Sonja Riegler
University of Vienna
Current theorizing on ignorance in feminist, political epistemology stresses that ignorance is more than just a gap in knowledge. Rather, these accounts consider ignorance to be a “substantive epistemic practice” that can serve purposes of domination (Alcoff 2007, Mills 1997 & 2007). I am sympathetic towards the aims of substantive-practice accounts (SPA) since they reckon with ignorance’s ties to social structures. However, I find existing SPAs insufficient in at least two respects. First, they fail to explain how precisely the practice of ignorance operates on a conceptual and social level. Second, I believe that ignorance serves a multitude of social functions, not all of which are negative or repressive.
In this talk, I seek to address these shortcomings by introducing a “functionalist approach to ignorance”. Central to my own account is what I label (1) “Craigean functionalism”. In his book Knowledge and the State of Nature (Craig 1990), Edward Craig uses a so-called “state-of-nature” scenario to explain why it is useful for an imagined community to introduce precursors of our concept of “knowledge”. The guiding idea in Craig is that instead of asking what knowledge is, we should rather ask what the term “knowledge” is for (Craig 1990, Hannon 2019, Kusch & McKenna 2018). I draw inspiration from this project and apply it to ignorance.
The first step of my genealogy of ignorance shows that to ascribe ignorance is not just the opposite of attributing knowledge; it is something more specific of a particular social situation. The second stage of my state-of-nature story introduces a developmental layer and asks how ignorance operates as a (strategic) phenomenon once social situations become more complex.
I submit that my account constitutes an important amendment to existing lines of inquiry on ignorance as a social and political phenomenon. For instance, my account is more precise about specific mechanisms through which ignorance operates as a practice. Additionally, my approach sheds light on potential positive epistemic and political functions of ignorance.
Chair: Sebastián Sánchez Martínez
Time: September 6th, 18:10-18:40
Location: SR 1.004
SOPhiA 2026 