Semantics of Willful Ignorance

Creator

Tommy Canales Burns, Claremont Graduate UniversityFollow

Preview

Exhibit/Collection Name

Vida En Sombras

Creation Date

2016

Description

THE SEMANTICS OF WILLFULL IGNORANCE

se·man·tics

səˈman(t)iks/

noun

noun: semantics; noun: logical semantics; noun: lexical semantics

the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. There are a number of branches and subbranches of semantics, including formal semantics, which studies the logical aspects of meaning, such as sense, reference, implication, and logical form, lexical semantics, which studies word meanings and word relations, and conceptual semantics, which studies the cognitive structure of meaning.

Willful blindness (sometimes called ignorance of law, willful ignorance or contrived ignorance or Nelsonian knowledge) is a term used in law to describe a situation in which a person seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally keeping himself or herself unaware of facts that would render him or her liable.

Although the term was originally - and still is - used in legal contexts, the phrase "willful ignorance" has come to mean any situation in which people intentionally send their attention away from an ethical problem that is believed to be important by those using the phrase - either because the problem is too disturbing for people to want it dominating their thoughts, or from the knowledge that solving the problem would require extensive effort. This phenomenon is closely related to the aphorism, "Ignorance is bliss."

-Texas Criminal Law book (mysteriously found in my car after leaving my windows open one night in Austin) in which I scrapbooked with approximately 1000 photos of graffiti from Corpus Christi, Amarillo, Midland/Odessa, El Paso, Austin, and San Antonio

-printed by Polaroid Printer on adhesive photo paper shot on old DSLR

Link to Student's Full Exhibit

scholarship.claremont.edu/tcburns_mfate/

Link to Artist Statement

scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_mfatheses/136/

Rights Information

© 2016 Tommy Canales Burns

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Recommended Citation

Burns, Tommy Canales, "Semantics of Willful Ignorance" (2016). CGU MFA Theses Exhibits. Image 1570.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_mfaexhibits/1570