Daniel R. DeNicola, “Understanding Ignorance: The Surprising Impact of What We Don’t Know” (The MIT Press, 2017)
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What is the central thesis of Daniel DeNicola’s *Understanding Ignorance*?
Hello, thank you for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy. I'm Robert Talise, I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co host the program with Carrie Figner. Carrie is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. My guest today is Dan Dinacola. Dan is Professor of Philosophy at Gettysburg College. His research focuses in epistemology, the philosophy of education, theories of emotions, and ethics. His new book is titled Understanding Ignorance The Surprising Impact of What We Don't Know. It's published by MIT Press. Now epistemology is the area of philosophy that examines the phenomena of And related to knowledge. The traditional core questions include How is knowledge different from lucky guessing, for example?
Can knowledge be innate? Is scepticism a threat? And if it is, how should we counter it? And also, is it possible to know something simply on the basis of other persons say so? In the background of all of these traditional questions, however, is a broad concern that's not often explicitly addressed. That concern is with ignorance. Epistemology in its traditional forms studies the nature of knowledge for the purpose of trying to overcome Or better address ignorance. However As Dan argues in his new book, Ignorance is not univocal. It comes in many forms. And it will need to be addressed in different ways. And perhaps surprisingly, some kinds of ignorance might actually be helpful for guiding inquiry. So, as usual, there's a lot to talk about.
But let's begin by greeting our guest. Hello, Dan. Hello Bob. How are you? I'm doing fine. How are you today?
I'm good.
Great. Why don't you start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Well, I grew up in Ohio. Um I went to Ohio University as an undergraduate and I arrived with lots of academic interests. Um I was afraid at one point I was leading on a whole lot of different people as to what field I was going into. And um I realized one day that what I liked about all of the different areas were uh was their philosophical aspects. And so I became a philosophy major. And uh I had wonderful teachers at Ohio University, people like Troy Oregon, Stanley Graham and others. And um uh got very interested uh uh in student government there and in the um philosophy that was behind a liberal education. Um I also got politically active. I was uh president of the student body there and my uh if if I'm uh recalled for anything there it was that uh I called a student strike, which in the end shut the university for two weeks.
Uh that was that was not because of the Vietnam War, which was in that era, but because we went out in a sympathetic strike with uh staff who um had not received raises in a long time in the public system in Ohio. And um uh that sort of directed my education to my educational interests to think about um education more broadly, more philosophically, and to integrate some thoughts about education with what I was majoring in, which was philosophy. So Um I was fortunate to get uh a research fellowship to Harvard University for my graduate work. Um those were the days in which um you could get a National Defense Education Act fellowship because being a philosopher of education served the national defense.
That's hard to imagine. Um I ended up Though at Harvard in a program. program which doesn't exist anymore, sadly, uh i that was joint between the Department of Philosophy uh in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Philosophy of Education program in the School of Education. And that program was created because uh Israel Scheffler was a professor in with a foot in both camps there. And I went to study with him for masters and doctoral work. But it was a wonderful time at Harvard because I was also studying with people like John Rawls, like Lawrence Kohlberg, like uh uh in in uh Willard Van Orman Quine uh and Burton Drievan and Robert Nozick showed up and uh Martha Nussbaum was around the perimeter of my experience there.
And uh so on and so forth. And um I struggled when I first got there with um taking the style of philosophy that I was used to as an undergraduate into what was then a pretty crisp edged uh analytic department.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central thesis of Daniel DeNicola’s *Understanding Ignorance*?
0:08–7:45
2
How does DeNicola differentiate the various forms of ignorance?
7:45–15:10
3
Why does the book argue that philosophy of education has been marginalized?
15:10–22:40
4
How can we map ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’ in practice?
22:40–30:54
5
What are the four ‘images’ of ignorance (place, boundary, limit, horizon) and why do they matter?
30:54–39:14
6
How can institutions like insurance or medical training manage ignorance?
39:14–45:38
7
What does the twenty‑percent chance of rain example reveal about probability and ignorance?
45:38–54:41
8
What future directions does DeNicola envision for epistemology and the study of ignorance?
54:41–1:01:39
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