In philosophical terms, knowledge is incredibly important. Information and facts are needed for any discussion from day to day problems to existential crises. Knowledge is power and the truth will set you free. However, some would argue that knowledge is more closely related to suffering. People will manage to reason either side of the argument in many ways from psychological to scientific, but by the philosophical nature of the question, no one will come up with a dependable answer. The issue of ignorance's bliss or knowledge's power is a topic that will forever stay in moral limbo based on current standards. The arguments between the two points on this subject are what make this topic so interesting. It is incredibly difficult for me to single out points I disagree with on either side. While I do favor one opinion over the other, each have very sturdy roots in several different mediums recorded through time.

Supporters of ignorance have been dated all the way back to the 18th century. The phrase "ignorance is bliss" originates in English poet Thomas Gray's work entitled "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College". In this poem, Gray uses imagery and metaphor to describe his nostalgia stating that "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." Gray believes that people and their emotions are saved by being ignorant, young, and carefree as reaching adulthood and being forced to bear the responsibilities that accompany it eventually becomes too taxing and depressing to endure.

The work is a great example of exigency as it can be concluded in the poem that Thomas Gray accuses children in general of wanting to grow up too quickly. The timeless question, of course, remains whether ignorance is bliss or not. Gray not only calls everyone to action but specifically writes this piece as a warning to the current students of Eton College. He looks upon them with wistfulness, hoping that they will enjoy and savor their youths much more than he ever did. I think it is important that this source find a place in my final project because, while it is not an up-to-date source, it is important, in this case, to state some kind of origin to the main theme of my paper. Knowing how anything began initially is important to me when forming any opinion or argument.

The importance of origins continues with Robert N. Proctor's creation of a word in his book, Agnotology: A Missing Term to Describe the Cultural Production of Ignorance (And Its Study). Agnotology is culturally induced ignorance specifically used to describe the public's tendency to show more ignorance toward a subject with the more information they have (Proctor 2). Proctor also argues that there is much more ignorance in the world than there is knowledge of anything combined. Before he invented the term agnotology, Robert Proctor came into the scene with a lot of situated ethos. Proctor's college education all comes from Harvard University and he currently stands as a Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University. Proctor also creates invented ethos for himself by knowing his audience. Someone who reads his book is likely to be scholarly themselves and to be impressed with how many ways he thinks about ignorance and how many kinds of ignorance he presents. Robert Proctor explores several sides of ignorance and knowledge in his book, so I would hope that at least some of the views he presents would find their way into my final product.

Robert Proctor raises the same questions on another book he edited with Londa Schieberger entitled Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. The book continues its description of agnotology as the study of ignorance with more of a focus on why we don't know what we don't know. The goal of the editors in this book is to specifically state certain things the public is ignorant of and why. For example, one of the chapters explicitly targets ignorance of global climate change among people in today's society. Because this book is so closely related to Robert Proctor's own book, I am not sure if it would be better to find a completely different source to draw information from, or to use this source to more specifically highlight the points Proctor hits in his book.

Jennifer Croissant, using the ideas of the relatively few pioneers of agnotology, sought to create a framework for looking at ignorance. In an article for the journal Social Epistemology, Croissant breaks agnotology and ignorance down into five domains, those five being ontology and epistemology, chronicity, granularity, scale, and intentionality. Analyzing and defining these points of ignorance is an appeal to logos. While in many cases philosophical arguments over such issues as ignorance is bliss are left up to internal and moral views, it is important to mention logistics. Even if a subject will often lead to arguments made from the heart, a debate including organized, detailed, and undoubtedly researched points are likely to be persuasive.

On the subject of logic, my last academic source leads with arguments made with pure scientific data relating to the neuroscience involved in introspection and self-awareness. The authors Focquaert, Braeckman, and Platek proceed to compare our likeness in the realm of empathy and inward thinking to chimpanzees. However, they conclude that true empathy and "mindreading" techniques cannot be used when exercised between human to non-human species because chimpanzees, the beings that are supposedly most linked to humans, lack an introspective factor (Focquaert, Braeckman, and Platek 63). Like the source from Jennifer Croissant, this source also demonstrates an appeal to logos. While I could see myself using the scientific, neurological terms to describe self-awareness and introspection in terms of ignorance and knowledge, this source is not specifically involved in my subject matter. Not only did it prove difficult to understand, it also spent more time on chimpanzees than I would have liked it to for me to largely include this source in my final paper.

In search of a source with fewer chimpanzees, I happened upon an article debating the moral ambiguity of a certain situation. The situation is as follows: Anne pours sugar into Bill's coffee. The sugar is actually cyanide. Anne poisons Bill unknowingly and Bill dies. Is Anne to blame (Harman 444)? Harman, in opposition to a previous author's opinion, states that a "Narrower Conclusion" while not perfect would be better than a broad one. The Narrower Conclusion states that if a person is ignorant to a false belief (like Anne falsely believing that the cyanide was sugar) then the action is not blameworthy. This article presents an opportunity to talk about syllogism. For instance, if actions that are committed under false belief are permissible and Anne was under the false belief that the cyanide was sugar, then Anne's action must have been permissible. This paper is full of points that I would love to make, however the author seems to enjoy contradicting herself. If I could find an article making similar points (even using the same situation) by a different author then I believe it would prove useful to put in my last paper.

This next article however makes similar points to my first source, the Thomas Gray poem. Dr. Jennifer Kunst speaks of blissful ignorance as childish and that it should be most prevalent in children. She concludes that sometimes little minded children need to be kept from the truth, ignorance only has its place for a while. Growing up, in essence, is that loss of ignorance and the beginning of daunting responsibilities and awareness of misery. Kunst seemed to have used artistic proofs rather than inartistic when writing this article. While it is clearly noted that she is a doctor of psychology that establishes ethos and therefore her probable ability to write inartistically, she does not. Instead she proceeds to speak from her own personal experiences and observation. Because this article is a great pairing with the Thomas Gray poem, a source I definitely want to include in some form, I would enjoy keeping this source for my final product.  It is important that the general theme of my paper be completely defined in any way that I can.

In the effort of staying true to that last statement, my final source is a story that embodies the statement "ignorance is bliss" as wholly and absolutely as I could find. This episode of the television hospital drama House deals with James Sidas, a man with an IQ of 178 who traded his successful job to be a courier in order to be with his intellectually inferior wife. As the episode continues you find that Sidas had been using alcohol and cough syrup to "dumb himself down" in order to feel happy. His lonely life as a child prodigy left him with depression and later concludes that he would rather be dumb and happy rather than smart and miserable. The writers of this episode have the same goal every week: to make the watcher feel something. A television drama is nothing without its use of pathos. As I watched this episode, I found myself feeling bad for Jason Sidas, his wife, and their whole situation. Appealing to pathos is a more interactive way of making the reader, or watcher, agree with you, so I would like to anticipate using a source with a strong appeal to pathos like this one in the future.

The debate on whether ignorance is bliss or not has been a topic I have wanted to research for a relatively long time, so all the information that I found on the subject was very interesting for me. Of course, what I most enjoyed was being able to take forty-five minutes to watch an episode of House and call it research. What intrigued me was that, while all of my sources had ignorance or the absence of knowledge in mind in some way, not all of them talked about it like I expected they would. I'm not even sure if I could tell you what I expected in the first place, but it wasn't what I ended up finding. After doing this paper, my thoughts feel even more jumbled than before. With that in mind, I believe my next step is to iron out a more concrete thesis and choose the sources that will most likely be able to represent whatever that is the best.
