1,721,017 research outputs found
Ignorant Cognition. A Philosophical Investigation of the Cognitive Features of Not-Knowing
No full textThis book offers a comprehensive philosophical investigation of ignorance. Using a set of cognitive tools and models, it discusses features that can describe a state of ignorance if linked to a particular type of cognition affecting the agent’s social behavior, belief system, and inferential capacity. The author defines ignorance as a cognitive condition that can be either passively (and unconsciously) borne by an agent or actively nurtured by him or her, and a condition that entails epistemic limitations (which can be any lack of knowledge, belief, information or data) that affect the agent’s behavior, belief system, and inferential capacity.
The author subsequently describes the ephemeral nature of ignorance, its tenacity in the development of human inferential and cognitive performance, and the possibility of sharing ignorance among human agents within the social dimension. By combining previous frameworks such as the naturalization of logic, the eco-cognitive perspective in philosophy and concepts from Peircean epistemology, and adding original ideas derived from the author’s own research and reflections, the book develops a new cognitive framework to help understand the nature of ignorance and its influence on the human condition
Situated ignorance: the distribution and extension of ignorance in cognitive niches
No full textIgnorance is easily representable as a cognitive property of more than just individual subjects: groups, crowds, and even populations can share the same ignorance regarding particular concepts and ideas. Nevertheless, according to some theories that refer to the extension, distribution, and situatedness of human cognition, ignorance is hardly a state that can be extended, distributed, and situated in the same way in which knowledge is in our eco-cognitive environment. In order to understand how these contradictory takes can come across in a coherent description of ignorance, in this paper I aim at analyzing the impact of the agent’s ignorance in her ecological and cognitive environment, as well as the effect that the surrounding context has on the agent’s epistemological successes and downfalls. To this end I will adopt the cognitive and empirically sensitive perspectives of the distributed cognition, the extended mind and cognitive niches construction theories, which will help me address and answer three topical questions: (a) adopting the theories about the extended mind, the distributed cognition, and the cognitive significance of affordances can we describe ignorance as extended and distributed in spaces, artifacts, and other people? (b) extending or distributing ignorance in one’s eco-cognitive environment has the same cognitive and ecological impact of extending or distributing knowledge? (c) can we recognize instantiations of externalized or distributed ignorance? I will argue that by acknowledging the extended, distributed, and situated dimension of ignorance in cognitive niches we could recognize the impact that our ignorance and uncertainty has on how we manipulate and organize our environment and also how our eco-cognitive frameworks affect the perception of our epistemological states
Ignoranza
Full text linkL'analisi dell'ignoranza condotta negli ultimi anni ha fatto emergere un insieme multidisciplinare di conoscenze. I cosiddetti Ignorance Studies sono infatti oggi un fronte di ricerca variegato e in espansione, che sfrutta collegamenti tra diversi settori accademici. Senza sottovalutare la natura interdisciplinare dell'argomento, la presente voce ha lo scopo di offrire un quadro d'insieme delle principali correnti di pensiero filosofico – affermate ed emergenti – che trattano l'ignoranza come termine chiave d'indagine. Le correnti esaminate trattano, in particolare, delle implicazioni etiche dell'ignoranza, della sua definizione a livello epistemologico e del suo ruolo nei processi cognitivi dell'individuo agente.
Scholars have recently begun analyzing the topic of ignorance, bringing out intricate and incohesive knowledge in the philosophical literature. Indeed, the so-called Ignorance Studies refer now to those miscellaneous investigations that examine the nature and features of ignorance from various perspectives. Without underestimating these studies' multidisciplinary nature, this work focuses on the philosophical points of view from which ignorance has been analyzed as a stand-alone research topic. The paper is divided into four main parts that describe ethical, epistemological, and cognitive investigations of ignorance. The last part aims at describing emergent and potential follow-ups to current studies
Cognitive autoimmunity: Knowledge, ignorance and self-deception
No full textIn logic and epistemology, the concept of autoimmunity refers to the partial incapability of the human agent to distinguish between her knowledge and her ignorance, due to an involuntary mechanism which underlies the fixation and revision of beliefs. The idea originated within the project initiated by Dov Gabbay and John Woods of a Naturalization of Logic, which aims at informing elaborated notions of logic and epistemology with well-established results of cognitive science. The term autoimmunity follows from the consideration that the cognitive states of belief, doubt, knowledge and ignorance affect the epistemic status of the agent who experiences them in ways she cannot anticipate nor control. Thus, we contend that the concept of autoimmunity could be usefully employed beyond the epistemological and logical fieldwork, in order to describe the cognitive mechanism supporting what the philosophical literature calls ‘epistemic feelings’, explaining some problematic occurrences of them related to the incorrect analysis of the agent’s own cognition (tip-of-the-tongue experience, misplaced feeling of knowing, etc)
Distributed Cognition in Aid of Interdisciplinary Collaborations
No full textWhat does it take to perform collaborative interdisciplinarity with good epistemic and academic results? This pragmatical question, slightly rephrased, has been one of the few key issues of the philosophical studies on interdisciplinarity since the Seventies. In this paper I aim at addressing that question adopting a conceptual framework weirdly not yet used for this purpose: distributed cognition theories. In particular I will focus on the embodied, emerging, and extended nature of cognitive activities at the core of successful examples of collaborative interdisciplinarity. In the first section of this paper I will briefly review the literature on interdisciplinary collaborations. In the second section I will present the perspective from which I aim at addressing their recurrent problems: a broadly conceived distributed cognition theory, which incorporates insights from the extended mind approach, and from the theories on emerging and embodied cognition. In the third section of the paper I will analyze some of the usual emerging problems of collaborative interdisciplinarity by referring to some well-documented case studies. Then, I will propose some ways to face those problems in the organization and development of a collaborative interdisciplinary project, referring to it as a complex system of distributed cognitive activities
Knowing the Unknown: Philosophical Perspectives on Ignorance
No full textHence, this collective volume aims at approaching a more centered discussion on limits, potentialities, and unexpected qualities of the notion of ignorance. The contributions to this collection show very well how the study of ignorance can animate the debate on a broad spectrum of issues in philosophy, epistemology, cognitive science, and logic. In particular, we have considered three general areas of research: logic and philosophy of science; cognitive science and the philosophical investigations of cognition; social and pragmatical issues in epistemology. In this socio-cultural moment, in which scientific results are sometimes politically and socially contested, and critical reasoning is rarely considered an urgent priority of standard educational plans, we believe that philosophy of science, epistemology, cognitive science, and logic could play a fundamental role in the development of a theoretically productive and pragmatically useful investigation of ignorance. By acknowledging this potential role of philosophy, this volume also aims at cross-examining theoretical and pragmatic perspectives on the analysis of ignorance, and at making it possible to redefine the concept in new cognitive, epistemological, and socio-psychological term
Embodied Irrationality? Knowledge Avoidance, Willful Ignorance, and the Paradox of Autonomy
No full textIn the current philosophical and psychological literature, knowledge avoidance and willful ignorance seem to be almost identical conditions involved in irrational patterns of reasoning. In this paper, we will argue that not only these two phenomena should be distinguished, but that they also fall into different parts of the epistemic rationality-irrationality spectrum. We will adopt an epistemological and embodied perspective to propose a definition for both terms. Then, we will maintain that, while willful ignorance is involved in irrational patterns of reasoning and beliefs, knowledge avoidance should be considered epistemically rational under particular circumstances. We will begin our analysis by considering which of the two phenomena is involved in patterns of reasoning that are still amply recognized as irrational—as wishful thinking, self-deception, and akrasia. We will then discuss the impact of epistemic feelings—which are emotional events that depend on epistemic states—on agents' decision-making. Then, we will consider the impact of willful ignorance and knowledge avoidance on agents' autonomy. By considering these issues, we will argue that when agents are aware that they are avoiding certain information (and aware of what kind of feelings acquiring the information would trigger), knowledge avoidance should be considered a rational, autonomy-increasing, hope-depended selection of information
Impasse-Driven problem solving: The multidimensional nature of feeling stuck
No full textThis study reports findings across four preregistered experiments (total N = 856) that establish the multidimensional nature of impasse and resolve two paradoxes implicit in the problem-solving literature: how a state of impasse can be at once necessary to solve a problem with insight yet also have appear to have a catastrophic effect on solution rates, and why individuals such as problem-solving and gaming enthusiasts seem to seek out this apparently aversive state. We introduce a new way of measuring impasse based on qualitative reports and subsequently confirmed through quantitative analysis that exploits two aspects of impasse: its dynamic and unstable nature (it can be resolved or unresolved) and its multidimensionality in terms of feelings of cognitive speediness, motivation, and affect. The feeling of being stuck varies between resolved and unresolved impasse in terms of feelings of speediness and positive affect, but not motivation, which remains constant. We demonstrate that the feeling of insight can be reliably elicited by experiencing and resolving impasse but also in the absence of impasse, which suggests that there is more than one path to an insight experience. This adds depths to current proposals of the cognitive mechanisms underlying both insight problem-solving and impasse. Our findings are robust across a range of problem types. The novel conception of impasse in this paper as dynamic and multidimensional has implications for theories of insight problem solving, and also wider implications for understanding how impasse can be resolved across different domains such as education and design
Ignorance
No full textIgnorance is an inherently broad and comprehensive notion, which, ironically, can refer to both the worst enemy of science and knowledge-related efforts and, in its Socratic form, their best ally. Indeed, by understanding the concept of ignorance, one can discuss a variety of topics, such as error, falsity, and prejudice but also surprise, wonder, and creativity. Unsurprisingly, so, the current research about ignorance is varied and interconnected. Thus, this chapter will be divided into two main sections: the first will be dedicated to a brief presentation of the different research areas that shape current ignorance studies; in the second section, a few questions will be asked: What can we do about our ignorance? How can ignorance be exploited and become useful? How can ignorance define the limits of our possibilities? Even if the answers presented in this chapter will not provide an exhaustive picture of how ignorance interacts with human chances, they will hopefully offer suggestions for further steps in its analysis and investigation
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