By Michael Smithson

In a 1993 paper, philosopher Ann Kerwin elaborated a view on ignorance that has been summarized in a 2×2 table describing crucial components of metacognition (see figure below). One margin of the table consisted of “knowns” and “unknowns”. The other margin comprised the adjectives “known” and “unknown”. Crosstabulating these produced “known knowns”, “known unknowns”, “unknown knowns”, and unknown unknowns”. The latter two categories have caused some befuddlement. What does it mean to not know what is known, or to not know what is unknown? And how can we convert either of these into their known counterparts?