Epistemic injustice in utterance interpretation

This paper argues that underlying social biases are able to affect the processes underlying linguistic interpretation. The result is a series of harms systematically inflicted on marginalised speakers. It is also argued that the role of biases and stereotypes in interpretation complicates Miranda Fricker's proposed solution to epistemic injustice

Intellectual Humility, Testimony, and Epistemic Injustice

In this exploratory paper, I consider how intellectual humility and epistemic injustice might contribute to the failure of testimonial exchanges. In §1, I will briefly highlight four broad ways a testimonial exchange might fail. In §2, I will very briefly review the nature of epistemic injustice. In §3, I will explore how both epistemic injustice and intellectual humility can lead to failures in testimonial exchange, and I’ll conclude by suggesting how intellectual humility and epistemic injustice might be related

Group assertion and group silencing

Jennifer Lackey (2018) has developed an account of the primary form of group assertion, according to which groups assert when a suitably authorized spokesperson speaks for the group. In this paper I pose a challenge for Lackey's account, arguing that her account obscures the phenomenon of group silencing. This is because, in contrast to alternative approaches that view assertions (and speech acts generally) as social acts, Lackey's account implies that speakers can successfully assert regardless of how their utterances are taken up by their audiences. What reflection on group silencing shows us, I argue, is that an adequate account of group assertion needs to find a place for audience uptake

Contextual Injustice

Contextualist treatments of clashes of intuitions can allow that two claims, apparently in conflict, can both be true. But making true utterances is far from the only thing that matters — there are often substantive normative questions about what contextual parameters are appropriate to a given conversational situation. This paper foregrounds the importance of the social power to set contextual standards, and how it relates to injustice and oppression, introducing a phenomenon I call "contextual injustice," which has to do with the unjust manipulation of conversational parameters in context-sensitive discourse. My central example applies contextualism about knowledge ascriptions to questions about knowledge regarding sexual assault allegations, but I will also discuss parallel dynamics in other examples of context-sensitive language involving politically significant terms, including gender terms. The central upshot is that the connections between language, epistemology, and social justice are very deeply interlinked

Unjustly dismissing an alternative : a case of epistemic injustice among epistemic frameworks

The concept of epistemic injustice has become a useful tool for understanding some of the wrongs and harms that result from the interplay of identity and knowledge. However, this paper proposes that analysis of epistemic injustice needs to consider not only the level of individual or institutional epistemic transactions, but also the level of epistemic frameworks. Drawing on Gaile Pohlhaus Jr. and Rajeev Bhargava, I examine the Cuban health care system and the epistemic framework it is based on as a case study of how prejudice that leads to the dismissal, discrediting and marginalization of such an epistemic framework can be an epistemic injustice.Le concept d'injustice épistémique est devenu un outil utile pour comprendre certains des torts et des inconvénients résultant de l'interaction de l'identité et du savoir. Cependant, cet article défend que l'analyse de l'injustice épistémique doit prendre en compte non seulement le niveau des transactions épistémiques individuelles ou institutionnelles, mais également le niveau des cadres épistémiques. En m'appuyant sur Gaile Pohlhaus Jr. et Rajeev Bhargava, j'examine le système de santé cubain et le cadre épistémique sur lequel il est basé, en tant qu'étude de cas sur la manière dont les préjugés qui entraînent la démission, le discrédit et la marginalisation d'un tel cadre épistémique peuvent être une injustice épistémique

Popular Music and Art-interpretive Injustice

It has been over two decades since Miranda Fricker labeled epistemic injustice, in which an agent is wronged in their capacity as a knower. The philosophical literature has proliferated with variants and related concepts. By considering cases in popular music, we argue that it is worth distinguishing a parallel phenomenon of art-interpretive injustice, in which an agent is wronged in their creative capacity as a possible artist. In section 1, we consider the prosecutorial use of rap lyrics in court as a central case of this injustice. In section 2, we distinguish art-interpretive injustice from other categories already discussed in recent literature. In section 3, we discuss the relationship between genre discourse and identity prejudice. The case for recognizing the category of art-interpretive injustice is that it allows one to recognize a class of harms as being importantly related in ways that one would otherwise overlook

Defective Contexts

In this chapter I hope to persuade you that defective contexts are more ubiquitous than we typically assume. In doing, so I will draw attention to a number of pressing social and theoretical issues which arise once we start to consider defective contexts. I will proceed by pointing to a number of ways in which defective contexts can emerge without self-correcting in the manner envisioned by Stalnaker. First I will consider situations in which some, but not all interlocutors recognise that the context is defective. I will then consider cases of opaquely defective contexts, and the question of what it is for a context to be “close enough” to being non-defective

Trust, distrust and epistemic injustice

This chapter was written during leave supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.PostprintPeer reviewe

Exploitative Epistemic Trust

Where there is trust, there is also vulnerability, and vulnerability can be exploited. Epistemic trust is no exception. This chapter maps the phenomenon of the exploitation of epistemic trust. I start with a discussion of how trust in general can be exploited; a key observation is that trust incurs vulnerabilities not just for the party doing the trusting, but also for the trustee (after all, trust can be burdensome), so either party can exploit the other. I apply these considerations to epistemic trust, specifically in testimonial relationships. There, we standardly think of a hearer trusting a speaker. But we miss an important aspect of this relationship unless we consider too that the speaker standardly trusts the hearer. Given this mutual trust, and given that both trustees and trusters can exploit each other, we have four possibilities for exploitation in epistemic-trust relationships: a speaker exploiting a hearer (a) by accepting his trust or (b) by imposing her trust on him, and a hearer exploiting a speaker (c) by accepting her trust or (d) by imposing his trust on her. One result is that you do not need to betray someone to exploit him – you can exploit him just as easily by doing what he trusts you for