The Ignorance Objection
For today's post I'm reviving a 2010 post from my Ticker blog. To answer in advance -- yes, I still run into this objection now and then, but not as much as I used to. Possibly I've banned so many trolls from TektonTV that make it that any new ones that show up know it's an instant ticket to getting themselves banned.
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The barren wastes of
YouTube have brought back an objection of the sort I have not seen in a
while, something I can call the Ignorance Objection. A YT user styled
“CMrace” put it this way:
I mean honestly, pretending to know what idioms were in common usage
2000 years ago, what metaphors people used, ignoring slang, pretending
you know what common usage of greek was 2000 years ago.You don't know
those things because no one knows those things. You even pretend to be a
scholar when you are just an English/Lit (minor, major maybe) All this
just so you can say your book is 100% true.
You don't like this opinion 'non-sense' because it hits home, just like my last post. I like french fries. go ahead refute that argument. You can't? then it must certainly be true.
You don't like this opinion 'non-sense' because it hits home, just like my last post. I like french fries. go ahead refute that argument. You can't? then it must certainly be true.
CMrace
of course repeatedly ignored the fact (though it was pointed out to him
repeatedly) that I used the works of credible scholars to make my
arguments and did not rely merely in my own authority. But let's get to
the main objection, which I call the Ignorance Objection.
Does
the Ignorance Objection have any force, though? Not at all. For one
thing, it is self-refuting. To state categorically that we cannot know
for sure about such things as cultural practices and idioms could only
be factually defensible if the objector has done sufficient research to
know that uncertainty is all that is available. But to argue this would
require the arguer to have a birds-eye view, as it were, in which they
know at what point certainty has been achieved. And if they know where
this point is, then they have achieved the very level of certainty that
they deny is possible.
I
find it doubtful that Ignorance Objectors like CMrace have actually
done enough research to make such claims, though. It is much more likely
– since they provide no data to prove that uncertainty exists (eg,
contrary readings of data each with sufficient support) – that this is
little more than a white flag indicating incompetence in the subject
matter.
Second,
although scholars will acknowledge where and when uncertainty exists,
there is enough information for us to have varying degrees of certainty
on varying matters. Case by case is how these things must be considered,
but to use the example of idioms, we have a great deal of data – a good
number of texts, and comparative data on the uses of language in oral
societies that persist to this day. So if we suggest that a certain
passage offers an idiomatic reading, we can provide arguments based on
this data. The critic’s burden is then to defuse those arguments by
explaining why that data is inapplicable. They must also provide a sound
epistemology for the identification of idiom which can compete with the
ones that scholars have established, and show they their system “works”
– that is, that it does not exclude known idioms and correctly
identifies idioms otherwise.
But
do we really expect the likes of CMrace to do things like this? Not at
all. And that is because, as I have said, the Ignorance Objection isn’t
made out of knowledge of ignorance – it is made as a way to avoid
engaging arguments well beyond one’s capability to address.
Something tells me I’ll be seeing this one again from people on YouTube.
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