This chapter canvases a number of ways that issues surrounding disability intersect with social epistemology. We begin with a discussion of how social epistemology as a field and debates concerning epistemic injustice in particular would benefit from further (a) engaging the fields of disability studies and philosophy of disability and (b) more directly addressing the problem of ableism. In section two, we turn to issues of testimony, “intuitive horribleness,” and their relationship to debates concerning disability and well-being. We address how (...) the regular lack of uptake of disabled people’s testimony can lead to a number of structural rather than merely individual epistemic injustices, and we also consider how the very nature of some disabilities make testimonial issues more complicated. We conclude by discussing various norms of social interaction and how they can systematically disadvantage Autistic people in particular with respect to all the issues discussed herein. (shrink)

The literature on epistemic injustice currently displays a logocentric or propositional bias that excludes people with intellectual disabilities from the scope of epistemic agency and the demands of epistemic justice. This paper develops an account of epistemic agency and injustice that is inclusive of both people with and people without intellectual disabilities. I begin by specifying the hitherto undertheorized notion of epistemic agency. I develop a broader, pluralist account of epistemic agency, which relies on a conception of knowledge that accounts (...) not only for propositional knowing, but also for other types of knowing that have been largely neglected in debates on epistemic injustice and agency. Based on this pluralist account of epistemic agency, I then show that people with intellectual disabilities qualify as epistemic agents and therefore as subjects of epistemic justice. Finally, I argue that this pluralist account of epistemic agency pushes us to revisit the current conception of epistemic injustice and to expand its taxonomy in two important ways. (shrink)

Intellectually disabled students face particular barriers to epistemic participation within schooling contexts. While negative forms of bias against intellectually disabled people play an important role in creating these barriers, this paper suggests that it is often because of the best intentions of educators and peers that intellectually disabled students are vulnerable to forms of epistemic injustice. The author outlines a form of epistemic injustice that operates through an educational practice widely regarded as serving the interests of intellectually disabled students. ‘Epistemic (...) ability profiling’ involves the identification of the epistemic consequences of disability in the service of promoting students’ best interests, or to create opportunities for their participation in epistemic communities. Epistemic ability profiling is a double-edged sword: it is important that educators understand and attend to the ways in which differences in ability shape students’ epistemic agency, and yet epistemic ability profiling operates against the background of a conceptually ableist conceptual terrain. As a result, epistemic ability profiling runs the risk of legitimating structural forms of injustice against intellectually disabled people. (shrink)

This essay argues that prediction markets, as one approach for aggregating dispersed private information, may not only be praised for their epistemic accuracy. They also feature characteristics that are morally desirable from the point of view of epistemic justice. Notably, they are a promising approach when we are trying to address testimonial injustice. The impersonality of market transactions effectively tackles the issue of identity prejudice, which underlies many forms of testimonial injustice. This is not to say that prediction markets do (...) not pose challenges for epistemic justice of their own like the risk of excluding knowers based on ability to pay. Or, in light of identity prejudice’s systematicity, the risk of discouraging some knowers because of differences in education or social background that lead to a certain unease when faced with prediction markets. The essay discusses these challenges, concedes limitations but also offers countermeasures to certain worries – e.g. hosting prediction markets on a play-money basis. Throughout, the essay addresses the question of the potential scope of using prediction markets for epistemic purposes, notably by means of the practical example of a prediction market for monetary policy. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that severe mental disabilities prevent relevant deliberative capacities from developing or persisting. Accordingly, excluding many people with mental disabilities from discourse practices seems justified. Against this common assumption I wish to show that the general exclusion is not justified and amounts to a form of epistemic injustice, as theorised by Miranda Fricker. The received norm of capable deliberators is connected to a specific model of deliberation. I introduce an alternative model of deliberation, which I dub the (...) joint effort model. According to this model, people with minority minds (as I call them) add valuable cognitive diversity to the process of deliberation, which is a relevant element of epistemic improvement. In this part of the argument I rely on empirically informed theoretical work by Hélène Landemore. I scrutinise the minimal requirements of capable deliberators from the perspective of a joint effort model of deliberation, and I highlight specific beneficial contributions people with minority minds can make to discourse practices. I will argue that people with minority minds can be presumptively deemed capable deliberators and that therefore their general exclusion is unjustified. (shrink)

Starting from Miranda Fricker’s recent work on the concept of testimonial injustice, this paper considers what duties testimonial justice creates for speakers. I discuss this question in relation to disclosures of so-called personal conflicts of interest, which authors are sometimes required or encouraged to declare when submitting their work to journals. Personal characteristics that have been disclosed by authors include smoking status, class background and ethnicity. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, I argue that disclosures of personal characteristics (...) raise problems of testimonial injustice in two ways: they can unfairly undermine researchers’ credibility and prejudice readers against the results or arguments proposed; and such disclosures can contribute to epistemic injustice more broadly by strengthening the view that individuals who share the features disclosed should, at least in some contexts, be given less credibility than others. The second goal of the paper is to argue that, while Fricker’s account focuses on the epistemic virtues of hearers in responding in the right way to testimonial injustice, there are also important duties of testimonial injustice incumbent on speakers. I propose three such duties. (shrink)