Ignorance: A Philosophical Study

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Book

Ignorance: A Philosophical Study

Year Published: 2023
Author(s): Rik Peels
Publisher: : Oxford University Press
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Description

Rik Peels’ book about ignorance is out now!

Ignorance: A Philosophical Study provides an in-depth exploration of ignorance in its many dimensions. Philosophers have long examined epistemological concepts like belief, knowledge, and understanding, but they have paid less attention to ignorance. Socrates famously claimed to be ignorant about a wide variety of issues, such as physical matters and ethics, but did not study ignorance itself. It was not until the 1960’s and 70’s that ignorance itself became a topic of concern in philosophy, when the fields of agnotology, philosophy of race, and feminist philosophy were born. These fields, however, focused on specific properties of ignorance, rather than ignorance itself.

Rik Peels provides a full-on epistemology of ignorance, and then applies that epistemology to a wide variety of philosophical issues. Relevant for the Extreme Beliefs project are the parts about Fundamentalism and Group Ignorance. Peels presents a wide-angle exploration that is relevant to the interests of philosophers across epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and other disciplines.

 

Rik Peels

This project is funded by:

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
European Research Council
European Union