The Issue Of Moral Ignorance

When considering this question it is important to discuss whether (complete) moral ignorance is even possible, but also, whether people are responsible for this ignorance. Therefore the questions I will answer, to reach my conclusion are; “Is (complete) moral ignorance possible, and are people responsible for their ignorance?”. To achieve this, I will present two opposing arguments, one which suggests that moral ignorance can excuse individuals from blame (belonging to Rosen), and the other which states that complete (moral) ignorance of wrongdoing is impossible and therefore, the agent is culpable (Moody-Adams).

Then I will present objections to these arguments, to demonstrate why the former argument falls short, and thus, why I believe that individuals cannot be excused from blame if they are acting from moral ignorance.

When attributing blame and culpability to an individual one must consider the conditions of moral responsibility. These usually are as follows:

1. The agent has acted harmfully – actus reus

2. The agent has acted knowingly – men's rea

3. The agent acted freely: un-coerced, they were able not to have done it

Moral ignorance is defined as not knowing ‘a general moral rule’ or the ‘moral facts’ and is applied to cases when the agent acts, from ignorance, for example, not knowing that ‘people have certain rights, or that one has certain duties” (2003, p.64). Despite the law, in many countries, stating ‘Ignorantia Juris nonexcuse, which means that ignorance of the law is no excuse, whether, or not, ignorance of moral fact can excuse an individual from blame is often disputed.

Many philosophers including Rosen believe that moral ignorance can excuse individuals from blame for participating and even supporting wrongful institutionalized practices (e.g slavery). He begins by taking the tacit assumption that; if action is committed from factual ignorance, we accept that the agent is only culpable if they are culpable for the ignorance from which they act. He extends this to examples of acting from moral ignorance, stating:

‘Whenever an agent acts from ignorance, whether factual or moral, he is culpable for the act only if she is culpable for the ignorance from which he acts’ (2003, p.64)

This is often referred to as the parity thesis because it holds factual and moral ignorance equally when assessing the blameworthiness of the agent. Rosen argues that the thesis functions because ‘factual and moral ignorance excuse when they do because they issue in blameless ignorance of what the agent has most reason to do all things considered.’ (2003, p.80)

Rosen believes that the parity thesis can only work if blameless moral ignorance is possible, and so makes use of an example that not only shows it to be possible but ‘place(s) the point beyond dispute’ (2003, p.64); the example of ancient Near Eastern slavery. He believes that if we take the case of a Hittite lord, who participates in the buying and selling of slaves, and ‘forces lablaborthout compensation’ etc., the lord only acts as such because he believes he is entitled to act as such if he believed otherwise then he wouldn’t act in this way. This is a clear example of someone acting from moral ignorance. Moreover, Near Eastern slavery was not ‘straightforwardly grounded in factual ignorance’(2003, p.65), unlike in the Americas, where they believed the slave to be a biologically inferior race and so it is clear that this is merely a case of moral (not factual) ignorance. Rosen argues, that if we agree that, because ‘one is normally under no obligation to rethink the uncontroversial normative principles that form a framework for social life (2003, p.65), the Hittite lord’s actions can be excused. Although Rosen, admits those that do reflect are acting morally, he believes it is not necessary to act in this way and so we cannot blame someone for not behaving as such. He also considers that perhaps ‘one is obliged to reflect in hard cases,… in response to known diversity of opinion’ (2003, p.65), but concludes, that the lord/’slaveholder’ still may meet ‘no such friction’ through reflection, and so we would hold our belief that he is non-culpable. Furthermore, Rosen argues that, if we believe the lord to be ‘obliged to reflect on the permissibility of his actions’(2003, p.65), there were no clear or obvious arguments against slavery that he would be aware of, and Rosen goes so far as to say that it would have ‘taken a moral genius’(2003, p.66,) to realize the wrongness of his actions. He concludes that if we accept that the lord acts from blameless ignorance, then we must accept that he cannot be blamed, or ‘feel anger…directed at him’(2003, p.66).

He also argues in favor of the broad conclusion and states:

“A person who acts wrongly is blameworthy for so acting only if the action itself is a case of clear-eyed akrasia or the action results from a case of clear-eyed akrasia.” (2011, p.443)

This means that if someone acts out of akrasia (against their better judgment), and thus they believe they should have acted differently. Rosen believes that moral ignorance is exculpatory if the agent acts out of ‘clear-eyed akrasia’, and because we never know if someone is truly acting akratically, then we never know if someone is truly blameworthy.

However, many philosophers believe that Rosen’s skeptical argument fails to prove that moral ignorance is exculpatory. For example, Harman argues that ‘someone who acts wrongly while ignorant that he should act differently is not acting akratically’ (2011, p.443). Firstly, Harman uses Guerrero’s objection to prove that to form his broad conclusion Rosen would need to claim that:

‘Every instance of morally wrong behavior (whether an action or an omission) is either a case of behavior from the false belief in p, such that if p is true then the behavior is permissible, or a case of clear-eyed akrasia.’ (2011, p.446).

Harman’s develops her own objection to Rosen, claiming:

‘Rosen takes his argument to apply to cases of wrongful omissions, including cases of forgetting to do something; he treats such forgettings as involving ignorance’ (2011, p.450).

She provides the example of a doctor giving an antibiotic to a patient who is allergic to it, and the patient dies; ‘On Rosen’s view, in this case, the failure to check is not a case of clear-eyed akrasia, because the doctor is not thinking about whether to check.’ (2011, p.450). If we apply the claim (aforementioned) to Harman’s example, then it becomes clear that Rosen’s arguments cannot be applied to wrongful omissions. Therefore, she concludes that it only follows that ‘false belief exculpates, not that ignorance does’ (2011, p.450), and so Rosen’s ‘line of thought provides no argument that she (the doctor) is blameless’(2011, p.450).

One could also argue that moral ignorance cannot excuse individuals from blame for participating in or supporting morally wrongful institutionalized practices. To launch her attack on views in favor of moral ignorance being exculpatory, Moody-Adams proposes a critique of the inability thesis. The inability thesis, according to her, is ‘the claim that sometimes one's upbringing in a culture simply renders one unable to know that certain actions are wrong’ (1994, p.293), meaning an agent can be without blame for supporting institutionalized practices. She disagrees with this and attempts to prove that ignorance of serious wrongdoing is impossible and no individual can be excused from blame on the grounds of moral ignorance. Ultimately, Moody-Adams is not convinced by the leap in reasoning that the inability thesis makes when it infers that, because the (potentially culpable) agents didn’t see the wrongness of their practice, it means that they couldn’t see it (i.e. due to cultural impairment). She considers ancient Greece slavery, when ignorance was caused by not only culture, and also ‘personal limitations’ (1994, p.293), however, she does not agree that the ‘inability thesis’ grants reason to excuse culpability or ‘withhold blame’(1994, p.293). She considers it to be a limited thesis as it tends to base ‘hypotheses on what some agents could not do solely on the evidence of what the agent did not do’ (1994, p.294) when we should instead question whether the agent was able to hold a view that opposed the society they lived in.

Moody-Adams believed that the inability thesis lacked any credible empirical credentials and to prove this she, again, considers ancient Greece, where we have evidence of a ‘complex legal structure (which) preserved the institution of slavery (1994, p.295). Additionally, we have evidence that the idea of slavery featured heavily in comedic theatre at the time, and have can cite writings of Aristotle who argued against ‘opponents of slavery who denied that slavery was natural’ (1994, p.296). Moody-Adams explains that the view that ‘slavery was justified’ was only held, and only persisted because it ‘was insufficiently examined by those who held it’(1994, p.296), subsequently she believes that the blame for this can only be caused by ‘affected ignorance’. She argues that affected ignorance is the ‘best explanation’ for the persistence of slavery, due to fact that ‘no empirical considerations alone can decisively resolve’ (1994, p.296) the debate around the inability thesis. That is to say that, self-interest made people disregard the obvious wrongness of slavery. Affected ignorance shows, contra the inability thesis, that institutional wrongdoers may act in, and from ignorance, by, for example, ‘choosing not to be informed of what we can and should know’ (1994, p.296) or choosing to ignore moral relevance of obvious facts. According to Moody-Adams affected ignorance is plausible because of one’s capacity for critical reflection, we can all look for evidence of wrongdoing in our daily actions, furthermore, she argues that there is no evidence that the Greek’s couldn’t imagine a world without slaves, because, ‘one has the capacity to question existing social practices merely by learning to form the negation of any statement’ (1994, p.296), something which she believes should be sufficient enough to conclude that an existing practice should exist. Moody-Adams believes that that utter ignorance (or the inability to know of) of any serious wrongdoing is impossible because of our ability to critically reflect on a situation.

Therefore, as Moody-Adams explains, it is only through acting out of affected ignorance that one can truly act from ignorance, and so, one could agree to an extent that if one consciously chooses not to be informed of the moral relevance of facts (definition of affected ignorance), they must be blamed for their actions. That is to say; individuals cannot be excused from participating in or supporting slavery, or other institutionalized practices on these, or other, grounds.

Benson, however, offers a refutation of Moody-Adams’ claim that moral ignorance cannot excuse individuals for participating in or supporting morally wrongful institutionalized practices, as he believes that she takes the inability thesis, name the inability aspect, overly-literally. Benson argues that one should not be ‘debating the slave’s abilities as a moral agent’ (2001, 613), but instead whether the culture (i.e. Greek society) has such an influence over the slave that it affects his ability to reflect critically on the ‘ethics of slavery’ (2001, 613). Benson concludes that it is implausible, given the ‘social circumstances’ of the slave that (s)he would understand the ethical implications of slavery and what is wrong or right. I believe that Benson’s argument succeeds as it highlights a naivety in Moody-Adam’s critique, which is that it would unfair of us to blame someone for not ‘attaining moral knowledge’ (2001, 614) if their societal stature prevents them from doing so.

To conclude, I believe that moral ignorance cannot excuse an individual from blame because I am convinced by Moody-Adam's critique of the inability thesis and the success of Harman’s refutation of Rosen’s skepticism.