transferred ignorance

is the morally problematic act of imparting unvetted 'knowledge' that ends up being wrong . It is morally problematic because, added to this mistake in one's belief (which is forgivable) is an additional and avoidable mistaken confidence in those beliefs.

transferred ignorance is the case when someone imparts 'knowledge' that he is not aware is in fact wrong. Let us say, for instance, that I tell you that vaccines cause autism, and I do so on the basis of my (alleged) knowledge of biology and other pertinent matters, while, in fact, I am no medical researcher and have only vague notions of how vaccines actually work (i.e., imagine my name is Jenny McCarthy). The problem, for Plato, is that in a sense I would be thinking of myself as smarter than I actually am, which of course carries a feeling of power over others. I wouldn't simply be mistaken in my beliefs, I would be mistaken in my confidence in those beliefs. It is this willful ignorance (after all, I did not make a serious attempt to learn about biology or medical research) that carries moral implications. So for Vogt the ancient Greeks distinguished between two types of ignorance: the self-aware, Socratic one (which is actually good) and the self-oblivious one of the overconfident person (which is bad). '

transferred ignorance, n.Definitions

transferred ignorance