I know that I know nothing?

[Flame4]

Socrates said “I know that I know nothing.”

Does anyone have an explanation? Is Socrates trying to say that we are unable to know anything for sure? Or is he being humble and saying he can’t know everything? Is he saying that we are always continuing to learn more (gain more knowledge?)

Thanks for responding. God Bless.

 

[_Locke]

Socrates said “I know that I know nothing.”

Does anyone have an explanation? Is Socrates trying to say that we are unable to know anything for sure? Or is he being humble and saying he can’t know everything? Is he saying that we are always continuing to learn more (gain more knowledge?)

Thanks for responding. God Bless.

I’m sure you’ve already read this but Wikipedia has an article on just that quote -
“The impreciseness of the English translation stems from the fact that the author is not saying that he does not know anything but means instead that one cannot know anything with absolute certainty but can feel confident about certain things.”
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing)

I hope that helps.

 

[tonyrey]

“I know that I know nothing” is a self-contradiction! How can you know you know nothing if you can’t know anything at all? The only solution is to make an exception to the rule but then the exception has to be justified. How do you know you know nothing? What is the basis of that knowledge?

This is the Socratic paradox. What Socrates meant is that the more we know the more we realise the less we know. Only a very unintelligent person would think he knows everything. Specialists are aware of their ignorance, knowing that reality is so complex it is impossible to reach the end of their investigations. One question leads to another because ultimately all aspects of knowledge are related. There is an immense network of facts which cannot be grasped by any finite intelligence.

Science consists of provisional conclusions which may have to be modified in the light of future discoveries. Only in philosophy is there one existential certainty: we know we are thinking. If we think we don’t exist that very thought doesn’t exist - which is clearly absurd. How could a solitary thought exist by itself?! Total scepticism is indisputably self-destructive.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

Some 40 + years ago I heard a talk by Edward Teller. He stated that we had no idea how to achieve a fusion based power generator. He noted that someone complained that that was the same thing he had said ten years earlier, and we had done much research since then. He explained, “Yes, but now we don’t know on the basis of much more complete information.”

 

[GreggAlvarez]

Socrates said “I know that I know nothing.”

Does anyone have an explanation? Is Socrates trying to say that we are unable to know anything for sure? Or is he being humble and saying he can’t know everything? Is he saying that we are always continuing to learn more (gain more knowledge?)

Thanks for responding. God Bless.

Perhaps, he could be saying that there is so much to know that any amount of knowledge is negligible. 500 miles compared to a light-year can be considered nothing in comparison. To us, 500 miles is quite a way but to a light-year, it is practically nothing.

 

[JDaniel]

“I know that I know nothing” is a self-contradiction! How can you know you know nothing if you can’t know anything at all? The only solution is to make an exception to the rule but then the exception has to be justified. How do you know you know nothing? What is the basis of that knowledge?

This is the Socratic paradox. What Socrates meant is that the more we know the more we realise the less we know. Only a very unintelligent person would think he knows everything. Specialists are aware of their ignorance, knowing that reality is so complex it is impossible to reach the end of their investigations. One question leads to another because ultimately all aspects of knowledge are related. There is an immense network of facts which cannot be grasped by any finite intelligence.

Science consists of provisional conclusions which may have to be modified in the light of future discoveries. Only in philosophy is there one existential certainty: we know we are thinking. If we think we don’t exist that very thought doesn’t exist - which is clearly absurd. How could a solitary thought exist by itself?! Total scepticism is indisputably self-destructive.

And, we know that we know that we know we are thinking! Which is even more pregnant.

God bless,
jd

 

[lemondiesel]

Socrates said “I know that I know nothing.”

Does anyone have an explanation? Is Socrates trying to say that we are unable to know anything for sure? Or is he being humble and saying he can’t know everything? Is he saying that we are always continuing to learn more (gain more knowledge?)

Thanks for responding. God Bless.

This quote relates to his analagy of the cave, if you haven’t read that.

 

[stenlis]

Socrates said “I know that I know nothing.”

Does anyone have an explanation? Is Socrates trying to say that we are unable to know anything for sure? Or is he being humble and saying he can’t know everything? Is he saying that we are always continuing to learn more (gain more knowledge?)

Thanks for responding. God Bless.

You need to know the whole story to understand it. I’ll try to be as brief as possible:

Apparently a friend of Socrates asked the Oracle of Delphi “who is the wisest man in Athens” and the Oracle replied: “Socrates”.

So this guy told Socrates about it but Socrates thought it was wrong: “How can I be the wisest man in Athens when I know nothing. You’ve got the poets who know about beauty and judges who know what justice is and craftsman who know about metal - I know none of these things”.

And he went out to prove it. He talked to judges and poets and whatnot (you can find the essence of these conversations in Plato’s dialogues) but found none of these people knew any better then him - the judges didn’t know what ‘justice’ was, they just followed the law blindly just like the smith followed the right procedure to forge metal without knowing why it works. And poets and sculptors couldn’t tell what beauty was either, their art came out of their unconscious inspiration.

So at the end Socrates concluded:

“Looks like the Oracle was right. I know nothing. But so does everybody else and I seem to be the only one who knows that he knows nothing. Thus I’m the wisest man in Athens.”

 

[Betterave]

Some 40 + years ago I heard a talk by Edward Teller. He stated that we had no idea how to achieve a fusion based power generator. He noted that someone complained that that was the same thing he had said ten years earlier, and we had done much research since then. He explained, “Yes, but now we don’t know on the basis of much more complete information.”

That is a very astute remark.

 

[Ano2000]

I just found this blog for the above quote: iknowonethingthatiknownothing.blogspot.com
Go to the last post & see or follow the link iknowonethingthatiknownothing.blogspot.com/2012/05/i-know-that-i-know-nothing.html

I am a student of philosophy and I would like to hear linkages between quote, zen and ego. Thanks advanced!

 

[empther]

Oh, I thought this was a thread by an atheist talking about himself.

I think Socrates meant that even if he the teacher was still learning, how much more did his students need to learn!

Something like that.

The simple is often the truth.

 

[Viewscreen]

Socrates said “I know that I know nothing.”

Does anyone have an explanation? Is Socrates trying to say that we are unable to know anything for sure? Or is he being humble and saying he can’t know everything? Is he saying that we are always continuing to learn more (gain more knowledge?)

Thanks for responding. God Bless.

Speaking for myself, I too know that I know nothing. In the sense that I do not have any criteria to know for certain anything in the first place. Thus, I do not even know the correct criteria for knowing, if by knowing you mean certitude in the form of stable knowledge, via deduction, abduction, inference, etc.

I don’t know how else to put it atm, but hopefully you get my drift.

 

[PeterJP]

Flame 4 - it’s been years since I read Plato-Socrates, but my view is that at the heart of that statement is a comment on the *nature *of human knowledge, i.e. on its limitations (necessary limitations) and its transitory/contingent qualities. I think just maybe St Paul was addressing the same subject when he writes that now we see dimly, as in a darkened mirror. Even the best of human life and human thinking lacks the capacity to fully see/grasp/understand The Truth. Socrates might have meant, “I have wisdom because I recognize that I have no (true) wisdom”. I find it a scary endeavour, trying for a humble but genuine acceptance of the limitations and liabilities of human thought, i.e. of my own thoughts and ideas. But I find that if/when I can live humbly and with faith, it’s feels very human and decent, and peaceful.

 

[Red_Godfather]

The phenomena (and there can be no doubt that this is the case) are what first give rise to the intelligible objects in space and time. The things in themselves stand in need to, even as this relates to reason, the transcendental objects in space and time, as is shown in the writings of Galileo. It remains a mystery why natural causes would thereby be made to contradict the phenomena; with the sole exception of space, reason, in reference to ends, is the mere result of the power of the Ideal, a blind but indispensable function of the soul. It is obvious that our faculties would thereby be made to contradict the phenomena, because of our necessary ignorance of the conditions. The Objective world, in an extremely broad sense, becomes adjusted to what is itself given. By means of formal logic, the paralogisms of practical reason would thereby be made to contradict, as I have elsewhere shown, the objects in space and time. Aristotle tells us that, in the full sense of these terms, the phenomena are the mere results of the power of the never-ending regress in the series of empirical conditions, a blind but indispensable function of the soul. Necessity teaches us nothing whatsoever regarding the content of, insomuch as our experience relies on the intelligible objects in space and time, our understanding. The phenomena constitute the whole content for, in the case of metaphysics, the phenomena, because of the relation between the transcendental unity of apperception and the paralogisms. Noematic descriptions, naturally, exist for us thanks to separated modes of consciousness. Noematic descriptions, naturally, exist for us thanks to separated modes of consciousness. If we follow up this doubt, it becomes manifest that we shift the weight of transcendental evidence of the transcendental Ego (in the broadest Cartesian sense) from the ego to noematic descriptions.