A capacity view of ignorance

Abstract I motivate and defend a new account of ignorance for which ignorance is the lack of a suitable explanatory connection between (i) one’s exercise of epistemic abilities and (ii) believing the truth. This view carves out a previously unexplored option space in the ongoing conceptual debate about ignorance in analytic epistemology and is shown to yield better results than competing views of ignorance, including those that define ignorance as a lack of knowledge, a lack of true belief, or as characterized by a failure of inquiry. Unlike these other views, the account defended here places an agent’s exercise of her epistemic abilities at its core, enabling it to provide a more nuanced explanation for various instances of ignorance and non-ignorance, as well as for the evaluative character of ignorance.