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)

There are many good reasons to learn about the lives of people who have less social privilege than we do. We might want to understand their circumstances in order to have informed opinions on social policy, or to make our institutions more inclusive. We might also want to cultivate empathy for its own sake. Much of this knowledge is gained through social scientific or humanistic research into others' lives. The entitlement to theorize about or study the lives of marginalized others (...) is often granted under the presumption of academic freedom. This paper will not question whether academic freedom licenses us to do so in the first place ; instead, I will... (shrink)

The contrast between third- and first-personal accounts of the experiences of autistic persons has much to teach us about epistemic injustice and epistemic agency. This paper argues that bringing about greater epistemic justice for autistic people requires developing a relational account of epistemic agency. We begin by systematically identifying the many types of epistemic injustice autistic people face, specifically with regard to general assumptions regarding autistic people’s sociability or lack thereof, and by locating the source of these epistemic injustices in (...) neuronormativity and neurotypical ignorance. We then argue that this systematic identification pushes us to construe epistemic agency as resulting from a fundamentally relational and dynamic process between an individual, others around them, and their social, cultural, or institutional environment, rather than as a fixed and inherent property of individuals. Finally, we show how our relational account of epistemic agency allows us to introduce the novel concepts of epistemic disablement and epistemic enablement. We argue that these two concepts allow us to more accurately track the mechanisms that undermine or facilitate epistemic agency, and thereby to better understand how epistemic injustice arises and to design more effective interventions to foster greater epistemic justice for autistic people. (shrink)

This essay reflects on some of the problems with characterizing collective epistemic resistance to oppression as “unthinking” or antithetical to reason by highlighting the epistemic labor involved in contending with and resisting epistemic oppression. To do so, I develop a structural notion of epistemic gaslighting in order to highlight structural features of contexts within which collective epistemic resistance to oppression occurs. I consider two different forms of epistemic echoing as modes of contending with and resisting epistemic oppression that are sometimes (...) mischaracterized as “unthinking” or “group think.” The first sense highlights the epistemic labor entailed in withdrawing from conditions of structural epistemic gaslighting that is sometimes mischaracterized as a pernicious self-sequestering that is antithetical to reason. The second sense highlights the epistemic labor entailed in actively confronting epistemic structures that gaslight what is sometimes mischaracterized as an “irrational group think.” In both cases, I highlight how epistemic acts that may appear unreasonable “within the gaslight” are, on the contrary, engaged in serious and important epistemic labor. (shrink)

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)

Disabled people face obstacles to participation in epistemic communities that would be beneficial for making sense of our experiences and are susceptible to epistemic oppression. Knowledge and skills grounded in disabled people's experiences are treated as unintelligible within an ableist hermeneutic, specifically, the dominant conception of disability as lack. My discussion will focus on a few types of epistemic oppression—willful hermeneutical ignorance, epistemic exploitation, and epistemic imperialism—as they manifest in some bioethicists’ claims about and interactions with disabled people. One of (...) the problems with the epistemic phenomena with which I am concerned is that they direct our skepticism regarding claims and justifications in the wrong direction. When we ought to be asking dominantly situated epistemic agents to justify their knowledge claims, our attention is instead directed toward skepticism regarding the accounts of marginally situated agents who are actually in a better position to know. I conclude by discussing disabled knowers’ responses to epistemic oppression, including articulating the epistemic harm they have undergone as well as ways of creating resistant ways of knowing. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker's original presentation of Hermeneutical Injustice left open theoretical choice points leading to criticisms and subsequent clarifications with the resulting dialectic appearing largely verbal. The absence of perspicuous exposition of hallmarks of Hermeneutical Injustice might suggest scenarios exhibiting some – but not all – such hallmarks are within its purview when they are not. The lack of clear hallmarks of Hermeneutical Injustice, moreover, obscures both the extent to which Fricker's proposed remedy Hermeneutical Justice – roughly, virtuous communicative practices – (...) adequately addresses the injustice, and the accuracy of criticisms suggesting that Hermeneutical Justice is insufficient to the task. In what follows, after briefly defending necessary and sufficient conditions for what I take to be the best candidate interpretation of Hermeneutical Injustice, I build on recent work on moral responsibility to construct and defend a rigorous explication of Hermeneutical Justice. (shrink)

In analyzing oppressive systems like racism, social theorists have articulated accounts of the dynamic interaction and mutual dependence between psychological components, such as individuals’ patterns of thought and action, and social components, such as formal institutions and informal interactions. We argue for the further inclusion of physical components, such as material artifacts and spatial environments. Drawing on socially situated and ecologically embedded approaches in the cognitive sciences, we argue that physical components of racism are not only shaped by, but also (...) shape psychological and social components of racism. Indeed, while our initial focus is on racism and racist things, we contend that our framework is also applicable to other oppressive systems, including sexism, classism, and ableism. This is because racist things are part of a broader class of oppressive things, which are material artifacts and spatial environments that are in congruence with an oppressive system. (shrink)

"Analyzes the value of using case-based methodologies to address contemporary social justice issues in philosophy"--.

Engages and extends the feminist philosopher Lorraine Code's groundbreaking work on epistemology and ethics.

Susan has been profoundly deaf since childhood. She is a hearing aid wearer, and likes to use the induction loops built into some public spaces, such as theaters and cinemas, to help cut down the background noise that can make hearing speech very difficult. But this depends on the building having an induction loop fitted and properly maintained. Like many other induction loop users, Susan frequently finds that the advertised loop system is either working poorly or not working at all. (...) Almost as often, she then has the experience of making a complaint about it only to have the problem denied. If she persists, she is often then met... (shrink)

Wem wird geglaubt und wem nicht? Wessen Wissen wird weitergegeben und wessen nicht? Wer hat eine Stimme und wer nicht? Theorien der epistemischen Ungerechtigkeit befassen sich mit dem breiten Feld der ungerechten oder unfairen Behandlung, die mit Fragen des Wissens, Verstehens und Kommunizierens zusammenhängen, wie z.B. die Möglichkeit, vom Wissen oder von kommunikativen Praktiken ausgeschlossen zu werden oder zum Schweigen gebracht zu werden, aber auch Kontexte, in denen die Bedeutungen mancher systematisch verzerrt oder falsch gehört und falsch dargestellt werden, in (...) denen manchen misstraut wird oder es an epistemischer Handlungsfähigkeit mangelt. In diesem Buch wird eine Übersicht über die breite Debatte epistemischer Ungerechtigkeit, epistemischer Unterdrückung und epistemischer Gewalt gegeben, in dem unterschiedliche Theorien, die sich auf der Schnittstelle von Gerechtigkeitstheorie und epistemischen Fragen befinden, systematisch und kritisch diskutiert sowie theoretische Vorgänger dieser Theorien beleuchtet werden. (shrink)

A common concern within the disability community are the ways in which negative or misguided representations in media produce stigma. Stigma can be broadly defined to include “problems of knowledge, problems of attitudes, and problems of behaviour,” which means that inadequate or unrealistic representations can cause a variety of damaging effects1. In Narrative Prosthesis, David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder explore the ways in which a broad selection of literature has represented disability as a literary device. Despite an ever (...) growing number of examples of disability in media, the public, and especially many scholars, have forgotten about how many representations actually exist: “a social erasure has been performed even as a representational repertoire has evolved”2. This forgetting has serious consequences, not only on the way disability is socially received, but in framing accessibility problems as either non-existent or not as something in need of significant change. In this way, a critical look at representations of disability is needed in order to not only combat stigma, but to bring disability issues to the forefront of social and political consideration. Using Letitia Meynell’s model of pictures as epistemic devices and Nancy Tuana’s conception of Wilful Ignorance, I argue that the social forgetting that occurs in spite of the numerous examples in media is due to the outcomes of those representations. In addition, I suggest that discussion of Wilful Ignorance should take disability examples into account going forward within the field of Agnotology. When the purpose of a disabled character as a literary device is ultimately to remove or cure the disability itself, it is not surprising that the public ultimately forgets that there was a disabled person there at all. (shrink)