I just want to throw this out there because I want to see some other opinions. Right now I am inclined to think that a lot of people intentionally misunderstand the people they discuss/ debate with. If you don't identify with someone title (atheist, Christian,Buddhist, well not Buddhist everyone like you guys,lol) then an assumption is made about the impending quality and variety of their contributions. Inadequate analysis is placed on their submissions and conclusions are swiftly drawn. I see a lot being missed.
This seems like two separate issues.
-One issue is intentionally misunderstanding the people they are discussing with. Examples include utilizing the straw man fallacy, changing the subject and then declaring victory, or focusing on the smallest details rather than engaging the actual point being put forward. All of these are problematic and should be avoided.
-The other issue is predicting the impending quality and variety of an argument based on someone's religious or philosophical description. I do this all the time and I don't consider it to be a problem. I base my prediction of impending quality on past experiences (probability) and on deductive arguments (premise A logically leads to conclusion B). Sometimes it leads to issues when a person is using a given title in a way that is very unusual (like seeing someone say "I'm an atheist but I believe in god" or even in my own description as a practitioner of Karma Yoga which is used in a way different than the term is typically applied). Most of the time, however, it leads to efficiency in getting to points faster than would otherwise be possible. Categorization and prediction are useful tools. Any errors are quickly corrected if one realizes that the quality or variety of argument from this particular person is different than others normally associated with that term.
I've come to the decision in the past couple of days that there is no such thing as intentional ignorance. If someone makes believe that something isn't happening that is happening or vice versa, that wouldn't be called ignorance. Maybe it is hiding from the truth, but even if someone is hiding from the truth, they have to truly know the truth. And hiding from the truth, to me, is not ignorance.
I agree; intentional ignorance is somewhat of a contradiction.
The only time I find that such a term may be useful would be to describe someone who purposely avoids viewpoints that they disagree with. In other words, if a given person believes in holy book A, and avoids reading holy books B, C, D, E, and F, either because they think they have all important knowledge after reading book A or they fear that reading books B through F will only serve to interfere with their acceptance of book A, then this is intentional ignorance. In other words, they truly are ignorant, but they are intentionally keeping their self in this state.