(2013). Groups as Epistemic Communities: Social Forces and Affect as Antecedents to Knowledge. Social Epistemology: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 3-20. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2012.760660.

This paper addresses the relationship between epistemic difference and hermeneutical injustice, starting from an example discussed by Townsend and Townsend: the case of the Kichwa Indigenous People of Sarayaku v. Ecuador before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. My thesis is that translation is inevitably at work in communicative exchanges involving epistemic difference, and that considering the problem of translation allows us to refine our understanding of epistemic injustice and mobilise further resources to respond to it. In a first step, (...) I will discuss McGlynn’s critique of Townsend and Townsend’s approach, and in particular the notion of discursive injustice elaborated by Kukla. Drawing on the notion of symbolic institution as theorised by the Belgian phenomenologist Marc Richir, I will show how translation is at work in this case, seeking to pinpoint the hermeneutical injustice at play. In a second step, I will reflect on the different paradigms of translation and argue for a broad, processual and layered conception of it. Building on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of translatability of languages, I will introduce the notion of epistemic translatability as that which allows translational strategies to be devised across epistemic difference in order to counter hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one formal logic that correctly (or best, or legitimately) codifies the logical consequence relation in natural language. This essay provides a taxonomy of different variations on the logical pluralist theme based on a five-part structure, and then identifies an unoccupied position in this taxonomy: perspectival logical pluralism. Perspectival pluralism provides an attractive position from which to formulate a philosophy of logic from a feminist perspective (and from other, identity-based perspectives, such (...) as critical race theory). An example of how such an account might be developed is sketched. The essay concludes by defusing an obvious objection to the perspectival approach: the claim that the correct logic (or logics), in virtue of the formal nature of logic, should be independent of considerations regarding the identity of the reasoner. (shrink)

The ‘epistemic calculus of groups’ posits functions to group-generated knowledge. In this article, those same epistemic group functions are now re-evaluated as means by which group members may tackle two contemporary and increasing challenges, or even obstructions, to knowledge. These obstructions, namely the liminality, the increasingly transitional nature of both ‘common sense’ and ‘common word meanings,’ occur, as our mass and social media practices change. Can groups still remain as ‘epistemic communities’ and regenerate common sense or common word meanings? As (...) a response to media developments and to counterarguments by the analytic social epistemologists, I reconceptualize the functions of the ´epistemic calculus of groups´ as skills, and present a synthetic approach toward thinking in small groups to enable the regeneration of common meanings. As a basis in the analysis of the notions of common sense and common word meanings, I use the theory of psychologic: a theory built on formal logic. F... (shrink)

(2013). A Group Epistemology is a Group Necessity: A Reply to Fallis and Mathiesen. Social Epistemology: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 26-31. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2012.760667.