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And when our energies subside, we have the little pitons that we can jam into nearby fissures for yet further purchase on certainty: is there one amongst us who has never once whispered ''[[for the avoidance of doubt]]'', not even to break some [[tedious]] impasse? | And when our energies subside, we have the little pitons that we can jam into nearby fissures for yet further purchase on certainty: is there one amongst us who has never once whispered ''[[for the avoidance of doubt]]'', not even to break some [[tedious]] impasse? | ||
Such is our institutional hatred of ''[[doubt]]''. Note the terminology of that dreadful piece of hack lawyering: “avoidance”, as in “void” — as if doubt is so repulsive to our collective morality we should evacuate it from our bowels, [[ab initio]], and flush it away, and only then can we repose in our cosy, sterile, pristine world of | Such is our institutional hatred of ''[[doubt]]''. Note the terminology of that dreadful piece of hack lawyering: “avoidance”, as in “void” — as if doubt is so repulsive to our collective morality we should evacuate it from our bowels, [[ab initio]], and flush it away, and only then can we repose in our cosy, sterile, pristine world of ''certainty''. | ||
Yet you need not be a great visionary of our halting course through the cosmos to notice that however hard we have lunged | Yet you need not be a great visionary of our halting course through the cosmos to notice that however hard we have lunged at the notional definitude, we have had a hard time finding it. Shit still, resolutely, ''happens''. Were it not so deeply buried in the foundations of our self-mythology, we might even wonder whether it wasn’t the problem, not the solution. | ||
So here, readers, I present you a spirited, against-the-run-of-play, defence of ''[[doubt]]''. | So here, readers, I present you a spirited, against-the-run-of-play, defence of ''[[doubt]]''. | ||
There are logical, psychological, commercial and philosophical grounds. Bear with me. | There are logical, psychological, commercial and philosophical grounds. Bear with me. Let us start with the elephants and turtles. | ||
==={{t|Epistemology}} of certainty=== | |||
Can we take Descartes as read? It gets more interesting a little later on. | |||
*'''Certainty in the sense of being solved''': if you have solved the puzzle ''no-one wants to play the game''. This is trivial to understand for noughts and crosses; we fancy we can get there with checkers, but [[chess]] and [[go]] while, technically capable of being solved, have not got there yet. But if at any point on the board there is an optimal move — and in a zero-sum game, there must be — then that includes the first move. In which case, there is no longer a point in playing. It becomes not a competition of wits, but of memory and data processing. That’s no longer interesting. | *'''Certainty in the sense of being solved''': if you have solved the puzzle ''no-one wants to play the game''. This is trivial to understand for noughts and crosses; we fancy we can get there with checkers, but [[chess]] and [[go]] while, technically capable of being solved, have not got there yet. But if at any point on the board there is an optimal move — and in a zero-sum game, there must be — then that includes the first move. In which case, there is no longer a point in playing. It becomes not a competition of wits, but of memory and data processing. That’s no longer interesting. | ||