Embodied Irrationality? Knowledge Avoidance, Willful Ignorance, and the Paradox of Autonomy

In 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.

No Moral Wiggle Room in an Experimental Corruption Game

Recent experimental evidence reveals that information is often avoided by decision makers in order to create and exploit a so-called “moral wiggle room,” which reduces the psychological and moral costs associated with selfish behavior. Despite the relevance of this phenomenon for corrupt practices from both a legal and a moral point of view, it has hitherto never been examined in a corruption context. We test for information avoidance in a framed public procurement experiment, in which a public official receives bribes from two competing firms and often faces a tradeoff between maximizing bribes and citizen welfare. In a treatment where officials have the option to remain ignorant about the implications of their actions for citizens, we find practically no evidence of information avoidance. We discuss possible reasons for the absence of willful ignorance in our experiment.

From Precariousness to Prudence: Eco-Cosmopolitanism as the Fabric for Weaving the Post-COVID World

In a crucial juncture when the whole world has been shattered by the reign of a tiny virus invading the apparently invincible empire of human ‘civilization’, the plaguing pandemic has brought to the fore fundamentally interconnected nature of our collective existence and consequently our shared vulnerability. COVID-19 as essentially a zoonotic disease accentuates the anthropogenic hazards inflicted on the ecosystem resulting in spilling over of such pathogens from animals to humans. It also nudges us to reflect on our fundamentally interconnected existence which we have long remained oblivious about. The prevailing obliviousness seems to have emanated from willful ignorance or selfdeceptive knowledge rooted in over-arching dictates of anthropocentrism; however on the structural front, the roots can be traced back to the capitalistic system perpetuating the ‘homo economicus’ aspirations so as to mark the unflinching triumph of the ‘Capitalocene’. While pushing and pulling ourselves to adapt to the ‘new normal’, it becomes an imperative to go beyond the myopic vision of restricting ourselves to shortterm mitigation measures like border-closure or vaccination; instead time is ripe for taking a critical and broad-based stance on the structural roots of the current pandemic such that restructuration of post-COVID world helps shoving aside such calamitous disaster in days to come. It is in this regard, a radical take on ‘cosmopolitanism’ seems the need of the hour to fill the lacunae in the existing mode of perusing interconnectedness that operates only on the surface level in the name of ‘globalization’ and overlooks the fundamental rubric of ecological integrity. While shedding some light on the nexus that this pandemic shares with the evils of capitalistic enterprise and neoliberal culture of globalized consumerism, this paper, within its limited scope, will make an attempt to find an antidote to the current crisis through endorsing an ‘eco-cosmopolitan’ worldview wherein the rationalized ‘instrumentalization’ of environment and wild animals gets overridden by an eco-centric perspective on our fundamentally interconnected existence.

Willful ignorance as resistance, harm reduction workers and ruling relations

This paper will explore how front-line harm reduction workers govern the space of agency services. In order to study how this is done this writer completed an institutional ethnography to illuminate how power operates in the day-to-day practice of a harm reduction agency. Harm reduction services have been criticized as a site of neoliberal governance through risk-management. This study aims to explore how harm reduction workers perform and understand their role within their agency. This writer interviewed front-line staff members that distribute harm reduction material, asking them about their adherence to their organizational policies and procedures. The policies represented by the text of the signage within agencies was also analyzed. Study results showed that staff members used wilful ignorance to allow people to use drugs on agency premises, provided they did so in a discreet manner. Harm reduction workers also tried to reduce the suffering, and promote the larger political goals of harm reduction, to help people who use drugs.