Understanding Ignorance by DeNicola Daniel R.;

Author:DeNicola, Daniel R.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: philosophy; epistemology; learning; knowledge; unknowing
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2017-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

Ignorance, Action, and Responsibility

Aristotle set the framework for analyzing the relation of ignorance to voluntary action—and hence to moral responsibility.17 He observes that actions that are coerced or produced by external forces are not voluntary. Aristotle also asserts that actions are not voluntary if they are done because of ignorance. Speaking broadly, for an action to be considered voluntary, the agent must know what she is doing. But this claim requires further distinctions, for which I will use a more contemporary situation.

Imagine passengers on a train that is equipped with an emergency cord that will stop the train precipitously. There are three ways to pull the cord. (1) Sarah pulls the cord deliberately, knowing what she is doing. This is a voluntary act for which we might praise or blame her depending on the reason for her act. (2) Philip pulls the cord thinking it is used to call the conductor. Philip acts from ignorance; in a sense, he does not know what he is doing. The action is not voluntary. (3) Michelle is very drunk and pulls the cord; in a different sense, she too does not know what she is doing. She pulls the cord in ignorance, not from ignorance. Oddly, Aristotle gives some classificatory weight to the agent’s feelings post factum: if Michelle regrets her drunken act when she is sober, it was a “nonvoluntary” action (neither voluntary nor involuntary).

From our perspective, the responsibility we bear for our ignorance forms a continuum. Recall Tom and his soup? If a chef unknowingly were to serve Tom soup that contained a poison, he would be acting from ignorance, not voluntarily. In Aristotle’s terms, he was ignorant of the particulars of the case: he did not know there was poison in the soup. We do not blame or condemn the chef. (The chef might feel that he was in some sense responsible, that the action was piacular if not immoral.) But suppose the chef knew there was arsenic in the soup but was ignorant of the commonly known fact that arsenic is poisonous: his ignorance is more culpable, though the act of poisoning is not intentional. But, if the chef was, as Aristotle would say, ignorant of universals and somehow did not know that poisoning was wrong, we are likely either to show little tolerance for his ignorance and hold him fully responsible, or—if he is unable to tell right from wrong in general—treat him as sociopathic or mentally incompetent and in need of therapy.

As I noted earlier, we may rightly be held responsible for our ignorance based on a wide range of factors, but ignorance may also serve as an excuse. Professions of ignorance are often used to deny responsibility. Genuinely exculpatory ignorance that has resulted in a tragic or harmful outcome involves the agent’s unknown unknowns, or things the agent could not have known or had no occasion or obligation to know.18

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