ABSTRACT
An argument for ignorance is any argument whose conclusion has this form: ‘N does not know that P’. ‘Occasionalism is false, so Mary does not know that Occasionalism is true.’ ‘John does not understand what “Occasionalism” means, so John does not know that Occasionalism is true.’ ‘The Magdeburg records were destroyed. Only if they hadn’t been could John know that his grandfather was born in Magdeburg. So John does not know that his grandfather was born in Magdeburg.’ These are all arguments for ignorance. None, however, is a sceptical argument for ignorance. An argument for ignorance is sceptical if and only if it is philosophical, and it is philosophical only if it does not rely on any premise about N’s personal deficiencies or special historical circumstances, and it is an argument in which philosophy does some actual work. Neither of the two arguments about John is by this standard philosophical, even though one of them concerns the philosophical doctrine of Occasionalism. John doesn’t understand what ‘Occasionalism’ means, but quite a lot of other people do. It is a personal deficiency. The Magdeburg records were destroyed: that is the historical situation in which John happens to find himself. The argument about Mary is not philosophical because even though it does not appeal to her purely personal deficiencies or special historical circumstances still it is an argument in which philosophy is idle. We do not need philosophy to tell us that not-p entails that p is not known.
