Question of the Day: Is Ignorance the Root of All Evil? Imagine a moral agent, Gygeous, with perfectly reliable prescience when it comes to the future consequences of his own contemplated actions. That is to say, each time Gygeous contemplates or deliberates upon his own future voluntary actions, he can “see” the outcome, result, or consequence of performing that action, and this prescience – although limited only to his own personal actions – is 100% reliable. Gygeous infallibly knows the consequences of his own voluntary actions. According to Socrates and Plato, ignorance is the source of evil. Gygeous, however, is virtually omniscient with regard to the consequences of his own possible voluntary actions; Gygeous is the perfect moral knower. If Plato and Socrates are correct, if evil is always and only the consequence of ignorance, then Gygeous (who is never ignorant of any suffering caused or potentially caused by any of his own actions) should be a morally perfect agent. But is he? Since Gygeous is a perfect moral knower, he knows exactly what he will get away with and when he will get caught. Needless to say, Gygeous will avoid all actions which result in his discovery, but what about actions that Gygeous knows will forever escape detection? Like his great, great grandfather, will Gygeous sleep with the queen, kill the king, take over the country and enrich himself? The moral skeptic in me agrees that Gygeous will do whatever he knows he can get away with. Is it therefore possible that ignorance, uncertainty about outcome, is actually the source of good? Or, at very least, the source of prudence?
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 18:29:22 +0000
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