Erotetic Ignorance Does Not Reduce To Factive Ignorance

Nottelman (2016) and Peels (2023) identify several categories of ignorance: factive, objectual, and practical, with erotetic ignorance —understood as the lack of knowledge of answers to questions—viewed as reducible to factive ignorance. This paper argues that erotetic ignorance is not in fact reducible to factive ignorance. More precisely, erotetic knowledge does not solely involve a relationship between a subject and a true proposition or set of propositions; instead, it involves a relationship between a subject, a true proposition or set of propositions and epistemic goals of inquiry.