- Date posted
- 13h
Getting answers
Regarding my last post, as a 15 year old, these thoughts have soured my mood—in an act to subjugate my feelings, I’ve strived for answers. I’ve contacted an Oxford professional regarding these concepts. It’s not my best email; I’d like to share though. The email: Dear Professor Fricker, I have been contending with recursive questions, arguments, and allegory's that I've come across within my own thoughts. Specifically in subjects such as epistemic self-doubt and meta-ethics. I am hoping you might point me toward contemporary literature as well as philosophical notions that allude to some sort of solution to these matters. Ignorance situates itself within fools paradise. Without the contextual narrative; rather, encapsulated within the narrative of the naive. Ignorant people get to live happily, fools paradise—but there is a side-effect for those informed. Those informed are hurt by those who aren’t, the moral dilemma is atrocious when introduced by the ignorant fool. It’s a curse to society, but for a particular individual, a blessing. Either we all live in blissful happiness—or we all fundamentally understand the world at its truest form. But, what if I myself am living in a fools-paradise; we constitute ourselves in who’s right and wrong, under the gauze of moral and logical authority. And yet, who’s to say what view point is objectively correct. People will strip, and strip, and strip logic into its crudest and worst form possible—they’ll be correct. And the matter of saying “oh, I question my possible ignorance, I must not be ignorant,” constitutes in its own ignorance. By saying you’re not ignorant because you questioned ignorance, can and will make you ignorant. So maybe, I live in a bliss; I’ll never know, Maybe we’ll never find clarity. So what’s the point of arguing—but even then, who'll listen to that? The concept: Level 1: The people around me are ignorant. Level 2: I see their ignorance, so I am informed. Level 3: But what if my belief that I am informed is just my own ignorance? Level 4: But what if my questioning of my own ignorance is just a trick to make myself feel smart again? This has garnered, specifically for me, an epistemological regression: observing and analyzing systemic/moral ignorance in others, recognizing my own framework, but then recursively questioning whether self-awareness is simply a secondary layer to the bias or quesdo-intellectual vanity. Furthermore, I am struggling with many philosophical ideologies that don't sit comfortably with me. A friction between Moral Realism and Nihilism. While pure nihilism logically reduces atrocities to moral neutrality, my cognitive architecture experiences profound sense of "intellectual insult"—and grief when structural order or purity is degraded. It feels impossible to accept nihilism without completely surrendering the very logic required to evaluate the world. Given your work of expertise, I hope for clarity, thank you for reading.