Ignorance

It is a mistake to think that we cannot be morally responsible for forgetting because, as a matter of principle, forgetting is outside of our control. Sometimes we do have control over our forgetting. When forgetting is under our control there is no question that it is the proper object of praise and blame. But we can also be morally responsible for forgetting something when it is beyond our control that we forget that thing. The literature contains three accounts of the blameworthiness of forgetting over which the agent has no control—the tracing account, the liberalized awareness condition, and attributionism. Even though these are competing accounts of the blameworthiness of harmful forgetting they are compatible with one another. In particular, it is possible to come up with a position that endorses the tracing account for certain kinds of harmful forgetting and attributionism for other kinds of harmful forgetting.

By a wealth of indicators, ignorance appears a bona fide if often vexing social fact. Ignorance is socially constructed, negotiated, and pervasive; ignorance is often socially inevitable, even necessary; and, without a doubt, ignorance is socially consequential. Yet, despite its significance, ignorance has appeared a largely secondary concern among sociologists. Perhaps more perplexing, while sociologists of racism, power, and domination have long focused on the ways racial ideologies distort and mystify racial understanding to sustain white domination and systemic racism over time, we have done less to elaborate ignorance than is possible and warranted. Here, I join growing calls for a fully-fledged ‘sociology of ignorance,’ and argue antiracist and decolonial scholars have much to gain from and contribute to such an endeavor. This article traces the historical forebears of a ‘sociology of ignorance’ and explores ignorance as a social concept before turning to examine precedents and increasing attention to ignorance scholarship on racism, racial domination, and racialized non-knowing. Drawing from this work, I urge race-critical scholars take advantage of our unique position to advance theory and methodology surrounding ignorance and the social-cultural production of non-knowledge as a broader area of social inquiry.

The Epistemic Bubble, taken as a cognitive concept, was first conceived by John Woods as a form of knowledge-immunization that inhibits the agent from clearly distinguishing what she knows from what she believes she knows. In recent years, the notion of the Epistemic Bubble has been referred to and rethought by different authors to discuss other concepts that emerge as conflictual in the third- person perspective and that are indistinguishable in the first-person perspective of the practical agent, i.e. ignorance, violence, and religious dogmas. All the reconfigurations of the original bubble maintain the same background assumption: the practical agent in first-person perspective is limited in obtaining self-knowledge regarding her cognitive possibilities. Intuitively, the bubbles also draw the extension of the agent’s self-ignorance, if we can label as such the intrinsic limits and blindspots of her self-knowledge. Are the bubbles equal in providing limitations and possibilities to the agent’s metacognitive capacities? Can the No Escape Thesis – which says that when we correct a detected error we place ourselves in a new epistemic bubble – be applied also to the other kinds of bubbles? In this paper we will address these questions, by advancing a review of the bubbles so far presented in the logical and epistemological literature and discussing their further cognitive implications.

Weil sie Problem und Lösung zugleich sind, entpuppen sich Fusionen in der Praxis gemeinhin als kompliziertes Geflecht aus Erwartungen und Enttäuschungen. Im einen Fall mündet ein solches Geflecht in eine produktive Zusammenarbeit,
indem überzogene Hoffnungen angepasst werden und aus Enttäuschungen gelernt wird. Im anderen Fall entwickelt sich eine nicht mehr zu überbrückende Kluft zwischen Fusionsgewinnerinnen und Fusionsverlierern. Die sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung zu der Frage, warum konkrete Organisationsfusionen einen bestimmten Verlauf nehmen, hat einige Mechanismen herausarbeiten können, die Fusionserfolge einerseits, das Scheitern von Zusammenschlüssen andererseits erklären. Die Ansätze bilden zusammengenommen keine konsistente Theorie gelingender
Fusionen bzw. ihres Scheiterns. Sie belegen jedoch eindrücklich, dass die Vereinigung von zwei Organisationen kein Selbstläufer ist. Exemplarisch ist der Fall der Fusion der deutschen Daimler-Benz AG und der US-amerikanischen Chrysler Corporation, der daher im Mittelpunkt dieser kurzen Studie über die ganz normale Trägheit von Organisationszusammenschlüssen stehen soll. Meine These ist, dass die heiße Phase der Fusion von Daimler-Benz und Chrysler zwischen Februar und November 1998 durch eine eigentümliche Form der Ignoranz geprägt ist, die ich als Organisationsvergessenheit bezeichne.

Este trabajo aborda un episodio muy polémico e ilustrativo que ha tenido lugar en el complejo ciencia y tecnología propio de las sociedades occidentales contemporáneas. Se muestra así que en el debate general sobre las posibles consecuencias humanas y ambientales adversas derivadas de la libre proliferación mundial de los alimentos transgénicos confluyen posiciones científicas y técnicas muy divergentes e incluso claramente enfrentadas y contradictorias. En virtud de la tensión esencial entre un enfoque más tradicional y conservador frente a una perspectiva más innovadora y revolucionaria, se analiza cómo un reconocido y prestigioso experto en este campo de conocimiento pudo convertirse en muy poco tiempo en un profesional deshabilitado de su puesto de trabajo y en un investigador en gran medida desacreditado y desautorizado.

An elected politician is assassinated in the street by a terrorist associated with extreme political groups, and the national response is to encourage picnics. Thousands of people are held in prison-like conditions without judicial oversight or any time-limit on their sentence . An attempt to re-assert national sovereignty and borders leads thousands of citizens to register for dual citizenship with other countries, some overcoming family associations with genocide in their second country of nationality to do so. This is life in the UK today. How then are things still continuing as 'normal'? How can we confront these phenomena and why do we so often refuse to? What are the practices that help us to accommodate the unconscionable? How might we contend with the horrors that meet us each day, rather than becoming desensitized to them? Violent Ignorance sets out to examine these questions through an understanding of how the past persists in the present, how trauma is silenced or reappears, and how we might reimagine identity and connection in ways that counter - rather than ignore - historic violence. In particular Hannah Jones shows how border controls and enforcement, and its corollary, racism and violence, have shifted over time. Drawing on thinkers from John Berger to Ben Okri, from Audre Lorde to Susan Sontag, the book questions what it means to belong, and discusses how hierarchies of belonging are revealed by what we can see, and what we can ignore.

This edited collection explores the moral and social dimensions of ignorance. The volume addresses such issues as the relation between ignorance and deception, ignorance as a moral excuse, ignorance as a legal excuse, and the relation between ignorance and moral character. Together, these topics will add depth and insight into the question of what are the moral and social relevance, value, and role of ignorance. It will be the first in its kind in having as its focus exactly those problems associated with this dimension. It will draw together twelve commissioned chapters written by leading philosophers in the field.

Published with Routledge

List of Contributors: Larry Alexander; Marcia Baron; Julia Driver; Don Fallis; Alex Guerrero; Sven Ove Hansson; Elinor Mason; Seumas Miller; Martin Peterson; Carolina Sartorio; Holly Smith; Michael Zimmermann

In my paper I search for ethical answers to the threat of biodiversity caused by human interventions. I start with discussing the role of socioeconomic factors for the destruction of biological diversity, and examine the importance of biodiversity for the provision of ecosystem services on which the survival of human societies depends. Biodiversity is understood as an interrelation of genetic diversity, species diversity and ecosystemic diversity, which is far too complex for making any reliable prediction concerning the consequences of human intervention in ecosystems. This constitutive ignorance of ecological and environmental sciences will be used as a normative resource. Because of our ecological ignorance it is important to treat our fellow-beings and their forms of association with respect. Precisely because of their epistemological inaccessibility we are highly responsible for them. Regardless of whether or not nonhuman actors show morally relevant properties such as self-consciousness and the capacity for suffering, species and ecosystems have an potential of evolution with goals and directions which will keep on being unknown to us and deserves our recognition.

Nel gioco di carte Machiavelli o Ramino machiavellico, il cui nome deriva dal noto filosofo, ogni giocatore ha inizialmente in mano 10 o 13 carte francesi nascoste agli altri giocatori, può pescare ad ogni turno una carta da un mazzo coperto, non può scartare ed il suo scopo è quello di depositare tutte le carte che ha in mano sul tavolo da gioco seguendo validi schemi combinatori. Inquadrando una tale situazione all'interno della logica agent-based, il giocatore è un agente cognitivo circoscritto in un determinato contesto, il gioco, nel quale possiede un target, l'obiettivo di vincere il gioco, e un determinato numero di risorse cognitive composte dalle informazioni a sua disposizione e dalle euristiche in grado di applicare per meglio gestire questi dati. A ben vedere, Machiavelli (e un qualsiasi gioco di carte, in verità) è un esempio paradigmatico di una situazione in cui l'agente è in una condizione di economia cognitiva. Non solo non possiede la totalità delle informazioni (non conosce quali carte hanno in mano gli altri giocatori, l'ordine delle carte all'interno del mazzo e la distribuzione delle carte tra giocatori e mazzo), non ha risorse cognitive in grado di ovviare a questa mancanza (anche barando o continuando a pescare dal mazzo non avrebbe alcuna chance di raggiungere il totale controllo delle carte sul tavolo e nelle mani dei suoi avversari). Infine, ha a disposizione un tempo limitato per agire, scandito dai turni di gioco e dalla celerità delle azioni degli altri partecipanti. Appare lampante in questo caso la differenza, spesso sottolineata da Gabbay e Woods (2001), tra scantness (scarsità) e scarcity (povertà) delle risorse cognitive a disposizione di un agente: 1 è vero, infatti, che il giocatore ha poche informazioni, è costretto ad agire in un tempo limitato e non ha i mezzi per modificare questa situazione ma, per vincere il gioco e conseguire quindi l'obiettivo prefissato, non ha bisogno di più tempo o maggiori informazioni ma solo di elaborare ed applicare strategie cognitive in grado di eludere le difficoltà poste dal gioco stesso. Le risorse che possiede sono scarse, ma non paralizzanti, e sono il presupposto del concetto di homo heuristicus, introdotto nel dibattito negli ultimi decenni del secolo scorso (Gingerenzer e Brighton, 2009). 1 La scarsità delle risorse è, infatti, una qualità comparativa: non implica necessariamente la povertà o l'assenza delle risorse, ma solo una loro minore quantità rispetto a quelle che normalmente possiede un agente istituzionale (intorno a questo concetto cfr. capitolo precedente). A questo si aggiunge anche il fatto che l'agente pratico si pone, generalmente, obiettivi modesti, commisurati alla quantità di risorse cognitive a sua disposizione. In questo senso un individuo potrebbe, nonostante la scarsità degli strumenti disponibili, avere lo stesso tutti i mezzi per conseguire il suo scopo (Gabbay e Woods, 2001).

Recent years have seen a surge in publications in 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.

ONLINE COST-FREE DIGITAL EDITION. 49 PAGES. 28 PICTURES. FIRST EDITION 2021. OVER 5,500 READS.
Not a wise professor at the Wise faculty at the University of Virginia. Loss of her faculties? Charlatanism? Rookie's error? Seems like all of the above. This is the title of Elizabeth C. Hirschman, PhD.'s 'paper' and 'book': 'DNA EVIDENCE SUGGESTS MANY SCOTS and NORTHERN IRISH HAVE JEWISH ANCESTRY'. Well relax everybody; DNA evidence suggests nothing of the kind. In fact, DNA evidence points to the under-contrary. The evidence does suggest that the writer of the above titled paper and book, is an idiot.
I'm saddened to determine that this paper and book by Elizabeth C. Hirschman, PhD., are an insult to science, insult to the Journal of Humanities and Social Science which published it, but mostly it displays high level ignorance on part of this 'distinguished' writer…
Let me explain briefly why my critique of this paper is so harsh: Her paper holds 42 pages and is swamped with photos of prominent and less prominent Scots who feature... long noses. Hirschman, the author of this paper whose own surname suggests Jewish ancestry, must have been out of her mind (In Yiddish and Hebrew: "Meshugge") to come up with a method to identify Jewish ancestry based on bodily external features. A dark German regime used such method less then 80 years ago, in order to identify and exterminate over 6 Million European Jews.
This critique was mailed for Hirschman's response back in December 2021. Hirschman chose not to respond but she did remove her paper from her Academia.edu page. Absent response, her no-response points to admission.
You may skip directly to the chapter on page 28 named  'Analysis and Findings' which starts with the following sentence: "Four primary DNA haplogroups are considered founding lineages for the Jewish people…". Then she proceeds to name not 4 but rather 7 Haplogroups which she decided to be "Jewish Haplogroups" or in other words Jewish Y-Mutations. And those are her 7 JEWISH Y-mutations: J1-M267, J2-M172,
G-M201 E-M35, E-V13, R1a-M198 and R1a-M512.
Needless to say that there  is not, never has been a single Jewish man in those 7 haplogroups. I'm willing to give up the ability of my right arm (so to speak, as in Psalms 137; 05), if one single Jewish man was living in the eras of the 7 haplogroups she mentioned. Her claim actually infers time-frame wise, that biblical Adam and Eve were... Jewish. Preposterous. The first Jew to walk the earth (Abrahamic Era) lived some 20,000 years past the time-frames of the so called 'Jewish' haplogroups Hirschman mentioned.
Hirschman's paper is extremely false. A paper based on such falsehood does not display merely the ignorance of its writer but is dangerous to science and to the naive reader.
This lady not only had written a 100% fictitious book about Scots and Northern Irish being of Jewish ancestry ($18 for the Kindle edition) but then she went one leap too far, attempting by her 06/2021 fake paper, to bend Genetic Genealogy scientific  rules in order to adhere to her fictitious book... If this is not charlatanism, what is? Ignorance is not a virtue, even when presented by a U. of Virginia professor who claims that she is a "DNA Consultant"... You should be on high alert if she 'consults' you anything concerning DNA. This lady is a walking bombshell waiting to explode. One may wonder how can a college professor make such freshman errors. It seems that odd faculty choosing standards exist down south in Virginia...
Albert Einstein once said: "Only two entities seem infinite: the Cosmos and Human Stupidity, and I'm not sure about the first"...

https://www.amazon.com/Elizabeth-Caldwell-Hirschman/e/B001H6MZMW%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

https://dnaconsultants.com/elizabeth-hirschman-modern-pioneer/

https://facultydirectory.virginia.edu/faculty/eh9b

Abstract: The metaphysics of sex and gender is of significant philosophical, social, and cultural interest at present. Terms like transgender and cisgender have come into wider circulation in the fight for gender justice. While many are familiar with ‘transgender’, fewer know ‘cisgender’, the term that captures AFAB-women (assigned ‘female’ at birth-women) and AMAB-men. But ‘cisgender’ is controversial to some, which I find surprising. In this article, I reflect on my process of recognising my self as cisgender. During, I highlight the ethico-political consequences of refusing the onto-epistemic category ‘cisgender’. I shall argue that uptake of ‘cisgender’ and apprenticeship to trans texts uncovers how we maintain, and might purposefully disturb, queer/cis-hetero, man/woman/other hierarchies of social identity power. I argue this self-recognition is a crucial tool for challenging ‘cisgender commonsense’ and may be a means toward dislodging ciscentrism in my (western, Anglophone) milieu.

Note: This article has is part of a special issue on "Recognising Recognition: Interdisciplinary Insights into Self-Other Dynamics in Everyday Encounters and Experiences". Guest Editors are Sandra Obradovic (Open University) and Amena Amer (University of Greenwich).

Isabel Archer, the heroine of The Portrait of a Lady (1996), a brilliant female figure in the world's literary gallery, has aroused interest of critics and the public ever since the novel's publication. It seems that Henry James aims at portraying a "new woman": Isabel Archer who is frequently labeled as an independent lady. This paper analyzes several weaknesses in Isabel's personality: caprice, egotism, innocence and ignorance, which cause her blind worship of European civilization.

An overview is presented of what I take to be (some main aspects of) the role of the intellectual virtues within the epistemological enterprise. Traditionally, the theory of knowledge has been thought to be central to the epistemological project, but since, as I explain, the intellectual virtues aren't required for knowledge, this might suggest that they have only a marginal role to play in epistemological debates. I argue against this suggestion by showing how the intellectual virtues are in fact crucial to several core (and interrelated) epistemological topics, including the nature of inquiry, epistemic axiology and our understanding of ignorance.

What might early Buddhist teachings offer neuroscience and how might neuroscience inform contemporary Buddhism? Both early Buddhist teachings and cognitive neuroscience suggest that the conditioning of our cognitive apparatus and brain plays a role in agency that may be either efficacious or non-efficacious. Both consider internal time to play a central role in the efficacy of agency.  Buddhism offers an approach that promises to increase the efficacy of agency. This approach is found in five early Buddhist teachings that are re-interpreted here with a view to explaining how they might be understood as a dynamic basis for ‘participatory will’ in the context of existing free will debates and the neuroscientific work of Patrick Haggard (et al.). These perspectives offer Buddhism and neuroscience a basis for informing each other as the shared themes of: (1) cognition is dynamic and complex/aggregate based, (2) being dynamic, cognition lacks a fixed basis of  efficacy, and (3) efficacy of cognition may be achieved by an understanding of the concept of dynamic: as harmony and efficiency and by means of Buddha-warranted processes that involve internal time.

This thesis is a philosophical response to Arthur Zajonc’s (2013:90) statement that “[e]ducation has as its high purpose the eradication of ignorance”, in which I argue why and how contemplative education can offer a comprehensive means to achieve this stated purpose. The research methodology adopts an interpretivist paradigm, drawing on theorists/the theories of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and Max van Manen’s phenomenology of practice. With a hermeneutic phenomenology as my research methodology and the research methods of a phenomenological inquiry (bracketed questioning in wonder and openness) and hermeneutic interpretation (conceptual analysis), I explore the philosophical themes within contemplative education and ask “how” it may comprehensively eradicate ignorance and give meaning and understanding to the Self and the Other. Hence I initially explore the broad praxis of contemplative education in its epistemological dimensions, looking at contemplative practices and the role of the Inner Scholar (Dederer 2007). Conclusively, after an analysis of key concepts (drawn from literature dated from 1989 to 2015 within the scope of contemplative studies), I argue that contemplative education is a comprehensive means toward eradicating ignorance, espousing the potentials in adopting contemplative practices in/for education. Building on this philosophical exploration I propose further research for the pragmatic application of contemplative practices in educational praxis.

Tirant profit d‘une enquête inédite et d‘un cadre comparatif original, nous entendons révéler la représentation de l‘histoire nationale chez 5 425 résidents de pays occidentaux. Des Canadiens, des Américains, des Britanniques et des Français ont résumé l‘histoire de leur pays en quelques phrases. Sont d‘abord analysés les personnages, événements et idées structurantes employés, puis la manière dont ces éléments s‘intègrent au sein d‘une trame historiale. D'après la première analyse, les guerres sont les événements les plus mentionnés dans tous les pays de l‘enquête. De plus, la majorité des répondants utilisent l‘une des trames historiales suivantes pour résumer l‘histoire : la trame de la contrainte, celles du déclin, de l‘ambivalence, ou de la neutralité – et les plus populaires – celle du progrès et la trame des forces. Notre travail élabore une typologie novatrice pour décrire la manière dont les gens perçoivent l‘histoire de leur pays.

XI. Ridículo, ignorancia y malevolencia. El tratamiento de lo cómico en el «Filebo» de Platón * Bernat Torres Morales 1. La presencia de lo cómico en el argumento y la acción dramática del Filebo En el Filebo de Platón cabe decir que se hacen pocas bromas, aunque el tema de la conversación sea la felicidad, la buena vida, y la contribución que en ella tienen el placer, el dolor y la racionalidad. En las conclusiones del diálogo, en la composición de la mejor de las vidas, no parece haber lugar para lo cómico (al menos para lo cómico tal y como se describirá a continuación), pero sí aparente-mente para la música (Filebo 64c-66d). Sin embargo, lo cómico, junto a lo ridículo y lo risible, se presentan tanto en la acción dramática como en el argumento mismo del diálogo de manera significativa. Efectivamente, en un determinado momento del Filebo, Sócrates indica la necesidad de profundizar en la esencia de lo que sea la * Este articulo forma parte de los trabajos realizados dentro de los grupos EIDOS, Hermenéutica, Platonismo y Modernidad (Universitat de Barcelona) y también del grupo SARX (Grupo de investigación en antropología de la corpora-lidad) (Universitat Internacional de Catalunya).

It is commonly accepted-not only in the philosophical literature but also in daily life-that ignorance is a failure of some sort. As a result, a desideratum of any ontological account of ignorance is that it must be able to explain why there is something wrong with being ignorant of a true proposition. This paper shows two things. First, two influential accounts of ignorance-the Knowledge Account and the True Belief Account-do not satisfy this requirement. They fail to provide a satisfying normative account of the badness of ignorance. Second, I suggest an alternative explanation of what makes ignorance a bad cognitive state. In a nutshell, ignorance is bad because it is the manifestation of a vice, namely, of what Cassam calls "epistemic insouciance".

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 (and unconsciously) borne by an agent or actively nurtured by him or her, and a condition that entails epistemic limitations (which can be any lack of knowledge, belief, information or data) 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.

In the economists’ old conception of a market, perfection would arrive when all participants had complete knowledge. However, economists and psychologists have lately realized that ignorance and bias more accurately describe the state of human knowledge even around those hallowed moments of transactional decision making. In these new academic stories, these models of irrationality and bias often take the form of basic cognitive features or evolutionary mal-adaptations.  however, it’s just, as is often the case, that there is also a historically specific story about local culture to be told about ignorance. This paper will report back from field-work conducted with contemporary, computerized stock traders, develop a typology of the things they say they don’t know, and then suggest what this has to do with some of the more durable features and behaviours of contemporary financial markets.

In migration, people are accumulating resources in contexts where the primary ethnographically imagined totality for shaping identity through exchange is not one's relationship to a finite totality of family knowledge. Instead, the assumption is one in which the totality in question is the totality of commodities which the consumer, with a finite amount of money, encounters. The relationship between part and totality revolves around commodities, the person is not in a metonymic relationship to a totality based on commodities. People are accessing a totality, they are not part of a totality. In fact, it is precisely this presumption that people and commodities are fundamentally separate that underlies commodity fetishism. The misrecognition lies in refusing to see that one's own finite capacity to produce also contributes to the actual possibilities of consumption — that one's own labour and its finitude is part and parcel of the desired commodity. As a result, when people move between these two exchange perspectives, the forms of misrecognition they must negotiate are logically incompatible. Under Samoan capitalism, to exchange one must ignore the physical labour that made it possible, while under the Samoan system, to exchange is to ignore the social labour that made it possible.

This article provides an analysis of the problematic of foresight in traditional Chinese thought, articulating it with current developments in the epistemology of futures studies, planning theory, and strategic management. It is argued that in Chinese thought the answer to the question " Can the future be predicted? " depends on the forecasting horizon: whereas the immediate future can be sensed and taken advantage of by immersing oneself in the evolving situation, the remote future is fundamentally unpredictable. These dual answers are entrenched in discussions of what constitutes wisdom, opening up productive spaces of encounter between the problematic of foresight and the problematic of wisdom. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.2018.22(3).00A35

In this paper I discuss various hard cases that an account of moral ignorance should be able to deal with: ancient slave holders, Susan Wolf’s JoJo, psychopaths such as Robert Harris, and finally, moral outliers . All these agents are ignorant, but it is not at all clear that they are blameless on account of their ignorance. I argue that the discussion of this issue in recent literature has missed the complexities of these cases by focusing on the question of epistemic fault. It is not clear that all blameworthy morally ignorant agents have committed an epistemic fault. There are other important issues that pull us in various directions: moral capacity, bad will, and formative circumstances. I argue that bad will is what is crucial, and moral ignorance itself can be a form of bad will. I argue that we should distinguish between two sorts of bad will, and correspondingly, two sorts of blameworthiness. Ordinary blameworthiness, requires moral knowledge, and is based on akratic action. The other kind of blameworthiness, objective blameworthiness, applies when the agent is morally ignorant, and when this indicates bad will. Objective blameworthiness can be undermined by unfortunate formative circumstances.

By explaining the argument from ignorance in terms of the presumption of innocence, many textbooks in argumentation theory suggest that some arguments from ignorance might share essential features with some types of presumptive reasoning. The stronger version of this view, suggesting that arguments from ignorance and presumptive reasoning are almost indistinguishable, is occasionally proposed by Douglas Walton. This paper explores the nature and limits of the stronger proposal and argues that initial presumptions and arguments from ignorance are not closely connected. There are three main reasons. First, the argument from ignorance, unlike typical presumptive reasoning, is a negative kind of inference. Second, the typical initial presumption is sensitive to a broader set of defeaters and thus assumes a higher (negative) standard of acceptability. Third, in dialectical terms, initial presumption and argument from ignorance bring different attacking rights and obligations. I conclude that Waltonian intuition is unsupported or, at best, is limited only to practical presumptions and practical arguments from ignorance.

This article offers an analysis of ignorance. After a couple of preliminary remarks, I endeavor to show that, contrary to what one might expect and to what nearly all philosophers assume, being ignorant is not equivalent to failing to know, at least not on one of the stronger senses of knowledge. Subsequently, I offer two definitions of ignorance and argue that one’s definition of ignorance crucially depends on one’s account of belief. Finally, I illustrate the relevance of my analysis by paying attention to four philosophical problems in which ignorance plays a crucial role.

The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual basis for the systematic treatment of uncertainty in model-based decision support activities such as policy analysis, integrated assessment and risk assessment. It focuses on the uncertainty perceived from the point of view of those providing information to support policy decisions (i.e., the modellers' view on uncertainty) -uncertainty regarding the analytical outcomes and conclusions of the decision support exercise. Within the regulatory and management sciences, there is neither commonly shared terminology nor full agreement on a typology of uncertainties. Our aim is to synthesise a wide variety of contributions on uncertainty in model-based decision support in order to provide an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for systematic uncertainty analysis. To that end we adopt a general definition of uncertainty as being any deviation from the unachievable ideal of completely deterministic knowledge of the relevant system. We further propose to discriminate among three dimensions of uncertainty: location, level and nature of uncertainty, and we harmonise existing typologies to further detail the concepts behind these three dimensions of uncertainty. We propose an uncertainty matrix as a heuristic tool to classify and report the various dimensions of uncertainty, thereby providing a conceptual framework for better communication among analysts as well as between them and policymakers and stakeholders. Understanding the various dimensions of uncertainty helps in identifying, articulating, and prioritising critical uncertainties, which is a crucial step to more adequate acknowledgement and treatment of uncertainty in decision support endeavours and more focused research on complex, inherently uncertain, policy issues.

Willful ignorance is an important concept in criminal law and jurisprudence, though it has not received much discussion in philosophy. When it is mentioned, however, it is regularly assumed to be a kind of self-deception. In this article I will argue that self-deception and willful ignorance are distinct psychological kinds. First, some examples of willful ignorance are presented and discussed, and an analysis of the phenomenon is developed. Then it is shown that current theories of self-deception give no support to the idea that willful ignorance is a kind of self-deception. Afterwards an independent argument is adduced for excluding willful ignorance from this category. The crucial differences between the two phenomena are explored, as are the reasons why they are so easily conflated.

Human geographers investigating socio-environmental change in resource frontiers often encounter illicit activities occurring alongside the licit processes they study. These encounters pose logistical challenges to conducting research and moral and analytical dilemmas for researchers. Illicit activities produce what we refer to as spheres of ambiguity, which obscure certain information, relationships, and phenomena surrounding them. We address the dearth of analytical tools for approaching the uncertainty this generates by bringing concepts from agnotology—the study of ignorance—to bear on research conducted amidst illicit activity, offering a framework for systematically evaluating ambiguous field data that is incompletely observed or reported.

In 1972, the US Navy installed a base for nuclear submarines in the Archipelago of La Maddalena off the northeastern shore of Sardinia, Italy. In response, Italy established a radiation surveillance program to monitor the impact of the base on the environment and public health. In the first systematic study of nuclear expertise in Italy, Davide Orsini focuses on the ensuing technopolitical disputes concerning the role and safety of US nuclear submarines in the Mediterranean Sea from the Cold War period to the closure of the naval base in 2008. His book follows the struggles of different groups—including local residents of the archipelago, US Navy personnel, local administrators, Italian experts, and politicians—to define nuclear submarines as either imperceptible threats, much like radiocontamination, or efficient machines at the service of liberty and freedom.
Unlike inland nuclear power plants, vividly present and visible with their tall cooling towers and reactor containers, the mobility and invisibility of submarines contributed to an ambivalence about their nature, perpetuating the idea of nuclear exceptionalism. In Italy, they symbolized objects in constant motion, easily removable at the first sign of potential harm. Orsini demonstrates how these mobile sources of hazard posed special challenges for both expert assessments and public understandings of risk, and in contexts outside the Anglo-Saxon world, where unique social power dynamics held sway over the outcome of technopolitical controversies.

Ius vigilantibus scriptum est / Nec stultis solere succurri / Ignorantia iuris.
Roman jurist Papinian paraphrased his master’s saying and incorporated it into the imperial rescript. The maxims: Scaevola’s "vigilantibus iura scripta sunt" and Papinian’s "nec stultis solere succurri" are parallel, embodying the same principle. "Nec stultis solere succurri" differs not only because it is cynical or sarcastic. Its formulation is self-explaining and for that reason more convincing. Yet, it is not less general, therefore the question about its nature remains essential. The maxims were not designed to declare the law, i.e. they cannot be considered legal rules. They rather reveal a general feature of the Roman way of treating individuals and organizing social life. Scaevola and Papinian articulated it centuries before Herbert Spencer pronounced his social evolutionism. In ancient Rome, it was not a theory. It allowed legal institutions to operate in public and private life. Thus, the desired organization of society could be achieved. The principle embodied in both maxims was therefore a matter of practice.

This article aims to bring organizational ignorance to the attention of management scholars and practitioners and thereby initiate the development of a managerial perspective on the unknown. Although managing every aspect of the unknown is beyond reach, the development of an appreciation of organizational ignorance can offer a valuable means of reflecting on management issues, particularly given the bounded rationality of organizational actors in contexts characterized by ever increasing supplies of knowledge and information, growing complexity, and the need to respond quickly to opportunities and challenges. The article begins with an account of why organizational ignorance warrants attention. The nature of ignorance and organizational ignorance is then considered and a typology of organizational ignorance is presented. The article concludes with a call for the development of a managerial perspective on the unknown, together with the elaboration of research questions that can usefully direct future investigations into organizational ignorance.
Keywords: Ignorance; Knowledge; Organizational Ignorance; Ignorance Management, the Unknown."""