The aim of the project is to develop an empirically informed philosophical understanding of motivated ignorance and complicity in one’s own oppression and in the oppression of others, by bringing together social psychological research with philosophical analyses. This project contributes directly to the aims of SCOOP by exploring the underlying structures of complicity relations that undermine sustainable cooperation, and by developing a model of responsibility which goes beyond individual and collective responsibility to capture the kind of shared forward-looking responsibility suitable to tackle complicity relations.

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PhD

Hannah Lee

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Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

Supervisor

Dr. Charlotte Knowles

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Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

PI

Prof.dr. Lisa Herzog

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Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

PI

Prof.dr. Ernestine Gordijn

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Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

• Philosophy
• Social psychology

• Synthesis

• Feedback Cycles

• Shared responsibility and sustainable cooperation

The concept of complicity is under-discussed in philosophical literature, yet it is key to understanding structures of injustice and the intersection of individual agency and systemic wrongs. In this context, the notion captures the various ways in which agents are indirectly involved in structural harms by contributing to, benefiting from, or failing to resist them (Aaragon and Jaggar 2018; Lepora and Goodin 2013; Knowles 2019, 2021; Kutz 2000). Complicity marks a threat to sustainable cooperation because it is a primary mechanism through which oppression and injustices are (re-)produced. Often, these forms of complicit involvement in oppression and structural injustice happens unintentionally. Because of this, the idea of complicity as motivated ignorance has gained ground in critical race studies (Mills 2017; Applebaum 2010). This "willful ignorance" is characterised by it being some form actively maintained and driven by an agent’s interests or convenience rather than being due to a genuine lack of epistemic opportunities to know better. Researchers argue that contrary to what one might assume, being ignorant or unaware of one’s complicit involvement or the unjust nature of the structures one is involved in is not coincidental to an agent's complicity, let alone that it could excuse it. Rather, an agent's ignorance often seems to be an integral part of how they become and remain complicit. It, for example, allows them to stay complicit involved, without having to throw their self-image as a decent person into question (Applebaum 2010) or without having to actively take on the responsibility of dealing with their complicit involvement in a critical way (Knowles, 2021). This project explores how analyzing complicity through the lens of motivated ignorance can better describe these relations, investigating how actively maintained "non-knowing" marks the enabling or constitutive conditions for maintaining structures of oppression.

Chapter one of this project conceptually refines motivated systematic ignorance as a form of epistemic misrepresentation that prevents the recognition of injustice. It argues that existing debates are constrained by a narrow cognitivist focus on knowledge that overlooks central practices that undermine the recognition of injustice and oppression. Drawing on feminist philosophy and phenomenology, the chapter shows that affectivity and emotions are integral to how agents make sense of the social world, both (i) as phenomenological means through which the normative significance of social reality is experienced and (ii) as diagnostic tools for identifying social pathologies. It argues that motivated ignorance operates through (i) affective interpretations that undermine the recognition of oppression and through (ii) the alignment of affectivity with dominant ideology in ways that prohibit “outlaw affectivity”. By shifting the focus from knowledge to hermeneutic practices and affective sense-making, the chapter reconceptualizes ignorance as a set of practices that refuse non-oppressive interpretations of reality and argues that overcoming motivated systematic ignorance also requires transforming both individual and collective affective dispositions. By doing so, it contributes to the project aims by sharpening the concept of motivated ignorance beyond a purely cognitivist framework and explaining why relations of complicity persist even when knowledge is available, establishing affective and interpretive conditions for complicity that are more resilient than mere knowledge gaps. It contributes to the general SCOOP aims, specifically the Synthesis goals of WP4, by providing a theoretical core for understanding feedback cycles between knowledge, ignorance, affectivity, and social change, showing that correcting beliefs alone is insufficient to disrupt cycles of complicity that undermine sustainable cooperation and value creation. Building on this hermeneutical and affective framework, chapter two introduces the concept of motivated apathy to explain how agents may have an interest in sustaining patterns of emotional disengagement that reproduce existing power relations, including remaining indifferent to injustice and the suffering of disadvantaged groups or refraining from challenging oppressive emotions such as racialized fear. While structural apathy captures systematically produced forms of collective emotional disengagement, this chapter addresses the resulting explanatory gaps by focusing on individual affective agency and the extent to which agents can exercise agency over their own emotional orientations under structurally apathetic conditions. It argues that apathy is culpable when it (i) arises from affective practices that uncritically perpetuate structural apathy, when it (ii) is embedded in attitudes of motivated hermeneutical ignorance, or when it (iii) functions to sustain complicit behavior. By doing so, the chapter contributes to the project aims by moving the analysis of complicity from the macro-structural level to the level of individual affective agency and by laying the groundwork for a subsequent account of shared affective responsibility. It contributes to the SCOOP aims, particularly the Shared Responsibility challenge within WP4, by identifying the micro-processes of individual affective agency that help explain why macro-level outcomes such as sustainable cooperation and social change fail, and by conceptualizing motivated apathy as a distinct threat to the shared labor required for acknowledging and challenging unjust social conditions. Chapter three challenges the binary between victims and accomplices in oppression by asking whether marginalized agents can be complicit in hermeneutical injustices directed against their own social groups. Focusing on willful hermeneutical ignorance as the refusal to use non-oppressive epistemic resources developed by oppressed groups despite their availability, the chapter examines whether similar dynamics can apply to marginalized agents themselves. It argues that, despite the apparent harms, hermeneutical ignorance can sometimes serve the interests of marginalized individuals as well. It specifically focuses on the affective pressures and costs imposed by oppressive interpretive frameworks. While carefully addressing the risk of victim-blaming, the chapter contends that part of how hermeneutical injustice operates is by creating conditions under which marginalized agents may resist or avoid non-oppressive hermeneutical tools. By doing so, the chapter contributes to the project aims by illuminating the structural and interpersonal similarities between complicity in the oppression of others and complicity in one’s own oppression, and by further preparing the ground for an account of shared responsibility. It contributes to the SCOOP aims by advancing both the Inclusion goals of WP2 and the Synthesis goals of WP4, refining the boundaries between cooperation and non-cooperation and arguing that sustainable cooperation in contexts of oppression is not a simple perpetrator–victim binary but a shared task of generating non-oppressive, epistemically accurate interpretations of the social world. The fourth chapter moves into interdisciplinary empirical work on affective injustice, drawing on Amia Srinivasan’s account of the tension faced by oppressed groups between apt anger and the desire to improve one’s situation. Through multiple studies, the chapter investigates how enforced emotional regulation, specifically the suppression of moral outrage for instrumental or strategic reasons, affects felt emotions and future protest intentions. While anger typically mobilizes protest, it is often restrained due to perceived costs, and this chapter examines whether such suppression intensifies or diminishes emotional responses and how it shapes future willingness to protest similar injustices. By doing so, it contributes to the project aims by integrating insights from social psychology into a more empirically grounded philosophical account of individual complicity in affective injustice. It also contributes to the SCOOP aims, particularly the Inclusion domain of WP2, by demonstrating how the demand to suppress apt anger may undermine societal resilience by weakening protest intentions and, consequently, social change. Chapter five of this project will bring together the conceptual and empirical insights developed across the previous chapters to address the question of shared responsibility under conditions of complicity and motivated ignorance. Working with a scaffolded account of agency, the chapter will articulate how responsibility can be meaningfully distributed in ways that acknowledge agents’ various positions within oppressive structures. It will develop a non-ideal account of shared responsibility that provides a normative framework for understanding shared responsibility for perpetuating and transforming the epistemic, affective and hermeneutical conditions that enable complicity in oppression.