Apathy Hinders Inquiry: An Argument Against Apathy and Strong Agnosticism
Introduction
It has been
some time since my last article with a moderate amount of depth. Here, I intend
on presenting an argument against apathy and strong agnosticism. The idea for
this is that it seems to be a cultural mantra that we cannot “know” anything,
especially if it concerns something outside of the physical world. However,
with an apathetic or strongly agnostic attitude, this can hinder one’s ability
at inquiry. When I say inquiry, I mean
the general disposition at investigating or attempting to gain knowledge.
Understanding the Meaning
Though
apathy and agnosticism are not traditionally merged, I do believe they are
connected. First, let us look at the definitions of both and move forward from
there.
Apathy is “a lack of interest or concern.”[1] Strong agnosticism can be defined as “the view that any ultimate reality (such as a deity) is unknown and unknowable.”[2] With the definition of strong agnosticism, I did remove a single word, “probably.” The reason for this removal is my argument does not concern agnosticism but rather strong agnosticism which places forward the idea that nothing can be known. Agnosticism in general, simply suggests that they will withhold belief in something until it can be known or because they simply do not know themselves. However, the strong form of this belief system is putting forward the claim that it is impossible to “know” whether something (typically supernatural claims) can be known.
Now, the claim that nothing can be known must be cleared up as well. Traditionally, when someone states that they know something, they are suggesting that they have reasonable grounds to believe in the thing they know. For example, someone may believe (or know) they had eggs for breakfast this morning. They know this because they woke up and made their breakfast with eggs that morning. What they have is justified true belief. They are justified in believing they had breakfast with eggs this morning because they have experienced it first-hand. Barring any defeaters to this belief they are justified in holding it and thus this equates to knowledge. On the flip side of that, typically when someone says “know” in the framework above (unknowable) they are meaning certainty. They are claiming because they cannot know for “certain” or beyond a shadow of a doubt then it does not equate to knowledge. This is a mistaken position to take and we will see why.
The Argument
In my mind, these two things (apathy and strong agnosticism) are in the same category. One says nothing is knowable and the other does not care if it is knowable or not. Though one is making a claim and the other is not, they are both taking a stance against knowledge.
The goal of inquiry is to gain knowledge. Apathy and strong agnosticism (SA) run in the opposite direction of knowledge. If you are a person that cares deeply or even at all for knowledge, then this trend or idea should haunt you. If a person has a general disposition of carelessness, in general, that person will be more prone to negative things, be it emotional, physical, psychological, whatever it may be. General carelessness leads to one not fully paying attention to the details around them and will miss information pertinent to them. For example, if a person (again generally) is apathetic and they are walking through a dangerous area they will be more prone to injury. This injury could be a result of their lack of paying attention to natural dangers (i.e. holes, pits, animals, etc) or personal dangers (i.e. robbers, traps, mines, etc). If this person simply cared, pitfalls like these could be avoided.
This applies to knowledge as well, be it philosophical or empirical. If person 1 (P1) does not care if God exists or not, then that person will be less able to obtain valuable information. Knowledge is justified true belief (JTB) and the person who does not care if something is knowable only holds to one part of this model, belief. This person is not justified in holding to this. The reason there is no justification in not caring is the serious hindrance it brings to one’s overall functionality within reality. Of course, this person can take this position and live out all of life in the apathetic zone but what benefit does it bring? None! As long as a person has a sincere drive to understand reality then apathy is a terrible approach, even to the things you may think foolish. The important takeaway here is to understand, even if the transcendent is not of ultimate concern, an inquiry into this area should be done in order to rule it out. Having an apathetic attitude towards this area of knowledge only hinders one’s overall ability at acquiring new information (or knowledge) about reality.
What about SA? This position puts forward the idea that nothing is knowable. We could make this more specific than that and say it holds nothing about God or the non-empirical is knowable. Is this a tenable position to take if one desires to know as much as they can about reality? Mathematical truths are often used to make a point. These truths are non-empirical but yet are held too as brute facts of reality. If we can know about these non-empirical truths, what is to say that we cannot know about other non-empirical truths.
By making the claim that nothing about God is knowable, there is a whole swath of information that is missing in one’s “knowing” tool bag. Plus, this faces some of the similar issues as apathy does. By saying that nothing about God is knowable, there can be nothing that is in the category of abstract or transcendent that can be known. Also, once someone takes this position, knowledge gathering comes to an immediate halt. Inquiry can no longer move forward since the intellectual disposition has been set. It should not take someone long to realize that science (the investigation of empirical things) will not be able to answer important questions of life. Not to say that science is unimportant because it is and has a specific function. But answering questions of the un-touchable, un-tasteable, and un-seeable is not within the realm of science. Philosophical thought can step in to fill the void here.
Our ability to think logically through things is partly what helps humans remain functional. Science and philosophy are two things that should be used in conjunction with each other. It is this conjunctive work of science and philosophy that provides the most well rounded and coherent view of reality. The things stressed throughout this discourse are that science and philosophy work best together rather than apart. As a matter of fact, philosophy is used to evaluate science and its methods. The reason for this is it is outside the purview of science to evaluate itself because science itself focuses on the touchable, seeable, and tasteable.
Benefits of the Conjunctive View
As has been stated throughout, the apathetic view seems to be lacking seriously in that it hinders one’s ability to know anything. This is not because the view itself is a knowledge system but rather because it does not care about knowledge. Apathy is a perfectly acceptable position to take but it lacks justification, reasonableness, or usefulness. SA seems to think (in the form I have presented above) that science or empirical knowledge is the only thing that can be known and anything outside of that is truly unknowable. However, the view that I am putting forward is both of these positions are replete with issues for knowledge acquisition. SA would be far more effective if it accepted philosophical inquiry because science itself does not possess the ability to gain information or knowledge about mathematical truths or abstract objects. Of course, the person could simply assume these truths and laws to be the case but it does nothing to bolster their own position to hold to assumptions that help their empirical investigations when a philosophical perusal of the metaphysical would provide justification for those assumptions.
The major benefit that can be gleaned from the marriage of science and philosophy is the general roundness to a person’s knowledge base. Not to suggest that if a person accepts philosophy as a reasonable and justified pursuit of knowledge, they will automatically hold inherently true beliefs. However, what happens instead of having a limited selection of information to pull from, the person opens up a wider selection of information to formulate a more detailed scope of knowledge. For any person who desires to seek knowledge, this seems like the most reasonable approach, to use both science and philosophy.
Another benefit of this unified approach could be since knowledge is not reducible to the physical; knowledge inherently seems to carry with it the trait of having no physical nature. It seems reasonable to assume if the very source of knowing, being non-physical, assumes there is the ability to know things outside of the physical since knowing is non-physical.
Those Against This View
What are some of the immediate objections to the view above? Immediately, it seems one could argue that knowledge is a physical event because there are brain states which can account for knowledge or portions of the brain hold knowledge. My initial concern here is how knowledge is being handled in this case. On the face of it, the brain does seem to have a great deal to do with knowledge in that it has certain portions of the brain that provide a physical capacity for knowledge retention. However, though portions of the brain may be the physical house of knowledge it does not account for the content of that knowledge. Think of it as a computer hard drive. The HDD is a physical place where information (or knowledge) is stored. However, the information contained within the HDD is not physical (in the strictest sense). Of course, the knowledge was gained via a physical medium but the information itself is not physical. It seems that the knowledge itself is outside of the physical and is more than simple molecular interactions.
The above seems to be the objection with the most force since it attempts to ground certain claims in something tangible. However, someone may argue against philosophical investigation based on it being trumped or “put out” by science. This objection seems to be misplaced because it assumes science is the only justified knowledge-gathering mechanism but also it is the arbiter of knowledge acquisition. This position also assumes the usefulness of something is a justified manner to judge the truthfulness of something. So, in the mind of the “scientist” (the one who holds empirical knowledge is the only type of knowledge), since philosophical inquiry is no longer useful it cannot be trusted to provide adequate knowledge. I believe this makes a drastic mistake in suggesting if something is useful it is true. Also, who is the one who determines that philosophical inquiry is no longer useful? It seems to overstep the epistemic position of the one who utters it. The more modest approach may be beneficial here. By this I mean to say, it would be better to suggest that philosophy takes a backseat to the empirical.
Do I recommend this philosophical backseat approach? Of course not! However, this position would be much more defensible than the former. Unfortunately, this more modest position seems to make the mistake in understanding that even this empirical knowledge is subject to change. Scientific knowledge has made significant shifts in positions since the scientific revolution. So, empirical knowledge is only useful, insofar as it maintains its position of acceptance. This seems to be a generally weak manner in which to judge knowledge and this cannot be projected onto a different realm of knowledge acquisition.
What is the Point?
It may seem that based on my reaction I hold to a view that no knowledge is knowable. If that is what you have gathered from this presentation, then I think you have failed to pay close attention. The overall point is to limit our knowledge gathering devices to strictly the empirical is to limit what we can know. This is why attention has been made on apathy and strong agnosticism (SA). Apathy has a general disposition of not caring about knowledge. SA seems to think that anything outside of the empirical is not knowable. The whole idea is there should be a change in our disposition towards knowledge. If we limit how we gather knowledge, then we obviously limit the things we can know. My general concern is for broadening the knowledge base and both of the above positions by their very disposition limit this knowledge base. With that said, the positions discussed above by their very nature hinder our ability at inquiry.
[1] Apathy, Webster’s Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apathy.
[2] Ibid, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agnosticism.
Apathy is “a lack of interest or concern.”[1] Strong agnosticism can be defined as “the view that any ultimate reality (such as a deity) is unknown and unknowable.”[2] With the definition of strong agnosticism, I did remove a single word, “probably.” The reason for this removal is my argument does not concern agnosticism but rather strong agnosticism which places forward the idea that nothing can be known. Agnosticism in general, simply suggests that they will withhold belief in something until it can be known or because they simply do not know themselves. However, the strong form of this belief system is putting forward the claim that it is impossible to “know” whether something (typically supernatural claims) can be known.
Now, the claim that nothing can be known must be cleared up as well. Traditionally, when someone states that they know something, they are suggesting that they have reasonable grounds to believe in the thing they know. For example, someone may believe (or know) they had eggs for breakfast this morning. They know this because they woke up and made their breakfast with eggs that morning. What they have is justified true belief. They are justified in believing they had breakfast with eggs this morning because they have experienced it first-hand. Barring any defeaters to this belief they are justified in holding it and thus this equates to knowledge. On the flip side of that, typically when someone says “know” in the framework above (unknowable) they are meaning certainty. They are claiming because they cannot know for “certain” or beyond a shadow of a doubt then it does not equate to knowledge. This is a mistaken position to take and we will see why.
The Argument
In my mind, these two things (apathy and strong agnosticism) are in the same category. One says nothing is knowable and the other does not care if it is knowable or not. Though one is making a claim and the other is not, they are both taking a stance against knowledge.
The goal of inquiry is to gain knowledge. Apathy and strong agnosticism (SA) run in the opposite direction of knowledge. If you are a person that cares deeply or even at all for knowledge, then this trend or idea should haunt you. If a person has a general disposition of carelessness, in general, that person will be more prone to negative things, be it emotional, physical, psychological, whatever it may be. General carelessness leads to one not fully paying attention to the details around them and will miss information pertinent to them. For example, if a person (again generally) is apathetic and they are walking through a dangerous area they will be more prone to injury. This injury could be a result of their lack of paying attention to natural dangers (i.e. holes, pits, animals, etc) or personal dangers (i.e. robbers, traps, mines, etc). If this person simply cared, pitfalls like these could be avoided.
This applies to knowledge as well, be it philosophical or empirical. If person 1 (P1) does not care if God exists or not, then that person will be less able to obtain valuable information. Knowledge is justified true belief (JTB) and the person who does not care if something is knowable only holds to one part of this model, belief. This person is not justified in holding to this. The reason there is no justification in not caring is the serious hindrance it brings to one’s overall functionality within reality. Of course, this person can take this position and live out all of life in the apathetic zone but what benefit does it bring? None! As long as a person has a sincere drive to understand reality then apathy is a terrible approach, even to the things you may think foolish. The important takeaway here is to understand, even if the transcendent is not of ultimate concern, an inquiry into this area should be done in order to rule it out. Having an apathetic attitude towards this area of knowledge only hinders one’s overall ability at acquiring new information (or knowledge) about reality.
What about SA? This position puts forward the idea that nothing is knowable. We could make this more specific than that and say it holds nothing about God or the non-empirical is knowable. Is this a tenable position to take if one desires to know as much as they can about reality? Mathematical truths are often used to make a point. These truths are non-empirical but yet are held too as brute facts of reality. If we can know about these non-empirical truths, what is to say that we cannot know about other non-empirical truths.
By making the claim that nothing about God is knowable, there is a whole swath of information that is missing in one’s “knowing” tool bag. Plus, this faces some of the similar issues as apathy does. By saying that nothing about God is knowable, there can be nothing that is in the category of abstract or transcendent that can be known. Also, once someone takes this position, knowledge gathering comes to an immediate halt. Inquiry can no longer move forward since the intellectual disposition has been set. It should not take someone long to realize that science (the investigation of empirical things) will not be able to answer important questions of life. Not to say that science is unimportant because it is and has a specific function. But answering questions of the un-touchable, un-tasteable, and un-seeable is not within the realm of science. Philosophical thought can step in to fill the void here.
Our ability to think logically through things is partly what helps humans remain functional. Science and philosophy are two things that should be used in conjunction with each other. It is this conjunctive work of science and philosophy that provides the most well rounded and coherent view of reality. The things stressed throughout this discourse are that science and philosophy work best together rather than apart. As a matter of fact, philosophy is used to evaluate science and its methods. The reason for this is it is outside the purview of science to evaluate itself because science itself focuses on the touchable, seeable, and tasteable.
Benefits of the Conjunctive View
As has been stated throughout, the apathetic view seems to be lacking seriously in that it hinders one’s ability to know anything. This is not because the view itself is a knowledge system but rather because it does not care about knowledge. Apathy is a perfectly acceptable position to take but it lacks justification, reasonableness, or usefulness. SA seems to think (in the form I have presented above) that science or empirical knowledge is the only thing that can be known and anything outside of that is truly unknowable. However, the view that I am putting forward is both of these positions are replete with issues for knowledge acquisition. SA would be far more effective if it accepted philosophical inquiry because science itself does not possess the ability to gain information or knowledge about mathematical truths or abstract objects. Of course, the person could simply assume these truths and laws to be the case but it does nothing to bolster their own position to hold to assumptions that help their empirical investigations when a philosophical perusal of the metaphysical would provide justification for those assumptions.
The major benefit that can be gleaned from the marriage of science and philosophy is the general roundness to a person’s knowledge base. Not to suggest that if a person accepts philosophy as a reasonable and justified pursuit of knowledge, they will automatically hold inherently true beliefs. However, what happens instead of having a limited selection of information to pull from, the person opens up a wider selection of information to formulate a more detailed scope of knowledge. For any person who desires to seek knowledge, this seems like the most reasonable approach, to use both science and philosophy.
Another benefit of this unified approach could be since knowledge is not reducible to the physical; knowledge inherently seems to carry with it the trait of having no physical nature. It seems reasonable to assume if the very source of knowing, being non-physical, assumes there is the ability to know things outside of the physical since knowing is non-physical.
Those Against This View
What are some of the immediate objections to the view above? Immediately, it seems one could argue that knowledge is a physical event because there are brain states which can account for knowledge or portions of the brain hold knowledge. My initial concern here is how knowledge is being handled in this case. On the face of it, the brain does seem to have a great deal to do with knowledge in that it has certain portions of the brain that provide a physical capacity for knowledge retention. However, though portions of the brain may be the physical house of knowledge it does not account for the content of that knowledge. Think of it as a computer hard drive. The HDD is a physical place where information (or knowledge) is stored. However, the information contained within the HDD is not physical (in the strictest sense). Of course, the knowledge was gained via a physical medium but the information itself is not physical. It seems that the knowledge itself is outside of the physical and is more than simple molecular interactions.
The above seems to be the objection with the most force since it attempts to ground certain claims in something tangible. However, someone may argue against philosophical investigation based on it being trumped or “put out” by science. This objection seems to be misplaced because it assumes science is the only justified knowledge-gathering mechanism but also it is the arbiter of knowledge acquisition. This position also assumes the usefulness of something is a justified manner to judge the truthfulness of something. So, in the mind of the “scientist” (the one who holds empirical knowledge is the only type of knowledge), since philosophical inquiry is no longer useful it cannot be trusted to provide adequate knowledge. I believe this makes a drastic mistake in suggesting if something is useful it is true. Also, who is the one who determines that philosophical inquiry is no longer useful? It seems to overstep the epistemic position of the one who utters it. The more modest approach may be beneficial here. By this I mean to say, it would be better to suggest that philosophy takes a backseat to the empirical.
Do I recommend this philosophical backseat approach? Of course not! However, this position would be much more defensible than the former. Unfortunately, this more modest position seems to make the mistake in understanding that even this empirical knowledge is subject to change. Scientific knowledge has made significant shifts in positions since the scientific revolution. So, empirical knowledge is only useful, insofar as it maintains its position of acceptance. This seems to be a generally weak manner in which to judge knowledge and this cannot be projected onto a different realm of knowledge acquisition.
What is the Point?
It may seem that based on my reaction I hold to a view that no knowledge is knowable. If that is what you have gathered from this presentation, then I think you have failed to pay close attention. The overall point is to limit our knowledge gathering devices to strictly the empirical is to limit what we can know. This is why attention has been made on apathy and strong agnosticism (SA). Apathy has a general disposition of not caring about knowledge. SA seems to think that anything outside of the empirical is not knowable. The whole idea is there should be a change in our disposition towards knowledge. If we limit how we gather knowledge, then we obviously limit the things we can know. My general concern is for broadening the knowledge base and both of the above positions by their very disposition limit this knowledge base. With that said, the positions discussed above by their very nature hinder our ability at inquiry.
[1] Apathy, Webster’s Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apathy.
[2] Ibid, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agnosticism.
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