Abstract
According to extended cognition, a subject’s biological cognitive processes can become integrated with features of the subject’s cognitive environment (and thereby “extended”), such as technology. When such extended cognitive processes lead to knowledge, the knowledge that results is extended knowledge. This chapter explores how the phenomenon of extended cognition relates to the epistemology of ignorance. In particular, our concern will be with not only forms of extended cognition that are epistemically problematic (and which one might be expected to have negative epistemic ramifications) but also forms of extended cognition that are generally epistemically sound. As we will see, some prima facie plausible arguments for how extended cognition might lead to ignorance are not compelling on closer inspection. In addition, some other ways in which extended cognition might lead to ignorance depend on the account of ignorance that one endorses, and in particular whether one opts for a normative or nonnormative account of ignorance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Note that we are here focusing on cases of extended cognition that involve the contribution of technological factors. There are two other forms of extended cognition of note in this regard. The first concerns the possible contribution of a subject’s embodied processes to cognition, what is known as embodied cognition. For some recent discussion of this thesis, see Noë (2004), Chemero (2009), Rowlands (2009), and Shapiro (2011). Consider, for example, how the use of gestures can have a bearing on a subject’s cognition processes, as discussed in Clark (2013), Wheeler (2013), and Pauw et al. (2014). The second concerns the possible contribution of other cognitive subjects within a subject’s cognitive processes, what is known as socially extended cognition (this is also known as distributed cognition). For discussion, see Hutchins (1995), Tollefsen (2006), Krueger (2011), and Gallagher (2013). Finally, note that technological extended cognition needn’t involve technology that is external to the skin of the cognitive subject, as one can imagine cases where the technology in question is directly embedded within the biological subject (and hence is to this extent “internal” to the subject, even though it is “external” to her on-board cognitive processes). This is so-called neuromedia. For discussion, see Lynch (2014) and Pritchard (2018b). See also Carter and Pritchard (2019), which discusses the general question of the epistemology of cognitive augmentation.
- 3.
The famous case of extended cognition (and extended mind—see footnote 4) given in Clark and Chalmers (1998) is precisely of this kind, whereby a subject (“Otto”) with memory-loss caused by Alzheimer’s disease uses a notebook to supplement his biological memorial cognitive processes.
- 4.
Interestingly, it was the extended mind thesis that was originally proposed in the famous paper by Clark and Chalmers (1998), with the extended cognition thesis merely noted as part of the supporting case. There are at least arguably distinct theses, however, in that in endorsing the latter one doesn’t seem to thereby be committed to endorsing the former (even if these two theses might naturally be thought to go together). See Giere (2010) and Goldberg (2012) for discussion of why one might accept the extended cognition thesis while rejecting the extended mind thesis. For a very useful recent overview of the extended mind/cognition theses, and how best to understand them, see Sprevak (2019).
- 5.
Despite the extensive discussion of the epistemological ramifications of extended cognition in the theoretical literature, this is, surprisingly, an underexplored topic, at least to the extent that it engages with contemporary work on the epistemology of ignorance. See, however, Arfini (2021) for a recent discussion of a slightly different question, which is the extent to which we can understand ignorance itself as an extended epistemic standing.
- 6.
For further discussion of extended knowledge (including the socially extended knowledge that arises from socially extended cognition—see footnote 2), see Pritchard (2010, 2018a, 2019, forthcoming-a), Carter et al. (2014, 2018a, b), Clark (2015), Palermos (2014), and Palermos and Pritchard (2016). See also the burgeoning literature examining the relevance of extended knowledge (and thus extended cognition) to educational contexts: Pritchard (2014, 2016, 2018b), Heersmink and Knight (2018), Kotzee (2018), and Pritchard et al. (2021).
- 7.
This has been viewed as a problem for extended cognition and, thereby, for extended knowledge too, in that it entails that one’s cognitive (and thus epistemic) reach goes far beyond what we might otherwise have expected—this is what is known as cognitive (and epistemic) “bloat.” For discussion of the problem of cognitive bloat, see Rupert (2004) and Allen-Hermanson (2013). For discussion of epistemic bloat, specifically, see Bjerring and Pedersen (2014), Ludwig (2015), and Smart (2017).
- 8.
For some key defenses of the so-called standard view (in virtue of its widespread adoption) of ignorance in terms of lack of knowledge, see Zimmerman (2008), Le Morvan (2011a, b, 2012, 2013), and DeNicola (2018). For some of the main defenses of the so-called new view of ignorance as the lack of true belief, see Goldman and Olsson (2009), van Woudenberg (2009), and Peels (2010; cf. Peels 2011, 2012). Of course, one can imagine distinct accounts of ignorance in terms of a lack of an epistemic standing that diverge from the standard or new views (such as ignorance as the absence of justified true belief, say, or the absence of an awareness of the target fact), but for convenience, we will henceforth follow convention and focus on these two epistemic standings. These two main contemporary accounts of ignorance are usefully surveyed in Le Morvan and Peels (2016). Note that we are here focusing on propositional forms of ignorance—see Nottelmann (2015) and El Kassar (2018) for two recent discussions of nonpropositional forms of ignorance and how they relate to the propositional variety. There is a much broader contemporary literature on ignorance that extends beyond the question of how we should define ignorance, such as the political implications of ignorance (e.g., Medina 2017), though usually such work, if it takes a stance on the nature of ignorance at all, commits to a particular definition of the term that conforms to the idea that it picks out the absence of an epistemic standing. See, for example, Fricker (2016, 144), who endorses the standard view of ignorance, and Mills (2007, 16), who endorses the new view of ignorance.
- 9.
One might think that there are other kinds of case that are more amenable to the claim in play. For example, consider two subjects who know a mathematical theorem in very different ways: the first subject knows it because she proved it, while the second subject knows it only via testimony (and lacks the means of proving it). Isn’t there something that the second subject is ignorant of that the first subject is not ignorant of? Yes, but notice that this ignorance doesn’t concern the target proposition, as neither of them are ignorant of that. It rather concerns further propositions that are concerned with the proof in question (such as what inferential principles are involved in the proof). In the same way, there might be propositions related to the target proposition that Watson fails to know (/truly believe), but which Sherlock knows (/truly believes), on account of the fact that his knowledge of the target proposition is testimonial. But that would be irrelevant to the point in hand, as it doesn’t show that he exhibits a kind of ignorance as regards that specific proposition. In any case, these scenarios where there is a possible wider ignorance in play are not relevant to extended knowledge/true belief anyway, as we’ve been given no reason for supposing that knowledge/true belief acquired via extended cognitive processes is likely to be associated with this form of wider ignorance when compared with the corresponding knowledge/true belief acquired via non-extended cognitive processes.
- 10.
See Pritchard (2021b, forthcoming-b) for a development of a view of this sort. See also Pritchard (forthcoming-c) for the application of this proposal to debates regarding God’s omniscience. Notice that this proposal is in a certain way orthogonal to the conventional accounts of ignorance in the literature that understand it in terms of the absence of a particular epistemic standing, as one could supplement this normative component to whichever epistemic standing is at issue in a conventional account of ignorance (one would just need to fill in the placeholder notion of what it is to be “aware” of the target fact accordingly).
- 11.
Indeed, it is far from clear that one can form a belief via guesswork—at least in the sense of belief that is relevant to epistemology anyway (i.e., that propositional attitude that is a constituent part of rationally grounded knowledge)—as to believe a proposition in this sense is to believe that proposition to be true. If that’s right, then one cannot form a belief (in the specific sense just described at least) about a proposition where one is aware that one has no basis for regarding the target proposition as true.
- 12.
An interesting case is that of contemporaneous people who deliberately elect, perhaps with good reason, to epistemically cut themselves off from the wider world. For example, the Sentinelese tribe who inhabit North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal are the most isolated group of people in the world, who avoid almost all contact with the outside world. As a consequence, there will be a wide range of propositions that are epistemically inaccessible to them, such as much of modern science. But would we say that these tribespeople are ignorant of these facts? That sounds improper to my ear. Even so, one might argue that this case is disanalogous with the ones just considered, in that the people in question have chosen to epistemically cut themselves off. In general, after all, one cannot avoid the charge of ignorance on the grounds that one chooses to not know something. I think it matters, however, what kinds of reasons one has for choosing to not know certain facts. As I’ve argued elsewhere, for example—see Pritchard (forthcoming-b, forthcoming-c)—if one has good reasons for not knowing something (as, e.g., when a lawyer refuses to consider trial evidence that has been released them in error), then this would not count as ignorance. My instinct is that “good reasons” here could include such considerations as a shared cultural objective to preserve one’s traditional customs by shunning contact with the outside world, though obviously this issue extends well beyond our current concerns.
- 13.
Another more disturbing kind of case could be fake news—that is, roughly, information that is presented as news, and yet designed to be systematically misleading (e.g., Pritchard 2021a)—that is delivered via an extended cognitive process.
- 14.
- 15.
I am grateful to Selene Arfini and Lorenzo Magnani who provided detailed comments on an earlier version of this paper.
References
Adams, F., & Aizawa, K. (2001). The bounds of cognition. Philosophical Psychology, 14, 43–64.
Adams, F., & Aizawa, K. (2008). The bounds of cognition. Blackwell.
Allen-Hermanson, S. (2013). Superdupersizing the mind: Extended cognition and the persistence of cognitive bloat. Philosophical Studies, 164, 791–806.
Arfini, S. (2021). Situated ignorance: The distribution and extension of ignorance in cognitive niches. Synthese, 198, 4079–4095.
Bjerring, J. C., & Pedersen, N. J. L. L. (2014). All the (many, many) things we know: Extended knowledge. Philos Issues, 24, 24–38.
Carter, J. A., & Gordon, E. (2020). Is searching the internet making us intellectually arrogant? In A. Tanesini & M. P. Lynch (Eds.), Polarisation, arrogance, and dogmatism: Philosophical perspectives (pp. 88–103). Routledge.
Carter, J. A., & Pritchard, D. H. (2019). The epistemology of cognitive enhancement. Journal of Medicine & Philosophy, 44, 220–242.
Carter, J. A., Kallestrup, J., Palermos, S. O., & Pritchard, D. H. (2014). Varieties of externalism. Philosophical Issues, 24, 63–109.
Carter, J. A., Kallestrup, J., Palermos, S. O., & Pritchard, D. H. (Eds.). (2018a). Extended epistemology. Oxford University Press.
Carter, J. A., Kallestrup, J., Palermos, S. O., & Pritchard, D. H. (Eds.). (2018b). Socially extended epistemology. Oxford University Press.
Chemero, T. (2009). Radical embodied cognitive science. MIT Press.
Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. Oxford University Press.
Clark, A. (2013). Gesture as thought. In Z. Radman (Ed.), The hand, an organ of the mind: What the manual tells the mental (pp. 255–268). MIT Press.
Clark, A. (2015). What ‘extended me’ knows. Synthese, 192, 3757–3775.
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58, 7–19.
DeNicola, D. R. (2018). Understanding ignorance: The surprising impact of what we don’t know. MIT Press.
El Kassar, N. (2018). What ignorance really is: Examining the foundations of epistemology of ignorance. Social Epistemology, 32, 300–310.
Fisher, M., Goddu, M. K., & Keil, F. C. (2015). Searching for explanations: How the internet inflates estimates of internal knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144, 674–687.
Fricker, M. (2016). Epistemic injustice and the preservation of ignorance. In R. Peels & M. Blaauw (Eds.), The epistemic dimensions of ignorance (pp. 144–159). Cambridge University Press.
Gallagher, S. (2013). The socially extended mind. Cognitive Systems Research, 2, 4–12.
Giere, R. (2010). Scientific Perspectivism. University of Chicago Press.
Goldberg, S. (2012). Epistemic Extendedness, Testimony, and the Epistemology of Instrument-Based Belief. Philosophical Explorations 15, 181–97.
Goldman, A., & Olsson, E. (2009). Reliabilism and the value of knowledge. In A. Haddock, A. Millar, & D. H. Pritchard (Eds.), Epistemic value (pp. 19–41). Oxford University Press.
Heersmink, R., & Knight, S. (2018). Distributed learning: Educating and assessing extended minds. Philosophical Psychology, 31, 969–990.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. MIT Press.
Kotzee, B. (2018). Cyborgs, knowledge and credit for learning. In J. A. Carter, A. Clark, J. Kallestrup, S. O. Palermos, & D. H. Pritchard (Eds.), Extended epistemology (pp. 221–238). Oxford University Press.
Krueger, J. (2011). Extended cognition and the space of social interaction. Consciousness and Cognition, 20, 643–657.
Le Morvan, P. (2011a). Knowledge, ignorance and true belief. Theoria, 77, 32–41.
Le Morvan, P. (2011b). On ignorance: A reply to Peels. Philosophia, 39, 335–344.
Le Morvan, P. (2012). On ignorance: A vindication of the standard view. Philosophia, 40, 379–393.
Le Morvan, P. (2013). Why the standard conception of ignorance prevails. Philosophia, 41, 239–256.
Le Morvan, P., & Peels, R. (2016). The nature of ignorance: Two views. In R. Peels & M. Blaauw (Eds.), The epistemic dimensions of ignorance (pp. 12–32). Cambridge University Press.
Ludwig, D. (2015). Extended cognition and the explosion of knowledge. Philosophical Psychology, 28, 355–368.
Lynch, M. P. (2014). Neuromedia, extended knowledge, and understanding. Philosophical Issues, 24, 299–313.
Medina, J. (2017). Epistemic injustice and epistemologies of ignorance. In P. C. Taylor, L. M. Alcoff, & L. Anderson (Eds.), Routledge companion to the philosophy of race (pp. 247–260). Routledge.
Mills, C. (2007). White ignorance. In S. Sullivan & N. Tuana (Eds.), Race and epistemologies of ignorance (pp. 13–38). SUNY Press.
Noë, A. (2004). Action in perception. MIT Press.
Nottelmann, N. (2015). Ignorance. In R. Audi (Ed.), Cambridge dictionary of philosophy (3rd ed., pp. 497–498). Cambridge University Press.
Palermos, S. O. (2014). Knowledge and cognitive integration. Synthese, 191, 1931–1951.
Palermos, S. O., & Pritchard, D. H. (2016). The distribution of epistemic agency. In P. Reider (Ed.), Social epistemology and epistemic agency: De-centralizing epistemic agency (pp. 109–126). Rowman & Littlefield.
Pauw, W. T. J. L., de Nooijer, J. A., & Paas, F. (2014). Toward a more embedded/extended perspective on the cognitive function of gestures. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 359.
Peels, R. (2010). What is ignorance? Philosophia, 38, 57–67.
Peels, R. (2011). Ignorance is lack of true belief: A rejoinder to Le Morvan. Philosophia, 39, 344–355.
Peels, R. (2012). The new view on ignorance undefeated. Philosophia, 40, 741–750.
Pritchard, D. H. (2010). Cognitive ability and the extended cognition thesis. Synthese, 175, 133–151.
Pritchard, D. H. (2014). Virtue epistemology, extended cognition, and the epistemology of education. Universitas: Monthly Review of Philosophy and Culture, 478(2014), 47–66.
Pritchard, D. H. (2016). Intellectual virtue, extended cognition, and the epistemology of education. In J. Baehr (Ed.), Intellectual virtues and education: Essays in applied virtue epistemology (pp. 113–127). Routledge.
Pritchard, D. H. (2018a). Extended virtue epistemology. Inquiry, 61, 632–647.
Pritchard, D. H. (2018b). Neuromedia and the epistemology of education. Metaphilosophy, 49, 328–349.
Pritchard, D. H. (2019). Extended knowledge. In J. A. Carter, A. Clark, J. Kallestrup, S. O. Palermos, & D. H. Pritchard (Eds.), Extended epistemology (pp. 90–104). Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, D. H. (2021a). Good news, bad news, fake news. In S. Bernecker, A. Flowerre, & T. Grundman (Eds.), Epistemology of fake news (pp. 46–67). Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, D. H. (2021b). Ignorance and inquiry. American Philosophical Quarterly, 58, 111–123.
Pritchard, D. H. (forthcoming-a). Extended social epistemology. In J. Lackey & A. McGlynn (Eds.), Oxford handbook of social epistemology. Oxford University Press.
Pritchard, D. H. (forthcoming-b). Ignorance and normativity. Philosophical Topics, 49.
Pritchard, D. H. (forthcoming-c). Omniscience and ignorance. Veritas, 66, e41050.
Pritchard, D. H., English, A., & Ravenscroft, J. (2021). Extended cognition, assistive technology and education. Synthese. (Online First. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03166-9
Rowlands, M. (2009). The body in mind. Cambridge University Press.
Rupert, R. D. (2004). Challenges to the hypothesis of extended cognition. Journal of Philosophy, 101, 389–428.
Rupert, R. (2009). Cognitive systems and the extended mind. Oxford University Press.
Shapiro, L. (2011). Embodied cognition. Routledge.
Smart, P. (2017). Extended cognition and the internet: A review of current issues and controversies. Philosophy & Technology, 30, 357–390.
Sprevak, M. (2009). Extended cognition and functionalism. Journal of Philosophy, 106, 503–527.
Sprevak, M. (2019). Extended cognition. In T. Crane (Ed.), Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy online. London.
Tollefsen, D. (2006). From extended mind to collective mind. Cognitive Systems Research, 7, 140–150.
van Woudenberg, R. (2009). Ignorance and force: Two excusing conditions for false beliefs. American Philosophical Quarterly, 46, 373–386.
Wheeler, M. (2013). Is cognition embedded or extended? The case of gestures. In Z. Radman (Ed.), The hand, an organ of the mind: What the manual tells the mental (pp. 269–301). MIT Press.
Zimmerman, M. J. (2008). Living with uncertainty: The moral significance of ignorance. Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pritchard, D. (2022). Extended Ignorance. In: Arfini, S., Magnani, L. (eds) Embodied, Extended, Ignorant Minds. Synthese Library, vol 463. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01922-7_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01922-7_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-01921-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-01922-7
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)