Active white ignorance is accompanied by an epistemic and affective insensitivity that allows American white people to avoid the negative affect that might typically accompany harmdoing. Resisting active ignorance about racism and white supremacy, therefore, often gives rise to shame. Yet, thinkers have debated the value of shame for white people’s antiracism. This article asserts that shame is an appropriate response for white people recognizing our culpability for and complicity in racist injustices and violence. However, the (...) article exposes problems with philosophical accounts of white shame, and draws on recent psychological research to show that contextual factors actually determine whether shame can support white antiracism. The article proposes a role for shame in what José Medina calls an “ethics and epistemology of discomfort,” arguing that there are conditions under which shame may encourage the sustained self-interrogation, sensitivity, and humility required if white people are to contribute meaningfully to antiracist action. (shrink)

This timely work provides the fullest account to date of “agnotology”—the study of ignorance—and how much of this ignorance is produced by science whether intended or unintended.1 Whether it be glo...

Climate science denial results from ignorance and perpetuates ignorance about scientific facts and methods of inquiry. In this paper, I explore climate science denial as a type of active ignorance...

What sort of epistemic positions are compatible with inquiries driven by interrogative attitudes like wonder and puzzlement? The ignorance norm provides a partial answer: interrogative attitudes directed at a particular question are never compatible with knowledge of the question’s answer. But some are tempted to think that interrogative attitudes are incompatible with weaker positions like belief as well. This paper defends that the ignorance norm is exhaustive. All epistemic positions weaker than knowledge directed at the answer to a (...) question are compatible with having an interrogative attitude towards that question. We offer two arguments for this conclusion. The first is based on considerations about the role of hedging in inquiry. The second is conditional on considerations related to the aim of inquiry as a goal-directed activity. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a theoretical and political role for ‘white ignorance’, present three alternative accounts of white ignorance, and assess how well each fulfils this role. On the Willful Ignorance View, white ignorance refers to white individuals’ willful ignorance about racial injustice. On the Cognitivist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance resulting from social practices that distribute faulty cognitive resources. On the Structuralist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance that (...) (1) results as part of a social process that systematically gives rise to racial injustice, and (2) is an active player in the process. I argue that, because of its greater power and flexibility, the Structuralist View better explains the patterns of ignorance that we observe, better illuminates the connection to white racial domination, and is overall better suited to the project of ameliorating racial injustice. As such, the Structuralist View should be preferred. (shrink)

At the start of the #metoo protests, many men professed genuine surprise about the prevalence of sexual harassment, whilst many women could not figure out how men could have been so ignorant. Black people have long observed that a similar apparent commitment to ignorance about race is widespread among whites. In a blog post originally written in 2004, the British journalist, Reni EddoLodge, reported that she had given up talking about race to white people because the majority simply refuse (...) to accept the reality of structural racism. She notes that when she speaks, she can see that “their eyes shut down and harden. It’s like treacle is poured into their ears, blocking up their ear canals” (Eddo-Lodge, 2017, p. ix). This chapter offers a vice-epistemological account of the ignorance of those who are invested in not knowing, with a special focus on white ignorance, understood as a kind of racial insensitivity. I have two main aims. The first is to show that some forms of ignorance are the product of epistemic vices, conceived as sensibilities. The second is to explain the mutually re-enforcing connection that exists between arrogance, ignorance, and privilege. The chapter consists of three sections: the first offers a definition of active ignorance. The second provides an account of one epistemically vicious sensibility – racial insensitivity. The third section illustrates how arrogance feeds on privilege, produces ignorance, and widens inequalities that entrench privilege. (shrink)

This article responds to Marzia Milazzo's article ‘On white ignorance, white shame, and other pitfalls in critical philosophy of race’, in which Milazzo argues that the concepts white shame, white guilt, white privilege, white habits, white invisibility and white ignorance are pitfalls in the process of decolonisation. Milazzo contends that the way these concepts are theorised in much critical philosophy of race minimises white people's active interest in reproducing the racial status quo. While I agree with Milazzo's (...) critique of white shame and white guilt, I argue that these affective responses are fundamentally different to the remaining concepts. Drawing on critical whiteness studies and agnotology, I argue that white privilege, white invisibility and white ignorance are valuable conceptual tools for revealing white people's active investment in maintaining racial inequality. Whereas Milazzo sees a contradiction between white people's active interest in maintaining racial inequality and concepts like white invisibility and white ignorance, I argue that, correctly theorised, these concepts resolve this apparent contradiction. I contest Milazzo's call to reject white privilege, white invisibility and white ignorance, arguing that these concepts are useful tools in the project of decolonisation. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge in publications about the epistemology of ignorance. In this article, I examine the proliferation of the concept ignorance that has come with the increased interest in the topic. I identify three conceptions of ignorance in the current literature: (1) ignorance as lack of knowledge/true belief, (2) ignorance as actively upheld false outlooks and (3) ignorance as substantive epistemic practice. These different conceptions of ignorance are as of yet (...) unacknowledged but are bound to impede epistemology of ignorance and, therefore, need to be uncovered. After discussing three unsuccessful ways of dealing with these varying conceptions, I put forward an integrated conception of ignorance that is more adequate for serving as the foundation of epistemology of ignorance. Introducing an alternative conception of ignorance provides us with a foundation for both epistemological and more broadly philosophical work on ignorance. (shrink)

On an initially plausible view of ignorance, ignorance is equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge-that. I argue that this view is incorrect, as lack of sufficient justification for one's true belief or lack of belief doesn't necessarily amount to ignorance. My argument rests on linguistic considerations of common uses of 'ignorant' and its cognates. The phrase 'is ignorant of', I argue, functions differently grammatically and semantically from the phrase 'does not know', when the latter is (...) used propositionally. 'Is ignorant of' does not have a genuine propositional use but is best understood as equivalent to 'is not knowledgeable of'. I further argue that 'knowledgeable' and 'ignorant' are relative gradable expressions. Relative gradables typically are associated with an implicit or explicit standard of comparison, give rise to borderline cases and trigger the Sorites Paradox in their unmarked form. From these linguistic considerations, it follows that being ignorant admits of degree, and that one can fail to be ignorant despite lacking true beliefs concerning the propositions constituting a particular subject matter. The proposed treatment of knowledgeability and ignorance of facts and subject matters lends itself to an alternative reply to the problem of skepticism, which I will call the ‘simple response’. In the final section of the paper I argue that ignorance can also reflect incompetence with respect to a particular activity. The latter, I argue, is a case of lacking a particular kind of ability-involving knowledge-how, viz. practical knowledge of how to perform the activity in question. (shrink)

Standpoint theorists have long been clear that marginalization does not make better understanding a given. They have been less clear, though, that social dominance does not make ignorance a given. Indeed, many standpoint theorists have implicitly committed themselves to what I call the strong epistemic disadvantage thesis. According to this thesis, there are strong, substantive limits on what the socially dominant can know about oppression that they do not personally experience. I argue that this thesis is not just implausible (...) but politically pernicious; it is an excuse for ignorance and silence that stifles our ability to address many injustices. Moreover, I argue that if we are to avoid lending support to the SEDT while working within a standpoint theory framework, we must hold that the socially dominant can achieve marginalized standpoints. So, we must hold that men can achieve feminist standpoints, that white women (and men) can achieve black feminist standpoints, and so on. (shrink)

The author advocates for teaching about varieties of ignorance with a psychoanalytic sensibility as one strategy with which to engage the emotional investments that sustain apathy and the ignorant refusal to care in this new era of suffering and spectatorship. Ignorance, here conceived, is complex, far from consisting only in some passive lack of knowledge. It is understood multidimensionally, as activity, rarely innocent, always inevitable, and entirely ineradicable; it is a powerful agent in the maintenance of oppression, but (...) it is also an important resource on which we can draw to promote curiosity and less defensive encounters with difficult knowledge and different Others. In diagnosing different forms of ignorance, we can distinguish between the varieties that are culturally produced and disseminated for profit from those forms which might serve as impetus for investigation. (shrink)

Drawing on contemporary epistemologies of ignorance, I analyze the American ideology of color blindness as a recalcitrant form of active ignorance that operates at a meta-level. I contend that the meta-ignorance involved in color blindness operates through distorting second-order attitudes about one's cognitive and affective attitudes, resulting in cognitive and affective numbness with respect to racial matters: ignorance of one's racial ignorance and insensitivity to one's racial insensitivity. I contend that the black/white binary that (...) has dominated the American racial imagination has contributed tremendously to establish and maintain meta-blindness about racial differences. I suggest that overcoming the black/white binary demands that we expand current conceptions of racial lucidity and that we go beyond the notions of double consciousness that critical race theorists have defended since Du Bois and Fanon. According to a more expansive social pluralism, lucidity with respect to racial differences requires a kaleidoscopic consciousness that does not reinscribe the black/white binary in one's racial imagination. (shrink)

In The Racial Contract, Charles Mills introduces the notion of an ‘inverted epistemology,’ an epistemology that construes social and racial ignorance as knowledge (p.18). As Mills points out, such ignorance can be used to oppress people by creating alternate realities or ‘white mythologies’ about race (p. 19). If the racial contract results in a society that oppresses people of color and supports white supremacy, then the question of how to correct an inverted epistemology becomes critical. Mills proposes the (...) correction of history and the racist thinking underwriting it as a solution to the problem. Others, like Alison Bailey, seek to confront racial ignorance with active resistance by suggesting that individuals from historically marginalized groups exploit what members of dominant society don’t know (p. 77). While Bailey’s solution, referred to as strategic ignorance, may originate from good intentions, I argue that it is in general inappropriate for Indigenous people. Strategic ignorance is a product of the Western worldview, and it privileges Western values. In fact, both solutions offered by Mills and Bailey fail to consider Indigenous values. Mills’ proposed solution, however, is less objectionable. Instead of either solution, a more suitable form of resistance – one that embraces connectedness, balance, and harmony – would be ideal for the Indigenous communities of Turtle Island. (shrink)

Positive ignorance is the putting in to question of, and sometimes moving on from, the knowledge we think we have, and asking where it might be just or helpful to do so. Drawing primarily on the work of Barbara Johnson, this article shows how the notion of positive ignorance might be offered as a tool in the context of education and educational research. Partly a critical development of Richard Smith's argument in ‘The Virtues of Unknowing’, I attempt to (...) understand ‘unknowing’ as an active rather than passive form of ‘not knowing’, in a manner that challenges some aspects of ‘the virtues of unknowing’ and its concomitant epistemological and ethical positions, not least those tied to Smith's advocacy for what he calls the ‘well-stocked mind’. Unknowing, in my reading, is not a dispositional acceptance of the desirability of nonknowledge, instead, unknowing is a means of epistemological resistance, especially against that which, often with very real social and political consequences, is presented as self-evident. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive philosophical investigation of ignorance. Using a set of cognitive tools and models, it discusses features that can describe a state of ignorance if linked to a particular type of cognition affecting the agent’s social behavior, belief system, and inferential capacity. The author defines ignorance as a cognitive condition that can be either passively borne by an agent or actively nurtured by him or her, and a condition that entails epistemic limitations that affect (...) the agent’s behavior, belief system, and inferential capacity. The author subsequently describes the ephemeral nature of ignorance, its tenacity in the development of human inferential and cognitive performance, and the possibility of sharing ignorance among human agents within the social dimension. By combining previous frameworks such as the naturalization of logic, the eco-cognitive perspective in philosophy and concepts from Peircean epistemology, and adding original ideas derived from the author’s own research and reflections, the book develops a new cognitive framework to help understand the nature of ignorance and its influence on the human condition. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a form of epistemic insensitivity that occurs when someone fails to make proper use of the epistemic tools at their disposal in order to bring their beliefs in line with epistemically relevant evidence that is available to them. I call this kind of insensitivity agential insensitivity because it stems from the epistemic behavior of an individual agent. Agential insensitivity can manifest as a failure to either attend to relevant and available evidence, or appropriately interpret evidence (...) that is attended to. The concept of agential insensitivity allows us to conceptualize the kind of not-knowing involved in forms of ignorance that are cultivated and maintained by individual agents, especially when this ignorance is enabled or encouraged by social structures. I use the skepticism about racial disparities in policing practices that is displayed by many white Americans as a lens for exploring this connection. Understanding agential insensitivity thus provides insight into both social and epistemic phenomena. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to the following argument which several authors have presented. If we are culpable for some action, we act either from akrasia or from culpable ignorance. However, akrasia is highly exceptional and it turns out that tracing culpable ignorance leads to a vicious regress. Hence, we are hardly ever culpable for our actions. I argue that the argument fails. Cases of akrasia may not be that rare when it comes to epistemic activities such as (...) evidence gathering and working on our intellectual virtues and vices. Moreover, particular cases of akrasia may be rare, but they are not exceptional when we consider chains of actions. Finally and most importantly, we can be culpable for our actions even if we do not act from akrasia or from culpable ignorance, namely in virtue of our unactivated dispositional beliefs. (shrink)

Socrates’ inquiry into the nature of the virtues and human excellence led him to experience Socratic ignorance, a practical puzzlement experienced by his recognition that his central life commitments were conceptually problematic. This practical perplexity was not, however, an epistemic weakness but a reflection of his wisdom. I argue that Socratic ignorance, a concept that has not received scholarly attention in business ethics, is a central aim that business practitioners should seek. It is what a truthful, thorough, and (...) courageous inquiry into their professional roles and commitments leads to. It wakes them up from the moral complacency engendered by organizations, forcing them to become much more critical of their day-to-day activities and more intentional about living virtuously. It curbs the corrupting potential of authority positions and prevents the tendency of subordinates to routinely conform to sanctioned norms and expectations. Finally, it opens up novel and creative moral avenues and provides a promising model to deal with the conflicts posed by our globalized and increasingly polarized world. (shrink)

Robert Proctor has argued that ignorance or non-knowledge can be fruitfully divided into at least three categories: ignorance as native state or starting point; ignorance as lost realm or selective choice; and ignorance as strategic ploy or active construct. This chapter explores Proctor’s second category, ignorance as selective choice. When scientists investigate poorly understood phenomena, they have to make selective choices about what questions to ask, what research strategies and metrics to employ, and what (...) language to use for describing the phenomena. This chapter focuses especially on the selective choice of language for describing and categorizing phenomena in the face of uncertainty. Using several case studies from recent pollution research, I show that linguistic choices are especially significant when we have severely limited knowledge, because those choices can emphasize and highlight some aspects of our limited knowledge rather than others. These selective emphases can in turn influence societal decision making, and they can exacerbate the selectivity of our knowledge by further steering scientific research in some directions rather than others. I conclude with some suggestions for developing scientific language in socially responsible ways, even in the face of significant ignorance and uncertainty. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a theoretical and political role for ‘white ignorance’, present three alternative accounts of white ignorance, and assess how well each fulfils this role. On the Willful Ignorance View, white ignorance refers to white individuals’ willful ignorance about racial injustice. On the Cognitivist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance resulting from social practices that distribute faulty cognitive resources. On the Structuralist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance that (...) results as part of a social process that systematically gives rise to racial injustice, and is an active player in the process. I argue that, because of its greater power and flexibility, the Structuralist View better explains the patterns of ignorance that we observe, better illuminates the connection to white racial domination, and is overall better suited to the project of ameliorating racial injustice. As such, the Structuralist View should be preferred. (shrink)

Although the historian confronts the question of what is not known in the same terms as does any other researcher no matter his or her discipline, the conditions of the debate are different for the historian because of the problematic nature of the science of history. While practically all the other sciences, including the social sciences, struggle against ignorance by seeking to discover and establish laws that will govern the facts, history must always face, in spite of its ever (...) more sophisticated techniques, the contingency of its materials, which are fundamentally human. The materials of history can not—in spite of what some have asserted—be contained within any single, all-encompassing mode of reasoning that would allow for the creation of constitutive abstract models. In spite of this reality the historian persists, like Sisyphus, in organizing knowledge. Man apparently has no choice but to believe that his activities have some logical basis. The historian therefore collates facts in order to develop cognitive and interpretive structures that will be durable. What gives the discipline of history its epistemological originality is the painfully central role it accords to the question, “What do we not know?” Man wants to know, believes he knows. The ignorance of historians thus seems especially upsetting when applied to our own century. How could the methodological progress of the science of history, along with the professionalization of the historian's craft, have led to an actual increase of uncertainty concerning a period so close to us in time? Today's man-in-the-street—endowed only with his memory, which seems so rich in “truths”—finds it hard to believe that any event or structure of the twentieth century could remain unknown. Limiting our inquiry to the twentieth century is not, however, justified solely by the practical consideration of trying to gain a better grasp of our times. Indeed in this brief article devoted to the relationship between ignorance and the history and historiography of the twentieth century, we will not attempt to inventory all the events, persons, mentalities or economic facts which historical knowledge has until now been incapable of explaining. Unlike the other sciences, whose struggle against ignorance is accomplished by a gradual process of nibbling at the margins of the unknown, the discipline of history must always keep in mind that the masses of granite that form the foundation of History are in fact but a body of statements that can only aspire to the status of truth. The aim of our inquiry— without of course claiming to be exhaustive—will therefore be to identify the nature of the obstacles that lie in the historian's path. These problems are of three kinds. The first concerns access to knowledge, and is tied—although not exclusively—to problems of the techniques of historical research. The second concerns the difficulties related to conceptualization and therefore to the uses of knowledge. There can be no knowing without know-how. Finally, the third pertains to the lack of permeability between history and the other human and social sciences, which creates for the historian the challenge of interdisciplinary exchange. (shrink)

Pulvermüller traces the differences in brain activity associated with function and content words. The model considers words displayed primarily in isolation. Research on letter detection suggests that what distinguishes function from content words are their roles in text. Hence a model that fails to consider context effects on the processing of words provides an insufficient accounting of word representation in the brain.

This article proceeds from a consideration of what John Baldacchino calls ‘viable ignorance’, attempting to take leave from the critical and pedagogical obligations of certain elements of Barbara Johnson's ‘positive ignorance’. It considers Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-François Lyotard and the composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen's reflections on modes of experience, and the cultivation of complementary dispositions, where the knowing, egocentric subject is transformed into, or undermined as, what Nietzsche calls ‘a medium of overpowering forces’. The disposition itself is outlined through close (...) readings of key elements of Nietzsche's notebooks, Lyotard's final chapter of Libidinal Economy (1993), and Stockhausen's lecture, ‘Intuitive Music’ (1971) and developed through supplemental practice-as-research activity in sound. The intention of this paper is to explore the space of aesthetic ignorance as committedly as possible, without reverting constantly to positive ignorance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feeling IgnorantA Phenomenology of Ignorance1Emily McRaeWhat does it feel like to be confused? What does it feel like to ignore something? These questions, although not prioritized in Western epistemologies, nevertheless matter in our lives. We often use our feelings as feedback on our epistemic states. Feeling ignorant is a reason to think we are ignorant and can motivate us to do something about it. Such feelings are fallible, of (...) course—we can feel like we know something we do not in fact know—but they provide rough, practical guidance to tracking our own epistemic states and motivations. In fact, feelings of ignorance may be central to the activity of learning. It is doubtful that we could learn effectively without them.But the affective profile and phenomenology of ignorance are rarely theorized in Western accounts, in large part, I suspect, because of the pervasive dichotomy of "thinking and feeling" that historically has dominated Western philosophical approaches to the mind. This dichotomy encourages us to sort phenomena according to their boundaries, and, if we must choose, ignorance seems to be more of an epistemic event than an affective one. Luckily, though, we do not have to choose. Buddhist psychological taxonomies, as I will show, are drawn along different lines. This positions Buddhist moral psychology to be a productive framework to investigate ignorance, since it allows us to attend to its epistemic, affective, and somatic contours.This paper focuses on the affective component of ignorance: what ignorance feels like, when and why these feelings arise (and when and why [End Page 26] they do not), and what feeling ignorant, particularly in moral contexts, can do for us. Drawing on the fourth-century Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, I examine the phenomenology of ignorance and argue that how ignorance feels depends on our epistemic access to our ignorance (whether and to what extent we know that we are ignorant) and the object of ignorance (what our ignorance is about). I argue that ignorance has a complex affective profile: it can feel a lot of different ways, ranging from unpleasant fogginess to clueless confidence. This complex affective profile makes ignorance difficult to spot, especially in ourselves, and marks a difference between ignorance and other problematic mental states, such as hatred or resentment, that have a more straightforward phenomenology. Understanding the connection between the object of ignorance, the epistemology of ignorance, and its affective phenomenology allows us to take on the project, essential in the Buddhist philosophical traditions, of locating and addressing our ignorance. Without careful attention to these three components, it is possible, and likely, to simply ignore our ignorance. I conclude with the suggestion that the ability to attend to our ignorance requires the cultivation of equanimity.This investigation into the affective side of ignorance requires the introduction of a core Buddhist philosophical and psychological category: the dysfunctional states (kleśa; nyon mongs). This is not only because the category of kleśa is a productive framework for understanding the phenomenology and epistemology of ignorance, as I will argue in the next section, but also because traditional Western categories of reason and emotion, or thinking and feeling, are not up to the task of investigating the affective aspects of ignorance. This dichotomy makes a division exactly at the place where my inquiry in this paper begins, for ignorance—as an affective, epistemic, and somatic experience—straddles the divide between thinking and feeling. The category of kleśa includes ignorance, along with other states that Western taxonomies would classify as emotions, such as hatred or envy. This allows for an investigation into features that ignorance may share with emotions without the commitment to the cumbersome claim that ignorance is (or is not) an emotion in the Western sense.The KleśasThe kleśas are dysfunctional states that cause wrong actions and suffering. They are typically divided into primary and secondary kleśas, where the primary kleśas are the root dysfunctional states and the secondary kleśas arise from the primary ones. Different texts and traditions include different kleśas as primary and secondary, but all agree that ignorance, desire, and hatred are among the primary kleśas... (shrink)

Human beings are among the species with the best color perception of all mammals. Yet, transparency can be perceived in scenes in which color cues point to opacity. Why do we ignore such color cues? Here we argue that colors, rather than being passively registered, must be actively recreated and then bound to other stimulus attributes. In this process, the visual system faces fundamental problems, some of which are logically impossible to solve. The resulting unreliability of color perception may go (...) some way toward explaining why color cues cannot usually veto transparency percepts. Other stimulus attributes, however, affect transparency perception strongly even though they are not processed in foolproof ways either. How come? We argue that our trichromatic color perception is likely to have been a late, and for that reason less than fully integrated, addition to an already existing visual system that was colorblind to red and green. (shrink)

Locke holds that the experience of voluntary action is the sole origin of the concept of causal power. What is it about this experience that compels Locke to draw this conclusion? I think this question should puzzle scholars a great deal more than it has. There are three existing interpretations of Locke’s position. The first explanation holds that Locke appeals to voluntary action because he takes this experience to reveal a necessary connection between volition and action; the second holds that (...) Locke is driven to this view by a prior commitment to the claim that mind is inherently active or that only mind is active; and the third holds that Locke takes reflection on the experience of voluntary action to reveal that in virtue of which volition brings about action. However, as I argue, these readings of Locke are inconsistent with the parsimony of his theory of causation and ignore the methodological demands of his empiricism. I submit that, according to Locke, the experience of acting voluntarily, or, equally, the feeling of bringing about change in the world, is a uniquely suitable origin in that its purely qualitative features mirror the characteristics that he deems essential to the concept of causal power. (shrink)

This article examines Samantha Vice's essay ‘How Do I Live in This Strange Place?’, which sparked a storm of controversy in South Africa, as a starting point for interrogating understandings of whiteness and racism that are dominant in critical philosophy of race. I argue that a significant body of philosophical scholarship on whiteness in general and by white scholars in particular obfuscates the structural dimension of racism. The moralisation of racism that often permeates philosophical scholarship reproduces colourblind logics, which provide (...) individualistic explanations for structural problems, thereby sustaining white dominance. In the process, I show that notions of white guilt, white habits, white ignorance, white invisibility, white privilege, and white shame as they are theorised in much critical philosophy of race share a crucial limitation: they minimise white people's active interest in reproducing the racist status quo. Studies, such as Vice's, that frame racism as a moral dilemma while silencing its institutionalisation and the central cause for its existence and longevity – that is, white people's investment in maintaining economic, political, and symbolic power – further naturalise white supremacy. (shrink)

“Ignorance” is receiving an increased amount of philosophical attention. The study of it even has its own name, “agnotology.” Some ignorance remains simply a case of not having enough information, but increasingly philosophers are recognizing a whole other type of ignorance, one that is socially constructed and often actively promoted. In the first section of this paper I examine perhaps the best known type of socially constructed ignorance, “white ignorance.” White ignorance reflects a lack (...) of genuine understanding of the social realities of others and it creates injustice. In the second section of the paper, I consider what it means to “genuinely understand,” arguing that when it comes to issues of justice those with epistemic power have a moral obligation to at least attempt to understand others’ social realities. (shrink)

A major strand of opposition to the West's/Global North's scientificising hegemony has recently been retrieved through Santos’ reinterpretation of Cusanus’ 15th-century doctrine of learned ignorance. Though Cusanus has been marginalised, his doctrine imbues a profound epistemic humility conducive to our present need to reconfigure education. Contributing to this retrieval, I define learned ignorance as an epistemic principle of humility, adherence to which conduces towards reconditioning learning and teaching as non-finalised, processual activities within a genuinely intercultural pluriverse of knowledges. (...) Agreeing with Santos’ marginalisation thesis and his advocacy of recovering similarly silenced voices from within Western discourse, I argue that learned ignorance in some works of English literature and philosophy has also been marginalised. One of the most famous lines from Pope—‘A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing’—has been widely misunderstood through failing to recognise the poem's learned ignorance elements. My reinterpretation of Pope suggests a possibly more extensive literary form of opposition to the scientificisation of knowledge. I also examine another marginalised, educationally significant retrieval of learned ignorance by Hamilton. His learned ignorance standpoint fundamentally opposes the scientificisation and instrumentalisation of knowledge and learning. The discussion identifies the counterhegemonic status of this epistemic principle of humility and intimates its paradigm-shifting opportunities through some brief closing suggestions concerning how learned ignorance enriches Freire's emphases on the importance of ‘love, humility and faith’ as essential to the ‘horizontal relationship’ between teacher and student of an educational dialogue founded on trust. (shrink)

When postgraduate researchers’ interests lie outside the body of knowledge with which their supervisors are familiar, different supervisory approaches are called for. In such situations, questions concerning the appropriateness of traditional models arise, which almost invariably involve a budding candidate’s relationship with a knowing-established researcher/supervisor. Supervisory relationships involving creative practice-led research in particular confront significant challenges by new and emerging themes, questions, processes and practices. My lack of disciplinary knowledge regarding two PhD candidates’ projects led me some years ago to (...) question the effects of this lack and to search for effective ways of dealing with it. A subsequent commitment to different modes of candidate/supervisor collaborations was based on three assumptions: One, a supervisor is not, in the first instance, a conveyor or purveyor of knowledge. Two, postgraduate researchers already have substantial and refined pockets of relevant knowledge to draw on. Three, and very importantly, they are able to activate networks of distributed knowledge, often outside of the University. The argument presented in this article draws theoretically on Jacques Rancière and Hannah Arendt’s ideas of pedagogy and public space, as well as notions of cosmopolitics, mode 2 knowledge and not-knowing in Art & Design. Reflections on my experiences of supervising PhD and Master of Art & Design candidates, together with ideas offered by contributors to a book I have recently edited, will locate moments of choice and the emergence of the unforeseeable, of vigilance towards singular events as much as collective understanding. (shrink)

In “Popper, Weber, and Hayek: The Epistemology and Politics of Ignorance,” Jeffrey Friedman argues that markets are superior to democratic institutions because the price system doesn't require people to make the kind of difficult counterfactual judgments that are necessary in order to evaluate public‐policy alternatives. I contend that real‐world markets require us to make all kinds of difficult counterfactual judgments, that the nature of these judgments limits the effectiveness of the price system in coordinating our activities, and that the (...) market participant who is capable of making reasonably good economic judgments can also become the kind of well‐informed citizen who is essential to democratic self‐government. (shrink)

Advocates of ?deliberative democracy? want citizens to actively participate in serious dialogue over political issues, not merely go to the polls every few years. Unfortunately, these ideals don't take into account widespread political ignorance and irrationality. Most voters neither attain the level of knowledge needed to make deliberative democracy work, nor do they rationally evaluate the political information they do possess. The vast size and complexity of modern government make it unlikely that most citizens can ever reach the levels (...) of knowledge and rationality required by deliberative democracy, even if they were better informed than they are at present. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In the paper we present a survey of some approaches to the semantics of many-valued propositional systems. These approaches are inspired on one hand by classical problems in the investigations of logical aspects of epistemic activity: knowledge and truth, contradictions, beliefs, reliability of data, etc. On the other hand they reflect contemporary concerns of researchers in Artificial Intelligence (and Cognitive Science in general) with inferences drawn from imperfect information, even from total ignorance. We treat the mathematical apparatus that (...) has emerged recently: algebraic structures related to the new logical systems in the same way Boolean algebras correspond to classical logic. (shrink)

In Buddhist contexts, avidyā refers not only to a lack of knowledge but also (and primarily) to an active misapprehension of reality, a warped projection onto reality that reinforces our own dysfunction and vice. Ignorance is rarely innocent; it is not an isolated phenomenon of just-not-happening-to-know-something. It is maintained and reinforced through personal and social habits, including practices of personal and collective false projection, strategic ignoring, and convenient “forgetting.” This view of avidyā has striking similarities to philosophical analyses (...) of white ignorance, such as Charles Mills’, which understand white ignorance not in terms of a passive lack of knowledge but as an active refusal by whites to confront basic facts about our social world (Mills 2007, 16). I argue that Buddhist analyses of avidyā may help us understand the mechanisms of white ignorance and the practices for deconstructing it. (shrink)

Emmalon Davis has offered an insightful analysis of an under-theorized form of epistemic oppression calledepistemic appropriation.This occurs when an epistemic resource developed within marginalized situatedness gains inter-communal uptake, but the author of the epistemic resource is unacknowledged. In this paper, I argue that Davis's definition of epistemic appropriation is not exhaustive. In particular, she misses out on explaining cases of epistemic appropriation in which an intra-communal epistemic resource isobscuredthrough inter-communal uptake. Being attentive to this form of epistemic appropriation allows us (...) to identify unique forms of epistemic oppression that emerge as a result of socially maintained active ignorance. (shrink)

We can currently see the formation of new nationalist and racist parties or tendencies within established parties to lean towards right-wing politics within many European countries; from the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) in the Netherlands, Lega Nord or Lega in Italia, Vox in Spain, the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, Front National in France, the Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden, Fidesz in Hungary, and Golden Dawn in Greece, to name only a few. At the same time, there (...) has been a surge in racist, fascist, and antisemitic attacks within Europe. Since 1991, Neo-Nazi gangs have attacked migrants and members of antifascist groups, burned down housing facilities for asylum seekers (including facilities for Ukrainian refugees in 2022), disrupted social initiatives, and spread fear (BfV, 2022; cf. Speit, 2021). However, most of these activities were described as the criminal action of socially marginalized individuals, downplaying the organized structure behind these far-right activities and, thus, paving the way for more attacks. Part of this paper is to show how the epistemic tools developed by the epistemology of ignorance literature can help to understand (a) why the organized structures of far-right movements are unintelligible within the dominant frame of intelligibility in Europe and (b) how the silence about far-right movements shifts the boundaries for what can be said or done, thus, having deeply problematic repercussions for who can feel safe in Europe. This paper has a modest aim: By bringing into focus contexts of social injustice that have not received much attention in the current literature and by understanding them with the help of existing research from the debate on problematic epistemic practices and philosophy of language, the paper aims to highlight some problematic practices. (shrink)

Emmalon Davis has offered an insightful analysis of an under-theorized form of epistemic oppression calledepistemic appropriation.This occurs when an epistemic resource developed within marginalized situatedness gains inter-communal uptake, but the author of the epistemic resource is unacknowledged. In this paper, I argue that Davis's definition of epistemic appropriation is not exhaustive. In particular, she misses out on explaining cases of epistemic appropriation in which an intra-communal epistemic resource isobscuredthrough inter-communal uptake. Being attentive to this form of epistemic appropriation allows us (...) to identify unique forms of epistemic oppression that emerge as a result of socially maintained active ignorance. (shrink)

Marine ecosystems are under increasing pressure from human activity, yet successful management relies on knowledge. The evidence-based policy (EBP) approach has been promoted on the grounds that it provides greater transparency and consistency by relying on ‘high quality’ information. However, EBP also creates epistemic responsibilities. Decision-making where limited or no empirical evidence exists, such as is often the case in marine systems, creates epistemic obligations for new information acquisition. We argue that philosophical approaches can inform the science-policy interface. Using marine (...) biosecurity examples, we specifically examine the epistemic challenges in the acquisition and acceptance of evidence to inform policy, discussing epistemic due care and biases in consideration of evidence. (shrink)

An introduction to the new area of ignorance studies that examines how science produces ignorance—both actively and passively, intentionally and unintentionally. We may think of science as our foremost producer of knowledge, but for the past decade, science has also been studied as an important source of ignorance. The historian of science Robert Proctor has coined the term agnotology to refer to the study of ignorance, and much of the ignorance studied in this new area (...) is produced by science. Whether an active or passive construct, intended or unintended, this ignorance is, in Proctor's words, “made, maintained, and manipulated” by science. This volume examines forms of scientific ignorance and their consequences. A dialogue between Proctor and Peter Galison offers historical context, presenting the concerns and motivations of pioneers in the field. Essays by leading historians and philosophers of science examine the active construction of ignorance by biased design and interpretation of experiments and empirical studies, as seen in the “false advertising” by climate change deniers; the “virtuous” construction of ignorance—for example, by curtailing research on race- and gender-related cognitive differences; and ignorance as the unintended by-product of choices made in the research process, when rules, incentives, and methods encourage an emphasis on the beneficial and commercial effects of industrial chemicals, and when certain concepts and even certain groups' interests are inaccessible in a given conceptual framework. Contributors Martin Carrier, Carl F. Cranor, Peter Galison, Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Philip Kitcher, Janet Kourany, Hugh Lacey, Robert Proctor, Londa Schiebinger, Miriam Solomon, Torsten Wilholt. (shrink)

Epistemic exploitation occurs when privileged persons compel marginalized persons to educate them about the nature of their oppression. I argue that epistemic exploitation is marked by unrecognized, uncompensated, emotionally taxing, coerced epistemic labor. The coercive and exploitative aspects of the phenomenon are exemplified by the unpaid nature of the educational labor and its associated opportunity costs, the double bind that marginalized persons must navigate when faced with the demand to educate, and the need for additional labor created by the default (...) skepticism of the privileged. I explore the connections between epistemic exploitation and the two varieties of epistemic injustice that Fricker (2007) identifies, testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. I situate epistemic exploitation within Dotson’s (2012; 2014) framework of epistemic oppression, and I address the role that epistemic exploitation plays in maintaining active ignorance and upholding dominant epistemic frameworks. (shrink)

This study addressed the question of whether L2 learners are able to utilize verb’s argument structure information in online structural analysis. Previous L2 research has shown that L2 learners have difficulty in using verb’s intransitive information to guide online syntactic processing. This is true even though L2 learners have grammatical knowledge that is correct and similar to that of native speakers. In the present study, we contrasted three hypotheses, the initial inaccessibility account, the intransitivity overriding account, and the fuzzy subcategorization (...) frame account, to investigate whether L2 learner’s knowledge of intransitive verbs is in fact ignored in L2 online structural analysis. The initial inaccessibility account and the fuzzy subcategorization frame account predicted that L2 learners cannot access intransitivity information in building syntactic structures in any situation. The intransitivity overriding account predicted that intransitivity information is accessed in L2 parsing, but this process is overridden by the strong transitivity preference when a verb is followed by a noun phrase. Importantly, the intransitivity overriding account specifically predicted that L2 learners would be able to use intransitive information in online syntactic processing when a noun phrase does not appear immediately following a verb. We tested the three accounts in an eye-tracking reading experiment using filler-gap dependency structures. We manipulated verb’s transitivity information and lexically based plausibility information and tested English native speakers as a control L1 group and Japanese-English L2 participants. The results showed that L2 learners as well as native speakers processed sentences differently depending on the subcategorization information of the verb, and adopted transitive analysis only when the verb was optionally transitive, providing support for the intransitivity overriding. The results further demonstrated that L2 learners had strong expectations for the transitive structure, which is consistent with the view proposed by the hyper-active gap-filling hypothesis. In addition, the results showed that the semantic mismatch in the incorrect transitive analysis facilitated native speaker’s processing but caused difficulty for L2 learners. Together, the current study provides evidence that L2 learners use intransitive information of the verbs to guide their structural analysis when there are no overriding constraints. (shrink)

The recent expansion of online genetic-genealogical networks has been hailed as a development that could break racial taboos in the United States by providing irrefutable evidence of the myriad historical and genetic links—many originating in slavery—connecting white and black families. These predictions are countered, however, by a scholarly literature on “white ignorance,” defined as an active historical project that works to prevent privileged groups from apprehending their links to, and positionality within, systems of racial oppression. This paper mobilizes (...) concepts from the fields of agnotology and epistemic ethics to assess how far genetic-genealogical technologies can contribute to redressing racialized epistemic inequities between slave and slaveholder descendants, by inducing the latter to respond to the former’s kinship claims and give access to data that could help reconstruct their linked family histories. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data that foreground the experiences of African American genealogists, the study outlines the structural and affective dimensions that have converged to enable white ignorance regarding genealogies of slavery and discusses ethical and technical solutions proposed by genealogical practitioners to redress the racialized power dynamics that continue to condition access to, and public acceptance of, family history knowledge relating to slavery. (shrink)

Prichard's concern here is whether a person's obligation depends either on features of his or her situation or on features of his or her thoughts about that situation. Related to this contrast between the objective view and the subjective view is the issue of whether an obligation is an obligation to do some action. To the latter issue, Prichard responds that an obligation is not an obligation to do something, but an obligation to set ourselves to do something; as a (...) consequence, it is necessary to modify the terms of Prichard's primary concern. This modification diminishes the force of the objective view and does nothing to eliminate the central difficulty in the subjective view, namely, that the obligation to do some action is said to depend not on the character that the action would have, but on our belief that it would have that character. The belief that some general character picks out obligations derives from the mistaken habit of regarding the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as equivalent to ‘ought’ and ‘ought not’. Having highlighted this mistake, Prichard holds that in instances where we have considered the circumstances fully, our thoughts about the situation decide whether we ought to perform a given activity. (shrink)

Childhood scholars have found that age inequality can be as profound an axis of meaningful difference as race, gender, or class, and yet the impact of this understanding has not permeated the discipline of sociology as a whole. This is one particularly stark example of the central argument of this article: despite decades of empirical and theoretical work by scholars in “the social studies of childhood,” sociologists in general have not incorporated the central contributions of this subfield: that children are (...) active social agents (not passive), knowing actors strategizing within their constraints (not innocent), with their capacities and challenges shaped by their contexts (not universally the same). I contend that mainstream sociology’s relative imperviousness has led to theoretical costs for both childhood scholars—who must re-assert and re-prove the core insights of the field—and sociologists in general. Using three core theoretical debates in the larger discipline—about independence, insecurity, and inequality—I argue that children’s perspectives can help scholars ask new questions, render the invisible visible, and break through theoretical logjams. Thus would further research utilizing children’s perspectives and the dynamics of age extend the explanatory power of social theory. (shrink)

Plato's Socrates denies that he knows. Yet he frequently claims that he does have certainty and knowledge. How can he avoid contradiction between his general stance about knowledge and his particular claims to have it? Socrates' disavowal of knowledge is central to his defence in the Apology. For here he rebuts the accusation that he teaches – and thus corrupts – the young by telling the jury that he cannot teach just because he knows nothing. Hence his disavowal of knowledge (...) is important to Socrates. Why does he make this claim? And how then can he justify engaging in any philosophical activity at all? (shrink)

Plato's Socrates denies that he knows. Yet he frequently claims that he does have certainty and knowledge. How can he avoid contradiction between his general stance about knowledge (that he lacks it) and his particular claims to have it?Socrates' disavowal of knowledge is central to his defence in theApology. For here he rebuts the accusation that he teaches – and thus corrupts – the young by telling the jury that he cannot teach just because he knows nothing. Hence his disavowal (...) of knowledge is important to Socrates. Why does he make this claim? And how then can he justify engaging in any philosophical activity at all? (shrink)

Do you feel like you're the only person at your office without an "I Voted " sticker on Election Day? It turns out that you're far from alone - 100 million eligible U.S. voters never went to the polls in 2016. That's about 35 million more than voted for the winning presidential candidate. In this book, Christopher Freiman explains why these 100 million need not feel guilty. Why It's OK to Ignore Politics argues that you're under no obligation to be (...) politically active. Freiman addresses new objections to political abstention as well as some old chestnuts. He also synthesizes recent empirical work showing how our political motivations distort our choices and reasoning. Because participating in politics is not an effective way to do good, Freiman argues that we actually have a moral duty to disengage from politics and instead take direct action to make the world a better place. Key Features: Makes the case against a duty of political participation for a non-expert audience Presupposes no knowledge of philosophy or political science and is written in a style free of technical jargon Addresses the standard, much-repeated arguments for why one should vote Presents the growing literature on politically motivated reasoning in an accessible and entertaining way Covers a significant amount of new ground in the debate over a duty of political participation Challenges the increasingly popular argument from philosophers and economists that swing state voting is effective altruism Discusses the therapeutic benefits of ignoring politics--it's good for you, your relationships, and society as a whole. (shrink)

Mainstream cognitive neuroscience typically ignores the role of quantum physical effects in the neural processes underlying cogni¬tion and consciousness. However, many unsolved problems remain, suggesting the need to consider new approaches. We propose that quantum theory, especially through an ontological interpretation due to Bohm and Hiley, provides a fruitful framework for addressing the neural correlates of cognition and consciousness. In particular, the ontological interpretation suggests that a novel type of 'active information', connected with a novel type of 'quantum potential (...) energy', plays a key role in quantum physical processes. After introducing the ontological interpretation we illustrate its value for cognitive neuroscience by discussing it in the light of a proposal by Beck and Eccles about how quantum tunneling could play a role in controlling the frequency of synaptic exocytosis. In this proposal, quantum tunneling would enable the 'self' to control its brain without violating the energy conservation law. We argue that the ontological interpretation provides a sharper picture of what actually could be taking place in quantum tunneling in general and in synaptic exocytosis in particular. Based on the notions of active information and quantum potential energy, we propose a coherent way of understanding how mental processes (understood as involving non-classical physical processes) can act on traditional, classically describable neural processes without violating the energy conservation law. (shrink)