Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T07:27:22.675Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A DUTY OF IGNORANCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 May 2013

David Matheson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Conjoined with the claim that there is a moral right to privacy, each of the major contemporary accounts of privacy implies a duty of ignorance for those against whom the right is held. In this paper I consider and respond to a compelling argument that challenges these accounts (or the claim about a right to privacy) in the light of this implication. A crucial premise of the argument is that we cannot ever be morally obligated to become ignorant of information we currently know. The plausibility of this premise, I suggest, derives from the thought that there are no epistemically ‘non-drastic’ ways in which we can cause ourselves to become ignorant of what we already know. Drawing on some recent work in the epistemology and psychology of self-deception and forgetting, I seek to undermine this thought, and thus provide a defense against the challenging argument, by arguing that there are indeed such ways.

Type
Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 10 , Special Issue 2: Privacy, Secrecy, and Epistemology , June 2013 , pp. 193 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, A. 1988. Uneasy Access: Privacy for Women in a Free Society. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Anderson, J., and Schooler, L. 2000. ‘The Adaptive Nature of Memory.’ In Tulving, E. and Craik, F. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Memory, pp. 557–70. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Audi, R. 1994. ‘Dispositional Beliefs and Dispositions to Believe.’ Noûs, 28: 419–34.Google Scholar
Bach, K. 1981. ‘An Analysis of Self-Deception.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 41: 351–70.Google Scholar
Bach, K. 1997. ‘Thinking and Believing in Self-Deception.’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20: 105.Google Scholar
Barnier, A., Conway, M., Mayoh, L., Speyer, J., Avizmil, O., and Harris, C. 2007. ‘Directed Forgetting of Recently Recalled Autobiographical Memories.’ Journal of Experimental Psychology, 136: 301–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bjork, R. 1989. ‘Retrieval Inhibition as an Adaptive Mechanism in Human Memory.’ In Roediger, H. III and Craik, F. (eds), Varieties of Memory and Consciousness: Essays in Honour of Endel Tulving, pp. 309–30. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Blaauw, M. 2012. ‘The Epistemology of Privacy.’ Presentation for the Episteme conference in Delft.Google Scholar
Davis, S. 2006. ‘Privacy, Rights, and Moral Value.’ University of Ottawa Law and Technology Journal, 3: 109–31.Google Scholar
Fried, C. 1968. ‘Privacy.’ Yale Law Journal, 77: 475–93.Google Scholar
Gavison, R. 1980. ‘Privacy and the Limits of Law.’ Yale Law Journal, 89: 421–71.Google Scholar
Joslyn, S., and Oakes, M. 2005. ‘Directed Forgetting of Autobiographical Events.’ Memory and Cognition, 33: 577–87.Google Scholar
Kerr, I. 2010. ‘Review of Mayer-Shönberger's Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age.’ Surveillance and Society, 8: 261–4.Google Scholar
Le Morvan, P. 2011. ‘On Ignorance: A Reply to Peels.’ Philosophia, 39: 335–44.Google Scholar
Le Morvan, P. 2012a. ‘On Ignorance: A Vindication of the Standard View.’ Forthcoming in Philosophia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Morvan, P. 2012b. ‘Privacy, Secrecy, and Ignorance.’ Presentation for the Episteme conference in Delft.Google Scholar
Liao, S., and Sandberg, A. 2008. ‘The Normativity of Memory Modification.’ Neuroethics, 1: 85–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matheson, D. 2007. ‘Unknowableness and Informational Privacy.’ Journal of Philosophical Research, 32: 251–67.Google Scholar
Matheson, D. 2008a. ‘Deeply Personal Information and the Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in Tessling.’ Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 50: 349–66.Google Scholar
Matheson, D. 2008b. ‘A Distributive Reductionism about the Right to Privacy.’ The Monist, 91: 108–29.Google Scholar
Mayer-Shönberger, V. 2009. Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Michaelian, K. 2011. ‘The Epistemology of Forgetting.’ Erkenntnis, 74: 399–424.Google Scholar
Parent, W. 1983. ‘Privacy, Morality, and the Law.’ Philosophy and Public Affairs, 12: 269–88.Google Scholar
Rosen, J. 2012. ‘The Right to be Forgotten.’ Stanford Law Review (online), 88 (13 Feb.): 88–92.Google Scholar
Sahdra, B., and Thagard, P. 2003. ‘Self-Deception and Emotional Coherence.’ Minds and Machines, 13: 213–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, J. 1975. ‘The Right to Privacy.’ Philosophy and Public Affairs, 4: 295–314.Google Scholar
von Hippel, W., and Trivers, R. 2011. ‘The Evolution and Psychology of Self-Deception.’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34: 1–16.Google Scholar
Westin, A. 1967. Privacy and Freedom. New York: Atheneum.Google Scholar
White, A. 1983. The Nature of Knowledge. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Williamson, T. 2000. Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Wrenn, C. 2007. ‘Why there are No Epistemic Duties.’ Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review, 46: 115–36.Google Scholar