Monday, April 8, 2019

The Impossibility Of Total Ignorance

Even many who recognize the utter impossibility of total skepticism never get any farther than realizing that logical axioms and consciousness cannot be illusory, regarding anything beyond these truths as ultimately uncertain.  While axioms are infallibly true, far more about them can be known than the basic fact that they cannot be false.  In fact, they are the key to knowledge about many matters.

The illumination provided by axioms does not apply only to axioms themselves, but to all things. It is outright impossible to not know at least some things about everything.  Even if all that one knows about an obscure subject is that there are truths about it, that all of the necessary truths of axioms apply to it, there is baseline knowledge that is immediately grasped.

That necessary truths apply to all things is such a basic fact that many people seem to overlook it entirely.  Nonetheless, the person who says "I don't know anything at all" about a topic, unless he or she is merely using drastic hyperbole, is in error.  Axioms preside over all facets of reality, not just a handful of them; thus, one can always at least know that much about every single issue.

Everything is governed by reason, and, as such, everything is knowable to at least some minimal degree.  There may often be many facts about a given matter that are unknown, but there are always at least a small cluster of facts that can be known about any aspect of reality.  Sometimes even the simplest truths about a matter are overlooked by the vast majority of people.

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