In search of our highest capacities, cognitive scientists aim to explain things like mathematics, language, and planning. But are these really our most sophisticated forms of knowing? In this paper, I point to a different pinnacle of cognition. Our most sophisticated human knowing, I think, lies in how we engage with each other, in our relating. Cognitive science and philosophy of mind have largely ignored the ways of knowing at play here. At the same time, the emphasis on discrete, rational (...) knowing to the detriment of engaged, human knowing pervades societal practices and institutions, often with harmful effects on people and their relations. There are many reasons why we need a new, engaged—or even engaging—epistemology of human knowing. The enactive theory of participatory sense-making takes steps towards this, but it needs deepening. Kym Maclaren’s idea of letting be invites such a deepening. Characterizing knowing as a relationship of letting be provides a nuanced way to deal with the tensions between the knower’s being and the being of the known, as they meet in the process of knowing-and-being-known. This meeting of knower and known is not easy to understand. However, there is a mode of relating in which we know it well, and that is: in loving relationships. I propose to look at human knowing through the lens of loving. We then see that both knowing and loving are existential, dialectic ways in which concrete and particular beings engage with each other. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker claims that a “gap” in collective hermeneutical resources with respect to the social experiences of marginalized groups prevents members of those groups from understanding their own experiences (Fricker 2007). I argue that because Fricker misdescribes dominant hermeneutical resources as collective, she fails to locate the ethically bad epistemic practices that maintain gaps in dominant hermeneutical resources even while alternative interpretations are in fact offered by non-dominant discourses. Fricker's analysis of hermeneutical injustice does not account for the possibility that (...) marginalized groups can be silenced relative to dominant discourses without being prevented from understanding or expressing their own social experiences. I suggest that a gap in dominant hermeneutical resources is ambiguous between two kinds of unknowing: hermeneutical injustice suffered by members of marginalized groups, and epistemically and ethically blameworthy ignorance perpetrated by members of dominant groups. (shrink)

This paper defends a contextualist approach to epistemic injustice according to which instances of such injustice should be looked at as temporally extended phenomena (having developmental and historical trajectories) and socially extended phenomena (being rooted in patterns of social relations). Within this contextualist framework, credibility excesses appear as a form of undeserved epistemic privilege that is crucially relevant for matters of testimonial justice. While drawing on Miranda Fricker's proportional view of epistemic justice, I take issue with its lack of attention (...) to the role that credibility excesses play in testimonial injustices. I depart from Fricker's view of the relation between credibility excesses and credibility deficits, and I offer an alternative account of the contributions that undeserved epistemic privileges make to epistemic injustices. Then, through the detailed analysis of To kill a mockingbird, I elucidate the crucial role played by the social imaginary in creating and sustaining epistemic injustices, developing an analysis of the kind of social blindness produced by an oppressive social imaginary that establishes unjust patterns of credibility excesses and deficits. (shrink)

Willful ignorance is an important concept in criminal law and jurisprudence, though it has not received much discussion in philosophy. When it is mentioned, however, it is regularly assumed to be a kind of self-deception. In this article I will argue that self-deception and willful ignorance are distinct psychological kinds. First, some examples of willful ignorance are presented and discussed, and an analysis of the phenomenon is developed. Then it is shown that current theories of self-deception give no support to (...) the idea that willful ignorance is a kind of self-deception. Afterwards an independent argument is adduced for excluding willful ignorance from this category. The crucial differences between the two phenomena are explored, as are the reasons why they are so easily conflated. (shrink)

This paper aims to understand the relationship between ignorance and vulnerability by drawing on recent work on the epistemology of ignorance. After elaborating how we might understand the importance of human vulnerability, I develop the claim that ignorance of vulnerability is produced through the pursuit of an ideal of invulnerability that involves both ethical and epistemological closure. The ignorance of vulnerability that is a prerequisite for such invulnerability is, I contend, a pervasive form of ignorance that underlies and grounds other (...) oppressive forms of ignorance. Thus, undoing such forms of ignorance requires working toward a particular form of vulnerability: epistemic vulnerability. (shrink)

Much of the literature concerning epistemic injustice has focused on the variety of harms done to socially marginalized persons in their capacities as potentialcontributorsto knowledge projects. However, in order to understand the full implications of the social nature of knowing, we must confront the circulation of knowledge and the capacity of epistemic agents to take up knowledge produced by others and make use of it. I argue that members of socially marginalized lay communities can sufferepistemic trust injusticeswhen potentially powerful forms (...) of knowing such as scientific understandings are generated in isolation from them, and when the social conditions required for aresponsibly-placed trustto be formed relative to the relevant epistemic institutions fail to transpire. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge in publications about the epistemology of ignorance. In this article, I examine the proliferation of the concept ignorance that has come with the increased interest in the topic. I identify three conceptions of ignorance in the current literature: (1) ignorance as lack of knowledge/true belief, (2) ignorance as actively upheld false outlooks and (3) ignorance as substantive epistemic practice. These different conceptions of ignorance are as of yet unacknowledged but are bound to impede epistemology (...) of ignorance and, therefore, need to be uncovered. After discussing three unsuccessful ways of dealing with these varying conceptions, I put forward an integrated conception of ignorance that is more adequate for serving as the foundation of epistemology of ignorance. Introducing an alternative conception of ignorance provides us with a foundation for both epistemological and more broadly philosophical work on ignorance. (shrink)

Classrooms are unlevel knowing fields, contested terrains where knowledge and ignorance are produced and circulate with equal vigor, and where members of dominant groups are accustomed to having an epistemic home-terrain advantage. My project focuses on one form of resistance that regularly surfaces in discussions with social-justice content. Privilege-preserving epistemic pushback is a variety of willful ignorance that many members of dominant groups engage in when asked to consider both the lived and structural injustices that members of marginalized groups experience (...) daily. I argue that this dominant form of resistance is neither an expression of skepticism nor a critical-thinking practice. I suggest that standard philosophical engagements with these expressions of resistance are incapable of tracking the harms of privilege-preserving epistemic pushback. I recommend treating this pushback as a “shadow text,” that is, as a text that runs alongside the readings in ways that offer no epistemic friction. I offer this as one critical philosophical practice for making students mindful of the ways they contribute to the circulation of ignorance and epistemic violence during the course of their discussions. (shrink)

Epistemic dependence refers to our social mechanisms of reliance in practices of knowledge production. Epistemic oppression concerns persistent and unwarranted exclusions from those practices. This article examines the relationship between these two frameworks and demonstrates that attending to their relationship is a fruitful practice for applied epistemology. Paying attention to relations of epistemic dependence and how exclusive they are can help us track epistemically oppressive practices. In order to show this, I introduce a taxonomy of epistemic dependence. I argue that (...) this particular taxonomy is useful for tracking epistemically oppressive practices in institutional contexts. This is because, first, the forms of epistemic dependence in this taxonomy yield, what I call, diagnostic questions. These are questions that help us track how relations of epistemic dependence could become exclusive and that thus help reveal epistemic oppression in institutional contexts. Second, the forms of epistemic dependence in the taxonomy are interrelated. Paying attention not just to each of three forms of epistemic dependence but also to the way in which they are interrelated is useful for illuminating epistemically oppressive practices. I conclude by demonstrating how the diagnostic questions can be used in analyses of concrete institutional practices in asylum law and higher education. (shrink)

In this paper, I characterize a new kind of testimonial injustice, a phenomenon I call ‘testimonial void’, which involves a substantial extension of the limits of the original concept put...

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

ABSTRACTSilencing is a practice that disrupts linguistic and communicative acts, but its relationship to knowledge and justice is not fully understood. Prior models of epistemic injustice tend to c...

I argue against the Standard View of ignorance, according to which ignorance is defined as equivalent to lack of knowledge, that cases of environmental epistemic luck, though entailing lack of knowledge, do not necessarily entail ignorance. In support of my argument, I contend that in cases of environmental luck an agent retains what I call epistemic access to the relevant fact by successfully exercising her epistemic agency and that ignorance and non-ignorance, contrary to what the Standard View predicts, are not (...) modal in the sense that knowledge is. After responding to objections, I conclude by sketching an alternative account of ignorance centered on the notions of epistemic access and epistemic agency. (shrink)

This volume has its roots in two recent developments within mainstream analytic epistemology: a growing recognition over the past two or three decades of the active and social nature of our epistemic lives; and, more recently still, the increasing appreciation of the various ways in which the epistemic practices of individuals and societies can, and often do, go wrong. The theoretical analysis of these breakdowns in epistemic practice, along with the various harms and wrongs that follow as a consequence, constitutes (...) an approach to epistemology that we refer to as non-ideal epistemology. In this introductory chapter we introduce and contextualise the ten essays that comprise this volume, situating them within four broad sub-fields: vice epistemology, epistemic injustice, inter-personal epistemic practices, and applied epistemology. We also provide a brief overview of several other important growth areas in non-ideal epistemology. (shrink)

Indigenous peoples are disproportionally vulnerable to climate change. At the same time, they possess valuable knowledge for fair and sustainable climate adaptation planning and policymaking. Yet Indigenous peoples and knowledges are often excluded from or underrepresented within adaptation plans and policies. In this paper we ask whether the concept of epistemic injustice can be applied to the context of climate adaptation and the underrepresentation of Indigenous knowledges within adaptation policies and strategies. In recent years, the concept of epistemic injustice has (...) gained prominence, indicating that someone has been unfairly discriminated against in their capacity as a knower. We argue that many climate adaptation policies are epistemically unjust towards Indigenous peoples because of the underrepresentation of Indigenous knowledges by showing how the case of Indigenous knowledges in climate adaptation planning and policy satisfies five conditions of epistemic injustice. We further consider what challenges there are to integrating local and Indigenous knowledges within development in general, and climate adaptation strategies in particular and how these can be addressed. Whether the lack of Indigenous knowledges in climate adaptation policies constitutes an epistemic injustice matters because an injustice denotes an unfair advantage to one group – whether by design or default – that ought to be remedied and redressed. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw attention to the epistemological assumptions of market liberalism and standpoint theory and argue that they have more in common than previously thought. We show that both traditions draw on a similar epistemological bedrock, specifically relating to the fragmentation of knowledge in society and the fact that some of this knowledge cannot easily be shared between agents. We go on to investigate how market liberals and standpoint theorists argue with recourse to these similar foundations, and sometimes (...) diverge, primarily because of normative pre-commitments. One conclusion we draw from this is that these similarities suggest that market liberals ought to, by their own epistemological lights, be more attentive towards various problems raised by feminist standpoint theorists, and feminist standpoint theorists ought to be more open to various claims made by market liberals. (shrink)

In this paper, I use the example of rape myths to argue that certain real-life phenomena compel us to adjust our philosophical methods such that we explicitly endorse feminist commitments and strive for democratic practices in our philosophical thinking. The concept of rape has evolved significantly over the past few decades both in law and common usage. But despite decades of work to dispel rape myths, they persist and interfere with the proper application of the concept. This paper aims to (...) account for this problem and propose a solution. First, I consider three examples that show how rape myths and other problematic schemas can distort our dominant working understanding of phenomena. All three examples are cases of grave injustices to the victims. I suggest that a revisionary project of conceptual amelioration can help counter injustices like these. In a second step, I argue that problematic schemas (such as rape myths) not only distort our working understanding or the accurate application of an existing concept, but can furthermore interfere with our philosophical analyses—even in cases of amelioration. As a solution, taking clues from theories of epistemologies of ignorance, I propose a more democratic and progressive method for engaging in conceptual amelioration. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw attention to the epistemological assumptions of market liberalism and standpoint theory and argue that they have more in common than previously thought. We show that both traditions draw on a similar epistemological bedrock, specifically relating to the fragmentation of knowledge in society and the fact that some of this knowledge cannot easily be shared between agents. We go on to investigate how market liberals and standpoint theorists argue with recourse to these similar foundations, and sometimes (...) diverge, primarily because of normative pre-commitments. One conclusion we draw from this is that these similarities suggest that market liberals ought to, by their own epistemological lights, be more attentive towards various problems raised by feminist standpoint theorists, and feminist standpoint theorists ought to be more open to various claims made by market liberals. (shrink)

Indirect situationist critiques of virtue ethics grant that virtue exists and is possible to acquire, but contend that given the low probability of success in acquiring it, a person genuinely interested in behaving as morally as possible would do better to rely on situationist strategies - or, in other words, strategies of environmental or ecological engineering or control. In this paper, I develop a partial answer to this critique drawn from work in early Confucian ethics and in contemporary philosophy and (...) psychology. From early Confucian ethics, I lean on the concept of li, or ritual. Ritual represents both a set of situational manipulations that are especially effective at directly producing moral behavior and at indirectly cultivating virtue over time, and also a virtue that consists of facility with and expertise in these situational manipulations. Appealing to the particular example of social power, I then argue that one is justified in attempting to acquire virtue if one knows that one will frequently encounter circumstances in which purely situationist strategies lose effectiveness, if these circumstances also carry moral urgency: the risk of great harm or opportunity for great benefit to others is high, and if utilizing the potent combination of situationist strategies and virtue envisioned by the early Confucians as ritual is possible. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn den 1970er Jahren eigneten sich feministische Aktivistinnen die Figur der Hexe in verschiedenen Kontexten und Konstruktionen an: als Symbol für Alterität, politischen Radikalismus oder politische Revolte, Repräsentation des verfolgten Opfers oder der alternativen Heilerin, die über subversives Körperwissen verfügt. Der Artikel untersucht diese Hexenkonstruktionen mit dem Fokus auf ihren Erfahrungsgrundlagen, wobei er sich auf Aneignungen in Westeuropa und insbesondere Westdeutschland in seinen transatlantischen Verflechtungen konzentriert. In einem ersten Abschnitt wird zunächst ein kurzer Überblick über exemplarische Hexendiskurse in den 1970er (...) Jahren in radikalfeministischen, gesundheitspolitischen und künstlerischen Milieus gegeben auf der Grundlage einer Auswertung repräsentativer westeuropäischen Zeitschriften und Gesundheitsliteratur. Der Artikel hebt die Vielfalt der Hexenbilder und ihre erkenntnistheoretischen Zusammenhänge hervor und argumentiert, dass, so unterschiedlich diese Ansätze auch erscheinen mögen, sie alle Differenzmuster konstruierten. Daran anschließend werden im zweiten Abschnitt alternative Praktiken der Wissensproduktion analysiert mit einem Schwerpunkt auf Gesundheitsratgebern und consciousness raising groups. Es wird gezeigt, wie Hexendiskurse einerseits die Wissensermächtigung der Bewegung ermöglichten, andererseits aber Teil einer komplexen Grenzarbeit innerhalb der Milieus waren, etwa in den Debatten über das Verhältnis von Erfahrungswissen und Theorie. Der letzte Abschnitt des Artikels erweitert das Bild und verweist darauf, wie eng und auf welche Weise Spiritualität mit dieser Grenzarbeit verbunden war. Es wird diskutiert, wie diese Milieus sich im Rahmen feministischer Epistemologien gegen und innerhalb etablierter Wissenskulturen konstituierten und damit weitere Grenzen innerhalb der Bewegung gezogen wurden. Insgesamt demonstriert der Artikel mit dieser Analyse der „Evidenz der Erfahrung“ (Scott) in exemplarischen Hexendiskursen, dass deren historische Relevanz zunächst in ihrem standpunktbildenden Charakter lag. (shrink)

This essay explores various roles that philosophers occupy in relation to intellectual disability. In examining how philosophers define their object of inquiry as experts and gatekeepers, it raises critical questions concerning the nature of philosophical discourse about intellectual disability. It then goes on to consider three alternate positions, the advocate or friend, the animal, and the “intellectually disabled,” each of which points to new ways of philosophizing in the face of intellectual disability.

This paper focuses on epistemic practices within biomedical ethics that are related to disability. These practices are one of the reasons that there is tension between biomedical ethicists and disability advocates. I argue that appeals to conceptual neutrality regarding disability, which Anita Silvers recommends, are counterproductive. Objectivity as neutrality serves to obscure the social values and interests that inform epistemic practices. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory and epistemologies of ignorance, I examine ways that appeals to objectivity as neutrality serve to (...) maintain the status quo and ignorance regarding disability. I adapt Charles Mills’s notion of “white ignorance” in order to consider the systematic social ignorance regarding disability that is treated as knowledge. Bioethicists commonly dismiss the reports of disabled people regarding their quality of life as biased, while claiming that their own judgments are objective. Sandra Harding’s notion of strong objectivity is useful for thinking about ways that examination of values and interests informing epistemic practices related to disability in biomedical ethics could create better knowledge practices by taking the standpoint of disabled people seriously. (shrink)

I adopt a situated approach to the question of what would constitute responsible trust and/or distrust in climate change science, and I identify some of the major challenges for laypersons in their attempts to know well by placing their trust in climate change experts. I examine evidence that white males, as a group of relative privilege, are more likely to distrust the institutions of climate change science than are other demographic groups, and use this example to consider specific challenges facing (...) those who occupy positions of privilege and who seek to place their epistemic trust wisely. I argue that the insights of feminist standpoint theory and epistemologies of ignorance concerning the role of positionality in knowledge production and the need for critical reflexivity can be applied to cases of epistemic trust as well; in some contexts, such as climate change science, considerations of how those differently situated from oneself place their trust will be valuable contributions to responsible assignments of trust. (shrink)

In this paper, I take up the question of how epistemic injustices can be resisted. Miranda Fricker, who introduced the term to describe situations in which subjects are wronged as knowers, has initially advocated an individualist, virtue-based account to counteract epistemic injustices. Epistemic injustices, however, do not merely operate at an individual level but are rooted in social practices and structures. Arguably therefore, individually virtuous epistemic conduct is not enough to uproot patterns of epistemic injustice. Institutional change and collective actions (...) are needed. Recently, Elizabeth Anderson has proposed such a structural remedy. Diagnosing patterns of social segregation that track existing inequalities to be the principal structural cause of epistemic injustices, Anderson suggests that integration is required to achieve epistemic justice. Pace Anderson, I argue that certain segregated spaces —namely spaces provided by subaltern counter-publics— can function and, in fact, have historically functioned as important sites of epistemic resistance. In particular, I argue that even if integration is sharply distinguished from assimilation, Anderson’s proposal insufficiently acknowledges the subversive potential of those spaces, in which shielded from the gaze of the oppressors, marginally situated subjects can assemble and question hegemonic epistemic practices. (shrink)

The French feminist philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff has taught us something about “the collectivity,” which she discovers in women’s struggle for access to the philosophical, but also about “the unknown” and “the unthought.” It is the unthought which will matter most to what I intend to say today about a fundamental ignorance on which speaker vulnerability is built. On International Women’s Day, it seems appropriate to speak about – or, at least, to evoke – the silencing which has been imposed (...) on women by an oppressive form of ignorance. My question is: how do our resounding voices as women – on 8 March 2016 – avoid what feminist philosophers have distinguished as wilful forms of silencing? Silencing exploits vulnerability; and speaker vulnerability is an exposure either to violence or affection, in its dependence on an audience. My response seeks to undo the silencing of women by transforming an ignorance of vulnerability into a distinctively ethical avowal. To see the significance of this undoing, we will consider how our contemporary global world reduces vulnerability to an openness to violence, ignoring what has been unthought: an openness to affection. A wilful ignorance of vulnerability develops not as a lack of knowledge but its disavowal – on which various forms of oppression are built. An active disavowal of thinking (the unthought) is the other side of a striving for invulnerability; and this striving is encouraged by a social world which remains ignorant of its own wounding, as well as its own potential for ethical relations in vulnerability. Like la mauvaise foi of the French existentialist, invulnerability is a form of self-deception; and those who claim it embrace ignorance of their own and others’ vulnerability too. (shrink)

Double standards are widespread throughout biomedicine, especially in research on reproductive health. One of the clearest cases of double standards involves the feminine gendering of reproductive responsibility for contraception and the continued lack of highly effective, reversible methods for cisgender men. While the biomedical establishment accepts diversity and inclusion as important social values for clinical trials, their continued use of inequitable standards undermines their ability to challenge unfair social hierarchies by developing male contraception. Thus, the gender/sex bias present in contraceptive (...) research raises the “New Demarcation Problem”: If we accept that values can and will play important roles in science, how can we nevertheless distinguish positive influences of values from more corrosive bias? I argue that biomedical researchers ought to aim their clinical trials at equity and utilize methodologies that actually achieve that aim. More specifically, I contend that we can avoid the problem of double standards by gender/sex in contraceptive research by utilizing more equitable standards. My demarcation strategy captures dynamic interplay between values and their effects, with direct policy implications for institutions conducting, funding, and evaluating clinical trials. For male contraceptive trials, this involves shifting risk assessment from an individual model to a shared model for sexual partners. (shrink)

This paper critiques the rise of scientific approaches to central questions in the humanities, specifically questions about human nature, ethics, identity, and experience. In particular, I look at how an increasing number of philosophers are turning to evolutionary psychology and neuroscience as sources of answers to philosophical problems. This approach constitutes what I term a biological turn in the humanities. I argue that the biological turn, especially its reliance on evolutionary psychology, is best understood as an epistemology of ignorance that (...) contributes to a climate of hostility and intolerance regarding feminist insights about gender, identity, and the body. (shrink)

In banning religious symbols for civil servants in a position of authority, Québec's laicity law disproportionately burdens religious minorities. Nevertheless, politicians seem to somehow avoid this problem, and the law is largely supported by the population. This insensibility to religious discrimination calls for an explanation. I argue that part of the explanation for this unequal treatment of religion in secular society lies in active religious ignorance. Drawing a parallel from how white ignorance functions to protect racial inequalities, I argue that (...) a kind of active ignorance in the religious domain – that I name post-Christendom ignorance – makes it difficult to comprehend alternative understandings of religious experience and allows the majority to deny its religious positionality. Applying this framework, I criticize Québec's laicity law for wrongfully relying on inadequate hermeneutical resources about religion. Further, the failure to see that targeting only religious symbols worn by individuals is discriminatory is the result of the epistemic vice of closed-mindedness. This article aims to show how religious persons in secular society can suffer hermeneutical wrongs because of their religious identity, and it aims to show that this injustice in the epistemic domain can help explain the unequal treatment of religious minorities while providing grounds for criticism. (shrink)

This article aims at commenting in a novel way on the concept of political correctness, by showing that, even if adopting a politically-correct behavior aims at promoting a precise moral outcome, violence can be still perpetrated, despite good intentions. To afford in a novel way the problem of political correctness, I will adopt a theoretical strategy that adheres to moral stoicism, the problem of “silence”, the “fascist state of the mind” and the concept of “overmorality”, which I have introduced in (...) my book Understanding Violence. The Intertwining of Morality, Religion, and Violence: A Philosophical Stance. I will demonstrate that political correctness certainly obeys the stoic moral rule, which teaches us that we have to diminish conflicts and, so, the potential for derived violence, by avoiding to pronounce words and expressions that can be offensive and so conflict making. Unfortunately, political correctness often increases the so-called already widespread overmorality, typical of our era, and postulates too many minor moral values to be attributed to individuals and groups, which must be respected. Therefore, engaging in political correctness obscures more serious issues regarding social, political and economic life, committing a sin of abstractness and idealization. At the same time, by discouraging the use of words and expressions, the intrinsic overmoralization at work creates potential new conflicts and potential derived violence. (shrink)

In classes that examine entrenched injustices like sexism or racism, students sometimes use “distancing strategies” to dissociate themselves from the injustice being studied. Education researchers argue that distancing is a mechanism through which students, especially students of apparent privilege, deny their complicity in systemic injustice. While I am sympathetic to this analysis, I argue that there is much at stake in student distancing that the current literature fails to recognize. On my view, distancing perpetuates socially sanctioned forms of ignorance and (...) unknowing, through which students misrecognize not only their complicity in injustice, but also the ways that injustice shapes the world, their lives, and their knowledge. Thus, distancing is pedagogically problematic because it prevents students from understanding important social facts, and because it prevents them from engaging with perspectives, analyses, and testimonies that might beneficially challenge their settled views and epistemic habits. To substantiate this new analysis, I draw on recent work on epistemologies of ignorance, especially José Medina’s account of “active ignorance.” In order to respond to student distancing, I argue, it is not sufficient for teachers to make students aware of injustice, or of their potential complicity in it. Beyond this, teachers should cultivate epistemic virtue in the classroom and encourage students to take responsibility for better ways of knowing. The article ends by outlining several classroom practices for beginning this work. (shrink)

This article argues that critical epistemology should aim at centering the voices and perspectives of those who have been excluded and silenced, proposing a way of doing that by combining Black feminist standpoint theory and Latina feminist theory as they converge in María del Rosario Acosta López’s philosophy of radical listening. The article also argues for the crucial significance of aesthetic interventions for creating epistemic friction that can transform our sensibilities so that we can start to listen to silences. The (...) author offers an analysis of the subversive potential in Doris Salcedo’s public art as an illustration of how aesthetic resistance can be used in practices of epistemic activism that resist insensitivity and promote new ways of listening to silenced voices and liminal sites. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article explores agnotology and ways of not knowing in the context of gender in engineering. It presents an empirically-emergent, three-part typology of ways of not knowing about gender based on interviews with engineering professors, and contributes to the growing body of scholarship on agnotology. Just as knowledge is inseparable from issues of power, so too are areas of non-knowledge, and it is important to understand how, and to what ends, non-knowing is produced. This analysis of the social construction of (...) ignorance around gender in engineering contributes new insights to feminist STS scholarship, as well as agnotology research. (shrink)

The existence of otherness as a social category is the result of a specific configuration of power relations. One way to maintain this configuration and exert control over subjectivities defined as "others" is to exclude them from participation in the production of knowledge, depriving them ofthe resources to understand themselves and the world and the words to describe their social experience. In this sense, the epistemic injustice, produced by exclusion from the system of knowledge production, constitutes a powerful instrument to (...) control power relations and to maintain the subordination of minorised subjectivities. At the same time, the production of analysis by oppressed subjectivities constitutes a form of resistance to the control of the knowledge production and to the control of subjectivities themselves; since this production has a liberating function from oppressive systems and is able to reveal the implicit power dynamics within the production of knowledge. (shrink)

There are a number of research fields that exhibit a special connection to some particular activist movement. Typically in these cases, we observe a remarkable degree of personnel overlap between the movements and the scientific communities. I have two primary aims. First, I shall explore the reasons why there are such close entanglements between some research fields and some activist movements. I argue that both scientists and activists have specific epistemic interests that help explain why both practices tend to intersect (...) functionally. Second, I shall evaluate these entanglements from an epistemological point of view. Drawing on a conception of science that has science consisting of two essential tasks—asking significant questions and adequately answering them—, I argue that activists’ contribution to science is ambivalent with regard to the first task because they can help to overcome the unjust distribution of resources, but they can also be the source of new inequalities. Regarding the second task, I similarly suggest that activists can serve a useful purpose in science, since they tend to exhibit certain epistemically valuable properties and can help compensate for what I call collective biases, although in certain situations they tend to reinforce collective biases. (shrink)

This article focuses on unjust credibility deficits in cases of testimony about emotional reactions towards acts of oppression. It argues that the injustice in these cases is not rooted in the hearer’s identity prejudices against the speaker, but the hearer's problematic way of dealing with his simulation of being in the speaker's situation. The simulation is in itself not morally problematic. However, I focus on a case where the hearer either recklessly or negligently fails to consider knowledge about the differences (...) in people’s emotional reactions and comes to believe that his simulated reaction is the only possible reaction, thus believing that the speaker does not report her emotions truthfully.In this case, the ‘epistemic poison’ results from the recklessness or negligence not necessarily from identity prejudice against the speaker. This credibility deficit is unjust, yet its persistent and systematic nature stems from the fact that a hearer who is not from the same marginalized or oppressed group as the speaker will simulate different emotional reactions to those reported by the speaker. Hence, the unjust credibility deficit can be connected to other forms of social injustices suffered by the speaker. (shrink)

One way to articulate the promise of interdisciplinary research is in terms of the relationship between knowledge and ignorance. Disciplinary research yields deep knowledge of a circumscribed range of issues, but remains ignorant of those issues that stretch outside its purview. Because complex problems such as climate change do not respect disciplinary boundaries, disciplinary research responses to such problems are limited and partial. Interdisciplinary research responses, by contrast, integrate disciplinary perspectives by combining knowledge about different issues and as a result (...) reduce ignorance about more aspects of the problem. In this paper, we develop this idea and argue that while interdisciplinary research can help remediate damaging ignorance about complex problems, it also creates conditions in which other damaging forms of ignorance can arise. We illustrate this point in detail with three case studies before discussing three implications of our analysis for identifying and managing deleterio... (shrink)

Among feminist philosophers, there are two lines of argument that sexist values are illegitimate in science, focusing on epistemic or ethical problems. This article supports a third framework, elucidating how value-laden science can enable epistemic oppression. My analysis demonstrates how purported knowledge laden with sexist values can compromise epistemic autonomy and contribute to paternalism and misogyny. I exemplify these epistemic wrongs with a case study of the morning-after pill during its 2006 switch to over-the-counter availability and its new drug label (...) from the US Food and Drug Administration that it “may prevent implantation.” Antiabortion science advisers created this label to protect zygotes based on debated value judgments that were later concealed. This zygote-centric knowledge enabled them to shape potential users by instructing “good mothers” that they ought to protect zygotes and punishing “bad mothers” by refusing their requests for the drug. Therefore, I argue that the sexist values and gender norms of antiabortionists that prioritize zygotic health are illegitimate in this context because they cause epistemic injustices and perpetuate epistemic oppression. Furthermore, I advocate against blanket protections for the “right to conscience” and “religious freedom” of healthcare providers because they reinforce the epistemic oppression of women, especially those on the margins.Content Warning: This article discusses sexual assault and refusals to provide contraception to patients, including survivors. (shrink)

Feminist theorists have crafted diverse accounts of implicit knowing that exceed the purview of epistemology conventionally understood. I characterize this field as through examining thematic clusters of feminist work on implicit knowledge: phenomenological and foucauldian theories of embodiment; theories of affect and emotion; other forms of implicit knowledge. Within these areas, the umbrella concept of implicit knowledge (or understanding, depending on how it's framed) names either contingently unspoken or fundamentally nonpropositional but epistemically salient content in our experience. I make a (...) case for distinguishing implicit knowledge from lively conversations about ‘implicit bias’, as well as from the ‘know-how/know-that’ debates, and I explore key ways the notion of implicit knowledge is currently formulated in feminist philosophy. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

En diciembre de 2011, Samba Martine, interna del Centro de Internamiento para Extranjeros de Aluche, muere de una infección evitable por no haber sido diagnosticada y tratada de manera adecuada, a pesar de haber solicitado insistentemente asistencia sanitaria. La madre de Samba, con el apoyo de varias entidades sociales, denuncia los hechos y llega a los tribunales. Ocho años más tarde, en junio de 2019, se anuncia la absolución por homicidio imprudente del único responsable procesado. Nueve años más tarde, en (...) octubre de 2020, el Ministerio de la Presidencia, Relaciones con las Cortes y Memoria Democrática emite una Resolución por la que se atiende la reclamación de responsabilidad patrimonial por el fallecimiento de Samba Martine. Tomando como punto de partida este caso, este trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar los factores que hacen de él un ejemplo de injusticia epistémica en tres niveles interrelacionados: micro, meso y macro. La relevancia de esta propuesta radica en mostrar cómo la dejación de funciones por parte de la Administración y sus instituciones contribuye a generar una ignorancia, que, combinada con la falta de credibilidad del testimonio de la víctima, tiene como resultado final su muerte. Lejos de ser un caso anecdótico, situaciones de injusticia epistémica como esta forman parte de la cotidianeidad de numerosas personas migrantes indocumentadas, que después de periplos de sufrimiento terminan internadas en limbos legales como los CIE. (shrink)

Any study of radical care needs to pay attention to the institution as a place of care. Yet, institutions have been more readily associated with failures of care than successes. We undertake close reading of the Ockenden Review of maternity services in a National Health Service hospital trust in England, concerning a large number of families that received inadequate care during pregnancy and birth, including investigations of adverse outcomes such as deaths of babies and mothers. We argue that to enable (...) better care in the institution requires a close attention to its institutional nature, particularly its scale, bureaucratic mode and functions, and the professional identities that work within it, and the ways they shape the practice of emotion. (shrink)