Epistemic injustice

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Epistemic injustice is injustice related to knowledge. It includes exclusion and silencing; systematic distortion or misrepresentation of one's meanings or contributions; undervaluing of one's status or standing in communicative practices; unfair distinctions in authority; and unwarranted distrust. [1]

Contents

An influential recent theory of epistemic injustice is that of British philosopher Miranda Fricker, who coined the term. [2] According to Fricker, there are two kinds of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. [3]

Related concepts include epistemic oppression and epistemic violence.

Origins

Though the term epistemic injustice was not coined until 1999, prior philosophers have posited similar concepts.

Vivian May has argued that civil rights activist Anna Julia Cooper in the 1890s anticipated the concept in claiming that Black women are denied full and equal recognition as knowers. [4]

Gaile Pohlhaus Jr. points to Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak's 1988 essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" as another anticipation. In that essay, Spivak describes what she calls epistemic violence occurring when subaltern persons are prevented from speaking for themselves about their own interests because of others claiming to know what those interests are. [5]

Testimonial injustice

Testimonial injustice is unfairness related to trusting someone's word. An injustice of this kind can occur when someone is ignored, or not believed, because of their sex, sexuality, gender presentation, race, disability, or, broadly, because of their identity. [3]

Miranda Fricker gives the example of Londoner Duwayne Brooks, who saw his friend Stephen Lawrence murdered. [6] The police officers who arrived at the scene regarded Brooks with suspicion. According to an official inquiry, "the officers failed to concentrate upon Mr. Brooks and to follow up energetically the information which he gave them. Nobody suggested that he should accompany them in searches of the area, although he knew where the assailants had last been seen. Nobody appears properly to have tried to calm him, or to accept that what he said was true." [7] That is, the police officers failed to view Brooks as a credible witness, presumably in part due to racial bias. This was, says Fricker, a case of testimonial injustice, which occurs when "prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word." [8]

Hermeneutical injustice

Hermeneutical injustice is injustice caused by people being unable to make sense of certain experiences in their life, owing to a lack of hermeneutical/interpretive resources required to make sense of the experience. (The word hermeneutical comes from the Greek word for 'interpreter'.)[ citation needed ]

Hermeneutical injustice occurs when someone's experiences are not well understood — by themselves or by others — because these experiences do not fit any concepts known to them (or known to others), due to the historic exclusion of some groups of people from activities, such as scholarship and journalism, that shape the language people use to make sense of their experiences. [3]

For example, in the 1970s, the phrase sexual harassment was introduced to describe something that many people, especially women, had long experienced. [9] Before this time, a woman experiencing sexual harassment may have had difficulty putting her experience into words. Fricker states that this difficulty is also not accidental, and was largely due to women's exclusion from shaping the English language and participating equally in journalism, publishing, academia, law, and the other institutions and industries that help people make sense of their lives.[ citation needed ] After the term sexual harassment was introduced, the same woman who experienced sexual harassment may have understood better what happened to her; however, she may have struggled to explain this experience to someone else, because the concept of sexual harassment was not yet well known. [ citation needed ]

Fricker argues that some women's lives are less intelligible – to themselves, and/or to others – because women have historically wielded less power to shape the categories through which people understand the world. [ citation needed ]

Epistemological violence

Epistemological violence is distinct from epistemic injustice in that it usually occurs in the power structure of academic research, such as when interpreting empirical results in psychology. Epistemological violence is theoretical interpretations of empirical results that construct a targeted group as inferior, despite alternative and equally viable interpretations of the data. [10]

For example, Dr. Monique Danielle Botha argues that academic studies of Theory of Mind in autistic children constitutes epistemological violence, due to foundational studies explicitly or implicitly drawing universal conclusions about the entire group of autistic people. [11]

Further developments

Other scholars since Fricker have adapted the concept of epistemic injustice and/or expanded what the term includes. These contributions have included naming and narrowing down forms of epistemic injustice, such as epistemic oppression, [12] epistemicide, [13] epistemic exploitation, [14] silencing as testimonial quieting and as testimonial smothering, [15] contributory injustice, [16] distributive epistemic injustice, [17] epistemic trust injustice, [18] and expressive hermeneutical injustice. [19]

José Medina has advocated for an account of epistemic injustice that incorporates more voices and pays attention to context and the relationships at play. [20] Elizabeth S. Anderson has argued that attention should be given to the structural causes and structural remedies of epistemic injustice. [21] A closely related literature on epistemologies of ignorance has also been developing, which has included the identification of overlapping concepts such as white ignorance [22] [23] and willful hermeneutical ignorance. [24]

American philosopher Kristie Dotson has warned that some definitions could leave out important contributions to the ongoing discussion around epistemic injustice. [16] Gaile Pohlhaus Jr. has replied that the concept should therefore be considered an open one, and many different approaches to the concept should be considered. [2]

In 2017, the Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice was published, compiling chapters addressing both the theoretical work on the concept and efforts to apply that theory to practical case studies. [25] The Indian political theorist Rajeev Bhargava uses the term epistemic injustice to describe how colonized groups were wronged when colonizing powers replaced, or negatively impacted, the concepts and categories that colonized groups used to understand themselves and the world. [26] Similarly, in 2021, Professor Dr. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni mentions the term epistemicide and the Cognitive Empire [27] to describe the discrimination of scholars and intellectuals from the Global South by Western academia and in the sphere of decolonisation studies. In 2021 as well, Bhakuni & Abimbola's application of the concept of pose (or the positionality of the speaker) and gaze (the influence of the audience being addressed) [28] as important modifiers of the both credibility deficit (that is, credibility deficit may apply to a person's pose or their role as gaze) and hermeneutical marginalization (that is, a person may be marginalized in relation to their pose as a speaker or to the gaze/audience to whom they have to address themself). [29]

A policy analysis indicated that the World Health Organization definition of neglected tropical disease reflects a form of epistemic injustice, where conditions like snakebite are forced to be framed as a medical condition, resulting in lack of focus on prevention. [30]

Genocide denial has been considered an example of epistemic injustice. [31] [32] [33]

See also

Selected philosophers and theorists

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epistemology</span> Branch of philosophy concerning knowledge

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in contemporary epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas:

Social epistemology refers to a broad set of approaches that can be taken in epistemology that construes human knowledge as a collective achievement. Another way of characterizing social epistemology is as the evaluation of the social dimensions of knowledge or information.

An epistemic community is a network of knowledge-based experts who help decision-makers to define the problems they face, identify various policy solutions and assess the policy outcomes. The definitive conceptual framework of an epistemic community is widely accepted as that of Peter M. Haas. He describes them as

"...a network of professionals with recognised expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy relevant knowledge within that domain or issue-area."

Perspectivism is the epistemological principle that perception of and knowledge of something are always bound to the interpretive perspectives of those observing it. While perspectivism does not regard all perspectives and interpretations as being of equal truth or value, it holds that no one has access to an absolute view of the world cut off from perspective. Instead, all such viewing occurs from some point of view which in turn affects how things are perceived. Rather than attempt to determine truth by correspondence to things outside any perspective, perspectivism thus generally seeks to determine truth by comparing and evaluating perspectives among themselves. Perspectivism may be regarded as an early form of epistemological pluralism, though in some accounts includes treatment of value theory, moral psychology, and realist metaphysics.

The philosophy of testimony considers the nature of language and knowledge's confluence, which occurs when beliefs are transferred between speakers and hearers through testimony. Testimony constitutes words, gestures, or utterances that convey beliefs. This definition may be distinguished from the legal notion of testimony in that the speaker does not have to make a declaration of the truth of the facts.

Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe the intuitions of ordinary people—in order to inform research on philosophical questions. This use of empirical data is widely seen as opposed to a philosophical methodology that relies mainly on a priori justification, sometimes called "armchair" philosophy, by experimental philosophers. Experimental philosophy initially began by focusing on philosophical questions related to intentional action, the putative conflict between free will and determinism, and causal vs. descriptive theories of linguistic reference. However, experimental philosophy has continued to expand to new areas of research.

Metaepistemology is the branch of epistemology and metaphilosophy that studies the underlying assumptions made in debates in epistemology, including those concerning the existence and authority of epistemic facts and reasons, the nature and aim of epistemology, and the methodology of epistemology.

Standpoint feminism is a theory that feminist social science should be practiced from the standpoint of women or particular groups of women, as some scholars say that they are better equipped to understand some aspects of the world. A feminist or women's standpoint epistemology proposes to make women's experiences the point of departure, in addition to, and sometimes instead of men's.

Feminist epistemology is an examination of epistemology from a feminist standpoint.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miranda Fricker</span> English feminist philosopher

Miranda Fricker, FBA FAAS is a British philosopher who is Professor of Philosophy at New York University, Co-Director of the New York Institute of Philosophy, and Honorary Professor at the University of Sheffield. Fricker coined the term epistemic injustice, the concept of an injustice done against someone "specifically in their capacity as a knower", and explored the concept in her 2007 book Epistemic Injustice.

Civil discourse refers to respectful conversation aimed at fostering understanding and constructive communication, where individuals within a group share different perspectives, enhancing the learning experience. It is a fundamental aspect of freedom of speech, characterized by dialogue that supports the societal good." Members of the U.S. Supreme Court session in 2011 aptly described civil discourse as "robust, honest, frank and constructive dialogue and deliberation that seeks to advance the public interest." Arguments are grounded in reason and evidence, adhering to strict guidelines for the appropriate behavior to be practiced. In contrast, uncivil discourse contains direct insults, unwarranted attributions of motive, and open contempt."

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Lackey</span> American philosopher

Jennifer Lackey is an American academic; she is the Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. Lackey is known for her research in epistemology, especially on testimony, disagreement, memory, the norms of assertion, and virtue epistemology. She is the author of Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge and of numerous articles and book chapters. She is also co-editor of The Epistemology of Testimony and The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays.

Epistemology of finance is a broad and largely disconnected field of study that aims at providing a conceptual framework(s) for the interpretation of mathematical models in finance as well as the study of their possible limitations, in order to determine the epistemological standards according to which financial theory should be assessed against any associated empirical reality.

José Medina is Walter Hill Scott professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He is a member of the American Philosophical Association, the British Wittgenstein Society, the North American Wittgenstein Society, the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and the Tennessee Philosophical Association.

Thomas Teo is a Canadian professor of Historical, Theoretical, and Critical Studies of Psychology at York University in Toronto, Canada. He is a leader in the fields of critical psychology and theoretical psychology.

In the philosophy of science, epistemic humility refers to a posture of scientific observation rooted in the recognition that (a) knowledge of the world is always interpreted, structured, and filtered by the observer, and that, as such, (b) scientific pronouncements must be built on the recognition of observation's inability to grasp the world in itself. The concept is frequently attributed to the traditions of German idealism, particularly the work of Immanuel Kant, and to British empiricism, including the writing of David Hume. Other histories of the concept trace its origin to the humility theory of wisdom attributed to Socrates in Plato's Apology. James Van Cleve describes the Kantian version of epistemic humility–i.e. that we have no knowledge of things in their "nonrelational respects or ‘in themselves'"–as a form of causal structuralism. More recently, the term has appeared in scholarship in postcolonial theory and critical theory to describe a subject-position of openness to other ways of 'knowing' beyond epistemologies that derive from the Western tradition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decolonization of knowledge</span> Process of undoing colonial influences on knowledge

Decolonization of knowledge is a concept advanced in decolonial scholarship that critiques the perceived hegemony of Western knowledge systems. It seeks to construct and legitimize other knowledge systems by exploring alternative epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies. It is also an intellectual project that aims to "disinfect" academic activities that are believed to have little connection with the objective pursuit of knowledge and truth. The presumption is that if curricula, theories, and knowledge are colonized, it means they have been partly influenced by political, economic, social and cultural considerations. The decolonial knowledge perspective covers a wide variety of subjects including philosophy, science, history of science, and other fundamental categories in social science.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coloniality of knowledge</span> Decolonial theory

Coloniality of knowledge is a concept that Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano developed and adapted to contemporary decolonial thinking. The concept critiques what proponents call the Eurocentric system of knowledge, arguing the legacy of colonialism survives within the domains of knowledge. For decolonial scholars, the coloniality of knowledge is central to the functioning of the coloniality of power and is responsible for turning colonial subjects into victims of the coloniality of being, a term that refers to the lived experiences of colonized peoples.

References

  1. ↑ Kidd, Ian James, José Medina, Gaile Pohlhaus Jr., eds. The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice (1st ed.). Routledge. doi : 10.4324/9781315212043. ISBN   978-1-138-82825-4. p. 1. "Epistemic injustice refers to those forms of unfair treatment that relate to issues of knowledge, understanding, and participation in communicative practices. These issues include a wide range of topics concerning wrongful treatment and unjust structures in meaning-making and knowledge producing practices, such as the following: exclusion and silencing; invisibility and inaudibility (or distorted presence or representation); having one’s meanings or contributions systematically distorted, misheard, or misrepresented; having diminished status or standing in communicative practices; unfair differentials in authority and/or epistemic agency; being unfairly distrusted; receiving no or minimal uptake; being coopted or instrumentalized; being marginalized as a result of dysfunctional dynamics; etc."
  2. 1 2 Pohlhaus Jr., Gaile (2017). "Varieties of Epistemic Injustice". In Kidd, Ian James; Medina, José; Pohlhaus Jr., Gaile (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. Routledge. pp. 13–26. doi:10.4324/9781315212043. ISBN   978-1-138-82825-4.
  3. 1 2 3 Fricker, Miranda (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford University Press. p. 1. ISBN   978-0-19-823790-7. OCLC   729949179.
  4. ↑ May, Vivian M. (2013-10-11). ""Speaking into the Void"? Intersectionality Critiques and Epistemic Backlash". Hypatia. 29 (1): 94–112. doi:10.1111/hypa.12060. S2CID   145513018.
  5. ↑ Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988), "Can the Subaltern Speak?", Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Macmillan Education UK, pp. 271–313, doi:10.1007/978-1-349-19059-1_20, ISBN   978-0-333-46276-8
  6. ↑ Fricker, Miranda (2014). "Epistemic Equality?". YouTube . University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
  7. ↑ "Opinions of the Lords of Appeal for Judgement in the Cause: Brooks (FC) (Respondent) v. Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis (Appellant) and others" (PDF).
  8. ↑ Auerback, Raymond (2021-08-08). "Just How Testimonial, Epistemic, Or Correctable Is Testimonial Injustice?". International Journal of Philosophical Studies. 29 (4): 559–576. doi:10.1080/09672559.2021.1997394. ISSN   0967-2559.
  9. ↑ Blakemore, Erin (January 8, 2018). "Until 1975, 'Sexual Harassment' Was the Menace With No Name". history.com. Retrieved 2020-10-08.
  10. ↑ Teo, Thomas "What is Epistemological Violence in the Empirical Social Sciences?." Social & Personality Psychology Compass 4.5 (2010) 295-303 doi : 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00265.x. "Yet, if an empirical difference is interpreted as inferiority or problematizes the Other, whether this theorizing has epistemological or practical consequences, one should speak of a form of violence that is produced in ‘knowledge.’ In these cases, interpretations of data (and not data!) turn into epistemological violence. Epistemological violence is a practice that is executed in empirical articles and books in psychology, when theoretical interpretations regarding empirical results implicitly or explicitly construct the Other as inferior or problematic, despite the fact that alternative interpretations, equally viable based on the data, are available. Interpretations of inferiority, or problematizations (see Teo, 2004), are never determined by empirical results; yet, they have a negative impact on the Other. Thus, interpretations are the actions of a subject against an object that one must label as violent. The epistemological part in this concept suggests that these theoretical interpretations are framed as knowledge about the Other when in reality they are interpretations regarding data. The term violence denotes that this ‘knowledge’ has a negative impact on the Other or that the theoretical interpretations are produced to the detriment of the Other. "
  11. ↑ M Botha. "Autistic community connectedness as a buffer against the effects of minority stress." (2020) "I will argue that literature regarding “theory of mind” has constituted EV. Researchers, based on one experiment, with a small sample of autistic children (20) (mean chronological age = 11, estimated verbal ability age = 5), argued that autistic individuals lacked “theory of mind”, which is to say, they lacked the ability to infer their own and others minds, that this was a universal effect and unique to autism (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985). Four autistic participants (20%) passed the experiment, demonstrating theory of mind, sixteen did not, yet it was claimed to be a universal effect which was unique to autism. It was hypothesised instead that the kids who passed may not “really” be autistic, instead of theory of mind having limits in its ability to explain autism. The available evidence has never been that it was universal (autistic children who passed the test were deemed to be outliers and an exception to rule, despite making up between 20-25% of the sample completing the task, reliably (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985; Yirmiya et al., 1998)."
  12. ↑ Dotson, Kristie (2014). "Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression". Social Epistemology. 28 (2): 115–138. doi:10.1080/02691728.2013.782585. S2CID   144330822.
  13. ↑ Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2015-11-16). Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315634876. ISBN   978-1-315-63487-6.
  14. ↑ Berenstain, Nora (2016). "Epistemic Exploitation". Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy. 3 (20200916). doi: 10.3998/ergo.12405314.0003.022 .
  15. ↑ Dotson, Kristie (2011). "Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing" (PDF). Hypatia. 26 (2): 236–257. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2011.01177.x. S2CID   144313735.
  16. 1 2 Dotson, Kristie (2012). "A Cautionary Tale: On Limiting Epistemic Oppression". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 33: 24. doi:10.5250/fronjwomestud.33.1.0024. S2CID   142869935.
  17. ↑ Coady, David (2010). "Two Concepts of Epistemic Injustice". Episteme. 7 (2): 101–113. doi:10.3366/E1742360010000845. S2CID   145332158.
  18. ↑ Grasswick, Heidi (2017). "Epistemic Injustice in Science". In Kidd, Ian James; Medina, José; Pohlhaus Jr., Gaile (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315212043. ISBN   978-1-138-82825-4.
  19. ↑ Catala, Amandine; Faucher, Luc; Poirier, Pierre (2021-05-11). "Autism, epistemic injustice, and epistemic disablement: a relational account of epistemic agency". Synthese. 199 (3–4): 9013–9039. doi:10.1007/s11229-021-03192-7. ISSN   0039-7857. S2CID   236566456.
  20. ↑ Medina, José (2012). "Hermeneutical Injustice and Polyphonic Contextualism: Social Silences and Shared Hermeneutical Responsibilities". Social Epistemology. 26 (2): 201–220. doi:10.1080/02691728.2011.652214. S2CID   16890075.
  21. ↑ Anderson, Elizabeth (2012). "Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions". Social Epistemology. 26 (2): 163–173. doi:10.1080/02691728.2011.652211. S2CID   145350986.
  22. ↑ Mills, Charles (2007). "White Ignorance" (PDF). In Sullivan, Shannon; Tuana, Nancy (eds.). Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. Philosophy and Race Series. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. pp. 13–38. ISBN   978-0-7914-7101-2.
  23. ↑ Mills, Charles (2017). "Ideology". In Kidd, Ian James; Medina, José; Pohlhaus Jr., Gaile (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315212043. ISBN   978-1-138-82825-4.
  24. ↑ Pohlhaus, Gaile (2012). "Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice: Toward a Theory of Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance". Hypatia. 27 (4): 715–735. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2011.01222.x. S2CID   143723579.
  25. ↑ Kidd, Ian James; Medina, José; Pohlhaus Jr., Gaile, eds. (2017). Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315212043. ISBN   978-1-138-82825-4.
  26. ↑ Bhargava, Rajeev (2013). "Overcoming the Epistemic Injustice of Colonialism". Global Policy. 4 (4): 413–417. doi:10.1111/1758-5899.12093.
  27. ↑ Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. (2021-05-04). "The cognitive empire, politics of knowledge and African intellectual productions: reflections on struggles for epistemic freedom and resurgence of decolonisation in the twenty-first century". Third World Quarterly. 42 (5): 882–901. doi:10.1080/01436597.2020.1775487. ISSN   0143-6597. S2CID   225573395.
  28. ↑ Abimbola, Seye (October 2019). "The foreign gaze: authorship in academic global health". BMJ Global Health. 4 (5): e002068. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2019-002068. ISSN   2059-7908. PMC   6830280 . PMID   31750005.
  29. ↑ Bhakuni, Himani; Abimbola, Seye (October 2021). "Epistemic injustice in academic global health". The Lancet Global Health. 9 (10): e1465–e1470. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(21)00301-6 . PMID   34384536.
  30. ↑ Bhaumik, Soumyadeep; Zwi, Anthony B.; Norton, Robyn; Jagnoor, Jagnoor (2023-08-01). "How and why snakebite became a global health priority: a policy analysis". BMJ Global Health. 8 (8): e011923. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2023-011923. ISSN   2059-7908. PMC   10445399 . PMID   37604596.
  31. ↑ Altanian, Melanie (2019). "Genocide Denialism as an Intergenerational Injustice". In Cottier, Thomas; Lalani, Shaheeza; Siziba, Clarence (eds.). Intergenerational Equity: Environmental and Cultural Concerns. Brill. pp. 151–162. ISBN   978-90-04-38800-0.
  32. ↑ Altanian, Melanie (2021-03-04). "Genocide Denial as Testimonial Oppression". Social Epistemology. 35 (2): 133–146. doi:10.1080/02691728.2020.1839810. ISSN   0269-1728. S2CID   229073471.
  33. ↑ Oranlı, Imge (2021). "Epistemic Injustice from Afar : Rethinking the Denial of Armenian Genocide". Social Epistemology. 35 (2): 120–132. doi:10.1080/02691728.2020.1839593. S2CID   229463301.

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