6 Conclusion
Under the rationale offered here for the Willful Ignorance Principle, mens rea matters to the criminal law’s response to the occurrence of a complex set of conditions that includes it because in light of our mental states our conduct manifests something more fundamental to culpability: our social preferences. When we give this idea expression in the Value Equation, we find that it is not just plausible, but demonstrable that the person who sees the receipt of the benefit of action as placed at risk by inquiry, and so does not inquire, manifests precisely the same social preference as the person who flat out knows that his conduct will give rise to the violation of the relevant legally protected interest when he acts. This should give us confidence about our use of the Willful Ignorance Principle—at least when we apply it in core cases. One argument for a theory of the point of mens rea, such as the theory offered here, is that the theory provides an explanation for something that was pre-theoretically appealing, but hard to explicitly justify. That, in fact, is the argument offered here for the theory of mens rea’s point offered in Sect. 3. The fact that that theory provides us with a simple and illuminating rationale for the Willful Ignorance Principle counts in favor of the theory, given that there simply must be a domain in which it is appropriate to apply the Willful Ignorance Principle.
