Willful Ignorance and Moral Responsibility

Abstract

Some agents are willfully ignorant regarding the behavior in which they propose to engage; they deliberately forgo the opportunity to inquire into the features that determine the behavior’s moral status. Examples include driving a car across an international border, suspecting that—but not verifying whether—the car contains contraband; buying cheap clothing, suspecting that—but not verifying whether—it was manufactured in a sweatshop; and so on. The law (when it applies) typically holds that such agents have no excuse for their ignorant wrongdoing, declaring them equally as culpable as those who engage in the same behavior but who are not ignorant of the relevant details. Legal and moral philosophers have tended to agree with this claim. This chapter argues that the case for equal culpability is not easily made.