13 Questions

[downbeatplumb]

A few observations. First, this seems to incorporate the genetic fallacy in fundamental ways. We're not born being able to recognize the persistence of objects, that when a person goes behind a screen, they don't cease to exist. This is largely a matter of brain development, but the notion that because we are born in ignorance, that is our natural state and we should remain that way is not a plank I want in my party platform. (Roland Barthes has cautioned us to "beware the natural sign" meaning that, many times, those things which our culture communicates to us as being "natural" are some of the most artificial and politicized constructs, and the assignment of the sign of naturalness is intended to discourage examination and to avoid it being questioned.) This is quite readily seen as an example of the is / ought fallacy.

The second is that many of the most valuable things in our world are based on such mechanisms -- things such as culture (inter-personal learning, often largely driven by the "authority" of the group), authoritarian indoctrination (in both institutionalized learning and the learning that results as an outflow of the power imbalance between parents and children), social discourses based on authority (what if each day we had to make up our mind about whether the king or president's directives should be followed, or, instead of trusting the self-correcting mechanisms of scientific discourse, we felt the need to personally verify each new find before incorporating it into our world); authoritarian learning is highly useful and is not in and of itself suspect simply by virtue of the social dynamics involved.

No. Learning is good. Many of the products of learning are good. If you disagree with assertions that are claimed to constitute knowledge, by all means dispute the claims. But discounting something simply on account of it being learned is silly.

I said that at one time everyone was an atheist because well its true isnt it?
I am not discounting something because it is learned, I am discounting it because it is wrong