Public Expertise and Ignorance

Abstract

One of the roles of public expertise is to spread useful knowledge throughout society. In this way, public expertise can combat ignorance. Crucially, however, it is also explained how a surprising central role of public expertise is often to manufacture the very ignorance that is being combatted. This is because there is more to ignorance than simply the absence of knowledge, as ignorance more specifically concerns lacking the knowledge that one should have. In this way, ignorance is never normatively neutral (in the manner that mere lack of knowledge can be). What expert-led public information does is thus create a reasonable expectation that one should know certain important truths, and hence ensures that those who remain unaware of them are now ignorant of them. Ignorance must thus often be manufactured by public experts before those same experts can combat it.