Guilty ignorance: An internalist perspective from dispositional beliefs for the technological context

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Published: Jul 4, 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6035/recerca.6268
Keywords:
Moral culpability, Epistemic responsibility, Guilty ignorance, Internalism, Dispositional beliefs

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Joshua Alexander González-Martín
Instituto de Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (ECyT). Universidad de Salamanca (USAL)
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1468-6360

Abstract

Ignorance is often a valid excuse for wrongdoing. But authors such as William FitzPatrick argued that ignorance is culpable if we could have reasonably expected the agent to take action that would have corrected or prevented it, given his capabilities and the opportunities provided by the context, but failed to do so due to vices such as laziness, indifference, disdain, etc. Guilty ignorance is still present in the debate and, in recent times, has become more pressing with the problem of technological responsibility. In this paper, an internalist perspective of culpable ignorance is adopted to analyze a form of culpability distribution in the technological context based on dispositional beliefs. Thus, two types of responsibility are found. By examining the implications of culpable ignorance, we realize that we can respond to the unambiguous idea that an engineer is morally and epistemically responsible for certain facts.

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How to Cite
González-Martín, J. A. (2022). Guilty ignorance: An internalist perspective from dispositional beliefs for the technological context. RECERCA. Revista De Pensament I Anàlisi, 28(1). https://doi.org/10.6035/recerca.6268
Issue
Vol. 28 No. 1 (2023): The staples of depopulation: the urban-rural divide, territorial inequality and unequal accessibility
Section
Open section
Author Biography

Joshua Alexander González-Martín, Instituto de Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (ECyT). Universidad de Salamanca (USAL)

Estudiante de doctorado en el Programa de Doctorado de Lógica y Filosofía de la Ciencia por la Universidad de Salamanca (USAL), en Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología. Su interés académico como profesional está vinculado con la filosofía de la tecnología, la ontología y la epistemología de los artefactos, la orientación social y el panorama de la perspectiva pública actual en temas de ciencia y tecnología. De este modo, su investigación se enmarca dentro de la Filosofía de la Tecnología, una rama interdisciplinar que va desde los problemas ontológicos y epistémicos de los artefactos hasta la roboética, que se centra en el análisis y desarrollo de herramientas éticas para el diseño, la producción y el control de tecnología.

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