You don’t have to be comprehensive, which I would also suggest is both impossible and not useful. But if we are working out of an established framework, it is always good practice to disclose that. And arguing one view without considering alternatives hardly forms a “case” for anything.
Sure, we can make up scenarios all we want and use deductive reasoning. But if we agree this scenario is not realistic then this sort of makes my point, which is that this stops being “a case for withholding knowledge” that we can use in the real world and becomes “a conversation on reddit about withholding knowledge” for a fake scenario about a sun flare form the future. We can grant the assumptions and discuss the moral implications and it’s all good fun, to be sure. It just doesn’t have real world utility if our deductive process is starting from a place not congruent with the real world. That’s all.
I have several reservations. First, the argument here seems to implicitly operate on utilitarianism. While using utilitarianism is not bad, per se, 1) the article does not make this perspective explicit, and 2) there are numerous other competing philosophical positions which would answer the question differently and those are not addressed here. The discussion would have been more rich if it had been more conversant with competing discussions of the good.
Second, “certain knowledge” of the future is sort of a poor assumption as it is debatable whether this would ever apply in the real world.
Third, finally, there are issues with the thought experiment. It is quite manufactured, such that (as is philosophical tradition at this point) other thought examples could easily be marshaled that directly contradict the arguments here and would point us to the opposite conclusion. The thought experiment is quite two dimensional and further fails to capture real world complexity. And so, in the end, is this really “A case for withholding knowledge” or is this a fake scenario about an sun flare from the future that was fun to discuss on reddit.
yikeswhatshappening t1_jcvf41i wrote
Reply to comment by thenousman in A Case For Withholding Knowledge by thenousman
You don’t have to be comprehensive, which I would also suggest is both impossible and not useful. But if we are working out of an established framework, it is always good practice to disclose that. And arguing one view without considering alternatives hardly forms a “case” for anything.
Sure, we can make up scenarios all we want and use deductive reasoning. But if we agree this scenario is not realistic then this sort of makes my point, which is that this stops being “a case for withholding knowledge” that we can use in the real world and becomes “a conversation on reddit about withholding knowledge” for a fake scenario about a sun flare form the future. We can grant the assumptions and discuss the moral implications and it’s all good fun, to be sure. It just doesn’t have real world utility if our deductive process is starting from a place not congruent with the real world. That’s all.