What do we know of the experience of being ignorant, of how it feels? We know of the experience of being ignorant that it resembles closely the feeling of thinking one knows, the feeling, indeed, of being omniscient. (Perhaps even the numbness of total unknowing is a sort of presumption of knowledge… Would we go so far as to say that that person whom we deem most ignorant feels himself to be most omniscient?)
Does the feeling of (actually) knowing differ in any way (in many ways?) from the feeling of incorrectly thinking one knows? In the way we just said, yes, ignorance is a far more sweeping feeling of knowing, of knowing all, than actual knowing. The person who thinks he knows more than he does thinks also that knowing is more than it is. (Perhaps: real knowing isn’t a “feeling” at all while thinking one knows is. And yet knowing, whether correct or incorrect, can often be accompanied by a feeling of victory.)
Additionally, although those who know tend to be guarded and cautious about the things they know, there is one thing which, through experience, they have come to know with confidence and certainty: and that is the misconceptions of those who only think they know. (That is, experts know very well the errors of amateurs and students of their field.) These — the misconceptions — the knowers may know even better than the thing they hope to know about, we suggest.
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