Abstract of the article and why it matters

Ideas like omniscience and infallibility that are impossible for humans to achieve are nevertheless very beneficial to us. They not only clarify our other ideas, but also help us understand and improve our very basic daily needs.

To live well in daily life, we need to understand barriers to it, and solutions. The support we can get from human prosperity was built upon ideas that may seem irrelevant at first, and the clarification on their relevance aids our own personal prosperity.

Introduction

The concept of omniscience can quickly tie theologians and philosophers into knots as they identify the impacts to concepts such as free will, foreknowledge vs present knowledge, and the privacy of one’s internal consciousness. Definitely fascinating for those in the field. But this was one of the areas that I couldn’t find benefit in while growing up. Because I needed answers that I could directly use to guide my everyday choices.

If you aren’t aware of these facets, typically the only time the concept of omniscience arises is when you are discussing God and religion. Now that’s just as an attribute of something separate from us. It is irrelevant to us, except perhaps, as surety that God can support your needs because he can know them. But there is a deeper and more daily-useful meaning of omniscience, as well as a related concept: infallibility.

Omniscience

As much as we want to quickly get to the point (my wife is poking me to do so soonest!), best we at least understand what we are talking about. We don’t want to meander and lose the benefit we are looking for.

Omniscience means all-knowing, which is straightforward enough. But there are details, as mentioned above, such as knowledge of the future vs past/ present, whether only truth qualifies as knowledge or falsehoods too, etc. Now omniscience is a concept without a referent. There is no omniscient being that we can directly query to get the answer. Therefore, I don’t need to debate details to identify which are correct, or have separate concepts for each attribute. Instead, we’ll leave it a bit vague.

Infallibility

Infallibility is slightly different. It means the inability to make an error. We would need to explore more about the meaning of “inability” and the meaning of “error”. But for now, again, I’ll leave it close enough.

There are definitely connections between these two concepts, and I’ll explore that in a separate article, specifically whether or not one subsumes the other. Most places I’ve read believe that omniscience covers infallibility since knowing everything will have one follow the truth. But there are some interesting avenues to explore that provide insights into how we think and what is important to us. More to come in that future article.

The Simple Source of the Abstract

Now as promised, I will get to the point. Once again, there is no such person that is infallible. So why are we even talking about it? Here is why.

Even when an idea is wrong, it allows us to work forward with what we do know, eventually discovering evidence to the contrary and leading to an improved idea.

Humans are amazing creatures and when they think, there is great meaning to even the most stumbling of initial ideas. See this article for an example. We also, as mentioned above, have a wondrous capacity to explore more and more intricate connections of ideas to connect and contrast and open up more areas to explore. In many ways, this is how science works. But it all starts with something simple. In science, this seems more obviously practical. Even when the idea is wrong, such as that the sun orbits the earth, it allows us to work forward with what we do know, eventually discovering evidence to the contrary and leading to an improved idea.

So what are the simple ideas that led to these complex nuances of omniscience and infallibility? Ignorance and error. In our daily lives and actions, we regularly come across decisions to make in which we wonder – do I know enough to make this decision? Or alternately, we know we do know enough, but then we make a bad decision. Not because we realize we didn’t know something, but that we didn’t use the knowledge we had properly. Even just forgetting is a form of error. We can’t say it was by ignorance that we bumped into the laundry basket we put there earlier.

What are the simple ideas that led to these complex nuances of omniscience and infallibility? Ignorance and error.

Thanks, Jeremy – I see these simple ideas and I see how those are a part of our daily lives, but you’re not leading me to anything useful about them.

Yes, I know – hang with me a few more sentences. Humans are not content just to recognize the problem, we must figure out what to do about them. And one crucial way to do so is to identify a situation in which I don’t have that problem. How could I not be ignorant? If I knew everything already! And how could I not mess up what I already know is right? When I am incapable of making an error, of course! Whew! Isn’t it nice when I can just solve my problems with some new words? Well, I may not be actually solving my problems at this point, but it is the birth of that solution.

Conclusion

Omniscience and infallibility are only bizarre ideas when we see them isolated from the real-world changes that were part of their creation. Trying to get to omniscience from the problem of ignorance, we created solutions such as writing knowledge down to share, and division of labor to enable specialization of knowledge and skill. Trying to get to infallibility from the problem of error, we invented logic, argument, memory-enhancing systems, and peer review. Through the simple extrapolation of our issue, we can carve a path of progress.

The next time your eyes glaze over some esoteric term, you may wish to examine the root reasons for it and benefit and enrich your own daily life. Or you can simply trust in the value of the progress that came out of its first use and appreciate the wonder of humankind. Live long and prosper!

References

1. Wikipedia page on omniscience
2. Article exploring how exploring an incorrect idea can lead us to the right idea