On knowing nothing

Question

Socrates said:

I know that I do not know. (1)

When I constructed a, what I thought was a similar statement:

"There are no absolute truths, other than this one." (2)

I got responses that, the notion of absolute truth is not a well defined one, and thus that my statement also has some flaws with its meaning, or some other problems with logic or the syntax or meaning of our language, etc...

My question is:

Does Socrates' statement (1) encounter also the same problems as mine statement (2) or is it different in some sense and doesn't have such problems because he constructed it more carefully or something?

Answer 1

1. The following fragment is handed down from the Greek philosopher Xenophanes at about 550 BCE:

   “But as for certain truth, no man has known it, Nor will he know it; neither of the gods Nor yet of all the things of which I speak. And even if by chance he were to utter The perfect truth, he would himself not know it; For all is but a woven web of guess.” (Fragment B34)

   The fragment has often been quoted by the modern philosopher Karl Popper. The epistemological positions agrees with your point of view.

2. Popper agreed with Xenophanes and draw the consequence to abandon - at least in science - the search for final irrefutable knowledge. Instead scientific theories are hypotheses which have been confirmed and not yet refuted. Scientific knowledge remains hypothetical.

3. The viewpoint that there is no ultimate justification of general knowledge has been illustrated by Popper’s follower Hans Albert by the Muenchhausen trilemma.

4. The quote from Socrates has to be translated more precisely: “I know that I do not know.” Socrates emphasizes that there are many things he does not know. But he does not pride himself to know everything like many experts he took to task on Athen’s market place.

Answer 2

Socrates used this phrase in his Apology, that is, in his defense against accusations that he had corrupted the youth of Athens with his impiety.

I don't think it had any particular epistemelogical purpose. He just used it as a clever device to solve the paradox of how the oracle at Delphi could have judged him the wisest of all men. He then concluded that if he knew that he knew nothing then he knew just that much more than anybody else who knew nothing. At least he knew that he knew nothing. No wonder the trial ended with the death penalty. You don't call people stupid.

Your second question: or is it different in some sense and doesn't have such problems because he constructed it more carefully or something?

Yes: "For I was conscious that I knew practically nothing..." (Plato, Apology 22d, translated by Harold North Fowler, 1966).

Practically nothing is not nothing.

Answer 3

We have to be careful to keep ontology and epistemology separate. The phrase "There are no absolute truths" implies an ontological claim — an assertion about facts — which is why adding "except this one" feels paradoxical or problematic. But the phrase "I know that I do not know" is an epistemological claim - an assertion about knowledge — which merely suggests that one knows that knowledge has limits.

Unfortunately, the term 'truth' doesn't distinguish between experiential truths and inferential truths, which causes endless confusion.

Answer 4

The two statements are very different, and it isn't even related to the "absolute" part of it. The latter, 2, clearly presents a positive and unsubstantiated axiom. It is also speaking broadly about external and real and infinite set of things and presenting a categorical claim. While it might be possible to conceive of a world in which that statement is true, we have no justification that it is true, and it would seem that it was chosen arbitrarily. Therefore, it would be uncompelling to accept it as true, and it certainly isn't something that can be affirmed from typical models for knowledge.

The former, 1, presents a very limited factual claim about the speaker's mental state, merely stating that he does not know. At the time, there were not such rigorous models describing what it means to "know", but intuitively we see knowledge as somehow being a reliable tool which is in some way related to a reliable method of justification. The speaker can consider several things which he might suspect he knows only to discover that he could not reliably know them, and this investigation could itself be seen as justification of a sort that is more reliable than for his other attempts at knowledge. Thus, his degree of confidence in the first know is greater to some significant amount than in the second set of "know"s. Since it is speaking merely about his mental state, rather than an external state, the speaker can be seen as a sufficiently reliable source of information and it is from a sufficiently limited scope that he might be capable of making such a claim.

I also want to point out that they are different in that 1 is talking about knowledge and 2 is talking about truths. Truth is, in popular models, a component of knowledge, but the inverse is not true. In other words, even if we cannot possibly know a thing, that doesn't affect whether or not that thing is true. Therefore, knowledge is a much more achievable bar to affirm than truth.

1 is also a starting point where 2 is a stopping point. 1 invites us to attempt to try to find things which we can know, while 2 provides a hard stop in finding any truth (and therefore, probably knowledge).

We simply cannot know that there are not absolute truths, and if there are, we cannot know that we could not somehow know them, or at least some of them. Positive claims need to be supported. We can be aware, however, that we lack any method to naively arrive at consistent conclusions. In other words, if we do have some capacity to know absolute truth, it isn't obvious. This is different than stating that we cannot know anything, and it certainly isn't making a claim that there is nothing true.

Answer 5

[Thinking that statement (1) is partially correct] You can extend statement (1) (E.g.: "I know that I know only a few things.”) I mean, ANYONE can think that statement (1) is partially correct.

But you cannot extend your statement (2) like this. You locked all the doors 'mentioning' that there is 'only' one absolute truth (that even you are not sure of).

No one is sure that statement 2 is even absolutely true. Since it is doubtful, NO ONE can think that statement (2) is even partially correct.

Your statement faces more problems than that of Socrates'.

There is humility in Socrates' statement. So, it can be used to focus on oneself. But I cannot see such humility in your statement. Therefore, it cannot be used for introspection.

The former touches the WISDOM of both the listener and the speaker; whereas the latter 'tries' to touch only the INTELLECT.

...Is it different in some sense and doesn't have such problems because he constructed it more carefully or something?

Yes. The above explanations reveal that.

Answer 6

In logic, truth is a set of judgements that are logically consistent, while falsehood is the counterpart set, that where judgements are logically inconsistent.

"There are no absolute truths, other than this one."

The adjective "absolute" has no meaning aside truth, it is like saying she's absolutely pregnant, she's very pregnant, she's excessively pregnant. Either she is pregnant, or not, no need for adjectives. In the same way, something is true if it is logically consistent with the truth set, or not.

So, this would become "there are no truths other than this one", which is evidently a false dichotomy fallacy, since it has this form: because this is true, all other judgements are true. So, this can be discarded

Or else, this might become "This is true", a tautology which has no issues.

The confusion comes from the adjective.

"I know that I do not know"

"I know that I do not know" has the logical form K(I) = Not(K(I)), which is a contradiction, so this would not lie in the truth group. However, the intention is rhetoric, not literal: the more I know, the less I understand I know. It should not be taken literally.

Answer 7

Okay, so both statements talk about knowing and truth, but they do it differently. Socrates' famous "I know that I know nothing" isn't really about claiming anything is absolutely true. It's more like saying, "I realize how much I don't know." It's about being humble and open to learning. It's not a paradox because it's a personal statement about his own understanding, not a grand rule about the universe.

Your statement, "There are no absolute truths, other than this one," is trickier. It's like saying, "This is the only exception to the rule that there are no exceptions!" See the problem? It trips over itself. If it's true, then it has to be false because it claims to be an absolute truth. And if it's false, well, then maybe there are other absolute truths, but it still doesn't fix the initial contradiction.

So.. both statements kind of loop back to themselves. But Socrates is talking about his knowledge, while you're talking about the idea of truth in general.

Socrates isn't saying anything is definitely true or false about the world. He's just talking about what he knows. Your statement, on the other hand, tries to make a big, universal rule, and that's where the trouble starts, especially with that "except this one" bit.

Your statement gets tangled up because it contradicts itself. Socrates', even though it sounds a little weird at first, doesn't actually break any logic rules.