The Ethics Blog

A research blog from the Centre for Resarch Ethics & Bioethics (CRB)

Tag: fact resistance

The demand for knowledge and the love of wisdom

Socrates image by fszalai on Pixabay
15 September, 2026 / / 0 Comments

When we talk about norms, we often overlook a higher norm in human interaction. I am thinking of the norm of having knowledge, the demand to know. Why do I say that knowledge is a higher norm? Because norms presuppose our knowledge of them. If we did not know which norms apply, they would lie by the wayside. They would lie in the ditch, and the wrong norms would guide us along the way. Being a good parent, for example, presupposes that we are acquainted with the norms of good parenting and understand what they require of us. We seem to live under this higher demand for knowledge of applicable norms. How ashamed we feel when we are ignorant of what applies and everyone else seems to know.

If the norm of knowledge permeates human interaction, it can also characterize our unconscious role play in the various situations of life. We do not notice how our gestures, tone of voice and behavior are often involuntarily governed by the superior demand to know what applies. The higher demand for knowledge, which should keep us on the right track, can paradoxically lead us into the labyrinths of lies. The fear and shame of not knowing is so intolerable that we instinctively flee from our ignorance by presenting a confident façade. Not least before ourselves. We imagine that we know what we do not know, and mere assumptions become firm convictions. The demand for knowledge thus gives rise to its opposite, it creates shadow worlds that we take for reality.

Philosophy is usually explained as the love of wisdom. Perhaps one could say that this love, ever since the days of Plato, has expressed itself in the fact that philosophers have always taken the norm of knowledge particularly seriously. In this post, I want to point out how this seriousness invites two possible philosophical tasks, which complement each other. An obvious task, which directly corresponds to the norm, is of course to critically examine how we live up to the norm of knowledge. False and unfounded claims to knowledge are identified and replaced by more well-considered ones. This philosophical task also includes developing a systematic knowledge-seeking approach that more rigorously takes us closer to the norm.

This philosophical task is not simple, however, because it is unclear how the norm of knowledge should be interpreted. What is knowledge? What does it mean to have knowledge about plant and animal life or about statesmanship and society? What does it mean to have knowledge about right and wrong or about beauty and ugliness? Ever since the days of Plato, philosophers have disagreed about what it means to live up to the norm of knowledge, and they have discussed which knowledge-seeking approach best ensures that we approach the norm rather than move away from it. Philosophical schools have criticized each other as ignorant of what knowledge is, and thus ignorant of how best to seek knowledge. So, while philosophers do indeed often identify false claims and provide good reasons for more well-considered positions, philosophy hardly functions as a higher court that authoritatively sorts out human disagreements about true and false, right and wrong. It often exhibits the same kind of human disagreements that it feels a responsibility to sort out in a systematic way. Philosophers have sometimes experienced their recurring disagreements as something of a scandal in philosophy and as a crisis for all of humanity. How is knowledge possible if even philosophy fails to live up to the superior norm that it takes so seriously?

But as I said, the norm of knowledge also invites another possible philosophical task, which complements the former. The second task is to confront the dark side of the norm of knowledge by examining how the demand for knowledge also generates shadow worlds. For like all norms, the higher norm of knowledge tends to generate its opposite. The expectation placed on us to know what applies triggers an increasingly rapid reflex to hide our uncertainty behind a confident façade. This unnoticed reflex becomes an unconscious habit. It feels so uncomfortable to stand there with empty knowledge gaps, that we routinely fill the gaps with perceptions about all sorts of things that we do not really know much about. The theme has been touched on in a previous post: Health information when knowledge gaps are already filled. The post was about the difficulty of reaching out with new health information when our knowledge gaps are paradoxically not empty but filled with perceptions that oppose the information.

The second task of philosophy – to draw attention to the dark side of the norm of knowledge – means that we open ourselves to our own uncertainty. We do not give in to the flight response that the knowledge norm activates when we feel the discomfort of uncertainty. We do not hide behind a façade but admit honestly and humbly: I don’t know. Instead of giving the appearance that we live up to the norm, we find ourselves at the absolute zero point of knowledge claims. Only from this lowest point can we freely examine how the higher norm generates shadow worlds in our ways of thinking, speaking, and living. This task is not easy either. Anyone who lives in a shadow world is unaware of the fact that it is only a shadow world, since the shadows have become the archetype of reality. The philosophical task of elucidating how these shadows arise and are assigned the lead role as the archetype of reality thus requires a certain freedom from the norm of knowledge. Merely tightening the requirements of the norm provides dubious protection against our resistance to facts, since the norm itself tends to generate the shadow pictures that it was intended to exclude. Therefore, the humbler task of philosophy is to illuminate how the knowledge norm generates shadow worlds within us.

In conclusion, I would like to say that philosophy – the love of wisdom – has two complementary tasks. If we do not pay attention to the dark side of the norm of knowledge, there is a risk that the emphasis on the bright side will lure us back into the shadows. The love of wisdom is greater than the demand for knowledge. Without condemning or shaming, the love of wisdom illuminates the dark side of the norm of knowledge – so that we can finally say, with Socrates: “when I don’t know things, I don’t think that I do either.”

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

This post in Swedish

Thinking about thinking

Self-confidence in the midst of uncertainty

14 June, 2022 / / 1 Comment

Feeling confident is natural when we have the knowledge that the task requires. However, self-confidence can be harmful if we think that we know what we do not know. It can be really problematic if we make a habit of pretending that we know. Perhaps because we demand it of ourselves.

There is also another kind of self-confidence, which can seem unnatural. I am thinking of a rarely noticed form of self-confidence, which can awaken just when we are uncertain about how to think and act. But how can self-confidence arise precisely when we are uncertain? It sounds not only unnatural, but also illogical. And was it not harmful to exhibit self-confidence in such situations?

I am thinking of the self-confidence to be just as uncertain as we are, because our uncertainty is a fact that we are certain of: I do not know. It is easy to overlook the fact that even uncertainty is a reality that can be ascertained and investigated in ourselves. Sometimes it is important to take note of our uncertainty. That is sticking to the facts too!

What happens if we do not trust uncertainty when we are uncertain? I think we then tend to seek guidance from others, who seem to know what we do not know. It seems not only natural, but also logical. It is reasonable to do so, of course, if relevant knowledge really exists elsewhere. Asking others, who can be judged to know better, also requires a significant measure of self-confidence and good judgment, in the midst of uncertainty.

But suppose we instinctively seek guidance from others as soon as we are uncertain, because we do not dare to stick to uncertainty in such moments. What happens if we always run away from uncertainty, without stopping and paying attention to it, as if uncertainty were something impermissible? In such a judgmental attitude to uncertainty, knowledge and certainty can become a demand that we feel must be met, towards ourselves and towards each other, if only as a facade. We are then back where we started, in pretended knowledge, which now might become a collective high-risk game and not just an individual bad habit.

Collective knowledge games can of course work, if sufficiently many influential players have the knowledge that the tasks require and knowledge is disseminated in a well-organized manner. Maybe we think that it should be possible to build such a society, a secure knowledge society. The question I wonder about is how sustainable this is in the long run, if the emphasis on certainty does not simultaneously emphasize also uncertainty and questioning. Not for the sake of questioning, but because uncertainty is also a fact that needs attention.

In philosophy and ethics, it is often uncertainty that primarily drives the work. This may sound strange, but even uncertainty can be investigated. If we ask a tentative question about something we sincerely wonder about, clearer questions can soon arise that we continue to wonder about, and soon the investigation will begin. The investigation comes to life because we dare to trust ourselves, because we dare to give ourselves time to think, in the midst of uncertainty, which can become clarity if we do not run away from it. In the investigation, we can of course notice that we need more knowledge about specific issues, knowledge that is acquired from others or that we ourselves develop through empirical studies. But it is not only specific knowledge that informs the investigation. The work with the questions that express our uncertainty clarifies ourselves and makes our thinking clearer. Knowledge gets a well-considered context, where it is needed, which enlightens knowledge.

A “pure” game of knowledge is hardly sustainable in the long run, if its demands are not open also to the other side of knowledge, to the uncertainty that can be difficult to separate from ourselves. Such openness requires that we trust not only the rules of the game, but also ourselves. But do we dare to trust ourselves when we are uncertain?

I think we dare, if we see uncertainty as a fact that can be investigated and clarified, instead of judging it as something dangerous that should not be allowed to be a fact. That is when it can become dangerous.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

This post in Swedish

Thinking about thinking

Fact resistance, human nature and contemplation

snowball fight
22 March, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Sometimes we all resist facts. I saw a cyclist slip on the icy road. When I asked if it went well, she was on her feet in an instant and denied everything: “I did not fall!” It is human to deny facts. They can hurt and be disturbing.

What are we resisting? The usual answer is that fact-resistant individuals or groups resist facts about the world around us, such as statistics on violent crime, on vaccine side effects, on climate change or on the spread of disease. It then becomes natural to offer resistance to fact resistance by demanding more rigour in the field of knowledge. People should learn to turn more rigorously to the world they live in! The problem is that fact-resistant attitudes do just that. They are almost bewitched by the world and by the causes of what are perceived as outrageous problems in it. And now we too are bewitched by fact resistance and speculate about the causes of this outrageous problem.

Of course, we believe that our opposition is justified. But who does not think so? Legitimate resistance is met by legitimate resistance, and soon the conflict escalates around its double spiral of legitimacy. The possibility of resolving it is blocked by the conflict itself, because all parties are equally legitimate opponents of each other. Everyone hears their own inner voices warning them from acknowledging their mistakes, from acknowledging their uncertainty, from acknowledging their human resistance to reality, as when we fall off the bike and wish it had never happened. The opposing side would immediately seize the opportunity! Soon, our mistake is a scandal on social media. So we do as the person who slipped on the icy road, we deny everything without thinking: “I was not wrong, I had my own facts!” We ignore the fact that life thereby becomes a lie, because our inner voices warn us from acknowledging our uncertainty. We have the right to be recognized, our voices insist, at least as an alternative to the “established view.”

Conflicts give us no time for reflection. Yet, there is really nothing stopping us from sitting down, in the midst of conflict, and resolving it within ourselves. When we give ourselves time to think for ourselves, we are freer to acknowledge our uncertainty and examine our spirals of thought. Of course, this philosophical self-examination does not resolve the conflict between legitimate opponents which escalates around us as increasingly impenetrable and real. It only resolves the conflict within ourselves. But perhaps our thoughtful philosophical voice still gives a hint of how, just by allowing us to soar in uncertainty, we already see the emptiness of the conflict and are free from it?

If we more often dared to soar in uncertainty, if it became more permissible to say “I do not know,” if we listened more attentively to thoughtful voices instead of silencing them with loud knowledge claims, then perhaps fact resistance also decreases. Perhaps fact resistance is not least resistance to an inner fact. To a single inner fact. What fact? Our insecurity as human beings, which we do not permit ourselves. But if you allow yourself to slip on the icy road, then you do not have to deny that you did!

A more thoughtful way of being human should be possible. We shape the societies that shape us.

Pär Segerdahl

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

This post in Swedish

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