Kind Of Epistemic Injustice Research Articles

Co-Production and Structural Oppression in Public Mental Health

AbstractCo-production, in the field of mental health, aims to bring together academic and clinical researchers and those with lived experience. Often, research projects informed by this methodology involve the meeting of opposing attitudes, whether to the legitimacy of psychiatry, determinants of mental ill health, or the most appropriate interventions. This has meant that whilst some have reported positive experiences of co-production, many people with lived experience of mental ill health, sometimes referred to as ‘experts by experience’ (EbE), report harms which have taken place or been perpetuated during co-produced research projects. In the literature, nearly always, this is understood as a kind of epistemic injustice in Miranda Fricker's sense. In this paper, I argue that whilst Fricker's view does provide a plausible explanation of what's at play, we can gain more insight into the structural factors which exclude EbE by applying a framework of epistemic oppression. By highlighting the systemic and structural factors which work to keep certain knowers and their contributions out of our collective epistemic resources, we begin to understand the enormity of the task required to redress injustices in our knowledge production systems.

Placental Social Ethics: Designing for Epistemologies of Resistance

Placental Social Ethics: Designing for Epistemologies of Resistance

Rape Myths, Catastrophe, and Credibility

AbstractThere is an undeniable tendency to dismiss women's sexual assault allegations out of hand. However, this tendency is not monolithic – allegations that black men have raped white women are often met with deadly seriousness. I argue that contemporary rape culture is characterized by the interplay between rape myths that minimize rape, and myths that catastrophize rape. Together, these two sets of rape myths distort the epistemic resources that people use when assessing rape allegations. These distortions result in the unjust exoneration of people we cannot conceive of as monstrous, while making it too easy to believe that some marginalized people could be rapists. I also argue that rape myths enable a novel kind of epistemic injustice. This injustice concerns how our assessments of trustworthiness and our assessments of plausibility interact. I argue that rape myths can result in runaway credibility deflations that can explain both why people fail to believe most women, and also why people may unjustly believe false allegations that white women have been raped by black men.

Epistemic Injustice in Political Discourses? The Problematic Concept of Authority in Langton’s Account of Pornography.

Through her silencing thesis, Langton has contributed to the study of epistemic injustice by highlighting a possible cause of such a phenomenon: She asserts that the pornographic representation of (straight) sexual relationships affects the felicity conditions of speech uttered by women, so this speech is not understood as an illocution by men. This fact arguably undermines women’s credibility, since their testimony is not even registered in men’s testimonial sensibility. However, this thesis entails problematic consequences from at least two standpoints. From a theoretical perspective, it enacts a circularity when it comes to the empirical individuation of the subordinative effects of pornography. I will point out that this problem arises from Langton’s substantive conception of power, i.e. from her notion of authority as an attribute which can be ascribed to preexisting subjects. From a political perspective, such conception of power allows Langton to performatively rank women as credible when testifying sexual violence, but it also leads her to silencing alternative political strategies, e.g. the ones proposed by Butler. Hence, I propose to consider this form of silencing as a specific kind of epistemic injustice, one that neutralises the performative value of political discourses.

Discussion Protocol for Alleviating Epistemic Injustice: The Case of Community Rehabilitation Interaction and Female Substance Abusers

Substance-abusing women are vulnerable to specific kinds of epistemic injustice, including stigmatization and discrimination. This article examines the development of the epistemic agency of female substance abusers by asking: How does the use of a formal discussion protocol in community rehabilitation interaction alleviate epistemic injustice and strengthen the epistemic agency of substance abusers? The data were collected in a Finnish rehabilitation center by videotaping six group discussions between social workers, peer support workers, and rehabilitation clients with substance abuse problems. Of these data, one recorded group discussion between four female participants—two rehabilitation clients, a peer support worker, and a social adviser—was used in this paper. Using conversational analysis, the findings indicate that, through the collaborative activities of sharing experiential knowledge about substance abuse and discussing the experiences of abuse in the rehabilitation interaction, substance abusers can develop novel ways to strengthen their epistemic agency by enhanced self-awareness. The discussion protocol is an epistemic tool that professionals and clients can learn to use in ethically and epistemologically successful ways in interaction. The use of a discussion protocol is an example of social professionals’ clinical knowledge of intensifying collaboration and sharing experiential knowledge in community rehabilitation and other substance abuse services.

Banal Skepticism and the Errors of Doubt

Ephecticism is the tendency towards suspension of belief. Epistemology often focuses on the error of believing when one ought to doubt. The converse error—doubting when one ought to believe—is relatively underexplored. This essay examines the errors of undue doubt. I draw on the relevant alternatives framework to diagnose and remedy undue doubts about rape accusations. Doubters tend to invoke standards for belief that are too demanding, for example, and underestimate how farfetched uneliminated error possibilities are. They mistake seeing how incriminating evidence is compatible with innocence for a reason to withhold judgement. Rape accusations help illuminate the causes and normativity of doubt. I propose a novel kind of epistemic injustice, for example, wherein patterns of unwarranted attention to farfetched error possibilities can cause those error possibilities to become relevant. Widespread unreasonable doubt thus renders doubt reasonable and makes it harder to know rape accusations. Finally, I emphasise that doubt is typically a conservative force and I argue that the relevant alternatives framework helps defend against pernicious doubt-mongers.

There was this goat: the archive for justice as a remedy for epistemic injustices in truth commissions

ABSTRACT Different kinds of epistemic injustice occur in the context of truth commissions. In this article, I will illustrate such with the example of one particular epistemic injustice that occurred during the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In their book, There was this Goat, Krog, Ratele and Mpolweni (2009) analysed the difficult reception of the testimony of Mrs Konile, during the TRC hearings. Her testimony seemed to be very incoherent, but during their research which was partially based on the truth commission archive, the authors reached a better understanding of her testimony. This research is the basis for my conceptualisation of how a truth commission archive can contribute to the redress of particular epistemic injustices that can occur during the process of an active truth commission. I show in my article the importance of Verne Harris’ archival principles of the ‘archive for justice’ and ‘hospitality to otherness’. Based on the work of Harris and other archivists forming part of the same tradition (Joan Schwartz, Terry Cook and Randall Jimerson), I further recommend that the custodians of truth commissions archives have good reason to act as activist-archivists in order to fight epistemic injustices in the context of truth commissions.

Connecting epistemic injustice and justified belief in health-related conspiracies

Summary In this paper, I argue that epistemic injustice in healthcare settings can contribute to patients’ rational mistrust of healthcare providers and the healthcare system, leaving these individuals vulnerable to rational belief in health-related conspiracy theories. I focus on the ways in which two kinds of epistemic injustice – testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice – can contribute to specifically women's rational mistrust of healthcare providers, as well as a rational mistrust of the mainstream healthcare system more generally. Once patients mistrust healthcare providers and/or the healthcare system, it seems rational for victims of these testimonial injustices seek out information from sources other than the mainstream healthcare system. This leaves them particularly vulnerable to rational belief in potentially harmful health-related conspiracy theories, especially given the easy access we all have to health-related misinformation and conspiracy via the Internet and social media. In this sense, then, experiences of epistemic injustice can contribute to individuals’ rational belief in health-related conspiracy theories.

Epistemic Injustice and Scientific Knowledge Distribution

This paper describes two kinds of epistemic injustice – discriminatory and distributive. The former is provided by Miranda Fricker; the latter is based on David Coady’s work which means unequal access to epistemic goods, especially knowledge. I will firstly identify distributive epistemic justice within an epistemic structure of society and discuss its basic principles for distributing knowledge. Then I will argue that there is Fricker’s discriminatory epistemic injustice in scientific knowledge distribution. And this kind of epistemic injustice will finally lead to distributive epistemic injustice. The possible way to diminish these epistemic injustices is expanding the diversity in science.

Epistemic Neglect

ABSTRACT In most testimonial transactions between adults, the hearer’s obligation is to accord the speaker a level of credibility that matches the evidence that what she is saying is true. When the speaker is a child, however, the adult must often respond by extending a level of trust greater than that warranted by the evidence of past epistemic performance. Such trust, which I call ‘hopeful trust,’ is not extended on the basis the child’s extant credibility, but on the basis of their epistemic potential. Hopeful trust communicates to the speaker that she has reason to trust her own epistemic capacities and thereby enables her to do so. Extensions of hopeful trust are thus a method of causal construction; by treating individuals as if they are reliable, hopeful trust enables those individuals to become reliable. While not all adults bear the responsibility to extend hopeful trust to children, those who occupy positions of educational authority do. Failure to discharge this responsibility constitutes a distinct kind of epistemic injustice that can take both transactional and structural forms.

Письма «запертого человека» — риторика и феноменологические перспективы нейроэтических проектов

<p>В статье рассматриваются нейроэтические исследования о синдроме «запертого человека» как примеры нейроэтических проектов. Предпринимается попытка реконструировать риторику, эпистемологические стандарты и дисциплинарные претензии нейроэтики.</p><p>Синдром «запертого человека» — состояние, при котором практически все мышцы тела парализованы, однако человек находится в ясном сознании и способен коммуницировать с другими благодаря движениям век. Движения век могут служить для ответа на вопросы, требующие ответа «да» / «нет», или для выбора нужной буквы из списка, перечисляемого интерпретатором, — путем последовательного выбора букв пациент способен артикулировать слова и фразы. Однако сложные социальные аппараты, необходимые «запертому человеку» для коммуникации, почти полностью игнорируются в нейроэтическом дискурсе. Сходные риторические приемы применяются в «Письме из Бирмингемской тюрьмы» Мартина Лютера Кинга. Такое сходство может быть объяснено направленностью обоих видов дискурса на преодоление одного и того же вида эпистемической несправедливости — погружения в пелену молчания. Данный вид несправедливости осуществляется через идентификацию говорящего как несостоятельного источника знания-свидетельства и может быть обнаружен в отношении пациентов с синдромом «запертого человека».</p><p>Однако при решении проблемы данного вида эпистемической несправедливости в рамках нейроэтического проекта актуализируется угроза появления другого ее вида. Борясь с молчанием можно «вкладывать собственные слова в чужие уста», чему благоприятствует и риторическое игнорирование социальных условий и режимов коммуникации. В заключении статьи кратко обозначена заданная трансцендентальной феноменологией перспектива нейроисследований, обращение к которым может помочь в преодолении второго вида эпистемической несправедливости.</p>

Epistemic justice as a condition of political freedom?

I shall first briefly revisit the broad idea of ‘epistemic injustice’, explaining how it can take either distributive or discriminatory form, in order to put the concepts of ‘testimonial injustice’ and ‘hermeneutical injustice’ in place. In previous work I have explored how the wrong of both kinds of epistemic injustice has both an ethical and an epistemic significance—someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower. But my present aim is to show that this wrong can also have a political significance in relation to non-domination, and so to freedom. While it is only the republican conception of political freedom that presents nondomination as constitutive of freedom, I shall argue that non-domination is best understood as a thoroughly generic liberal ideal of freedom to which even negative libertarians are implicitly committed, for non-domination is negative liberty as of right—secured non-interference. Crucially on this conception, non-domination requires that the citizen can contest interferences. Pettit specifies three conditions of contestation, each of which protects against a salient risk of the would-be contester not getting a ‘proper hearing’. But I shall argue that missing from this list is anything to protect against a fourth salient threat: the threat that either kind of epistemic injustice might disable contestation by way of an unjust deflation of either credibility or intelligibility. Thus we see that both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice can render a would-be contester dominated. Epistemic justice is thereby revealed as a constitutive condition of non-domination, and thus of a central liberal political ideal of freedom.

A Critique of Hermeneutical Injustice

Recent work at the junction of epistemology and political theory focuses on the notion of epistemic injustice , the injustice of being wronged as a knower. Miranda Fricker (2007) identifies two kinds of epistemic injustice. I focus here on hermeneutical injustice in an attempt to identify a difficulty for Fricker's account. In particular, I consider the significance of background social conditions and suggest that an epistemic injustice should not rely on other forms of disadvantage to achieve its status as an injustice. Thus reformulated, the notion of epistemic injustice can help us to achieve an even deeper understanding of the relationship between knowledge and privilege.