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The skeptical challenge from ignorance comes from cases where people do something wrong in ignorance. Such ignorance comes in two varieties: factual (aka circumstantial) ignorance and moral (aka normative) ignorance. You act in factual

26 _{A benighting act is an impairment of one’s epistemic position that can occur due to an act or an} omission. An omission that impairs one’s epistemic position is technically a benighting act. Forgetting to carefully look at the research is an omission to look at the research. But, in that it positively impairs or fails to advance one’s epistemic state, it is also a benighting act. Thanks to Hieronymi for requesting this clarification.

27 _{The literature assumes wrongness is objective. This is because the goal in the literature is to explain} how even under the assumption that acts are objectively wrong agents may or may not be responsible for such acts depending on the status of the ignorance from which the act was done. Wieland (2017a: 6) explains subjective wrong versus objective wrong by way of an example, “[I]f a doctor was ignorant about the hazards of a certain drug, it would not be subjectively wrong for her to prescribe it. Indeed, if she believed that it was the best treatment option available, the subjectivist about wrongness might hold that she is even obligated to prescribe it, despite the unknown hazards. According to objective accounts of wrongness, in contrast, the wrongness of [the act] is not threatened by ignorance. On this view, the doctor’s ignorance would not suffice to neutralize the wrongness of prescribing the hazardous drug. We will assume, with most participants in this debate, that some kind of objective account is true. Objective accounts allow for the cleaner separation of issues of wrongness and blameworthiness.”

ignorance when you did not know that you were doing something that was wrong to do under the relevant description of that act. You act in moral ignorance when you knew what you were doing (under the relevant description), but you just did not realize it was wrong. A successful response to the skeptical challenge will address both types of ignorance. To illustrate the difference between types of ignorance consider the following variations on slaveholder cases.

Slaveholder 1: Subject S keeps slaves. She knows she could let them go, yet she

does not do this because she hardly pays any attention to them, and is ignorant that they suffer.

Slaveholder 2: S keeps slaves. This time, she knows they suffer. Still she does

not let them go because she is ignorant that she could run her business without them.

Slaveholder 3: S keeps slaves. This time, she knows they suffer, and that she

could run her business without them. Still, she does not do this because she is ignorant that she is doing anything wrong. For all she knows, slavery is a given fact of nature, and if she was unlucky enough, she could have been a slave herself.28

28 _{These cases are from Wieland (2017a: 2). I thank Hanser for pointing out that the cases are under-} described in important ways. The cases assume that factual ignorance about the suffering of slaves is leading to moral ignorance of the wrongfulness of the slaveholder’s acts. We need to stipulate that she does not know that in cases 1-3 unwitting wrongful acts are committed. This is because ignorance of the slaves suffering may not entail ignorance of the wrongness of slavery. Slavery might be wrong because it is a violation of autonomy even if the slaves do not suffer at all. Also, it is unclear why the slaveholder in case 2 does not know that she can run her business without keeping slaves. She may not know that she ought to release the slaves so, given an ought-implies-can principle, she does not know that she can release the slaves. Or, there might be a psychological reason at play. Fear of poverty might prevent her from thinking too hard about things. She might know she ought to release the slaves but fail to draw the inference that she can release the slaves given her psychology.

All three slaveholders commit an unwitting wrongful act—the enslavement of persons—but they do so ignorant of different things. Slaveholder 1 and 2 exhibit circumstantial (or factual) ignorance. Slaveholder 1 is ignorant of the fact that her act of keeping slaves has the consequence of causing them suffering. Slaveholder 2 is ignorant of the fact that she does not need to keep slaves to run her business.29 _She

does not know that her keeping of slaves is wrong because she does not know that she could have acted otherwise in running her business. Slaveholder 3 exhibits moral ignorance. She is ignorant of the moral wrongness of keeping slaves. Some cases involve a combination of moral and factual ignorance.

Let’s focus on factual ignorance. There are several ways one might perform a benighting act that hinders one’s epistemic position and causes an unwitting wrongful act. As a consequence of such a benighting act one’s ignorance is culpable. H. Smith (1983) illustrates how culpable ignorance prevents ignorance from being an excuse forestalling blameworthiness by way of three cases involving factual ignorance. In these cases, the agents perform wrongful acts while falsely believing they are morally permissible or morally required acts.

Deficient Investigation: The doctor who failed to read his medical journal is an

example of this kind of case: he ought to have read it, and if he had, he would

29 _{It is worth also mentioning that this case put forward by Wieland (2017a) is under-described. Is} Slaveholder 2 ignorant of the fact that she cannot run her business effectively, at current scale, or at all without the use of slaves? What sort of business is she running such that it could not exist without the use of slaves, at least in her mind? Wieland intended these to be toy examples illustrating a simple point, but there are various ways the cases are under-described. If anything hangs on the way they are under-described I will note that as we proceed. Otherwise, I will assume they illustrate different ways of being ignorant and performing wrongful acts from that ignorance.

have discovered the use of high oxygen concentrations to be unnecessarily harmful to the infant.

Preventing Subsequent Discovery: A person is slightly near-sighted, but not

legally required to wear glasses while driving. Late for work one foggy morning, and unable to find her glasses quickly, she leaves home without them. Subsequently she swerves to avoid hitting a dog on her left, and seriously injures a child walking in the street on her right. Had she worn her glasses, she would have seen the child in time not to swerve.

Deficient Inference: On Monday a real estate agent tells her husband she will

need the family car on Wednesday in order to show a client some property. Their conversation recedes from the husband's consciousness, and on Wednesday he does not ask himself whether his wife might need the car. Had he asked himself, he would have remembered her request. Not remembering, he takes the car rather than the bus to work, and the agent is forced to cancel her appointment. (H. Smith 1983: 544-5)

As discussed in the introduction to this dissertation, a person is ignorant when they lack a true belief or knowledge. The cases above illustrate different ways agents can poorly gather and handle information such that, at the time of action, they are ignorant of the fact that they are doing something wrong. For instance, in the Deficient Inference case, the husband neglected to infer that he should not take the car to work because his wife needs the car on that day. His forgetting the conversation with his wife where she told him she will need the car on Wednesday is the benighting act. It resulted in his failing to improve his cognitive position and infer from his background

beliefs that he ought not take the car to work—that it is wrong of him to take the car to work. Additionally, the husband’s cognitive slip is not excusable on other grounds, such as it being the first time he forgot to query himself whether his wife needs the car, where this is the natural result of his aging. Instead, his wife would justly judge that her husband should have thought about whether she may need the car and remembered the conversation about her needing it. If the husband is culpable for the benighting act, then, according to H. Smith (1983: 547), the husband is culpable for the consequences of the act done in ignorance—the unwitting act. But this raises the question: why are benighting acts wrong? For instance, why was it wrong that the doctor failed to read the relevant medical journal, the driver did not wear her glasses, or the husband neglected to remember that he ought not take the car?