Wilholt, Torsten (2018) On knowing what one does not know: Ignorance and the aims of research. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Abstract
In order to select an area of ignorance and make it the target of inquiry, one first has to be aware of one’s own lack of knowledge in this particular area. In this paper, I explore this connection between ignorance and the aims of research. I emphasize the importance of distinguishing between all the things we don’t know—our total ignorance—and the totality of what we know we don’t know—our conscious ignorance. I argue that while our total ignorance may be conceptualized as a set of true propositions that are unknown to us, our conscious ignorance is best understood as a set of questions. This enables us to identify the preconditions that have to be satisfied in order for a question to be an element of our conscious ignorance. The analysis reveals that conscious ignorance is a complex ability that can often require quite an amount of knowledge and competence. Items of conscious ignorance can, of course, differ in many important respects. To stress one of these differences, I introduce the notion of deep ignorance to signify cases in which we not only fail to know the correct answer to a given question, but cannot even name any plausible candidate answers. I argue that items of deep ignorance should be expected to possess particular attractiveness as targets of research (provided they are not entirely intractable). Finally, I suggest that in light of my analysis, some of the strategies of ignorance-mongers that have engaged agnotologists’ interests over the past years can be understood as attempts to undermine not only knowledge, but also conscious ignorance at the same time—or, in cases where that is not possible, to at least counteract the impression that the ignorance in question is deep.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Wilholt, Torsten torsten.wilholt@philos.uni-hannover.de 0000-0002-0729-5476
Additional Information:	The final version of this paper has been published in Science and the Production of Ignorance, ed. by Janet Kourany and Martin Carrier, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2020, pp. 195-218.
Keywords:	Ignorance, aims of research, normal science, revolutionary science, agnotology
Subjects:	General Issues > Social Epistemology of Science General Issues > Theory Change
Depositing User:	Dr. Torsten Wilholt
Date Deposited:	20 Sep 2024 12:04
Last Modified:	20 Sep 2024 12:04
Item ID:	23926
Subjects:	General Issues > Social Epistemology of Science General Issues > Theory Change
Date:	December 2018
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23926

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