Ascriptions of Ignorance to Social Groups
Our social identities are accompanied by both positive and negative prejudices, including ideas about what we are capable of knowing. However, ascriptions of knowledge and ignorance to social groups are not always based on prejudice, but can also be theoretically grounded. A famous example is standpoint theories, which argue that marginalisation can provide privileged access to knowledge. This implies limited epistemic access for those who have not experienced marginalisation. This idea has led to a whole catalogue of epistemologies of ignorance in social and feminist epistemology. These ascriptions play an important social and epistemological role: they reveal injustices in science and at the same time correct false, one-sided beliefs that are a consequence of them. However, they also run the risk of reproducing the very ignorance they seek to describe. If dominant groups are determined to be ignorant, this also relieves them of the responsibility to inform and educate themselves. Given the problematic consequences of this kind of ignorance, the question arises as to how social epistemologies should proceed in ascribing ignorance without at the same time reproducing it.
Olivia Erna Maegaard Nielsen
Institution Philosophie (Phil)
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