How We Fail to Know: Group-Based Ignorance and Collective Epistemic Obligations

Abstract

Humans are prone to producing morally suboptimal and even disastrous outcomes out of ignorance. Ignorance is generally thought to excuse agents from wrongdoing, but little attention has been paid to group-based ignorance as the reason for some of our collective failings. I distinguish between different types of first-order and higher order group-based ignorance and examine how these can variously lead to problematic inaction. I will make two suggestions regarding our epistemic obligations vis-a-vis collective (in)action problems: (1) that our epistemic obligations concern not just our own knowledge and beliefs but those of others, too and (2) that our epistemic obligations can be held collectively where the epistemic tasks cannot be performed by individuals acting in isolation, for example, when we are required to produce joint epistemic goods.

Epistemology of ignorance: the contribution of philosophy to the science-policy interface of marine biosecurity

“…Ignorance of facts can obtain at all levels and in many of the above cases there will be an easy remedy; in others it will be very difficult. It is much more difficult to induce higher-order knowledge in larger and dispersed groups (Schwenkenbecher, 2022). Consequently, individual agents' epistemic obligations do not just concern their own knowledge, but that of others, too.…”

A century of pluralistic ignorance: what we have learned about its origins, forms, and consequences

“…Correcting norm perception also may be effective in prompting people to act on their conviction when their previous reluctance to do so was based on their fear that they would be a sucker or ineffectual if they did so (Kerr, 1996;Lubell, 2002;Keohane and Victor, 2016;Abrams et al, 2021;Chen et al, 2022;Schwenkenbecher, 2022). One example of this is Wenzel's (2005) investigation of the role of pluralistic ignorance in tax compliance in Australia.…”

“…The group experiencing pluralistic ignorance is not actually ignorant in the sense of being unsure as to where it stands but is rather confidently mistaken as to where it stands (O'Gorman, 1986). Alternative descriptions of the phenomenon include second-order misperceptions of first-order beliefs (Bicchieri, 2016;Schwenkenbecher, 2022) and collective misperceptions (Miller and Prentice, 1994;Grant et al, 2009). Familiar illustrations are circumstances where "no one believes, but everyone believes that everyone else believes" (Katz and Schanck, 1938) and in which "no one is certain, but everyone is certain that everyone else is certain" (Miller and McFarland, 1987).…”

Normalization of Racism and Moral Responsibility: Against the Exculpatory Stance

“…Epistemologists have recently argued that lack of true beliefeither in terms of false belief or as lack or suspension of beliefqualifies as ignorance. 34 Insofar as the normalization of racism consists (at least at the individual level, as highlighted by the poll) in the widespread endorsement of the generic racist norm about the justifiability of racism, where the belief expressed by such a norm is the false moral belief that racism and discrimination are permissible, then endorsing such a belief amounts to being factively 35 ignorant about the proposition that racism and discrimination are impermissible. Even if we were to understand the relation between the normalization of racism and moral ignorance as not strictly a necessary one, it seems nonetheless plausible that in a context of normalization of a certain morally problematic issue X, there is an increased risk of moral ignorance about X.…”