Ignorance, Alternative Possibilities, and the Epistemic Conditions for Responsibility
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Abstract
The topic of the present chapter is the third type of evaluative ignorance, which calls radical evaluative ignorance. By radical evaluative ignorance means ignorance about what source of normativity is, or is not, applicable to some issue. Ethical egoists also defend a rigid position. They believe that morality and self-interest always coincide: the morally right option is to do what is best from the agent's self-interested point of view. External evaluative ignorance is similar to its internal counterpart except that the evaluation does not merely concern the agent's subjective attitude. The question of how a normatively conscientious agent should deal with radical evaluative ignorance arises no matter what minimally plausible view one takes on the nature of ignorance and the debate over cognitivism and noncognitivism. A straightforward way to show that radical evaluative ignorance is more than a mere conceptual possibility is, therefore, to show that there exist at least two non-rigid sources of normativity.
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Publication Year
2016
Publication Date
2016
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License
ISBN
978-1-315-67124-6