Reflections on Deliberate Ignorance
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Description
Many different definitions of “deliberate ignorance” may be derived from the ordinary usage of these two terms. “Ignorance” may refer to an absence of belief, to an unjustified belief, to disregard of a fact, or to use of a fact known to be false. “Deliberate” may refer to a direct decision not to know some fact F or an indirect decision to know F′ rather than F. An individual may be deliberately ignorant but so may a group be. These different interpretations of deliberative ignorance raise different issues in different contexts. This essay develops a taxonomy of accounts of deliberate ignorance, suggests the criteria one might use to select among definitions, and identities some normative questions that arise from them in a selection of contexts ranging from debates over individual rationality to questions in political philosophy. Hertwig and Engel argue that psychology has largely ignored an important set of phenomena that they, ironically, call deliberate ignorance. They define deliberate ignorance as “the conscious individual or collective choice not to seek or use information (or knowledge)” and note that they are particularly interested in situations in which the marginal cost of knowledge acquisition is low and the expected benefits high. They then offer a functional taxonomy of deliberate ignorance, discuss why it might be normatively desirable, and suggest modeling strategies. In this essay, I offer a conceptual rather than functional taxonomy of deliberate ignorance. 1 This perspective sets deliberate ignorance within a more general framework that focuses on the distribution of knowledge and information. This framework raises questions concerning the appropriate scope of a concept of deliberate ignorance in the study of psychological and social phenomena. It also has implications for our understanding of both rationality and normative questions in moral and political philosophy. The argument relies on the literature on extended cognition and the extended mind, which argues that individual knowledge does not rest solely in the mind of the individual but also in the minds of others and in other artifacts. This argument thus lessens the gap between individual and collective knowledge. Questions of “deliberate ignorance” shift into questions about the distribution of knowledge and decision-making authority. The discussion begins with an analysis of the concept of deliberate ignorance. It then assesses its implications for understanding the norms of rationality and discusses issues pertaining to political and moral philosophy.
Source Publication
Deliberate Ignorance: Choosing Not to Know
Source Editors/Authors
Ralph Hertwig, Christoph Engel
Publication Date
2020
Recommended Citation
Kornhauser, Lewis A., "Reflections on Deliberate Ignorance" (2020). Faculty Chapters. 1015.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1015
