Arrogance, Ignorance, and Privilege

2. Arrogance, Ignorance, and Privilege Alessandra Tanesini April 2019

3. The Plan • Active Ignorance • Virtuous and vicious epistemic sensibilities • Racial insensitivity • Arrogance as Superbia • Superbia and Self-Ignorance • Privilege, arrogance, ignorance a self-sustaining triad.

4. What is Ignorance • Ignorance as • False belief that p • Withholding belief as to whether p • Never thought of p • Plain ignorance is ignorance that is the result of accident, bad luck, cognitive limitation or shortcoming • Active ignorance is ignorance that is the result of social and/or psychological mechanisms whose function is to produce ignorance

5. Active Ignorance • Three forms of active ignorance: • Motivated ignorance: ignorance that is the outcome of processes motivated by a desire not to know. • Deliberate Ignorance: ignorance that is the result of others’ activities that intentionally spread false information or are designed to engender doubt and confusion. • Systematic ignorance: ignorance that is the result of occupying a cognitive niches that systematically facilitates ignorance and whose success at fostering ignorance makes it self-sustaining.

6. Motivated Ignorance Resulting from Vicious sensibilities • The manner in which one deploys one’s perceptual capacities is a sensibility. • Some sensibilities are virtuous (e.g., being observant) some are vicious (e.g., being testimonially unjust). • Vicious sensibilities are ways of being insensitive to what is epistemically salient (given one’s own goals). • Vicious sensibilities result in motivated ignorance. • Two forms of motivated ignorance: • Motivated cognition that produces false beliefs or withholding of belief. • Motivated avoidance of cognition so that one does not entertain any ideas on relevant topic.

7. Racial Insensitivity and Motivated ignorance • Racial insensitivity is a vicious sensibility. • Racial insensitivity as the sensibility that produces motivated ignorance about racial privilege • Racial insensitivity as “numbness” (Medina, 2013, 2016). • Racial insensitivity as a sensibility where negative affect toward ethnic minorities captures attention away from what is epistemically salient. • Aversive racism as racial insensitivity

8. What is Arrogance? • Behaving arrogantly • Arrogance about A • Arrogance in situation D • Arrogance tout court • Kinds of arrogance: • Hyper-autonomy/ hubris • Superbia • Superbia is a complex disposition (a) to do others down in order to excel and (b) to enhance oneself (Tanesini 2016, 2018)

9. How does superbia work? • The behaviours expressive of superbia serve the role of either • Enhacing the self (bragging, mansplaining, boasting, arrogating special privileges) Or • Diminishing others (humiliating, intimidating, deflating their authority and credibility, dismissing, ignoring) • The sense of self worth of those who have superbia depends on feeling superior to others • High self-esteem that is defensive

10. Superbia and Motivated ignorance • Superbia is invested in motivated self-ignorance • If one can think well of oneself only if one feels superior one is likely to • Overestimate one’s own strengths • Underestimate or have no opinion about other people’s strengths • Avoid thought about one’s limitations • Superbia promotes vicious sensibilities including • Being testimonially unjust • Being racially insensitive • Being ignorant of one’s white privilege and deflating others’ credibility are instrumental to preserving feelings of superiority • Psychologically, ignorance is easier to manage by avoiding thought than by fighting to preserve false belief

11. How privilege enables ignorance • Avoidance of thought is a luxury • e.g., only white people can afford to be knowingly ignorant about race • e.g., entitled people can avoid facing evidence of their own abilities by self- handicapping (Lupien et al., 2010). • Ignorance by avoidance is enabled by material and social privilege.

12. How Arrogance entrenches Privilege • Superbia includes a disposition to behave in ways that diminish others by • Intimidating • Dismissing • Humiliating • The behaviours are often effective • Those who are intimidated, humiliated and dismissed often • Lose self-confidence • Are less able to function as informants • Suffer from atrophy of their own abilities • Are denied opportunities to improve

13. A vicious circle • Arrogance, by means of behaviours that diminish others, • Entrenches privilege. • The privilege that enables the kind of ignorance that • Protects arrogance