Willfully Blind for Good Reason

Criminal Law and Philosophy 3 (3):301-316 (2009)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Willful blindness is not an appropriate substitute for knowledge in crimes that require a mens rea of knowledge because an actor who contrives his own ignorance is only sometimes as culpable as a knowing actor. This paper begins with the assumption that the classic willfully blind actor—the drug courier—is culpable. If so, any plausible account of willful blindness must provide criteria that find this actor culpable. This paper then offers two limiting cases: a criminal defense lawyer defending a client he suspects of perjury and a pain doctor who suspects his patient may be lying about her pain. The paper argues that each of these actors is justified in cultivating ignorance about his client’s or patient’s truthfulness. If this is right, then a good theory of willful blindness must distinguish these cases. The article argues that neither Husak & Callender’s motivation-based account of willful blindness nor the recklessness account is able to do so. The paper proposes the following alternative: contrived ignorance constitutes culpable blindness when the decision to remain blind or to cultivate blindness is not itself justified. This Justification approach meshes with our intuitions about willfully blind drug couriers as well as willfully blind lawyers and doctors.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Imagery and blindness.Susanna Millar - 2002 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (2):201-202.
Tracing Culpable Ignorance.Rik Peels - 2011 - Logos and Episteme 2 (4):575-582.
Non-Tracing Cases of Culpable Ignorance.Holly M. Smith - 2011 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 5 (2):115-146.
Contextualism, invariantism and semantic blindness.Martin Montminy - 2009 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (4):639-657.
Epistemic Contextualism, Semantic Blindness and Content Unawareness.André J. Abath - 2012 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (3):593 - 597.
Abstract Making the blindsighted see.Juha Silvanto - 2007 - Neuropsychologia 45 (14):3346-50.
Ethical Blindness.Guido Palazzo, Franciska Krings & Ulrich Hoffrage - 2012 - Journal of Business Ethics 109 (3):323-338.
Another variety of vision.John R. Skoyles - 1997 - Trends in Neurosciences 20 (1):22-23.

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-09-13

Downloads
206 (#89,497)

6 months
7 (#175,814)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Citations of this work

Willful ignorance and self-deception.Kevin Lynch - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (2):505-523.
Responsibility for Strategic Ignorance.Jan Willem Wieland - 2017 - Synthese 194 (11):4477-4497.
The Point of Mens Rea: The Case of Willful Ignorance.Gideon Yaffe - 2018 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 12 (1):19-44.
Willful ignorance in law and morality.Alexander Sarch - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (5):e12490.
Willful Ignorance and Bad Motives.Jan Willem Wieland - 2019 - Erkenntnis 84 (6):1409-1428.

View all 6 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Epistemic partiality in friendship.Sarah Stroud - 2006 - Ethics 116 (3):498-524.
Crime and Culpability: A Theory of Criminal Law.Larry Alexander, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan & Stephen J. Morse - 2009 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Kimberly Kessler Ferzan & Stephen J. Morse.
Friendship and Belief.Simon Keller - 2004 - Philosophical Papers 33 (3):329-351.
Lawyers and Justice: An Ethical Study.David Luban - 1988 - Princeton University Press.

View all 8 references / Add more references