Miguel Ángel Prieto Castellanos

Becoming Aware of Ignorance and Contradiction

This project investigates the cognitive and affective processes involved in reaching awareness of ignorance. Moving beyond the idealised, normative accounts common in philosophy of science and epistemology, it aims to develop a psychologically realistic account of how such awareness is achieved by examining the cognitive resources that real, embodied subjects rely on to recognise what they do not know.

Intuitively, the notions of ignorance and contradiction are interconnected. Within the framework of this project, this connection is explored by treating contradictions as special cases of self-ignorance. Thus, a central observation is that such “ignored contradictions”—cases in which subjects act inadvertently in ways that are inconsistent, or that imply inconsistent beliefs or attitudes—can be resolved by reaching awareness of them.

In sum, the project has two main ambitions. First, to provide a psychological account of ignorance awareness. Second, to use this model to deepen our understanding of the psychology of contradiction, and of the cognitive and affective processes required to become aware of ignored contradictions. To achieve these aims, the project draws on contemporary research in philosophy of mind and cognitive science –particularly on recent work on inner speech, metacognition, and epistemic feelings– to develop an embodied model of ignorance awareness that can serve as a basis for analysing ignored contradictions.