Abstract
There is a debate on the nature of ignorance in contemporary epistemology. The standard view holds that ignorance is the lack of knowledge, while the new view contends that ignorance is the lack of true belief. Rather than taking a side in this dispute, Pritchard recently offers a new proposal according to which ignorance essentially involves not just the absence of a certain epistemic good, but also an intellectual failing of inquiry. We argue that Pritchard’s new proposal advances the discussion of ignorance by incorporating insight from virtue epistemology, and hence the normative dimension of ignorance is properly noticed. Crucially, ignorance is no longer a mere static cognitive state, but also reflects the quality of inquiry and inquirers’ obligations. However, the new proposal faces two problems. First, current formulation is incomplete so that it cannot ground the epistemic blame that Pritchard requires. More details must be filled in. Second, his view would label all ignorance as normatively negative, and therefore locutions such as virtuous ignorance, blameless ignorance and the positive value of ignorance would be wrong.
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Notes
When objectual ignorance is involved in the debate, we will make it explicit.
The linguistic evidence can be found in Peels and Le Morvan (2016, 16).
See Le Morvan and Peels (2016, 26–30).
This argument can be found in Le Morvan and Peels (2016, 29).
One reviewer says that in real life a detective would not form his belief this way. We agree that this case is unrealistic, but it can further the philosophical understanding of ignorance.
In terms of instrumental value, there are cases where ignorance is not intellectual bad because it has positive epistemic value. For instance, it is created or maintained for the sake of epistemic good.
This conclusion has been argued in Chisholm and Sosa (1966, 245). An example can illustrate this point. Within a hedonistic framework, there is a happy crane is a good state of affairs. However, the possibility that there are no happy cranes is not a bad state of affairs. As they put it, “to rate the universe a minus, a state of affairs should involve displeasure or unhappiness, not merely the absence of pleasure or happiness.”.
Influential accounts of fundamental epistemic good including the truth account, the knowledge account, the understanding account by Elgin (2017), and the wisdom account by Tiberius (2008). Pritchard also notes that there is a possibility that one embraces a pluralism about fundamental epistemic good. Note that in Pritchard (2021c), he endorses the truth account.
One may see this point by looking at Sosa’s virtue epistemology. According to Sosa (2007), in the standard Gettier cases, one may have a belief that is both accurate and adroit, but fails to be apt. In this situation, the belief’s being accurate does not manifest the belief’s being adroit. Analogously, we can say that there are cases where the inquiry’s failure does not manifest the inquirer’s unskilfulness.
Italics are our own.
Note that the standard view would explain this idea indirectly. Since Jim believes that P < smoking is not risky > and P is false, Jim is alethically ignorant that P. And it is so because Jim is ignorant that not-P < smoking is risky > . This line of explanation is advocated by Le Morvan (2012, 383).
Note that this is the primary value problem of knowledge. Pritchard distinguishes three value problems in Pritchard (2010, 5–8).
We suspect that Pritchard presents this idea in a misleading way. If this is the normative condition on ignorance, then one who is ignorant that p must manifest the absence of intellectual vice. This is clearly false. Obviously, a person can be ignorant that p when his intellectual vice prevents him from knowing certain truths that he is required to know. Jim the smoker at t3 is a case in point. Hence, this idea should be understood as follows. To avoid the charge of ignorance, the absence of intellectual vice is needed. Only when intellectual vice is present, the charge if ignorance can take place.
Pritchard (2022, 14) distinguishes between propositional ignorance and character ignorance. Propositional ignorance is ignorance ascribed to subjects with regard to a particular proposition. Character ignorance is ignorance ascribed to a person’s character.
See Sosa (2007, 78–79).
Note that even typical reliabilists do not understand intellectual vices in this inverted way. Goldman (1992, 162) takes guesswork, wishful thinking and ignoring contrary evidence as intellectual vices. Sosa (1991, 229) mentions haste and inattentiveness. Greco cites wishful thinking and superstition (2002, 521).
El Kassar (2018, 305) submits a similar point. He expresses the concern that understanding ignorance as dysfunctional belief forming practices overlooks the fact that ignorance may, in fact, be valuable in the sciences and in inquiry quite generally.
We admit that sometimes a moral duty comes with an epistemic duty. For example, one is morally required to drive carefully in order not to harm other people on the road, this duty comes with the epistemic duty that one should focus on the road while driving.
Even if she might have other reasons to know, her moral reason not to know trumps the other reasons. Hence, all things considered, she ought not to know.
One reviewer has the concern that the intuitions we appeal to tread on unappreciated moral perceptions, when it is only epistemic ones that matter. In discussing ignorance, we usually take it to be primarily an epistemic flaw. However, scholars don’t confine the discussion to this domain. For instance, Peels and Le Morvan (2016) defends the new view of ignorance by considering the exculpatory power of blameless ignorance. Pritchard (2021b, 7–8) also says that one’s obligation is affected by epistemic and moral factors. For these reasons, we don’t draw a sharp boundary between these two reasons in discussing Pritchard’s view of ignorance. However, if Pritchard adopts this strategy and considers only epistemic matter, then we would instead argue that his account is too restrictive.
Proctor (2008, 7).
See Pritchard (2016, 134). In footnote 7, He expresses the concern that the standard view of ignorance is broadly correct, but there are some difficult cases. However, for the ease of discussion, Pritchard sets this issue aside. One reviewer contends that ignorance seems to be primarily a matter of omission or failure to know (what one is supposed to know), rather than a matter of knowledge absence. According to this contention, not knowing the misleading defeater would be mere absence of knowledge, rather than ignorance. We accept this distinction. However, our point is that Pritchard’s early view would classify not knowing the misleading defeater as ignorance since it is also a lack of knowledge. This result helps to reveal the positive instrumental value of ignorance. This conclusion is interesting enough. However, this advantage would be undermined when he adopts the novel view of ignorance developed in Pritchard (2021a, 2021b, 2021c). The crucial point is not to develop our view of ignorance, but to highlight the substantial change in Pritchard’s positions and its implications.
Indeed, there are things with such a value combination. For instance, torturing an innocent genius scientist has negative intrinsic value, but if doing so is the only way to acquire some confidential research findings, then this action has negative intrinsic value but positive instrumental value.
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Funding
Shanghai Social Science Project “vice epistemology and the turn of ignorance studies” (No. 2022ZZX004).
FDUROP Wangdao Programme (No. 22081).
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Wang, J., Wang, C. Pritchard on ignorance and normativity. AJPH 2, 3 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-022-00058-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-022-00058-8