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We don’t know we don’t know: asserting ignorance

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The pragmatic logic of assertions shows a connection between ignorance and (informal) decidability. In it, we can express pragmatic factual ignorance and first-order ignorance as well as some of their… Click to show full abstract

The pragmatic logic of assertions shows a connection between ignorance and (informal) decidability. In it, we can express pragmatic factual ignorance and first-order ignorance as well as some of their variants. We also show how some pragmatic versions of second-order ignorance and of Rumsfeld-ignorance may be formulated. A specific variant of second-order ignorance is particularly relevant. This indicates a strong pragmatic version of ignorance of ignorance, irreducible to any previous form of ignorance, which defines limits to what can justifiably be asserted about higher-order ignorance. Finally, we relate the justified assertion of second-order ignorance (that cannot be known) with scientific assertions.

Keywords: know asserting; order ignorance; second order; ignorance; know know

Journal Title: Synthese
Year Published: 2019

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