In previous chapters, I have developed an account of the knowledge of what things are. But I have not discussed up to this point the repercussions of our failures to have knowledge of this sort. Of course, regarding many things, we do not know what they are. That is, there are many things such that we are ignorant regarding what they are.

Ignorance, of course, it not always a problem. As put by Fricker (2016, p. 160),

Ignorance is not always bad; far from it. Looking at the issue in its most general aspect there is the obvious point that for finite beings massive ignorance is a precondition of having an epistemically functional life, for cognitive overload is an epistemic liability. There is an indefinite, indeed infinite, number of things that we do not have the slightest need to know—the number of hairs on your head at midnight on your next Birthday, for instance. Furthermore, we actively need not to know most of them (or not to spend time and energy investigating them) in order to conserve cognitive capacity for those things that we do need to know.

In the same vein, oncologist Albert Lim Kok Hooi writes—in a New York Times article that focuses on ignorance in medicine—that

It would be a foolish doctor to cram 10,000 useless facts into his brain. Things that can easily be checked should be checked. Memory can fail. Only the naïve and unsophisticated patient would be taken aback if the doctor needs to check up on a drug dose or schedule[…]So much knowledge has been unearthed about diseases and their treatment. No doctor can hope to know more than a tiny fraction of all there is to know (2010, Dec 20).

However, as a growing literature alerts us, ignorance can be a problem—epistemically and morally speaking. For instance, in early April 2020, in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, American neurosurgeon and CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta was outraged to hear from Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp that he had just found out that the virus could be transmitted asymptomatically. Dr. Gupta reacted by saying: “this is inexcusable…My kids who go to school in Georgia knew that a month ago…We’ve known this for a long time”.Footnote 1 So, on the one hand, it is clear that we cannot and need know all that there is to know. There is much that we can and should ignore. On the other, certain pieces of knowledge are required of us. Governor Kemp should have known by April 2020 that COVID-19 is transmitted asymptomatically. In failing to do so, his ignorance may be rightly judged—as it was by Gupta— to be inexcusable or culpable.Footnote 2

I start with these general remarks, but my topic here is not ignorance in general. It is, as it should be, ignorance of what things are. Here as elsewhere, knowledge is and should be limited: we cannot know what all things are, and we need not to. Still, there are things such that we should know what they are. For example, Governor Kemp should know what COVID-19 is, as well as what viral asymptomatic transmission is. If he fails to do so, his ignorance may be rightly judged to be inexcusable or culpable.

But here we should ask: why some things are such that we should know what they are? How to understand the inexcusable or culpable ignorance of what things are? In this final chapter, I shall try to give an answer to these and other difficult questions related to ignorance of what things are, and to obligations to know what things are. First, however, we need have a proper grasp of the phenomenon of ignorance of what things are. This is the task of Sect. 7.1, in which I isolate a form of ignorance that will be of special concern to us: the erotetic ignorance of what things are. In Sect. 7.2, I discuss the topic of culpable or inexcusable ignorance of what things are. In Sects. 7.3 and 7.4, I provide an account of obligations or requirements to know what certain things are, one in terms of obligations that attach or are associated with social/institutional roles that we happen to occupy. Finally, in Sect. 7.5, I discuss a form of epistemic injustice related to the phenomenon of ignorance of what things are.

1 Understanding Ignorance of What Things Are

The philosophical literature on ignorance is surprisingly scarce. Even so, it is possible to identify a position as being dominant in the literature, one that is well expressed by Zimmerman (2008, p. IX).

Ignorance is ignorance of facts. It is a failure to know what is true. To know what is true, one must believe it (something that involves having a certain level or degree of confidence in it) and do so with adequate justification. Thus ignorance can come about in one of two ways: either by way of failure to believe the truth or by way of believing it without adequate justification.

The position sounds intuitive. Where there is knowledge of facts, there is no ignorance. Ignorance would then be the lack of knowledge of facts. More precisely, if it is a fact that p, a subject S is ignorant toward p if and only if S does not know that p. Taking the knowledge of a fact that p to be equivalent to a true and justified belief, S can be ignorant of the fact that p either given the lack of the belief that p or given a lack of adequate justification for believing that p. Following Le Morvan and Peels (2016), let us call this the standard view of ignorance. As pointed out by Nottelmann (2016), however, there seems to be a variety of kinds of ignorance. Not all of them seem to be properly understood in terms of lack of knowledge of facts. Or, if they can be so understood, this needs to be argued for. For instance, one can be ignorant regarding entities (or things)—taken broadly, as encompassing objects, persons, events and properties. As put by Nottelmann (2016, p. 37),

if we allow ‘entity’ as a liberal appellation for objects, persons, events, and properties, ignorance of all such entities conform to the following schema:

(Ignorance of an entity) S is ignorant of entity E if, and only if,

1. S is an epistemic subject.

2. E exists (i.e. there is such an entity as E).

3. S does not know E.

One could say that we can know objects, persons, events and properties merely by consciously experiencing (e.g., seeing) these entities, without knowledge of facts about them. As we have seen in Chap. 2, Tye (2009) argues for a view of this sort. Whether it is correct or not, a philosopher who wishes to defend the idea that ignoring entities is not a matter of one ignoring facts has room for maneuver here. She could say that an entity is ignored if we do not know it in the sense of not having consciously experienced it. More important for our purposes, however, is a kind of ignorance that has recently been labelled erotetic ignorance (Rescher 2009), that is, ignorance of answers to questions. My focus in this book, after all, is on the knowledge of what things are, and my treatment of knowledge of this sort is in terms of knowledge of answers to questions.

To start with a simple case of erotetic ignorance, suppose that Alice does not know any proposition whatsoever that truly answers the question of what roentgenium is, so that (1),

(1) Alice knows what roentgenium is

is false in any context in which it is uttered. It seems clear that we could say of Alice here that she is ignorant regarding what roentgenium is. But to be precise, the kind of ignorance she displays is well captured by the idea of “complete erotetic ignorance”. As put by Nottelmann (2016, p. 39), for a given embedded question Q,

(erotetic ignorance, complete) S is completely ignorant of Q if, and only if,

1. S is an epistemic subject.

2. Q has at least one correct answer in the actual world.

3. S does not know any correct answer to Q.

Clearly, the idea of complete erotetic ignorance captures the situation we find ourselves in regarding many ontological items. There are many things such that we are completely ignorant regarding what they are, in that, for any such thing x, we do not know any proposition whatsoever which correctly (that is, truly) answers the question “What is x?”.Footnote 3 In what follows, I will keep my focus on ignorance in the erotetic form, but the idea of complete erotetic ignorance, simple as it is, is not sufficient to cover many interesting cases of ignorance regarding what things are. After all, we have been working with a view according to which the knowledge of what things are is context-sensitive, in the following sense: whether S knows what x is depends on whether propositions known by x properly answer the question of what x is given a context c. Suppose now that Alice knows that roentgenium is a radioactive synthetic chemical element. That is, she knows a stereotypical description of roentgenium. She does not know, however, the element’s atomic number and other of its underlying chemical properties. According to the view put forward in Chap. 4, Alice thus knows what roentgenium is for the purpose of bringing certain everyday inquiries to a close. But she doesn’t know what roentgenium is for the purpose of bringing to a close inquiries that aim to obtain information regarding underlying chemical properties of the element. Now, if this is so, Alice is not completely ignorant regarding what roentgenium is. After all, she does know a proposition that properly answers the question of roentgenium is, but this proposition does so in certain contexts only.

In order to make justice to the context-sensitivity of the knowledge of what things are, an account of ignorance of what things are also has to be context-sensitive. Thus I would like to suggest the following view:

Erotetic Ignorance of What Things Are

A subject S is ignorant regarding what x is in a context c if and only if S does not know any proposition that properly answers the question of what x is in c.Footnote 4

So, Alice may be ignorant regarding what roentgenium is in a context c1—in which, say, the goal of the inquiry is to obtain information regarding underlying chemical properties of the element. But she may not be ignorant regarding what roentgenium is in context c2. If in c2 the goal of the inquiry is, for instance, to obtain a stereotypical description of roentgenium, this is a context in which Alice does know a proposition that properly answers the question of roentgenium is. Again, as when characterizing the knowledge of what things are, we can also say, simply, that Alice knows what roentgenium is for the purpose of bringing to a close inquiries that aim at obtaining a stereotypical description of the element. But she does not know what roentgenium is for the purpose of bringing to a close inquiries that aim at obtaining information regarding its underlying chemical properties—in which case she can be said to be ignorant regarding what roentgenium is for such purpose. Similarly, I may know what a jaguar is for the purpose of providing stereotypical descriptions of the animal. But I may be ignorant regarding what a jaguar is for the purpose of bringing to a close inquiries that aim at obtaining information regarding its genetic make-up. So, there are (certainly many) things x such that we are completely ignorant regarding what they are in the erotetic sense: we do not know any proposition whatsoever—apart from propositions that are uninformative in any context—which truly answers the question “What is x?”. But there are things x (also many) such that we are ignorant regarding what they are only in certain contexts, or for certain purposes only.

Having clarified the idea of ignorance regarding what things are, we are now in position to tackle the following question: why some things are such that if we fail to know what they are our ignorance may be deemed culpable, or inexcusable?

2 Culpable Ignorance of What Things Are

There is by now a considerable literature on moral philosophy on the issue of culpable ignorance. It will be useful to start by considering an example taken from this literature, so that we have a better grip on what it takes for a case of ignorance to be culpable. We will then be in good position to discuss the issue of culpable ignorance as applied to the domain of the knowledge of what things are.

The (hypothetical) case is presented by Smith (1983) and involves a doctor, from the 1950’s, who, in trying to treat a respiratory disorder, exposes a premature infant to high concentrations of oxygen. As a result, her eye is severely damaged. She ends up blind. Now suppose that the doctor did not know that oxygen enrichment could lead to such an outcome. But suppose, further, that a prestigious medical journal had recently published a research indicating that oxygen enrichment could indeed lead to blindness when administered to premature infants. As put by Smith, “the doctor should have read the journal, and if he had done so, would have realized he ought to use less oxygen” (1983, p. 543). He was ignorant regarding the effect of high concentrations of oxygen on premature infants, but his ignorance seems to be inexcusable. After all, he should have read the journal and thus should have known that high concentrations of oxygen could have such an effect. This hypothetical case is, of course, similar to the actual case presented earlier, involving Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp. He should have known that COVID-19 can be transmitted asymptomatically. His ignorance was thus inexcusable.

These cases suggest that there is a close link between S’s ignorance toward p being culpable and our judgement that S should know (or should have known) that p. Let us say that, typically,Footnote 5 if S is ignorant toward p but should know (or should have known) that p, then S’s ignorance is culpable.

I take it that this thesis can be applied—with the necessary adaptations—to ignorance regarding what things are. With minimal adaptations, we have that, typically, if S is ignorant regarding what x is but should know (or should have known) what x is, then S’s ignorance regarding what x is is culpable.

At this point, there is a pressing question to be answered: what does it mean to say that S should know what x is? Let me try to clarify this point by considering a similar question put in respect to knowing that p: What does it mean to say that “S should know that p”? Well, in saying that “S should know that p”, in the sense relevant here, we are not merely expressing that knowing that p would be of interest, desirable or somehow advantageous to S. We are, rather, expressing a strong normative point: knowing that p is required or demanded of S, such that, if S fails to know that p, it will be a “distinctively epistemic shortcoming on the subject’s part”, as put by Goldberg (2017, p. 2864). Similarly, in saying that “S should know what x is”, in the sense relevant here, we are expressing the normative point that knowing what x is is required or demanded of S, such that, if S fails to know what x is, it will be a distinctively epistemic shortcoming on S’s part.

Although the very existence of epistemic obligations is the subject of an ongoing debate when it comes to obligations that can be expressed by utterances of statements of the form “S ought to believe that p”,Footnote 6 the suggestion I wish to make here is less than controversial. It is one according to which sentences of the form “S should know what x is” should be taken as expressing the idea that S is required to know answers to the question of what x is. More specifically, the suggestion I am making is that utterances of statements of the form “S should know what x is” should be taken as expressing the normative point that S is required to know answers to the question of what x is, such that, if S does not know any such answer, it will be a distinctively epistemic shortcoming on S’s part. S’s ignorance might then be deemed culpable.

One final caveat before we continue. Of course, utterances of statements of the form “S should know what x is”, should not be taken as expressing the normative point that S is required to know all answers to the question of what x is. First, here as elsewhere, ought implies can. Human beings certainly cannot know all answers to most questions of the form “What is x?”, given that our capacities of information storage and retrieval are limited. Second, statements of the form “S should know what x is” are uttered in specific contexts, contexts in which certain issues are pressing and in which purposes are taken into account. Suppose, for example, that, in a discussion surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, Samir says to Jake: “You should know what herd immunity is. Your ignorance is inexcusable!”. They are both layman when it comes to virology and related areas. The claim being made here is, certainly, not that Jake should know what herd immunity is as much as a specialist does. Or to put it another way, the claim is not that Jake should know what herd immunity is in contexts in which the goal of the inquiry is to obtain expert-level information on the issue. The claim is that Jake should know what herd immunity is for the purpose of bringing to a close inquiries that aim to obtain some reliable information on the issue. This seems to be a general feature of what we mean (and should mean) to express by uttering statements of the form “S should know what x is”, in the sense relevant here: that S is required to know what x is in certain contexts or that S is required to know what x is for certain purposes.

Of course, for this thesis to have some bite, we must be able to at least begin to answer the following question: why some things are such that, given certain contexts, we should know what they are—at least given the goal of inquiry in the context, or at least for certain purposes? This is the question I begin to tackle in the next section. In answering it, the issue of culpable ignorance regarding what things are will be further developed.

3 Social Roles and Obligations to Know What Things Are

In this section, I shall explore cases in which a subject S should know what a given x is in a context c (or for certain purposes) given the fact that S occupies a certain social role. Now, it is not entirely clear what a social role, in general, is, but my focus here will be on institutional roles, roles that are institutionally defined, such as professional or occupational, familial and political roles (Hardimon 1994, p. 334). More specifically, I will argue in this section that there are obligations to know what certain things are that attach to institutional roles we voluntarily sign on for, such as professional or occupational roles.

To begin, consider once more Holly Smith’s case introduced above. Intuitively, a doctor who treats premature infants should be up to date with the relevant literature. If there is evidence in the literature showing that the administration of high concentrations of oxygen in premature infants can lead to blindness, the doctor should know it. But why, exactly?

In an illuminating paper, Goldberg (2017, p. 2866) writes:

When it is part of one’s responsibilities as a professional to be knowledgeable regarding certain topics (or knowledgeable of the sources of information on those topics), a professional who fails to be relevantly knowledgeable will be susceptible to the charge that she should have known. This much should be relatively uncontroversial. And while it may be a little more controversial, I suspect that the same point holds with respect to people who play roles in various institutions (whether or not these are professional roles): government officials, civic leaders, members of social or religious groups, players on teams, club members, and so forth.

I take it that Goldberg is right here. As persons who exercise certain institutional roles, there are pieces of knowledge such that we should be in possession of them. To give an example as uncontroversial as any, a person who occupies the role of judge of the Supreme Court in Brazil should know the country’s constitution, and know it well. If the judge is not in possession of these pieces of knowledge, he would be susceptible to charges of culpable ignorance (or that he should have been in possession of these pieces of knowledge). According to Goldberg (2017, 2018), these charges, moreover, would be legitimate. For others are entitled to expect of a judge of the Supreme Court, for instance, that he knows the constitution, and knows it well. For Goldberg, the entitlements in case here are practice-generated, in the following sense:

I submit that it is the sort of entitlement through which we articulate and defend our practice of holding each other accountable in the ways provided for by the practice’s standards…The point is simply that established practices requiring the satisfaction of a given set of standards generate the expectation that those standards will be met. Insofar as the practice itself is legitimate—not something whose propriety we want to call into question etc.—the participants are entitled to those expectations. These are practice-generated entitlements (2017, p. 2869/Goldberg’s italics).

Practice-generated entitlements are not restricted to the epistemic domain, but quite general when it comes to established, legitimate practices that come with certain standards. As illustrated by Goldberg (2017, p. 2869), Mellissa may have a practice-generated entitlement to expect that her garbage is picked up on Wednesdays, if it is standard practice in Mellissa’s community that Wednesday is the day for garbage pickup. Now consider the example of teaching. It is an established and legitimate practice. It involves teachers, students, principals, parents and so on. These are the participants in the practice—let us call them the school community. The practice of teaching comes with several standards—which may, of course, somehow vary from community to community, and from school to school in a given community—, some of which are epistemic, some of which are not. Among non-epistemic standards are moral ones. The Teacher’s Standards Guidance for School Leaders, School Staff and Governing Bodies for use in school in England states, for instance, that teachers in the country should “maintain high standards of ethics and behavior, within and outside school, by treating pupils with dignity, building relationships rooted in mutual respect, and at all times observing the proper boundaries appropriate to a teacher’s professional position”.Footnote 7

The Teacher’s Standards Guidance also establishes epistemic standards for the profession. It states, for example, that teachers should “have a secure knowledge of the relevant subject(s) and curriculum areas”. Suppose, for example, that Benjamin teaches contemporary European history in high school. Suppose, further, that one of the subjects he should cover is the history of WWII. He should thus be knowledgeable concerning a number of facts which are part of the history of WWII.

If this is so, according to Goldberg’s view, then the school community is entitled to expect that such an epistemic standard for teachers of contemporary European history is met by Benjamin. It is a case of a practice-generated entitlement. If it is not met, then Benjamin is open to the legitimate accusation that he should have known.

Now, I take it that Goldberg is right in believing that others are entitled to expect of someone who occupies a professional role such as that of teacher that he or she is in possession of pieces of knowledge such that possessing them is standard of the practice of which the role is a part. However, I do not think that the expectations of others, no matter how legitimate, are part of the explanation of why such subjects are under certain epistemic obligations in the first place. In fact, I believe it is the other way round: it is because such subjects are under certain epistemic obligations that others are entitled to expect that these obligations are met.

We should bear in mind that most professional roles (and institutional roles in general) are such that we voluntarily sign on to occupy them. In signing on for a role, one commits to a “package of duties, fixed by the institution of which the role is a part”, as put by Hardimon (1994, p. 354). If Benjamin signs on to exercise the role of teacher in a secondary school, he commits to a package of obligations (or duties), fixed by the institution. Many of these obligations may be written down. Others may be passed on by testimony. Of course, many of these obligations belong to the practical and moral domain. He should not harass colleagues and students, for example. But other obligations belong to the epistemic domain. He should know the school’s policies. He should know when meetings with the principal take place. He should know who to talk to if a student needs medical help, and so on. He should also be knowledgeable regarding certain topics. Again, if he signs on to teach contemporary European History, he should be knowledgeable concerning a number of facts which are part of the history of WWII.

So, once a subject signs on to occupy a certain role, whether professional or institutional but non-professional, obligations are in place, both moral and epistemic. Given this, others are indeed entitled to expect that the subject fulfills her obligations. But it is not the—however legitimate—expectations of others that make one obliged to fulfill them in the first place. Subjects are under certain obligations simply because they have signed on to exercise a certain role, a role that comes with these obligations attached to it. As suggested by Hardimon (1994, p. 334), obligations—he is discussing moral obligations, but I take it that the same applies to epistemic obligations of the sort we have been discussing—, with their normative force, simply flow from the role one signs on to exercise. Thus, these obligations would be in full force even if others happened to have no expectations toward someone as a moral and/or epistemic subject.

I have been talking of epistemic obligations that attach to professional or other institutional roles in general terms. Now I should be more specific and focus on obligations to know what things are. Taking the ideas above into account, the suggestion I would like to make is the following: once we voluntarily sign on to exercise certain professional or other institutional roles, we commit to a package of obligations (or duties), fixed by the institutions of which the role is a part. These obligations are then attached to the role we sign on to exercise. Among these obligations are obligations to know what certain things are. Again, if Benjamin signs on to teach contemporary European history, he should know several facts regarding WWII. This may be explicit in the curriculum. But he should also know what a (vast) number of things are. He should know what a war is. He should know what a declaration of war is. He should know what the Marshall Plan is. (Of course, knowing what these things are is necessary for him to know a number of facts about WWII). He should also know what a school principle is, what a student representative is, and so on. And if, instead, he had signed on to teach mathematics some of his obligations would be different. He would have to know what a real number is, what a logarithm is etc. If he failed to know what these things are, his ignorance could be taken as culpable, and rightly so.

Now suppose that Olivier has signed on to be a GP in a certain hospital. In doing so, he commits to a package of obligations fixed by the institution he works for. Some of these obligations are, of course, moral or practical. He should not put patients on treatment without their consent. He should not query patients about their personal life in a way that is irrelevant to diagnosis or treatment. Other obligations are epistemic. He should know a considerable number of facts relevant to his practice. He should also know what a number of things are. He should know what a virus, in general, is. He should know what specific viruses—such as COVID-19 and HIV—are.

But this certainly leaves a difficult question open: a GP should know what a virus is, for instance, but what should this knowledge consist of? Well, as a GP, Olivier should certainly know what a virus is in that he should know several propositions that properly answer the question “What is a virus?”. Which propositions are those? They need not be listed. The answers a GP should know to the question of what a virus is are the ones such that knowing them is necessary so that he can meet the standards of the practice of GP. A specialist on the issue—a virologist—should certainly know what a virus is more than Olivier, as a GP, should. Her knowledge should be such as to meet the standards of the practice of virology, standards which are more demanding in respect to the knowledge of what a virus is.

So, if a GP simply fails to know what COVID-19 is, then given the standards of his practice—that of GP—, his ignorance may be taken to be culpable. And rightly so. If a rheumatologist fails to know what arthritis is so as to meet the standards of her practice, her ignorance may be taken as culpable. Again, rightly so.

Fricker (2007, p. 103) reminds us that, in many cases, “the line between what we should and should not blame people for, what we may and may not properly expect of them (and of ourselves), is surely fuzzy…”. When it comes to the knowledge of what things are, the line may also seem fuzzy regarding whether someone’s ignorance is culpable or not. Should a GP know at least some answers to the question of what a certain rare disease is? Suppose that, during a dinner party, Jane, who is also a GP, mentions to Olivier that she had a patient with some rare disease. She mentions the name of the disease, and some of its symptoms. Jane works in a different country, and remarks in passing that she has never heard of any case of the disease in the country where Olivier lives in. One year later, one of Olivier’s patients comes to his office and happens to be afflicted by the rare disease mentioned by Jane during the dinner party. Alas, he has not retained any information about it. He does not match his patient symptoms to the ones mentioned by his friend. He then refers the case to a colleague who is more familiar with such symptoms. The patient is now correctly diagnosed but, unfortunately, it is too late; he dies a few days later.

Is Olivier’s ignorance culpable here? Should he have known what the disease was, so that he could have identified it and made the diagnosis himself? On the one hand, it seems clear that knowing what the disease in question is is not necessary so that Olivier meet the standards of the practice of GP. So here we can find a reason to think that his ignorance is non-culpable. On the other hand, information regarding the disease was made available to him. Should he have retained it having in mind that you never know in advance the cases that you will have to face in the future? Maybe he thinks he should have. He may thus blame himself for not having this piece of knowledge when it would have been useful. Others may happen to blame him as well. Yet, as remarked by oncologist Albert Lim Kok Hooi in the passage I quoted above, “it would be a foolish doctor to cram 10,000 useless facts into his brain. Things that can easily be checked should be checked”. Physicians talk to each other, and a vast number of information is shared regarding diseases. Hooi is certainly right in thinking that it would be foolish to try to retain every piece of information shared. Our capacity of information storage is, after all, limited. So, although in cases such as this it may be unclear to the subject himself and for others whether his ignorance is culpable or not, a strong argument can be made suggesting that Jake is, after all, not to blame: possessing the piece of knowledge in case is not necessary so that he can meet the standards of his practice, and he can always rely on others that know what certain diseases are more than he does, and that know what they are when he does not. Given this, I take it that we should say that Olivier’s ignorance is non-culpable. He was just unlucky, epistemically speaking.

This is not to say that there are no cases in which it ends up being just unclear whether our ignorance regarding what certain things are is culpable or not. After all, standards of a practice may vary from community to community, for instance. Consider the following case. Knowing how to drive manual transmission cars is not required for one to meet the standards of the practice of driving in the US. But suppose an American driver is visiting a country where knowing how to drive manual transmissions cars is necessary in order for one be a licensed driver. He tries to rent a car. Only manual cars are available. He claims not to know how to drive manual transmission cars and prefers to wait for an automatic one to become available. As the conversation unfolds, the queue behind him gets longer. People get impatient and comment that he should know how to drive manual transmission cars. But should he? I believe that it is less than clear how to answer this question.

Similar remarks can be made when it comes to knowing what things are. Since the early 2000’s, cars in the US are required by law to have anti-lock braking systems (ABS). In other countries, this requirement came into full force much later—in Mexico, for instance, it dates from 2019. Once the requirement is in full force, a driver should know facts involving ABS—questions about ABS may even be asked as part of driving tests involving security. Knowing what ABS are then becomes required so that one can meet the standards of the practice of driving. But suppose that, in 2018, I decided to drive my car—which does not have an ABS—from Mexico to the US. I do not even know what an ABS is (I do not know any answers to the question “what is an ABS?”). Knowing so is not required of me so that I can meet the standards of the practice of driving in Mexico. I am stopped by an officer in the US who asks me if my car’s ABS is working properly. I have no answer to give him. I do not even know if my car has an ABS or not. Is my ignorance culpable here? Well, given the standards of the practice of driving in Mexico, my ignorance is certainly non-culpable. Does it become culpable once I cross the border? There seems to be no clear answer here as well.

I will leave the discussion at this point, but certainly many other cases could be presented, not only in which it is unclear which standards of a practice should count as we move from one community to another—supposing that standards are different between them—but also as standards change in a given community from time to time, such that there are moments of transition, or are accepted by the community at large but not by the community as a whole. I will leave it to the reader to consider such cases.

In this section, I have argued that obligations to know what things are may simply attach to professional or other institutional roles we voluntarily sign on for, roles that have obligations fixed by institutions of which the role is a part. Thus, if we fail to know what certain things are given obligations that attach to a role we voluntarily occupy, our ignorance might be taken as culpable, and rightly so. But are we required to know what things are when we happen to occupy roles we have not signed on for? I discuss this issue next.

4 Associativism and Knowing What Things Are

Consider the role of citizen. Unless we are naturalized citizens of a given country or the like, this does not seem be a role we voluntarily sign on for. This seems to be a role into which we are born (Hardimon 1994; Horton 1992, 2006, 2007, 2010; Scheffler 2001; Renzo 2012; Van der Vossen 2011). Above I argued that, when it comes to institutional roles we voluntarily sign on for—such as professional roles—we commit to a package of obligations. These obligations then simply attach to these roles. But since I have not signed on to be a citizen in the country in which I was born and happen to live in, are there epistemic obligations to know what things are somehow connected to this role? And if there are, why is that so?

Intuitively, there are indeed things such that a citizen should know what they are and failure here might lead to claims of culpable ignorance. Consider, for instance, knowing what taxes are. If a subject failed to pay his taxes and later claimed having failed to pay them because he did not know what taxes are, his ignorance may certainly be taken as culpable. As a citizen, he should have known what taxes are. But why, exactly, should a citizen know this?

There is an influential position in moral and political philosophy—often named “the associate view” or “associativism”—according to which the mere fact that we are members of institutions—or that we occupy a role in an institution—may impose obligations on us, even if we have not voluntarily signed on to occupy this role or to have this membership but were born into it.

Thus Scheffler (1997, p. 204) writes:

Each of us is born into a web of social relations, and our social world lays claim to us long before we can attain reflective distance from it or begin making choices about our place in it. We acquire personal relations and social affiliations of a formative kind before we are able to conceive of them as such or to contemplate altering them.

More explicitly, Horton and Windeknecht (2015, p. 909) write that obligations of the associative kind

[...]are not created by a voluntary act. Rather, they arise through a form of non-voluntary association–‘non-voluntary’ in the sense that membership and the obligations of membership are not the outcome of a voluntary choice. There is nothing analogous to the act of making a promise or deciding to join a swimming club.

Often, the idea here is illustrated in terms of obligations that we have simply given the fact that we are members of a given family. In most cases, we do not choose to be someone’s daughter or son, brother or sister. We are born into these roles. Yet it seems that we have obligations toward our parents and siblings. Moreover, that we take ourselves to have these obligations seems to be central to our moral outlook (Hardimon 1994; Horton 1992). According to the associative view, there is no further explanation (or justification) for there being such obligations over and above the fact that they are simply attached, or associated, to these familial roles. As put by Horton (1992, p. 148), “such obligations ‘derive’ from membership of a family and it is in terms of what this means that they have to be understood”. Thus, if am I asked why I should go and take care of my father and leave a night out with colleagues from work, I need say nothing more than: “It’s my father. I have to look out for him”. Of course, spelling out what these obligations are—and here we are, of course, talking about moral obligations—is certainly no easy matter, for these may vary from community to community, from time to time etc. But that there are such obligations seems indeed to be part of our general moral outlook.

There is an analogy to be made here when it comes to our roles as citizens of a given community. In most cases, we are born so as to occupy these roles. The idea, given the associate view, is that we are bound to certain obligations—and here the discussion turns to political obligations—simply because we are citizens of a given country. Again, it is difficult to spell out in general what these obligations are, for again they vary from country to country, and from time to time in a given country. But we can say that, among these obligations, are obligations to comply with the country’s laws, for instance (but see below).

The associative view is certainly not without its critics. Given that my aim in this section is to suggest an extension of this view for obligations to know what things are, it is sufficient that the associative view is one that merits discussion. Thus I will not engage here with the substantial literature for and against the view.Footnote 8 But let me deal with one pressing worry before we return to epistemic matters, for it is one that may also be raised for the epistemic domain. Is it not a terrible consequence of the associate view that citizens are under the obligation to comply with a country’s laws, for instance, no matter how terrible they are? Is it not a consequence of the view that children born under the Nazy regime are under the obligation to comply with its laws?

This would indeed be a serious threat for the associative view if it were left without response. But Horton has given a convincing replied to it—or so I believe—is writing that

The important point to recognise here is that accounts of ‘institutional’ or ‘positional’ duties do not need to assume that these exist in a moral vacuum. Other moral principles or rules may indeed show a particular institution to be immoral, or a particular duty attached to an otherwise unobjectionable institution to be unjust…Institutions which give rise to moral obligations also exist within a wider context of other moral beliefs and commitments. These may set various limits to the moral obligations to which institutions can legitimately give rise […] (1992, p. 156–7).

So, when inquiring if an alleged obligation, attached to an institution, is a legitimate one, we need to ask ourselves if the institution itself is legitimate—morally and/or legally, for instance. We also need to ask ourselves if the alleged obligation is not in conflict with other rules or principles. Thus a Government may be illegitimate, and the obligations that would attach to it simply do not hold. The rules in place in familial relations in a given community—based on violence and oppression, for example—may also be illegitimate, so that a child born into the family has no obligations to comply with these rules. Moreover, the idea is not that, in these cases, obligations are in place but are then overridden. They are not in place at all. As put by Horton (1992, p. 156), if a subject promises to another that he is going to kill someone, obviously such a promise does not generate an obligation to do so, one that happens to be overridden by the moral and legal prohibition on murder. These prohibitions make the promise ineffective to start with. It can certainly be further objected that it is then utterly unclear whether an alleged obligation—one that attaches to an institutional role—holds in a given community or not, given that it may be unclear whether the institution is legitimate in the first place; it may also be unclear whether there are other rules or principles that would make the obligation an illegitimate one. But maybe here one should just bite the bullet. As with many other questions in the moral domain, it is only against a network of background information that we can judge whether an obligation is legitimate or not and, in many cases, no clear answer may be available.

Let us assume, for now, that the associative view is correct on its broad lines. If this is so, then there are obligations—both moral and political—that can take a hold on us merely given the fact that we occupy institutional roles (or are members of institutions) by being born into them. What I would like to suggest when it comes to obligations to know what things are is the following: when it comes to roles we have not signed on for but were born into them, we should know what certain things are if and only if obligations of another kind—moral or political—are such that, in order for us to comply with these obligations, some things are such that we need to know what they are.

The view can be made clear by means of examples. Suppose that, given that I am a citizen of a given country, there are obligations in place such that I should comply with the country’s laws. Suppose further that I am required, by law, to vote. The idea is that, for me to competently comply with such a law, there are things such that I need to know what they are: I should know, certainly, what voting is. I should also know several things related to this very piece of knowledge: I should know what an election is. I should know what a candidate is, and so on. If I did not vote and, as a justification, claimed not to know what voting is, my ignorance may be taken as culpable. And, for typical cases, rightly so. I should have known. I am also required by law to pay taxes. I should then know what taxes are. Again, if I fail to pay my taxes and justify failing to do so under the claim that I do not know what taxes are, my ignorance may also be taken as culpable. Again, for typical cases, rightly so.

Of course, given that it is difficult to say, in general, what are the moral and political obligations that take a hold on us merely given the fact that we are born occupying certain institutional roles—for again these may vary from community to community and from time to time—it is also difficult to say much regarding obligations to know what things are—ones that must be in place if we are to comply with the moral and political obligations in case—in general terms. But we should bear the following in mind: that when we are required to know what certain things are for the reasons under discussion, we should know what these things are given certain contexts, or for certain purposes. Generally, we can say that, as average citizens, we should know what taxes are for the purpose of everyday inquiries, including those made in tax forms. Similarly, we should know what a country is, what laws are, what voting is, for the purpose of everyday inquiries, in a way that allows us to competently comply with our political obligations: voting, paying taxes, and so on. If one happens to sign on to occupy a public office, then certainly one is required to know what these things are given more demanding contexts. But this is a role one voluntarily signs on for, and not one into which one is born. I take it that the obligations to know what certain things are that need to be met if we are to comply with obligations that attach to institutional roles we are born into demand of us that we know what these things are for everyday purposes only. (This does not mean, of course, that it is not epistemically advantageous or interesting to know what these things are given more demanding contexts, but my discussion here is regarding obligations to know, and not regarding what it is epistemically advantageous to know).

These ideas can also be applied to obligations to know what things are that attach to familial roles, even though, again, it is difficult to say much about these obligations in general terms. Given the associative view, the obligations that attach to familial roles are typically moral. In typical cases—that is, if the obligations that attach to families in a community are not unjust—one should look after one’s parents and siblings. To comply with this obligation, one need to know what several things are. But looking after our parents, for example, involves taking different courses of action in different circumstances. The things that are such that we need to know what they are so as to comply with this obligation will thus vary along with the circumstances. In a community affected by COVID-19, looking after one’s parents demands that one knows what COVID-19 is. It also demands that one knows what social isolation is, and so on. Similarly, in a community affected by dengue fever, looking after one’s parents requires that one knows what dengue fever is, what an aedes aegypti is etc.

If I am right in my line of reasoning, there are then many things such that we should know what they are so as to comply with our moral/political obligations. Given that certain moral/political obligations take hold on us and that to comply with them we must be in possession of certain pieces of knowledge, others are indeed entitled to expect of us that we are in possession of these pieces of knowledge. But again, pace Goldberg, it is not their expectations that make us required to have knowledge in the first place. Rather, they are entitled to such expectations because obligations take hold of us in the first place, and, in order to comply with them, we must be in possession of certain pieces of knowledge.

So far I have discussed requirements to know what things are that are associated to institutional roles only. Could we expand the discussion to other roles that we occupy in society, such as the role of friend? I take it that we could, but that here we would have to introduce a different explanatory apparatus. Friends certainly have obligations toward one other, but these obligations may be best understood in terms of arrangements that they make during their relationship. A non-philosophical friend may, for instance, promise to read my PhD thesis. If he does so, in order to comply with the obligation generated by his promise he may be required to know what a number of things are, things mentioned in my work. An extended discussion of requirements to know what things are related to such social roles would, however, take us too far afield, as we would need to discuss issues such as obligations generated by promises. I will thus leave the discussion at this point.

To recapitulate, I have argued, in Sect. 7.3, that if we voluntary sign on to occupy a certain institutional role, we commit to a package of obligations or duties, and obligations to know what certain things are immediately imposed on us; they simply attach to such roles. In this section, I have argued that if, instead, we are born into a given institutional role, there may be obligations—moral and/or political—that are imposed on us simply because they are attached, or associated to, this role. To comply with these obligations, we should know what a number of things are. If we do not, our ignorance may be taken as culpable.

Before we finish, there is an important complication to be dealt with. In many cases, information regarding what things are—information that we are under an obligation to possess—is not made available by the usual channels of information transmission. If the information is not made available, are we still to blame for not knowing what the things in question are? Or is our ignorance non-culpable in these cases? Discussion of these issues will allow us to touch on an important topic in contemporary epistemology, that of epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007, 2016).

5 Distributive Epistemic Injustice and the Knowledge of What Things Are

Consider Daniel. He was raised in a slum in São Paulo. At a very young age, his parents put him to work, selling candies on the streets of the city center. He rarely had the chance of attending school. When he reached adolescence, he dropped out completely, to financially support himself and his family. In fact, he succeeds in doing so, for Daniel is a gifted handy man. By the time he reaches 18, he is already making some money repairing items in luxury flats. He is now required to pay income taxes. Yet, he fails to do so. He gets a notification and happens to be fined. He raises the issue with a friend. He claims not to know what taxes are, and how he should go about in dealing with the issue.

As a Brazilian citizen, Daniel is obliged by law to pay income taxes. In order do so, he should know what income taxes are. It could be said then that if he is not in possession of this piece of knowledge, his ignorance may be rightly taken as culpable. But, of course, there is a complication in the story that should make us pause before we judge Daniel’s ignorance as being culpable. Information regarding what taxes are was not made available to him, a kid with hardly any schooling, working on the streets. In fact, he lacks information regarding many issues that relate to his duties as a citizen, for there was no one available to pass this information along to him. Given this scenario, should we still say that Daniel is to blame for not knowing what taxes are?

Before we tackle this question, let us frame it in a way so that it can be properly discussed. There is a clear sense in which Daniel seems to be victim of a form of epistemic injustice. His case is in fact well captured by the words of Fricker at the very beginning of her influential book Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing:

There are a number of phenomena that might be brought under the general head of epistemic injustice. Given how we normally think about justice in philosophy, the idea of epistemic injustice might first and foremost prompt thoughts about distributive unfairness in respect of epistemic goods such as information or education. In such cases we picture social agents who have an interest in various goods, some of them epistemic, and question whether everyone is getting their fair share (2007, p. 1).

Fricker’s (2007) is focused on other kinds of epistemic injustice, namely, testimonial injustice—that “occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word” (p. 1)—and hermeneutical injustice—that “occurs at a prior stage, when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences” (p. 1). In later work, Fricker (2013) names the kind of epistemic injustice that occurs when there is a distributive unfairness in respect to epistemic goods—such as information—as distributive epistemic injustice. The importance of epistemic injustice of this kind has been recognized by several authors by now (Coady 2010, 2017; Anderson, 2012). Coady (2010, p. 106), for instance, writes that distributive epistemic injustice is the

[…] kind of injustice that occurs when someone’s right to know is violated. It seems clear that our ordinary thought about rights includes this concept, as when we say, for example, that a patient has a right to know his or her medical condition, that a soldier has the right to know the cause for which he is fighting, or that the public has the right to know about some of the activities of certain public figures.

It should be clear then that distributive epistemic injustice is a widespread phenomenon. It should also be clear that Daniel is a victim of epistemic injustice of this kind. After all, Daniel is obliged by law to pay income taxes. Given that, to do so, he should know what taxes (and income taxes) are, he has the right to be in possession of this piece of knowledge. In fact, information regarding what taxes in general and income taxes in particular are is part of a package of epistemic goods that should be made available to every citizen in working age. For socio-economic reasons, information regarding such issues has not been passed on to Daniel. Thus there is a sense in which Daniel’s right to know what taxes are has been violated. Or, to put it in terms closer to Fricker’s (2007), Daniel did not get his fair share of a package of epistemic goods such that its possession is required for him to comply with obligations that he has as a Brazilian citizen. Daniel’s case thus clearly fits the bill for distributive epistemic injustice. Bearing this in mind, the suggestion I would like to make is the following: if a subject S should know (or should have known) what x is but information regarding what x is is not passed on to S due to distributive epistemic injustice, then S is not to blame for his/her ignorance in respect to what x is. Thus even though there is a sense in which Daniel should know what income taxes are, he is not to blame for his ignorance. Or, to put it in other terms, his ignorance here is non-culpable.

Now, it can be argued that, even if information regarding what taxes are happens to be passed on to Daniel, it may be the case that he is not able to properly grasp it, given that distributive epistemic injustice may have prevented him from having the required background knowledge necessary for one to grasp this piece of information in the first place. More specifically, “distributive unfairness in respect of epistemic goods such as information or education”, to put it in the words of Fricker (2007, p. 2), may prevent Daniel from grasping information regarding what taxes are, even if this information is passed on to him. No information, after all, is grasped in a vacuum. For each piece of information that we grasp in a way that constitutes knowledge, there is background information that we possess so that knowledge can be obtained. In this scenario, Daniel may not be the victim of distributive epistemic injustice in respect to information regarding what taxes are. He has the right to be informed of what taxes are, and information in this respect is passed on to him. But he is the victim of a more general form of epistemic distributive injustice. Due to socio-economic reasons, several epistemic goods were not properly passed on to him, goods necessary for him to properly grasp a particular piece of information, such as information regarding what taxes are.

In this case, I think Daniel is again not to blame for not knowing what taxes are—or, maybe, for having knowledge of what taxes are that is insufficient for everyday purposes, such as competently filling out a tax form. So, I think a more general version of the thesis considered above is also true: if a subject S should know (or should have known) what x is but fails in this respect due to distributive epistemic injustice, then S is not to blame for his/her ignorance in respect to what x is, even if information regarding what x is happens to be passed on to S.Footnote 9

According to the thesis introduced above, typically, if S is ignorant regarding what x is but should know (or should have known) what x is, then S’s ignorance is culpable. I have already remarked that this thesis allows for exceptions. In this section, I have presented one such exception, a particular important one. A victim of distributive epistemic injustice, such as Daniel, may be blameless in his ignorance of what a given x is, even if he should know what x is. The blame for his ignorance, after all, may lie elsewhere: it may lie in the institutions that are responsible to make information regarding what things are available to individuals in the first place, and to create the conditions for such information to be properly grasped, in way that leads to knowledge of what things are.

6 Concluding Remarks

In this chap. I have discussed several issues related to the ignorance of what things are. I have isolated a form of ignorance which of central interest here, erotetic ignorance, and I have provided a treatment of culpable ignorance in respect to knowledge of this sort. The problem of culpable ignorance, in turn, led us to deal with the question of why some things are such that we should know what they are. I have argued that, in signing on to exercise certain institutional roles—such as professional or occupational roles—we commit to a package of obligations or duties, and among these obligations are epistemic ones, and, more specifically, obligations to know what certain things are. Thus obligations to know what things are may simply attach or flow from roles we voluntarily sign on for. I have also suggested that we may be born into certain institutional roles, ones which have moral and/or political obligations attached to it, and that we should know what certain things are in order to comply with these obligations. I ended with a brief discussion of distributive epistemic injustice and claimed that a victim of injustice of this sort may be blameless in not knowing what a given x is, even if he is under an obligation to know what x is.

Clearly, these are large and difficult issues, and a fuller treatment of them would require a book in itself. For now, I hope to have stressed their importance and paved the way for further explorations.