Philosophia

DOI 10.1007/s11406-009-9202-8

What Is Ignorance?

Rik Peels

Received: 10 December 2008 / Revised: 16 March 2009 / Accepted: 14 April 2009

# Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract This article offers an analysis of ignorance. After a couple of preliminary

remarks, I endeavor to show that, contrary to what one might expect and to what
nearly all philosophers assume, being ignorant is not equivalent to failing to know, at
least not on one of the stronger senses of knowledge. Subsequently, I offer two
definitions of ignorance and argue that one’s definition of ignorance crucially
depends on one’s account of belief. Finally, I illustrate the relevance of my analysis
by paying attention to four philosophical problems in which ignorance plays a
crucial role.

Keywords Ignorance . Analysis . Knowledge

Preliminary Distinctions

Before embarking on our exploration, let me make two preliminary remarks, one on
knowledge and one on doxastic attitudes.
For long the epistemological focus has been on propositional knowledge, i.e.
knowledge of facts, knowledge that something is so, knowledge that some
proposition is true. Some have argued, however, that in addition to propositional
knowledge, there is such a thing as practical knowledge or knowledge-how
(knowledge how to do something, how to perform some task), and knowledge by
acquaintance or experiential knowledge (acquaintance with some object). Examples

R. Peels (*)
Department of Philosophy, Utrecht University,
Heidelberglaan 6, Postbus 80126,
3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
 Philosophia

of these kinds of knowledge are respectively knowing how to play the piccolo and
knowing the taste of pomegranates.1 Others have argued that knowledge-how and
knowledge by acquaintance can somehow be reduced to propositional knowledge.2
Now, those who believe that practical knowledge and experiential knowledge cannot
(entirely) be reduced to propositional knowledge might also think that, in addition to
propositional ignorance, there is such a thing as practical ignorance and experiential
ignorance. Some people are ignorant in math (they do not know how to do math)
and most children of the age of five are ignorant of both the discouraging hardness
and the challenging possibilities of life (that is, they are ignorant of these things). In
this article I will keep aloof from the practical and experiential varieties of
knowledge and ignorance, whether they are different from propositional knowledge
and ignorance or not. Henceforth, I use ‘knowledge’ and ‘ignorance’ as shorthand
for ‘propositional knowledge’ and ‘propositional ignorance’.3
The second thing I should like to point out concerns our doxastic attitudes. It is
something of a communis opinio among epistemologists that there are just three of
them: belief, disbelief, and suspension of judgment. Let me briefly clarify how I use
these terms. By ‘belief’ I mean belief that some proposition p is true. By ‘disbelief’ I
mean belief that p is false. By ‘suspension of judgment’ I mean neither belief nor
disbelief that p, whether one has ever considered p or not. Each of these doxastic
attitudes may be occurrent or dispositional. If some cognitive subject S at some time
t occurrently believes that p, then at t S is considering p or thinking about p or
reflecting on p, and believing p. If at t S latently believes p, then at t S is not
considering p or thinking about p or reflecting on p, but still believes p.
Now, dispositional and non-dispositional accounts of belief (and disbelief and
suspension of judgment) provide us with different views on what it is for someone to
latently believe a proposition. This is because they provide us with different views as
to what it is for someone to believe something. According to Jonathan Cohen’s
dispositional account of belief, for instance, “belief that p is a disposition, when one
is attending to issues raised, or items referred to, by the proposition that p, normally
to feel it true that p and false that not-p (…).”4 This means that one need not have
considered a proposition in order to believe it. It also means that for any person S

1
For a highly influential account of the distinction between propositional and practical knowledge, see Ryle
1945, 4-16, and 1969, 27-32, 40-41. One of the first to make a distinction between propositional knowledge
and knowledge by acquaintance is Bertrand Russell in Russell 1910-1911, and 1980, 23, 25-32.
2
For a recent discussion of this issue, see Stanley and Williamson 2001; Snowdon 2003; and Rumfitt 2003.
3
One might want to suggest that, next to propositional, practical, and experiential ignorance, there is
ignorance of the right answer to a question. As it seems to me, however, this kind of ignorance is reducible
to propositional ignorance. Imagine that Sam has put a piece of paper in a box and asks me what is in the
box. If I am ignorant of the right answer to his question, I am ignorant of the (truth of the) proposition that
there is piece of paper in the box, although I might simultaneously be ignorant of the proposition that there
is not a hammer in the box, that there is not a shirt in it, etc., and know that there is not an elephant in the
box (the box being far too small for that), etc. Thus, ignorance of the right answer to a question seems to
consist of ignorance of two or more propositions, whether one disbelieves them, suspends judgment on
them, or has never considered them. This is not to say, however, that it might not be useful in certain
contexts, such as philosophy of science, to phrase ignorance in terms of one’s doxastic attitude toward the
right answer to certain questions (see, for instance, Bromberger 1992, 115, 128 who defines a scientific
theory’s acceptability partly in terms of ignorance of the right answer to specific questions).
4
Cohen 1995, 4.
Philosophia

and proposition p, S believes, disbelieves, or suspends judgment on p (assuming that

belief and disbelief are mutually exclusive). Non-dispositional accounts (or most of
them), however, have it that, in order for S at some time t to believe, disbelieve, or
suspend judgment on p, S ought to have considered or entertained p at t or at some
time t* prior to t.5 On such accounts, for any proposition p, S believes p, disbelieves
p, suspends judgment on p, or has never considered p.
I will argue that ignorance can be defined in terms of the three doxastic attitudes.
As we will see below, however, whether one’s account of belief is dispositional or
non-dispositional makes an important difference to one’s definition of ignorance.

Ignorance and Lack of Knowledge

The word ‘ignorant’ is derived from the Latin in (not) and gnarus (knowledgeable,
acquainted with). This suggests that ‘to be ignorant’ means ‘to lack knowledge’.
Thus, to say that Marion was ignorant of the fact that her uncle promised her mother
to pick her up at St. George Street at 11.00 a.m., so it seems, is just another way of
saying that she did not know that the proposition that her uncle promised her mother
to pick her up at St. George Street at 11.00 a.m. is true. That ignorance is equivalent
to lack of knowledge is also widely assumed among philosophers.6
But is ignorance really equivalent to lack of knowledge? In other words, are
ignorance and knowledge each other’s complements? There seem to be just five
ways for some person S to fail to know that some proposition p is true:
(a) p is false;
(b) S disbelieves p, while p is true;
(c) S suspends judgment on p, while p is true;
(d) S does not have any doxastic attitude toward p, while p is true;7
(e) S believes p, while p is true, but S’s belief that p lacks the warrant necessary for
knowledge.8
I do not assert that these candidate categories of ignorance are hard in the sense
that they cannot be split up into subcategories. For example, (a), as it stands, does
not tell us anything about S’s attitude toward p, that is, it does not tell us whether S
believes p, disbelieves p, suspends judgment on p, or has never even considered p.
One might also think that there are several ways in which some person S can believe
a true proposition p without knowing that p, for instance, by believing that p without

5
Non-dispositional accounts tend to be fairly complex. According to Robert Audi, for instance, perceptual
experience can sometimes leave some sort of doxastic trace that can count as a latent belief, even if one
has not explicitly considered the proposition in question. Yet, he clearly distinguishes latent beliefs from
dispositions to believe (see Audi 1994, 420ff.). I believe that the above, rough definition will do for
present purposes.
6
See, for instance, Driver 1989, 373ff, and Flanagan 1990, 420ff, in their discussion of whether ignorance
is necessary for certain moral virtues. For similar understandings of ignorance as lack of knowledge, see,
for instance, Unger 1975, 93, and Zimmerman 1988, 75.
7
Remember that many dispositional accounts of belief will reject option (d) as a genuine possibility of
failing to know, given the fact that for any proposition p, one either believes, disbelieves, or suspends
judgment on p. On such accounts, only (a), (b), (c), and (e) will count as instances of failing to know.
8
Where I take ‘warrant’ to be that (enough of) which turns true belief into knowledge.
 Philosophia

having any good reasons for p, or by S’s true belief’s being incoherent with the rest
of her doxastic doxastic evidence base. That is, perhaps there are different ways in
which (e) can be instantiated. The list does seem to be exhaustive, though, in the
sense that there is no way in which a cognitive subject might fail to know some
proposition that is not an instance of one of these categories. For, how could S lack
knowledge of p without the occurrence of one of (a) – (e)?
Obviously, instances of (b) and (c) will count as instances of ignorance. If
someone believes that Darwin did not publish his Origin of Species in 1859, he is
ignorant of the fact that he did and if someone suspends judgment on the proposition
that Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia, then he is ignorant of this truth. One
might think, however, that the other three categories in this short list can be used to
show that ignorance of p is not equivalent to lack of knowledge that p.
First, we would not say that someone who believes a false proposition p and,
thereby, lacks knowledge of p, is ignorant of p. One can only be ignorant of truth, so it
seems. It does not make sense to say that someone is ignorant of p if p is false.9 Hence,
instances of (a) show that someone can lack knowledge without being ignorant.
Second, not all instances of (d) seem to be cases of ignorance. For one, most
people have never considered the proposition q that Hillary Clinton is not identical
to the autobiography she wrote. On certain non-dispositional accounts of belief, this
means that most people do not have any doxastic attitude toward q: they do not
believe q, disbelieve q, or suspend judgment on p. Nevertheless, we would not say
that such people are ignorant of q: as soon as they were to consider q, people would
occurrently believe q. Everyone knows that people are not identical to books. With
other propositions things are different. Most people in this world have never
considered the proposition r that the core of helium contains two protons and two
neutrons. Upon considering this proposition they would most probably suspend
judgment on r. Knowing that r is true, we would describe these people as ignorant of
r’s truth. Hence, on a non-dispositional account of belief, one might be willing to
attach the label ‘ignorance’ to some, but certainly not to all instances of (d).
Third and finally, we would not say that someone who believes a true proposition p
without knowing that p for some reason or other is ignorant of p.10 If I truly but
accidentally believe that I will get the job, we would not say that I am ignorant of the
fact that I will get the job. Hence, instances of (e), although instances of some person’s
lacking knowledge that p, are not instances of that person’s being ignorant of p.
As it seems to me, however, only the third argument is promising. First, one
might easily revise the view at hand in the following way: not knowing the truth
value of some proposition p or not knowing whether p is equivalent to being

9
Therefore, Goldman’s repeated parenthetical remark that ignorance is the absence of true belief seems
closer to the truth (cf. Goldman 1986, 36, 1999, 5).
10
In an interesting article, Talisse contends that we use the term ‘ignorance’ to denote (1) someone’s
believing what is false, (2) someone’s having an unjustified belief, or (3) someone’s holding a belief at
which she arrived in an epistemically irresponsible way (cf. Talisse 2006, 456). It is not clear, or at least
not to me, what the difference between the second and third types of ignorance is supposed to be, but both
of them seem to consist of cases in which a person has a belief that, even if true, does not amount to
knowledge. This seems implausible: if the proposition p which the person in question believes is true, then
we would not say that she is ignorant of p, although she might be ignorant of many other things, such as
the existence of good evidence in favor of p.
Philosophia

ignorant of the truth value of p or to being ignorant as to whether p. By wording

one’s position in this way one can meet the objection that one cannot be ignorant of
a false proposition.
The second argument is only convincing if one adheres to a non-dispositional
account of belief. And even if one adheres to a non-dispositional account of belief,
there seem to be several ways out. Let me mention just two of them. First, one could
argue that, although we would say people know that Hillary Clinton is not identical
to her autobiography, we would not say they believe this proposition. On this view,
belief is not a necessary condition for knowledge. Second, one could argue that
people not only believe propositions that they have considered, but also all those
propositions that are obviously entailed (on their own criteria, if you like) by
propositions they believe. People believe that Hillary Clinton is a human being and
given the obvious fact that no human being is or could be a book, we can properly
say that all people believe that Hillary Clinton is not identical to her autobiography.
The second option seems most promising to me.
The third argument seems to be the strongest. One could take at least three different
routes in response to it, the first route embracing the argument, the second route
refining it, and the third one trying to rebut it. First, one could claim that knowledge
never has the meaning of mere true belief and that, therefore, lack of knowledge is
indeed not equivalent to ignorance. If this (in some sense of the word traditional) view
is correct, all instances of (e) count as instances of failing to know, but not as instances
of ignorance. Second, one could argue that ‘knowledge’ has many senses and that one
of these senses – a weak sense – is having a true belief.11 Ignorance, one could say, is
equivalent to lack of knowledge on this weak understanding of knowledge, whereas
it is not on a stronger understanding of knowledge, a sense which requires more than
true belief.12 On this line of reasoning, (e) cannot count as a category of failing to
know in a weak sense. Third, one could contend that knowledge simply is mere true
belief.13 If the two former arguments against the thesis that ignorance is not
equivalent to lack of knowledge are somehow wanting, as I believe they are, this
third view is compatible with the idea that lack of knowledge is equivalent to
ignorance. On this line of reasoning, (e) simply cannot count as a category of failing
to know. The problem with this third view is that it has hardly convinced anyone.
For the remainder of this paper I will assume without further argument that either
the first or the second position is correct. If knowledge is not equivalent to mere true
belief, we can conclude that ignorance is not equivalent to lack of knowledge—at
least not on one of the stronger senses of ‘knowledge’.

11
For a defense of the intriguing idea that ‘knowledge’ is polysemous and that there is a sense of
‘knowledge’ in which it is identical to true belief, see Van Woudenberg 2005 and Van Woudenberg,
“Which Value for What Knowledge?”, unpublished manuscript. I take this second route to include those
contextualist accounts of ‘knowledge’ that have it that in some, but not all contexts a person S who has a
mere true belief that p can properly be described as ‘knowing that p’.
12
For a statement of the idea that on a weak sense of ‘knowledge’ – where ‘knowing that p’ is
synonymous with ‘being cognizant of p’, ‘being aware of p’, and ‘possesses the information that p’ – ‘lack
of knowledge’ is identical to ‘ignorance’ whereas it is not on a stronger sense of ‘knowledge’, see
Goldman and Olsson, “Reliabilism and the Value of Knowledge,” (forthcoming).
13
That knowledge is equivalent to mere true belief has most famously been championed by Crispin
Sartwell (1991, 1992).
 Philosophia

A Definition of Ignorance

We have seen that there are different kinds of ignorance: (1) S disbelieves the true
proposition p, (2) S suspends judgment on the true proposition p after having
considered p, (3) S has never considered the true proposition p, but would disbelieve
p upon considering p, and (4) S has never considered the true proposition p, but
would suspend judgment on p upon considering p.14 Let us dub these varieties of
ignorance respectively disbelieving ignorance, suspending ignorance, conditional
disbelieving ignorance, and conditional suspending ignorance. One might even
want to make more distinctions. Each of the first and second kinds of ignorance can
be occurrent or latent. And is there not a difference between suspending judgment
on – neither believing nor disbelieving – a proposition p because one has insufficient
evidence to either believe or disbelieve p on the one hand (call it evidential
ignorance), and because one lacks the cognitive capacities or the relevant knowledge
necessary to grasp p on the other (call it deep ignorance)?15
Assuming for the moment that if S disbelieves p, S would disbelieve p upon
considering p and that if S suspends judgment on p, S upon entertaining p would
suspend judgment on p, it seems that, on both dispositional and non-dispositional
accounts of belief, ignorance can be defined as follows:
1. Some cognitive subject S is ignorant of some proposition p iff (i) p is true and
(ii) if S were to consider p, S would disbelieve p or suspend judgment on p.
or:
1*. Some cognitive subject S is ignorant of the truth value of some proposition p
iff (i) p is true and if S were to consider p, S would either disbelieve p or
suspend judgment on p, or (ii) p is false and if S were to consider p, S would
either believe p or suspend judgment on p.
One might wonder, though, whether it is indeed true that if S disbelieves p, S
would disbelieve p upon considering p, and that if S suspends judgment on p, S
upon entertaining p would suspend judgment on p. On a dispositional account of the
doxastic attitudes, according to which one has some doxastic attitude A toward some
proposition p iff one has a disposition to normally16 have A toward p upon
considering p, this seem true by definition. To believe p, on such accounts, just is
having a disposition to, say, feel p to be true upon entertaining p. But what about
non-dispositional accounts of belief, such as the view that one believes some
proposition p at some time t iff at t one occurrently believes p or at some time t*,
prior to t, one has occurrently believed p and since not occurrently disbelieved p or
suspended judgment on p?

14
On dispositional accounts of belief the subjunctive conditionals (3) and (4) will be understood as
instances of (1) and (2).
15
Here I assume that one can only believe or disbelieve a proposition if one can grasp it.
16
Cohen 1995, 8, has argued that in abnormal circumstances – when one’s life seems to depend on
concentrating on some other issue or when one is accidentally distracted by, say, a nearby thunderbolt -
one might fail to form A toward p, even though one can be said to have A toward p.
Philosophia

Imagine that some person S at some time t occurrently disbelieves the true
proposition p. Imagine also that S does not consider p again for the next fifteen
years. Imagine, finally, that S at t*, nine years after t, acquires some strong piece of
evidence e in favor of p and that if S were to consider p a t* – which she does not –
she would realize that e heavily counts in favor of p and that as a result of that she
would come to believe p. On a non-dispositional account of belief S at t* is ignorant
of p, whereas on a dispositional account of belief she is not. Therefore, adherents of
non-dispositional accounts of belief might prefer the following definition of
ignorance:

2. Some cognitive subject S is ignorant of some proposition p iff (i) p is true and
(ii) S disbelieves p, S suspends judgment on p, or S has never considered p, but
would disbelieve p or suspend judgment on p upon considering p.
or:

2*. Some cognitive subject S is ignorant of the truth value of some proposition p
iff (i) p is true and S disbelieves p, S suspends judgment on p, or S has never
considered p, but would disbelieve p or suspend judgment on p upon
considering p, or (ii) p is false and S believes p, S suspends judgment on p,
or S has never considered p, but would believe p or suspend judgment on p
upon considering p.
1, 1*, 2, and 2* define someone’s ignorance concerning a single proposition. In
daily life, however, we ascribe to people not only ignorance of some fact
(supposedly, a true proposition), but also ignorance about some subject matter. We
say people are ignorant about Buddhism, about transnational crime, about economic
issues, or about HIV.
What does it mean for someone to be ignorant about, say, transnational crime?
Obviously, that person is ignorant of the truth of each or most members of a certain
set of propositions. But how large should this set be and which propositions should it
include? Well, it all depends. It depends on who the person in question is and on
which circumstances she is in. We can ascribe ignorance about transnational crime to
the minister of foreign affairs, while not ascribing it to some high-school biology
teacher, even if the former is ignorant of just half of the propositions the latter is
ignorant of. A student can be said not to be ignorant about Buddhism at the
beginning of a class on Eastern religions and properly be said to be ignorant about it
at the end of the same class, even if at both times she is ignorant of exactly the same
propositions.
Of course, this is not to deny that there is a set of propositions such that in
these cases the minister of foreign affairs is less ignorant about the truth of each
of them than the biology teacher is, and that there is a set of propositions such that
the student is equally ignorant of the truth of each of them at the end of the class as
he was when it started. What I want to say is that whether some person S is
ignorant about X, where X is some subject matter rather than a specific set of
propositions, is person-dependent and context-dependent. This means that precise
definitions of ignorance about subject matters rather than some true proposition
cannot be given.
 Philosophia

Relevance

The above analysis of ignorance, as it seems to me, will turn out to be helpful in
thinking about several philosophical issues in which ignorance takes centre stage.
Let me mention and briefly discuss four of them.

1. Ignorance as excuse condition for moral responsibility Ignorance is one of the so-
called Aristotelian excuse conditions for bringing about a morally bad state of
affairs.17 In other words, a person’s performing an action that has harmful
consequences may be excused by her ignorance of certain facts. For instance,
assume that Cindy knows that she has some dangerous disease D. Imagine also that
she has some other relatively innocent disease E for which her doctor prescribes
medicine M, a medicine that turns out to be fatal in combination with D. Assume,
finally, that her doctor knows that M is deadly if prescribed to someone having D.
Now, it seems that the doctor’s ignorance of Cindy’s having D can count as an
excuse condition for prescribing M only if his ignorance itself is not reprehensible.
That is, only if the doctor’s ignorance as to whether Cindy has D is itself in some
sense of the word responsible, justified, rational, or reasonable, will he be excused
for prescribing M.
This has been widely acknowledged in the literature. Holly Smith, for example,
distinguishes three reasons for why a particular instance of ignorance may be
culpable (she calls them deficient investigation, preventing subsequent discovery,
and deficient inference18) and she discusses in depth three views on the relation
between a person’s culpable ignorance and a morally bad action of that person
ensuing from her ignorance (she dubs them the conservative, moderate, and liberal
views19). What she and others20 have failed to notice, though, is that which kind of
ignorance is exemplified can make a crucial difference to our moral evaluation of the
person’s action. Thus, the doctor’s ignorance of Cindy’s having D will count as an
excuse condition for prescribing M to her only if his ignorance is a case of
disbelieving ignorance. If his ignorance is a case of suspending ignorance,
conditional suspending ignorance or conditional disbelieving ignorance, he seems
culpable for her death: if he suspended judgment on her having D, he should not
have prescribed the medicine and it is his professional duty to find out – and hence,
consider – whether she has D.

2. Ignorance as excuse condition for doxastic responsibility Perhaps ignorance can

be an excuse condition not only for performing a morally bad action, but also for
acquiring or having a bad or wrong belief.21 But what is it to have a bad or wrong
belief? Here, one might think primarily of false beliefs. We may not hold John
responsible for falsely believing that it was a good thing for senator McGrath to
finance some non-profit company if John was ignorant of the fact that McGrath was

17
See Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics III.1,5, V.8.
18
See Smith 1983, 544–45.
19
See Smith 1983, 548ff.
20
See, for instance, Fields 1994 and Zimmerman 1997.
21
This is argued by Van Woudenberg 2009.
Philosophia

deeply involved in a large-scale fraud perpetrated by the company’s employees,

unless of course John should have known about it. But under normal circumstances
John’s ignorance counts as an excuse condition only if it is disbelieving ignorance or
conditional disbelieving ignorance rather than suspending ignorance or conditional
suspending ignorance. (Notice that his ignorance is a necessary, not a sufficient
condition for his being non-culpable for his belief; his ignorance itself needs to be
non-culpable). In mathematical contexts we might not hold someone responsible for
weakly believing a false theorem A if her ignorance of the fact that theorem B,
which she strongly believes, entails ~A is a case of disbelieving ignorance, but we
might hold her responsible for believing A if she suspends judgment on whether B
entails ~A.
Obviously, the topics of ignorance as excuse condition for respectively moral
responsibility (or, more precisely, responsibility for actions) and doxastic responsi-
bility are closely related to each other. In both cases, whether one’s ignorance
functions as an excuse condition will depend at least partly on whether one’s
ignorance itself is culpable or not and on whether some specific relation between
one’s ignorance and the ensuing act or belief holds (one might argue, for instance,
that one should have had good reason to think that being ignorant concerning p
would (probably) result in a morally bad action or a false belief). But there may also
be important differences. Whereas our actions are typically oriented toward what is
good or what is beneficial, our beliefs are widely thought to aim at truth. In other
words, actions are usually evaluated from a moral or prudential point of view,
whereas beliefs are often evaluated from an epistemic point of view. Closely
connected to this is the fact that, according to many philosophers, usually we have
voluntary control over our actions, whereas usually we do not have voluntary control
over our beliefs. Normally, we can reflect upon our beliefs and desires and then
freely decide what to do, whereas most beliefs are automatically formed. This might
lead one to think that, whereas culpable ignorance may be an excuse condition for
morally wrong actions, culpable ignorance is always an excuse conditions for
ensuing false beliefs. Whether this is indeed the case is a question that I will not
attempt to answer here.

3. Justified ignorance We find many different concepts of justification in the

philosophical literature. Above, we saw that one can be culpable or non-culpable for
a certain case of ignorance. If, as many in the ethics of belief debate would agree,
there is such a thing as doxastic responsibility, one might wonder what it is for
ignorance rather than belief to be justified in this sense. This is an interesting
question on its own, whether or not ignorance can count as an excuse condition for
bringing about morally bad states of affairs or for having a false belief. This topic
has only briefly been touched on by Wolterstorff and Foley.22 But whether
someone’s ignorance is, say, an instance of evidential ignorance or deep ignorance
will make an important difference as to whether the attitude is responsible. E.g., if
Max’s ignorance of the Cantor-Bernstein-Schroeder theorem in set theory results
from his violation of evidence gathering obligations (which would be a case of

22
Wolterstorff 2005, 335, and Foley 2005, 338–339.
 Philosophia

evidential ignorance), we may consider his ignorance as culpable, while we may not
be willing to hold him responsible for his ignorance of this theorem if it results from
his cognitive inability to understand the theorem (which would count as a case of
deep ignorance).
The same seems true for at least some other notions of justification. If a belief is
justified if it is the epistemically appropriate response to one’s evidence (whether or
not the person is responsible for that), as certain evidentialists have argued, then
whether some person’s ignorance is an instance of, say, disbelieving ignorance or
suspending ignorance will often make a crucial difference as to whether we would
describe that person’s ignorance as justified or not. If several experts (wrongly) tell
Max that the Cantor-Bernstein-Schroeder theorem has been decisively refuted, Max
ought to disbelieve this theorem rather than suspend judgment on it. That is, his
ignorance will count as justified in the evidentialist sense mentioned above only if it
is a case of disbelieving rather than suspending ignorance.

4. Ignorance as a necessary condition for certain moral virtues According to Julia

Driver, some kind of ignorance is necessary for one’s exemplification of certain
moral virtues.23 She fails, however, to clearly spell out what she means by
‘ignorance’, which renders her account of virtues such as modesty systematically
ambiguous. Whether or not ignorance is indeed a necessary condition for certain
moral virtues, it should be clear that not just any kind of ignorance will be necessary
for virtues such as modesty. Deep ignorance cannot count as a necessary condition
for knowledge. If a young child is deeply ignorant about the fact that she excels in
learning a language, since she lacks the required knowledge of what it is to excel in
learning a language, we should describe her as modest. More generally, any kind of
conditional ignorance cannot count as a necessary condition for modesty. If that
were the case, my having once thought about my own talents in a certain area would
all by itself exclude my being modest. Perhaps the idea is that one is modest only if
one exemplifies any of the kinds of ignorance that I distinguished above. As long as
it is not clear what Driver means by ‘ignorance’, it will be difficult, if not impossible
to provide a full assessment of her account of moral virtues such as modesty.

Acknowledgement I would like to thank Martijn Blaauw, Anthony Booth, Alvin Goldman, Thomas
Müller, Herman Philipse, Jeroen de Ridder, Vincent van Oostrom, René van Woudenberg, and an
anonymous referee of this journal for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

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