From Opinionator, a fascinating article SteveK sent our way (thanks, Steve): “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is“
It’s about competence and incompetence, and the difficulty incompetence has seeing itself for what it is. It seems to me the best corrective is exposing oneself to the acknowledged best and brightest among those with whom you agree with and disagree.
(It appears this link will work for subsequent installments in the series.)
P.S. There’s a special gem in there for anyone who has wondered at evolution’s (alleged) ability to produce any behavior whatsoever:
ERROL MORRIS: Something I have wondered about: Is there a socio-biological account of what forces in evolution selected for stupidity and why?
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Here’s an excerpt from the article paraphrased:
Today’s musings
Our ability to know is interesting to me. It seems pretty clear that a mind has to start with “some known A” before it can get to the next piece of knowledge, say, “some known B”. Without that first piece of knowledge in place, you can’t say that you know B, because B requires that you first know A.
Some will say A is a working assumption that gets confirmed through various methods and repetitions, which then allows you to build upon that knowledge. But saying this requires that you KNOW it’s a working assumption, KNOW what valid confirmation methods are, KNOW what repetitions are, etc.
Simply stated, it takes knowledge to aquire new knowledge – which is how I interpret the Chinese Room thought experiment, a personal favorite of mine.
I think these bits of “starter knowledge” are what some call “properly basic” knowledge. I could be wrong about that. Where does this starter knowledge come from? As a Christian, I would say it comes from the eternal, spiritual part of reality, i.e. God.