of self isn't always in control of what I do or what I want to do or even how I feel about going about it. I am experiencing the world around me, I respond to the stimulus, I think. Both those acts affect my disposition. I am changed and now act differently. My sense of self is just some part in the whole, as in control as it can be but no more in control then that.

We know from computer science that changes in the disposition of a learning machine can happen quite fast. The right re-enforcement learning algorithm can play through round after round of a game its never known and learn how to play it flawlessly, quickly. Our brains operate more slowly, but there still is a sense in which the overall processing is quite fast. Yet my sense of self seems much slower... I must invest more than a computer in effort and time to read a sentence, and then to comprehend it. It is as if information from my conscious experience trickles into my sense of self. But if suddenly a car flies out at me, or I am forced to defend myself with a sword, an instinctive part of me takes over and does the work without consciously thinking. In fact my sense of self feels propelled on a gust of impulse, a stray word or thought flying out of the sense of "!"

I want to ask you a question... Imagine a person who has never had any experiences. Since the day they were born the only sensory signal they received was blank whiteness. They are incapable of motion of any kind from blinking to twitching, let alone muscle spasms of any kind. They experience neither pain, nor pleasure nor hunger. They're just on. I wonder, if you let that mind just operate for twenty years and then thrust it into a fully functional human body, what would that person be? Would they have any personality, impulse or skill? Would they just die on the spot, or if their life was preserved, be a vegetable with minor reactions to things? Or would even their capacity to learn and respond be atrophied by their non-experience?