“If She Was Great, I Would Have Heard of Her by Now”: When Trust in Our Sources of Knowledge Lead Us Astray

Several years ago in graduate school, I was a teaching assistant for a course titled, “Great Philosophers,” which at many universities really means, “Favorite Philosophers of the Professor.” But professors will usually make a case for why their favorites should be considered “great.” In this particular course, we read the work of Ruth Millikan, who wrote a lot of interesting things about language and biology and what it means for a word to ‘stand for’ for something in the world. I hadn’t heard of Millikan before the class, but found her work fascinating. One day, I brought up her inclusion in the course to a fellow graduate student, who responded incredulously, “But she’s not a “Great” philosopher.” I asked him why he thought that, thinking that he was familiar with her work and found it lacking. “I mean, she’s clearly not.” He said. “Have you read her work?” I asked. “No, I don’t need to,” he replied. “If she were a Great Philosopher, I would have heard of her by now.” He was utterly confident in this statement. I think my fellow graduate student should not have been nearly so confident in that statement, but in this talk, I want to discuss what his statement says about the world of academic philosophy, and his trust in it. To do this, I’ll examine the idea of “epistemic trust”—trust that the information you receive from others is accurate and reliable. Everyone needs to extend epistemic trust to many different people and institutions in order to live in a society. Imagine what your day would be like if you did not trust any of the information around you: bus schedules, the textbooks for your courses, your favorite source of news, etc. Think about how must trust you extend to the university that perhaps you study or work at: trust in the information given to you by professors, by fellow classmates, by the college website, etc. When do you choose to trust or not trust a source? What makes a source of information trustworthy or reliable? In this talk, I’ll analyze what happens when someone calls into question a whole system of knowledge that we have grown to trust, and why it may be so hard for us to take those challenges seriously

Stereotype threat, epistemic agency, and self-identity

Stereotype threat is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when individuals become aware that their behavior could potentially confirm a negative stereotype. Though stereotype threat is a widely studied phenomenon in social psychology, there has been relatively little scholarship on it in philosophy, despite its relevance to issues such as implicit cognition, epistemic injustice, and diversity in philosophy. However, most psychological research on stereotype threat discusses the phenomenon by using an overly narrow picture of it, which focuses on one of its effects: the ability to hinder performance. As a result, almost all philosophical work on stereotype threat is solely focused on issues of performance too. Social psychologists know that stereotype threat has additional effects, such as negatively impacting individuals’ motivation, interests, long-term health, and even their sense of self, but these other effects are often downplayed, or even forgotten about. Therefore, the “standard picture” of stereotype threat needs to be expanded, in order to better understand the theoretical aspects of the phenomenon, and to develop broader, more effective interventions. This dissertation develops such an “expanded picture” of stereotype threat, which emphasizes how the phenomenon can negatively impact both self-identity and epistemic agency. In doing so, I explore the nature of stereotypes more generally and argue that they undermine groups’ moral status and contribute to what is called “ontic injustice.” I also show how stereotype threat harms members of socially subordinated groups by way of coercing their self-identity and undermining their epistemic agency, which I argue is a form of epistemic injustice. Lastly, I analyze the expanded picture’s implications for addressing the low proportion of women in professional philosophy. I critically engage recent arguments that these low numbers simply reflect different interests women have, which if innate or benign, would require no intervention. My expanded picture shows the mistakes in this sort of reasoning, which is also present in discussions on the underrepresentation of women in science. The expanded picture of stereotype threat that this dissertation develops is not only practically important, but also advances key philosophical debates in social epistemology, applied ethics, and social metaphysics

Positive Stereotypes: Unexpected Allies or Devil's Bargain?

If asked whether stereotypes about people have the potential to help overcome injustice, I suspect that many think there is a clear-cut answer to this question, and that answer is “no.” Many stereotypes do have harmful effects, from the blatantly dehumanizing to the more subtly disruptive. Reasonably then, a common attitude toward stereotypes is that they are at best shallow, superficial assumptions, and at worst degrading and hurtful vehicles of oppression. I argue that on a broad account of stereotypes, this is not is not an inherent feature of them nor a foregone conclusion about them. At least some positive stereotypes have the potential to help resist certain forms of epistemic injustice--though they likely can only play a limited or temporary role in this regard. The takeaway is that we should approach moral and epistemic analyses of stereotypes by thinking about them as (crude) cognitive tools, and as such, focus on what these tools are being used for, and what their actual impact is

Is Asking What Women Want the Right Question? Underrepresentation in Philosophy and Gender Differences in Interests

In discussions of the underrepresentation of women in professional philosophy, those sceptical of discrimination as an explanation often suggest that gender differences in interests are a plausible alternative hypothesis. Some suspect that if women\u27s differing interests explains underrepresentation, then interventions suggested by the discrimination hypothesis might be unnecessary-or even risky. I argue that one needs to consider how stereotypes might influence interests, and that doing so can provide a more even-handed assessment of the risks involved in proposed interventions

Hermeneutical Backlash: Trans Youth Panics as Epistemic Injustice

In this paper we use the contemporary example of trans youth panics to introduce the notion of hermeneutical backlash, in which defenders of an established, unjust hermeneutical regime actively work to undermine and discredit hermeneutical liberation. We argue that the strategies and tropes of the trans youth panic illustrate a general propaganda vulnerability of epistemic liberation movements (including familiar examples from recent history), and so are troubling for reasons that go beyond their application to trans youth. This exploration of a few specific cases of hermeneutical liberation and hermeneutical backlash calls attention to the need for further theoretical work on the dynamics of struggles for (and against) hermeneutical justice

Overcoming Epistemic Injustice: Social and Psychological Perspectives

This volume draws together cutting edge research from the social sciences to find ways of overcoming the unconscious prejusice that is present in our everyday decisions, a phenomenon coined by the philosopher Miranda Fricker as \u27epistemic injustice\u27

Is Asking What Women Want the Right Question? Underrepresentation in Philosophy and Gender Differences in Interests

In discussions of the underrepresentation of women in professional philosophy, those sceptical of discrimination as an explanation often suggest that gender differences in interests are a plausible alternative hypothesis. Some suspect that if women\u27s differing interests explains underrepresentation, then interventions suggested by the discrimination hypothesis might be unnecessary-or even risky. I argue that one needs to consider how stereotypes might influence interests, and that doing so can provide a more even-handed assessment of the risks involved in proposed interventions