In this article, I introduce and analyze the notion of joint abilities; a species of ability possessed by agents who perform joint actions of a certain kind. Joint abilities are abilitie...

There is a need to provide an appropriate normative conception of the modern university: a conception which identifies its unifying purposes and values and, thereby, gives direction to institutional role occupants, governments, public policymakers and other would-be institutional designers. Such a conception could admit differences between modern universities; differences, for example, between so-called universities of technology and other universities. Indeed, it is preferable to frame the issue at the level of higher education or university systems rather than at the level (...) of individual universities. According to the teleological normative theory of social institutions, social institutions are organizations or systems of organizations that provide collective goods by means of joint activity; universities are no exception. So what are the fundamental collective good that universities of technology, or the larger systems of which they are a part, ought to be providing and how are they travelling in this regard? This is the question addressed in this paper. (shrink)

In addition to opening a fertile field for inquiry in analytical social epistemology, Miranda Fricker’s work has provided powerful conceptual tools that merge descriptive capacity and political potency. For this reason, over the last fifteen years, the conceptual repertoire introduced by the author has been well received in both academic and political arenas. At times, the concepts of both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice acquire excessive dimensions in the literature, and this undermines, on the one hand, their analytical precision and, on (...) the other, their usefulness. In this paper I argue against Fricker’s structural parallelism thesis and defend an independent treatment of each of these concepts. On this basis, to counteract the hyperinflation of the concept of hermeneutic injustice, I proceed with an exercise of conceptual precision. To this end, I identify the conditions that make hermeneutic injustice both unjust and hermeneutic. Finally, I present theoretical and practical reasons to encourage the rigorous use of these concepts. (shrink)