The Pragmatics and the Normativity of Ignorance Attributions

The way we attribute ignorance to each other is often connected to normative considerations. Intuitively, attributions such as ‘S is ignorant that p’ sound odd when S is under no obligation to know that p. These linguistic intuitions about attributions of ignorance have been used to motivate the increasingly popular Normative Account of the nature of ignorance (Pritchard 2021a, https://doi.org/10.5840/philtopics202149223 2021b; https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-022-00529-7 2024) according to which ignorance is a lack of a positive epistemic standing which manifests a failure of inquiry. Here, I will argue that champions of the Normative Account who want to draw metaphysical and conceptual conclusions about ignorance from linguistic intuitions may be too quick to do so. In fact, the normative weigh of ignorance attributions can be explained on a pragmatic basis.