Ignorance is Bliss

There are a number of crucial considerations that bear on this debate. They are:1. Is 'Ignorance is Bliss' literal?2. Does 'Ignorance is Bliss' have to be true in all situations to be considered true?3. What does 'Ignorance is Bliss' actually mean?I do not believe that any phrase has a 'correct' or 'essential' definition: I take the view of Ludwig Wittgenstein, which is that definitions have 'familial relationships' with one another, that overlap and evolve over time. Nonetheless, we can tell the rough, current meaning of a phrase by its general use: and I do not believe that this general use is the use Con is claiming that it has. 1. Con claims that "'Ignorance is Bliss' is not an idiom, and claims that "the phrase itself is pretty much literally the sum of it's parts". I found the phrase on several dictionary sites listed as an idiom, but in any case this is untenable - the phrase is far too vague. Indeed, even the oversimplified definition Con gives: "Not knowing something makes you happier" is in fact a large elaboration on the original phrase. For the 'it makes you' in that sentence elaborates the information that it means people are causally affected by ignorance to be happier - information not available from the mere phrase by itself. Even if we agree that the phrase is not sufficiently different from the sum of its parts to be considered an idiom, its meaning is still highly interpretable - which means we should pay careful attention to its use to determine its truth status. 2. I believe that this is obviously not true - proverbs are not intended to be logical principles in the same vein as axioms or mathematical truths. They only have to be largely true insights to be considered true. Take 'a penny saved is a penny earned'. This proverb is not undermined by the fact that it is possible that someone will steal all your saved pennies, thus rendering your earnings void - it only has to be generally true. 3. This is where the most important argument lies. Con did not respond to my documentation of the original source of the phrase: remember, I pointed out that in its original setting the phrase was a conditional statement that meant "it is foolish to learn the facts when doing so would cause misery and suffering, and where ignorance would be blissful". Con's arguments simply do not apply to this interpretation.I claimed that the phrase typically was used to mean "If one does not know about a problem or unpleasant fact, one will not worry about it". I do not intend this to become a dictionary battle - and indeed, different dictionaries seem to give subtly different interpretations of the phrase. However, I believe this to be a more plausible interpretation than the one Con gives - which is just that "Not knowing something makes you happier.". This is obviously not true unconditionally. It does not even seem insightful, which makes me think that it cannot be the intended meaning - if it is not even intuitively plausible, why would people believe it?In fact, I think Con gets it more right somewhere in his round. He says "If we don't know how miserable we should be, we will be happier". Note that this is different from saying that "Not knowing something makes you happier". The latter is a very general statement, wheras the former is conditional. It equates to "In situations where knowing something would make you miserable, not knowing that thing will make you happier" - and that seems true. Con's various counterexamples.Con gives a number of examples to try to prove his point. There is an initial problem I would like to raise with this approach - it does not seem to prove the resolution. For, just as in the case of 'a penny saved is a penny earned' exceptions to the phrase are not enough to negate the resolution - rather, one would have to show that the phrase is generally wrong, which I do not blelieve Con has done, or even attempted to do. But even so, are his examples sound?Some of them seem to be negated by the mere fact that they do not seem to rely on ignorance - the examples in his first round are not examples of ignorance - i,e, the lack of knowledge about something, but rather the presence of a false belief which is something different. As far as I can tell, the suffering caused by the example at the end of the first round of Con being miserable is due to various misfortunes in his life, rather than ignorance. But in any case, the ignorance of happy or wonderful events simply does not apply to the proverb - for we have seen, it is not a general statement but rather a conditional one. It is only when the knowledge in question would have made you miserable that it applies. The other examples all have a common theme - the person is happy at the time, but eventually his ignorance catches up with him and he is made miserable. Someone slips on ice and crashes, or shoots someone jokingly not knowing that someone else had loaded the gun. Right away, there is a problem - in most of these examples, it is not true that knowing would make you unhappy. If you knew the road was icy it would not make you unhappy, but you would be more careful. If you knew the gun was loaded you would simply not shoot. However, there is another problem - the phrase obviously does not mean that you will be permanently happy - that's obviously false. Rather, the phrase more likely means that at the time of being ignorant you are happier than if you had known. Ignorance was indeed bliss when you had sex with the girl who had AIDs. That bliss, of course, did not last - eventually you found out that she had AIDs. But at the time the proverb was true, even if it did not last forever.