Ignorance Archives | Neel Burton

Why We Would Rather Be Wrong than Be Proved Wrong

Socrates questioning the priest Euthyphro, who is in a hurry to leave.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

In 399 BCE, the Athenians sentenced Socrates to death. His crime? He had spent his life making people look like the fools that they were.

Officially, Socrates was charged with impiety and corrupting the youth. For years, this eccentric septuagenarian had gone around asking people questions, exposing the inconsistencies and contradictions in their opinions. In his mind, he had been doing them the greatest favour.

Socrates had discovered something about human nature that remains as true today as it was in antiquity: Our problem is not so much that we are ignorant, but that we are ignorant of our ignorance.

The Wisest Man in Athens

According to his student Plato, Socrates had a friend called Chaerephon, who once travelled to Delphi and, on a whim, asked the oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates. The oracle replied in the negative: “There is no one wiser than Socrates.”

Socrates was as surprised and perplexed as everyone. He knew that he was not wise—but, surely, the god of the oracle could not have been mistaken? To find out what the god might have meant, he went around questioning people with a reputation for wisdom, beginning with the politicians, then the poets, and finally the craftsmen.

The politicians, he found, could not even explain the words that they were using. The poets wrote beautiful verses but struggled to make sense of them. The craftsmen possessed genuine expertise, but mistakenly assumed that this made them knowledgeable about everything else.

Socrates concluded that he was wiser than these supposedly wise men in one small but critical respect: He did not think he knew what he did not know.

The Trouble With Knowing Everything

From then on, Socrates devoted himself to questioning his fellow Athenians. He would ask a general to define courage, a priest to define piety, or a pair of good friends to define friendship. They would offer a confident answer, only for Socrates to expose some inconsistency or contradiction. He and they would then explore the concept in every direction until everyone threw up their hands in despair at their inability to define even the most important and apparently self-evident things.

This method of questioning, known as elenchus, or the Socratic method, aimed to bring about a state of puzzlement called aporia.

Aporia, if you like, is the honest and fertile state of knowing that you do not know.

One day, Socrates met a youth called Theaetetus, whose perplexity delighted him. Socrates said to him, “I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”

The Perils of Being Right

But there was a problem. As I discuss in my book, The Gang of Three, Socrates’ interlocutors did not want to be helped. Deep down, in a place unknown even to them, they did not welcome the truth.

Our beliefs are not merely propositions that we hold in our heads. They are bound up with our sense of who we are. To challenge a person’s beliefs is to challenge that person’s identity, standing, and meaning. We defend our beliefs as if we were defending ourselves.

Socrates understood this all too well. To prevent his interlocutors from getting angry or running away, he frequently feigned ignorance or used flattery. His approach rather resembles that of Lieutenant Columbo, the apparently bumbling detective who always has just one more question.

The Price of Wisdom

By exposing the ignorance of prominent Athenians, Socrates acquired admirers, especially among the young, but also powerful enemies.

At his trial, he reproached his fellow citizens for concerning themselves with wealth and reputation while neglecting wisdom, truth, and the proper care of their souls.

He compared himself to a gadfly attached by the gods to a great but listless horse: Athens needed him to sting her into wakefulness.

Even with his life at stake, Socrates refused to change his ways. If anything, he dropped the mask.

Socrates had spent his life showing people that they were fools. In condemning him, the Athenians demonstrated just how right he was.

And two and a half thousand years later, what has changed? We still prefer certainty to doubt, reassurance to correction, and the appearance of wisdom to the difficult business of acquiring it.

We are not merely ignorant; we are invested in remaining ignorant.