The Epistemology of Igorance

            Based on the six components of ignorance laid out by Nancy Tuana in “The Speculum of Ignorance,” I have come to understand ignorance as an issue that manifests itself in different ways in different parts of life. While ignorance is an issue of thought, an invisible pattern of signals in the human mind, it causes empirically measurable consequences in the outside world. In this way, the epistemology of ignorance can be explained by the symbol of a tree. After reading how Tuana divides the epistemology of ignorance into six parts, I grouped those six parts into three categories: innocent ignorance, selfish ignorance, and evil ignorance. I associate each of these groups with a part of the tree.

Innocent ignorance represents the roots of a tree—they feed the existence of the tree, but they exist underground, unseen, and not responsible for what goes on above ground. Tuana provides two examples of this type of ignorance: when We Don’t Even Know What We Don’t Know, and when we are Lovingly Ignorant. The first of these mindsets is ignorant because it involves someone being so comfortable with “the one” that they don’t even consider the matters of “the other.” It’s not that they purposefully want to hurt the other, they just only see the world through the lens of the one. The second example involves people who try to understand concepts they cannot truly know. While they are well-intentioned in this pursuit, they still fail to achieve true understanding of “the other,” so they remain ignorant. Thus, both of these examples represent ignorance, which is wrong in itself, but stemming from relatively innocent actors.

Selfish ignorance represents the trunk of the tree: this is visible ignorance where actors can be held accountable, but they aren’t necessarily as active as the branches of the tree, who sprout leaves and interact more with the rest of the world. Selfish ignorance happens when We Know What We Don’t Know, But We Don’t Care and Willful Ignorance. In the first example, actors are aware of their ignorance but do nothing to change it, even though change could lead to progress. Willful ignorance is when an actor knows that they are part of a system that harms certain people, but tries to forget this and not know it. These two examples constitute the trunk of the tree because they are made up of actors “strong” enough to at least understand ignorance, but also privileged enough to be unmoving in their ignorance if challenged. Thus, stubborn, rigid ignorance makes up the trunk of the tree.

The branches of the tree, on the other hand, contain the types of ignorance that move about the world, actively harming others with the same ignorance protected by the trunk of the tree. This is ignorance that is systemically cultivated to impact certain groups and ignorance that comes from completely discrediting certain identities. The first type denies information to certain groups who are known by the information-holders to be capable of understanding it, so it systemically deprives them of understanding. The second does not care if information reaches a certain group, because the information-holders believe that group to be incapable of understanding or advocating for themselves what they claim to understand. These two forms of ignorance are the most pernicious, in my opinion, thus they represent the branches that grow leaves which fly in the wind, effecting other parts of the environment.

In this way, I consider the epistemology of ignorance to be a spectrum of issues concerning knowledge, ranging from actors who are ignorant themselves to actors who aim to enforce ignorance in other groups.

-Sammy Karon, responding to Nancy Tuana's "Speculum of Ignorance"