The Ethics of Willful Ignorance

The ethics of ignorance.

'Even the wisest of doctors are relying on scientific truths the errors of which will be recognised within a few years time,' wrote Marcel Proust a century ago. At that time most people understood the severe limitations of medicine, but today doctors are viewed as having enormous power. Medical research is seen by the public as the 'most scientific' form of scientific research (1); television p...

Willful Ignorance in a World of Biased Misinformation

Suppose individuals face a claim of uncertain validity and can only obtain more information from sources known to sometimes report biased misinformation for or against the claim. In such an environment, it is optimal for Bayesian expected utility maximizers to select the source biased toward their current behavior even if they know that source more frequently reports misinformation than an oppo...

Does Willful Ignorance Deflect Punishment? – An Experimental Study

This paper studies whether people can avoid punishment by remaining willfully ignorant about possible negative consequences of their actions for others. We employ a laboratory experiment, using modified dictator games in which a dictator can remain willfully ignorant about the payoff consequences of his decision for a receiver. A third party can punish the dictator after observing the dictator’...

1 Equal Culpability and the Scope of the Willful Ignorance Doctrine

Willful Ignorance, Embodiment, and the Limitations of Sympathy: J. M. Coetzee on Animal Cruelty Through Fictional Interlocutors