(1) is not a gradable concept—if we’re clueless, then in Hilary Greaves’ words, we “can never have even the faintest idea” which of two actions is better.
(2), on the other hand, is a gradable concept—it can be more or less difficult to find the best strategies. Potentially it would be good to have a term that is gradable, for that reason.
I appreciate you making this distinction. Although I find that it all the more makes me want to use one term (e.g. clueless) for (2), and a modified version (absolutely clueless, or totally clueless, or perhaps infinitely clueless) for (1). I think that the natural relation between the two concepts is that (1) is something like a limiting case of (2) taken to the extreme, so it’s ideal if the terminology reflects that.
A couple of other remarks around this:
I think the fact that “totally clueless” is a common English phrase suggests that “clueless” is grammatically seen as a gradable concept.
I agree that in principle (2) is a gradable concept so we might want to have language that can express it.
In practice my instinct is that most of the time one will point at the problem and put attention on possible responses, and it won’t be that helpful to discuss exactly how severe the problem is.
However, I like the idea that being able to express gradations might make it easier to notice the concept of gradations.
I can dream that eventually we could find a natural metric for degree-of-cluelessness …
I appreciate you making this distinction. Although I find that it all the more makes me want to use one term (e.g. clueless) for (2), and a modified version (absolutely clueless, or totally clueless, or perhaps infinitely clueless) for (1). I think that the natural relation between the two concepts is that (1) is something like a limiting case of (2) taken to the extreme, so it’s ideal if the terminology reflects that.
A couple of other remarks around this:
I think the fact that “totally clueless” is a common English phrase suggests that “clueless” is grammatically seen as a gradable concept.
I agree that in principle (2) is a gradable concept so we might want to have language that can express it.
In practice my instinct is that most of the time one will point at the problem and put attention on possible responses, and it won’t be that helpful to discuss exactly how severe the problem is.
However, I like the idea that being able to express gradations might make it easier to notice the concept of gradations.
I can dream that eventually we could find a natural metric for degree-of-cluelessness …