Abstract
Rik Peels has forcefully argued that, contrary to what is widely held, ignorance is not equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge. In doing so, he has argued against the Standard View of Ignorance according to which they are equivalent, and argued for what he calls “the New View” according to which ignorance is equivalent (merely) to the lack or absence of true belief. In this paper, I defend the Standard View against Peels’s latest case for the New View.
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Notes
Its other definitions include: 2. “With an and pl. An act due to want of knowledge; an offence or sin caused by ignorance”; 3. “(In full the time or days of ignorance ; tr. Arabic jāhilīyah state of ignorance, < jāhil ignorant.) The period of Arabian history previous to the teaching of Muhammad.”
I owe this citation to Kyle (2012).
While Peels (2012) continues to insist in a footnote that one can believe that p even if one has never considered that p, I shan’t pursue the discussion of this point any further here, for it has already been addressed in Le Morvan (2012) and (2011). See the discussion therein of hindsight bias and the distinction between potential and actual beliefs, points that Peels (2012) does not address in once again insisting that people believe propositions they have never even considered.
A reviewer of this journal noted that a concept can make sense even if it is highly unnatural. In response let me say the following. A concept that makes sense is one that is satisfactory and intelligible (see the OED’s definition 27 of ‘sense’). In calling the concept of propositional ignorance “highly unnatural,” Peels (2011) was presumably calling into question its satisfactoriness, its intelligibility, or both. In fact, Peels (2011, p. 350) claimed that he found it “hard to think of” anything distinct from the truth of a proposition of which he could be ignorant. By making a claim like this, Peels sounded like he was calling into question not just the concept’s satisfactoriness but its intelligibility by using as evidence its allegedly being “highly unnatural.” His now agreeing that the concept of propositional ignorance makes sense does therefore contrast with his earlier characterization of it being “highly unnatural.”
This is not an unusual occurrence. More generally, it’s possible to be ignorant that x is F even if one is not ignorant of x which happens to be F. Suppose for instance that I see a painting x, and it happens to be a Giotto. In this case, I’m presumably not ignorant of x which is F. Suppose, however, that there is considerable controversy about whether the painting is a fake even though, as a matter of fact, it is genuine. It’s possible in a case like this for me to be ignorant that x is F even though I am not ignorant of x which is F. Though I am not ignorant of a Giotto, I may nonetheless be ignorant that it is a Giotto.
In fact, even if x necessarily entails y, it does not follow that x is a sub-species of the species instantiated by y. For instance, trilaterality entails triangularity (and vice versa), but trilaterality is not a subspecies of the species angularity instantiated by triangularity.
A reviewer of this journal concedes my distinction between being ignorant of p's truth conditions TC and being ignorant that TC are p's truth conditions, but then argues that it actually “counts against” what I say. The reviewer thinks this because “it seems possible that someone S is not ignorant of p's truth conditions TC, but is ignorant that TC are p's truth conditions. The author would have to say that this person is not propositionally ignorant of p and that seems to contradict his earlier remarks on propositional ignorance.” My response is as follows. On the account of propositional ignorance defended in this paper, S’s propositional ignorance of p entails that S is ignorant of p and its concomitant truth-conditions, and if S is ignorant of p’s truth-conditions, then presumably S is ignorant that those truth-conditions are p’s truth-conditions. Accordingly, S’s ignorance of p’s truth-conditions TC entails S’s ignorance that TC are p’s truth-conditions. S’s ignorance that TC are p’s truth-conditions, however, does not entail S’s ignorance of p’s truth-conditions TC, for it is possible for S to be ignorant that TC are p’s truth-conditions TC while not being ignorant of p’s truth-conditions TC. The reviewer is right that “it seems possible that someone S is not ignorant of p's truth conditions TC, but is ignorant that TC are p's truth conditions” and that in this case I hold that S “is not propositionally ignorant of p.” The reviewer, however, claims that this “seems to contradict” my earlier remarks on propositional ignorance but gives no textual evidence at all of any such contradiction. I fail to see anything in the paper that substantiates this charge of seeming contradiction, quite the opposite.
Notice here how Peels conflates propositional and factive ignorance once more by taking ignorance of p to be ignorance of p’s truth (i.e., that p is true). He appears to be conflating ignorance of a proposition’s truth-conditions with ignorance of its truth.
A reviewer for this journal says that he/she does not see the problem for Peels's view, and writes the following: “According to Peels, S is ignorant that p iff (~S believes that p & p). The complement, the absence of S's being ignorant that p, is thus that the following condition is satisfied: Either (~S believes that p & ~p) or (S believes that p & p). And that seems right: if ~p, then S cannot be ignorant that p (on Peels' view) and if p & S believes that p, then S is not ignorant that p.” In response, I must note that the reviewer is mistaken on a point of logic. Yes, according to Peels, S ignorant that p iff (~S believes that p & p). However, the complement of (S is ignorant that p)—in other words, the absence of S’s being ignorant that p—is ~(S is ignorant that p). Given Peels’s biconditional, the latter is logically equivalent to ~(~S believes that p & p). This in turn is logically equivalent to (S believes that p v ~p), and not as the reviewer claims to [(~S believes that p & ~p) v (S believes that p & p)]. Given that the complement of ignorance, on the New View’s characterization of ignorance as (~S believes that p & p), is (S believes that p v ~p), the New View does not entail that the complement of ignorance that p is (the presence of) true belief that p even though Peels repeatedly tells us that ignorance is the absence of true belief. This is because the complement of ignorance that p turns out instead to be either S believes that p or it is not the case that p. Thus the New View has the strange consequence that the presence of true belief is not the complement of the absence of true belief.
A reviewer of this journal wrote that s/he doesn’t share my intuition “that it is an implausible consequence of the New View that S in 1695 was not ignorant of Fermat’s Last Theorem.” The reviewer asked: “Why not say that he was not ignorant of that Theorem, although he was ignorant of all sorts of truths in the neighbourhood, such as why it is true or what are good proofs of it?” Contrary to what the reviewer suggests, I do not claim here or anywhere else that “it is an implausible consequence of the New View that S is 1695 was ignorant of (italicization mine) Fermat’s Last Theorem,” nor do I claim that S was ignorant of that theorem. In fact, as I point out in the thought-experiment, S believed that Fermat’s Last Theorem is true (which implies that S was not propositionally ignorant of it). What I wrote is that the New View “entails the highly implausible consequence that, simply in virtue of believing it, S was not ignorant that Fermat’s Last Theorem is true.” Note the difference between (i) being ignorant of a proposition and (ii) and being ignorant that it is true. Why is this consequence so implausible? Because until it was proven in 1995, Fermat’s Last Theorem was one of the most difficult unsolved mathematical problems and its proof required important developments in algebraic number theory among other things, and it strains credulity to think that S in 1695 was not ignorant that it is true simply in virtue of believing it. Nothing in what I write implies that S was ignorant of Fermat’s Last Theorem on the New View (quite the contrary), and what I write is perfectly compatible with S’s being ignorant of “all sorts of truths in the neighbourhood, such as why it is true or what are good proofs of it.”
This does not mean that he was ignorant of the proposition that he was robbed by a Canadian, but ignorant of its being true.
This is a matter I hope eventually to test experimentally by sampling various people’s intuitions. I ask readers here to consult their own intuitions.
A reviewer of this journal points out that “Peels could respond by saying that ‘S is ignorant that p’ always implies that p is true, whereas ‘S does not know that p’ does so in only some conversational contexts. Thus, it is not paradoxical to say ‘S does not know that Lyon is the capital of France, because it is not,’ while it is paradoxical to say ‘S is ignorant that Lyon is the capital of France, because it is not’.” In response, let me say that Peels and I may once again be at an intuitional impasse: by my intuitions, ‘S is ignorant that p’ does not always imply that p is true any more than does ‘S does not know that p’. In any case, we will have to leave this to the judgment of our readers and/or work in experimental philosophy.
Notice how Peels seems to be conflating propositional and factive ignorance here.
If Peels is using ‘exculpatorily relevant’ in some other sense, then his response does not engage with what I wrote. A reviewer of this journal thinks that what Peels has in mind in saying that Matthew’s belief that p is exculpatorily relevant is that it is relevant in that if Matthew believes that p, he is not excused (unless other excuses, apart from those of ignorance, hold). If the reviewer is right about what Peels has in mind, then Peels is indeed not engaging with my point, although he claims to be responding to it, for he is using the expression “exculpatorily relevant” to mean exactly the opposite of what I meant and wrote. I did not dispute, in fact he insisted, that if Matthew had the true belief that the old barn was a historical monument, Matthew was not excused from demolishing it (unless other excuses, apart from those of ignorance, hold).
I also argued that, because the New View entails that no true belief counts as ignorance, it is incompatible with the plausible idea that at least some instances of true belief can count as culpable ignorance. Though I don’t find persuasive Peels’s response to the effect that the blameworthiness in question can be explained exclusively in terms other than ignorance, I shan’t pursue this matter any further here apart from noting that Peels in effect concedes that no true belief can count as culpable ignorance if the New View is true.
Even if doing so leads to believing many false propositions as well, remember that according to Peels one can only be ignorant of true propositions. I thank an anonymous reviewer of this journal for pointing out that this argument only requires as a premise that gullibility can lead to believing many true propositions, not the stronger premise that it will.
See Peels (2012), p. 747.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that Adam’s being likely to believe more true propositions than Bert does not by itself entail that he will.
See Peels (2012), pp. 747–748.
Peels adds that on an internalist account of knowledge, “this person might even be indistinguishable from someone who knows all true propositions: on certain internalist accounts, if one believes all true propositions, then one knows all true propositions. This is because if one believes all true propositions, one will also believe every truth about one’s evidence, the evidential relation between one’s evidence and the proposition in question, and so forth. Thus, both on externalist and many internalist accounts of knowledge, someone who believes every truth and disbelieves every falsehood does not seem ignorant of anything” (p. 748).
It’s worth remembering that gullibility can lead to believing a large number of propositions (see note 14); Peels seems to presuppose that it will.
Peels adds that “we should be careful not to equate ignorance with intellectual blame and lack of ignorance with intellectual praise or blamelessness: one may be epistemically blameworthy for removing some kind of ignorance and one may be epistemically praiseworthy or at least epistemically blameless for remaining ignorant on some topic” (p. 749).
References
Kyle, B. (2012). The new ignorance puzzle (and the old). Unpublished draft.
Le Morvan, P. (2011). On ignorance: a reply to Peels. Philosophia, 39(2), 335–344. doi:10.1007/s11406-010-9292-3
Le Morvan, P. (2012). On ignorance: a vindication of the standard view. Philosophia, 40(2), 379–393. doi:10.1007/s11406-011-9330-9
Levinson, S. (2000). Presumptive meanings. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Peels, R. (2010). What is ignorance? Philosophia, 38(1), 57–67. doi:10.1007/s11406-009-9202-8
Peels, R. (2011). Ignorance is lack of true belief: a Rejoinder to Le Morvan. Philosophia, 39(2), 345–355. doi:10.1007/s11406-010-9301-6
Peels, R. (2012). The new view on ignorance undefeated. Philosophia, 40(4), 741–750. doi:10.1007/s11406-012-9364-7
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Le Morvan, P. Why the Standard View of Ignorance Prevails. Philosophia 41, 239–256 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9417-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9417-6