We Know We Don't Know

 

 

Most students of Philosophy are forced to accept that they know nothing.  What then is the point of the endeavor?  How can progress be made with such a bleak expectation?  What am I doing keeping a blog on the topic of Philosophy if not to showcase my own ignorance for the world to see?  Truth be told, I had to take a required course on Logic three times and still didn't even get a good grade at the end of it.  If anybody knows how stupid a human being can be, it is me.  Know Thyself.  Yet, my extended study on the topic of Logic exposed me to many limits of modern analytic thought and ended up stumbling into the world of paraconsistency via the works of Graham Priest.  Through the lens of propositional calculus, I became fascinated with the concept of Dialetheism.  Life itself seemed to be an accumulation of endless paradoxical circumstances:  List of Paradoxes.  By the year 2012, I was considering the possibility the universe was merely a simulation and we had no free will that wasn't an illusion.  My professors seemed to have no choice but to routinely denigrate and fail me due to my lack of support for the Law of Non-Contradiction.  So, if we are supposed to know that we know nothing how is that not a true contradiction in itself?  In any case, it certainly seemed that my professors were positive that I knew nothing and deserved only the lowest of grades possible in spite of my many countless hours out of class in the library spent reading and attempting to regurgitate centuries of Philosophical wisdom at their command.  Perhaps, now I do know something but only that we know we don't know and might never know unless we take it upon ourselves to make progress.   Having grown accustomed to incompleteness and uncertainty, I never finished a degree in anything to this day.