Vijaya asked:

Do you think that there is knowledge we should not seek? And if so, why?

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There is a popular saying that 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'. I am mentioning this at the
start because I want to exclude this sort of response. That is not a reason for not seeking knowledge
in the first place. If I know that the best I am likely to achieve in my knowledge seeking is insufficient
to reliably guide my actions, then I should be aware of that fact and proceed with caution. 'A little
knowledge' is dangerous only when we falsely estimate its size.

There are in fact two questions to answer: 1. Whether there is any knowledge which, as a matter of
prudent self-interest, I should not seek. 2. Whether there is any knowledge which it would be morally
wrong for me to seek.

1. Knowledge gives us the power to do things. If my plans rest on false assumptions, they are more
   likely to be frustrated than if they had been based on knowledge. It would seem to follow from this
   that knowledge can never be a bad thing for me. The more knowledge I possess, the more power I
   have to achieve my goals. However, we have to reckon on the psychological effect of certain kinds of
   knowledge, for example, the knowledge that one has only six months to live. A doctor may judge that
   it is not in a person's best interests to be told be told the truth about their state of health.

2. A person can be held morally culpable for not making sufficient effort to acquire knowledge of the
   facts, in cases where their actions have unintended bad consequences for others. It is not an
   adequate defence to say, for example, 'I didn't know that the brakes of my truck were faulty.' Ethics
   concerns doing good things, and not doing bad things, and just as in the case of prudent self-interest,
   knowledge is necessary for successfully carrying out our intentions. However, as before, there seem
   to be cases where one can reliably predict that the effects of our acquiring certain kinds of
   knowledge. One example would be the attempt to devise intelligence tests which could be used to
   determine possible differences between people from different racial groupings. It is a near-certainty
   that such knowledge would be put to a bad use.

I therefore see no contradiction in asserting the following propositions. Knowledge is prima facie good
for the person who seeks it. We have a prima facie moral duty to ensure that we act out of knowledge
rather than ignorance. Yet there are cases were, all things considered, knowledge is not good for the
person who seeks it. And there are cases were, all things considered, we morally ought not to seek
knowledge that is within our means to acquire.

Geoffrey Klempner