This paper seeks to intervene in environmental ethics and social epistemology. Within a predominant strand of environmental ethics, one witnesses accounts based on nonhumans’ ability to suffer, and consequently, the passivity of nonhumans. On the other hand, social epistemology is often not social enough insofar as it does not include nonhumans. Seminal accounts of epistemic injustice often conceal or exclude the possibility that nonhumans can be subjects of knowledge and victims of epistemic injustice because of an (...) anthropocentric bias that maintains propositional language is a necessary condition for knowledge. By presenting a non-anthropocentric, corporeal epistemology, this paper reveals a more affirmative account of nonhumans as epistemic agents with tacit, embodied knowledge. To prevent epistemic depreciation turning into ethical indifference or wrongdoing, this paper focuses on whether it is possible to commit epistemic injustices against nonhumans. In particular, this paper argues that humans can commit fourth-order epistemic exclusion, testimonial injustice, and testimonial smothering against nonhumans. (shrink)

This paper seeks to intervene in environmental ethics and social epistemology. Within a predominant strand of environmental ethics, one witnesses accounts based on nonhumans’ ability to suffer, and consequently, the passivity of nonhumans. On the other hand, social epistemology is often not social enough insofar as it does not include nonhumans. Seminal accounts of epistemic injustice often conceal or exclude the possibility that nonhumans can be subjects of knowledge and victims of epistemic injustice because of an (...) anthropocentric bias that maintains propositional language is a necessary condition for knowledge. By presenting a non-anthropocentric, corporeal epistemology, this paper reveals a more affirmative account of nonhumans as epistemic agents with tacit, embodied knowledge. To prevent epistemic depreciation turning into ethical indifference or wrongdoing, this paper focuses on whether it is possible to commit epistemic injustices against nonhumans. In particular, this paper argues that humans can commit fourth-order epistemic exclusion, testimonial injustice, and testimonial smothering against nonhumans. (shrink)

This paper explores environmental protection policies and initiatives, such as conservation, through the lens of an orientalist epistemic injustice. This is a form of epistemic injustice that occurs when the orientalizing of space and access to sovereign systems of knowledge causes the assigning of an unjust deflated or elevated level of credibility to a knower. Under this framework of orientalist epistemic injustice, the author criticizes the credibility excess assigned to Western subjects that perform conservation efforts in (...) third-world countries and the related credibility deficit assigned to indigenous and local knowledge and conservation practices. (shrink)

We are in the midst of a global crisis of climate change and environmental degradation to which the healthcare sector directly contributes. Yet conceptions of health justice have little to say about the environment. They purport societies should ensure adequate health for their populations but fail to require doing so in ways that avoid environmental harm or injustice. We need to expand our understanding of health justice to consider the environment and do so without reinforcing the epistemic (...) injustice inherent in the field of bioethics. This paper considers what work in philosophy related to the environment should be applied to help build that understanding and develops ideas about the healthcare sector’s responsibilities of justice to the environment. It first introduces the dominant multivalent environmental and ecological justice (EJ) concept in philosophy and each of its dimensions: distribution, participation, recognition and well-being. It then shows why applying that conception alone to broaden our understanding of health justice will reinforce epistemic injustice within bioethics. Drawing on EJ literature from the global South, the paper demonstrates that different ontological and experiential starting points identify additional EJ dimensions—power and harmony—and give rise to a nuanced understanding of the recognition dimension relative to the dominant EJ conception. The paper concludes by applying them to articulate healthcare sector responsibilities of justice to the environment, demonstrating they ground responsibilities beyond reducing its carbon emissions. (shrink)

This book offers a critical analysis of the theory and practice of global development. Using how Chagas disease has been understood and addressed as an example of a failing of global development, Anna Malavisi argues for a rethinking from an ethico-epistemic perspective using a strong ethical approach.

Environmental health research produces scientific knowledge about environmental hazards crucial for public health and environmental justice movements that seek to prevent or reduce exposure to these hazards. The environment in environmental health research is conceptualized as the range of possible social, biological, chemical, and/or physical hazards or risks to human health, some of which merit study due to factors such as their probability and severity, the feasibility of their remediation, and injustice in their distribution. This paper (...) explores the ethics of identifying the relevant environment for environmental health research, as judgments involved in defining an environmental hazard or risk, judgments of that hazard or risk's probability, severity, and/ or injustice, as well as the feasibility of its remediation, all ought to appeal to non-epistemic as well as epistemic values. I illustrate by discussing the case of environmental lead, a housing-related hazard that remains unjustly distributed by race and class and is particularly dangerous to children. Examining a controversy in environmental health research ethics where researchers tested multiple levels of lead abatement in lead-contaminated households, I argue that the broader perspective on the ethics of environmental health research provided in the first part of this paper may have helped prevent this controversy. (shrink)

In her groundbreaking text Epistemic Injustice, Miranda Fricker evaluates types of harms incurred by individuals undergoing unrecognized and inarticulable oppression. At issue in epistemic and hermeneutic injustice are prejudicial comportments to and evaluations of reality. In the following, I focus on hermeneutic and epistemic injustice in relation to the formation of intellectual and ethical virtues. When reading Fricker and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics together, there is a clear pathway to improve ethical development. In particular, ethical development ought to (...) cultivate the proper virtues that promote understanding. Gadamer’s emphasis on the qualities of a researcher and the epistemic virtues that Fricker highlights reveal an educative path for addressing injustice. In other words, cultivating these virtues counteracts injustice wherein recognition and articulation of reality is challenged or at issue. (shrink)

Fricker shows that virtue epistemology provides a general epistemological idiom in which these issues can be forcefully discussed.

What makes an injustice epistemic rather than ethical or political? How does the former, more recent category relate to the latter, better-known forms of injustice? To address these questions, the papers of this Special Issue investigate epistemic injustice in close connection to different conceptions of agency, both epistemic and practical.

Epistemic injustice has become one of the most widely discussed topics in social epistemology, and has revived interest in issues in the intersections between epistemology and ethics and political philosophy. Much of the impetus for this recent explosion of interest has been the influential work of Miranda Fricker; however, Fricker’s framework and terminology for discussing the phenomena and the kinds of examples she’s interested in has not always been cleanly separated from the phenomena themselves. This chapter examines what’s distinctive (...) of Fricker’s treatment of the phenomena she labels epistemic injustice, focusing on the two varieties that her discussion highlights, testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Once the distinctive elements of Fricker’s treatment are clearer, we will be better placed to assess which of them are plausible and which implausible, and to consider alternative theoretical frameworks for thinking about the phenomena, such as that developed by Kristie Dotson. (shrink)

Epistemic injustice has undergone a steady growth in the medical ethics literature throughout the last decade as many ethicists have found it to be a powerful tool for describing and assessing morally problematic situations in healthcare. However, surprisingly scarce attention has been devoted to how epistemic injustice relates to physicians’ professional duties on a conceptual level. I argue that epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial, collides with physicians’ duty of nonmaleficence and should thus be actively fought against in healthcare (...) encounters on the ground of professional conduct. I do so by fleshing out how Fricker’s conception of testimonial injustice conflicts with the duty of nonmaleficence as defined in Beauchamp and Childress on theoretical grounds. From there, I argue that testimonial injustice produces two distinct types of harm, epistemic and non-epistemic. Epistemic harms are harms inflicted by the physician to the patient qua knower, whereas non-epistemic harms are inflicted to the patient qua patient. This latter case holds serious clinical implications and represent a failure of the process of due care on the part of the physician. I illustrate this through examples taken from the literature on fibromyalgia syndrome and show how testimonial injustice causes wrongful harm to patients, making it maleficent practice. Finally, I conclude on why nonmaleficence as a principle will not be normatively enough to fully address the problem of epistemic injustice in healthcare but nevertheless may serve as a good starting point in attempting to do so. (shrink)

What it means to be a knower together with the social practices through which we come to know are irreducibly complex ethical concepts (Congdon, 2018). Extant analyses of epistemic injustice typica...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reflecting Back, Looking Forward:Ethics and the Environment at 25Lori Gruen (bio)Twenty-five years ago, when Ethics and the Environment launched, I remember having engaging conversations with the late founding editor, Victoria Davion, about just how important feminist thinking was to ethical explorations of our vexed relationships with the more than human world. She promised to promote feminist philosophical scholarship in this journal and she kept that promise. Although I'm quite (...) skeptical of "metrics" I did a search on the term "feminism" in the three prominent journals that publish on ethics and the environment and was not surprised to find that this journal contains 147 results where there are 51 in Environmental Values and just 33 in Environmental Ethics, a journal that has been publishing longer than Ethics and the Environment.Before the journal launched, Vicky, Chris Cuomo, and I spoke regularly about the value that feminist philosophical insights brought to environmental ethics. While we disagreed on a variety of issues (should the climate be central? Should we center our relationships with other animals?) and names (should we think of ourselves as "ecofeminists" or "ecological feminists"?) and had lively debates with other ecofeminists, including Carol Adams, Greta Gaard, Marti Kheel, Deborah Slicer, Val Plumwood, and Karen Warren, among others, we all shared a commitment to feminist methodology as well as recognizing the crucial need to incorporate ecofeminism into environmental ethics and praxis.Part of the reason it is important to incorporate ecofeminist insights into environmentalism is that ecofeminism builds on work in feminist philosophy that uncovers various biases that distort our knowledge and our relationships. For example, feminist epistemologies help us to see how testimony from those outside the center are undervalued or ignored. This has become painfully clear in environmental justice struggles; communities of [End Page 3] color are disproportionately impacted by exposure to toxins and are then burdened with finding "experts" who can "objectively" assess their claims. Ecofeminists have helped identify the inequity of looking to so-called objective expertise when communities are suffering. This sort of epistemic injustice is getting worse in the face of extreme weather events, in at least two ways. Many people who are impacted by hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, are often not well positioned to navigate institutions that may be able to help, if those institutions even exist. And as sea ice melts and oceans rise, indigenous people's multi-generational wisdom is often overlooked, while their communities are simultaneously imperiled.Another reason that feminist and ecofeminist analyses are crucial for environmental philosophy is that ecofeminists can correct certain problematic frameworks that often hinder our abilities to reshape our relationships with the more than human world. Ecofeminists have long been critical of the abstract individualism that has permeated environmental ethics, including animal ethics (Adams and Gruen, 2014). This focus on abstract individualism leads to faulty analyses of our place in the natural world, as many holistic environmental philosophers have argued. Ecofeminists have also provided important challenges to holism in environmental philosophy, as the categorical "wholes" tend to occlude important differences within and between them. (Kheel, 2007). Ecofeminists have sought to contextualize ecological sensibilities to illuminate how systems of power differentially structure our relationships with each other and our environments.Vicky's commitment to incorporating feminist and ecofeminist perspectives as a central part of this journal's vision has also provided newer scholars with a venue for further development of ecofeminist thinking, as can be seen in A.E. Kings' "Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism" (2017) and Chaone Mallory's "What's in a Name? In Defense of Ecofeminism (Not Ecological Feminisms, Feminist Ecology, or Gender and the Environment)" (2018) published in the special tribute issue to Vicky. New thinking is always important, but in the face of global climate collapse, it is more important than ever.This journal has also been one of the go-to venues for animal ethics. In the early days of environmental ethics, there was a complex debate about what role, if any, animal ethics should play in environmental ethics. Over 35 years ago, two of the early pioneers, J. Baird Callicott (1980) and the late Marti Kheel (1985), argued in the pages of... (shrink)

This research scrutinizes the repercussions of digital disinformation on knowledge disparities and delves into strategies aimed at fostering epistemic justice. The examination of the findings will involve a comprehensive exploration of various ethical frameworks and theories. This analytical approach seeks to identify the underlying ethical issues that may be inherent in the results. Ethical frameworks provide a structured lens through which we can evaluate the implications of the findings on different stakeholders, ensuring a thorough understanding of potential ethical dilemmas. (...) For this purpose, the research integrates philosophical, social, and technological perspectives. Firstly, through philosophical perspective this research explores the concept of epistemic justice and its conditions in the digital era. Secondly, this research will investigate the role of digital disinformation in creating knowledge inequities, especially the disparities in knowledge access and distribution. By understanding the mechanisms through which false or misleading information spreads in digital spaces, the research seeks to identify strategies and interventions that can eliminate the roots of epistemic injustice and foster a more just and enlightened knowledge landscape for everyone, regardless of their backgrounds. Abstrak Penelitian ini bertujuan mengkaji dampak disinformasi digital terhadap disparitas pengetahuan dan memeriksa strategi yang diterapkan untuk memajukan keadilan epistemik. Pemeriksaan temuan akan melibatkan eksplorasi komprehensif terhadap berbagai kerangka teori dan etika. Lewat pendekatan analitis akan diidentifikasi dan diperiksa isu-isu etis yang mungkin melekat dalam hasil penelitian. Kerangka etika menyediakan lensa terstruktur melalui mana kita dapat mengevaluasi implikasi temuan terhadap pemangku kepentingan yang berbeda, memastikan pemahaman menyeluruh terhadap potensi dilema etis. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan lintas disiplin dengan mengintegrasikan perspektif filosofis, sosial, dan teknologis. Pertama-tama, lewat perspektif filosofis akan diperiksa konsep keadilan epistemik dan implikasinya dalam era digital. Kedua, penelitian ini akan menyelidiki peran disinformasi digital dalam menciptakan ketidaksetaraan pengetahuan, khususnya bagaimana disinformasi digital berkontribusi pada disparitas dalam akses dan distribusi pengetahuan. Dengan memahami mekanisme melalui mana informasi palsu atau menyesatkan menyebar di ruang digital, penelitian ini berusaha mengidentifikasi pelbagai strategi dan intervensi yang dapat mengeliminasi akar ketidakadilan epistemik dan memajukan lanskap pengetahuan yang lebih adil dan mencerahkan bagi semua orang. Kata-kata kunci: keadilan epistemik, disinformasi digital, ketidakadilan pengetahuan. (shrink)

Breast Cancer (BC) is a debilitating disease with the global mortality rate of 13.0 per 100,000 of population (Globocan, 2018). BC affects the physical, mental, and emotional well-being and quality...

This paper examines an application of epistemic injustice not fully explored in the literature. How does epistemic injustice function in broader contexts of relationships within countries between colonizers and colonized? More specifically, what can be learned about the ongoing structural aspects of hermeneutical injustice in Canada’s settler history of the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples and the resultant erasing and marginalizing of Indigenous histories, languages, laws, traditions, and practices? In this paper, I use insights from Canada’s Truth and (...) Reconciliation Commission report to challenge dominant understandings of reconciliation, reciprocity, respect for agency, and the rule of law in settler nations. In its retrieval of the richness and diversity of Indigenous collective interpretive resources, both past and present, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission draws on a broad and full account of relationships that have shaped Indigenous lives and communities, non-Indigenous lives and communities, the interactions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and communities, and the relationships of all of these to and through the state. (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)

Parsa-Parsi et al bring attention to the World Medical Association (WMA) and transparency to its International Code of Medical Ethics (ICoME) revisions.1 We value their report and the revised ICoME but explain here that the ICoME cannot reflect consensus among all WMA members, or the wider medical profession, given structural and epistemic injustices that restrain low-income and middle-income country (LMIC) physicians from participating in activities such as WMA revisions. Such injustices overlook experiences and contributions of those from LMICs and (...) marginalised groups, hindering their access to and influence within medicine.2 They also undermine access to information about, and from, the WMA. Recruiting new members from, and better engaging members in, LMICs would strengthen the WMA and its influence across the medical profession, and better elevate environmental sustainability as a biomedical and bioethical concern. This would be beneficial because there is controversy among physicians, bioethicists and other stakeholders about the relevance of environmental sustainability to medicine.3 4 That its addition to the ICoME was ‘uncontentious’ hints at structural and epistemic injustices in the revision process and homogeneity of those most involved in the revisions. Based on our observations as medical educators, it appears that few medical students and physicians at our institution, and few across the Caribbean and …. (shrink)

This special issue aims to delve deeper into the manifestations of epistemic injustice within asymmetric relationships, such as those between laypersons and experts (e.g. patients and physicians). We focus on distinguishing between warranted and unwarranted epistemic exclusions, recognizing that some epistemic harms may stem from justified exclusions, thus necessitating consideration of both just and unjust exclusions. Using examples from the medical field, including instances of misdiagnosis based on statistical correlations, we highlight the intricate nature of epistemic (...) exclusions and their ethical implications. While some exclusions may align with established epistemic practices, others arise from unnecessary practices fueled by identity prejudice or power dynamics, thus presenting as instances of epistemic injustice. Additionally, our exploration of epistemic gaps, particularly within complex environments like medicine, illuminates the challenges individuals face in effectively conveying their experiences and accessing pertinent information. While certain forms of epistemic isolation may be warranted, others result from structural barriers hindering knowledge exchange, prompting critical reflection on the ethical dimensions of such practices. (shrink)

The concept of epistemic injustice is the latest philosophical tool with which to try to theorise what goes wrong when mental health service users are not listened to by clinicians, and what goes right when they are. Is the tool adequate to the task? It is argued that, to be applicable at all, the concept needs some adjustment so that being disbelieved as a result of prejudice is one of a family of alternative necessary conditions for its application, rather (...) than a necessary condition all on its own. It is then argued that even once adjusted in this way, the concept does not fit well in the area where the biggest efforts have been made to apply it so far, namely the highly sensitive case of adult patients suffering from delusions. Indeed it does not serve the interests of service users struggling for recognition to try to apply it in this context, because there is so much more to being listened to than simply being believed. However, the concept is found to apply smoothly in many cases where the service users are children, for example, in relation to children’s testimony on the efficacy of treatment. It is suggested that further research would demonstrate the usefulness of the concept in adult cases of a similar kind. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalomyelitis remains a controversial illness category. This paper surveys the state of knowledge and attitudes about this illness and proposes that epistemic concerns about the testimonial credibility of patients can be articulated using Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice. While there is consensus within mainstream medical guidelines that there is no known cause of CFS/ME, there is continued debate about how best to conceive of CFS/ME, including disagreement about how to interpret clinical studies (...) of treatments. Against this background, robust qualitative and quantitative research from a range of countries has found that many doctors display uncertainty about whether CFS/ME is real, which may result in delays in diagnosis and treatment for patients. Strikingly, qualitative research evinces that patients with CFS/ME often experience suspicion by health professionals, and many patients vocally oppose the effectiveness, and the conceptualization, of their illness as psychologically treatable. We address the intersection of these issues and healthcare ethics, and claim that this state of affairs can be explained as a case of epistemic injustice. We find evidence that healthcare consultations are fora where patients with CFS/ME may be particularly vulnerable to epistemic injustice. We argue that the marginalization of many patients is a professional failure that may lead to further ethical and practical consequences both for progressive research into CFS/ME, and for ethical care and delivery of current treatments among individuals suffering from this debilitating illness. (shrink)

Leading paradigms of clinical ethics consultation closely follow a biomedical model of care. In this paper, we present a theoretical reflection on the underlying biomedical model of disease, how it shaped clinical practices and patterns of ethical deliberation within these practices, and the repercussions it has on clinical ethics consultations for patients with chronic illness. We contend that this model, despite its important contribution to capturing the ethical issues of day-to-day clinical ethics deliberation, might not be sufficient for patients presenting (...) with chronic illnesses and navigating as “lay experts” of their medical condition(s) through the health care system. Not fully considering the sources of personal knowledge and expertise may lead to epistemic injustice within an ethical deliberation logic narrowly relying on a biomedical model of disease. In caring “for” and collaboratively “with” this patient population, we answer the threat of epistemic injustice with epistemic modesty and humility. We will propose ideas about how clinical ethics could contribute to an expansion of the biomedical model of care, so that important aspects of chronic illness experience would flow into clinical-ethical decision-making. (shrink)

Microaggressions cause epistemic injustice and prevent human flourishing. As a step toward the recognition of microaggressions as sources of epistemic injustice and their remedy as a source for flourishing, I propose active engagement with narratives that present cases of microaggressions as they are contextualized in experience. The poet, essayist, and mythobiographer, Audre Lorde, provides contextualized narratives that express experiences of microaggressions from multiply intersectional and humanistic perspectives. Lorde’s work is an ideal source for actively engaging with experiences of (...) microaggressions and epistemic injustice from a practical, humanist perspective. I argue that Lorde provides useful tools that assist in acknowledging, addressing, and remedying epistemic injustice. Her work suggests uses of anger through reconstruction and receptivity to difference that facilitate human flourishing. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that the destruction or hiding of archives can cause long-lasting epistemic harms and constitute complex ethical challenges. The case of Kenya’s ‘migrated archives’ is argued to be an example of how actions in the past can have long-lasting epistemic consequences and can cause contemporary epistemic injustices and harms related to one’s knowledge of the past. The perpetrators of such harms and injustices are argued to have a backward-looking epistemic responsibility and to (...) be liable to make epistemic amends. The practice of acknowledgement is suggested as one possible way to make effective epistemic amends. I argue that making effective epistemic amends would constitute a step towards addressing epistemic harms and injustices related to our knowledge of the past. However, it is important to remember that this would only constitute one out of many necessary steps in addressing epistemic injustice and that further individual, institutional and ideological changes are necessary. (shrink)

Sometimes ordinary disagreements become deep as a result of epistemic injustice. The paper explores a hitherto unnoticed connection between two phenomena that have received ample attention in recent social epistemology: deep disagreement and epistemic injustice. When epistemic injustice comes into play in a regular disagreement, this can lead to higher-order disagreement about what counts as evidence concerning the original disagreement, which deepens the disagreement. After considering a common definition of deep disagreement, it is proposed that the depth (...) of disagreements is best understood as a matter of degree. Then, a case study of real-life disagreement is introduced: the disagreement about whether racism is a significant issue in the Netherlands, illustrated by the tradition of ‘Black Pete’. It is argued that there is disagreement about what counts as evidence in the case study because of two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. Specifically, there is disagreement about epistemic principles concerning whether private first-personal experience of racism is a weighty source of evidence in this domain, whether victims of racism count as important testifiers in this domain, and how to assess testimony that is not intelligible to you because it employs concepts and terminology you are unfamiliar with. By dismissing the relevant testimony and epistemic resources, the disagreement boils down to disagreement on the level of epistemic principles concerning,, and. Introducinginjustice-based deep disagreementhighlights moral and political aspects of disagreements that might seem factual. (shrink)

Smartphone apps might offer a low-threshold approach to the detection of mental health conditions, such as depression. Based on the gathering of ‘passive data,’ some apps generate a user’s ‘digital phenotype,’ compare it to those of users with clinically confirmed depression and issue a warning if a depressive episode is likely. These apps can, thus, serve as epistemic tools for affected users. From an ethical perspective, it is crucial to consider epistemic injustice to promote socially responsible innovations within (...) digital mental healthcare. In cases of epistemic injustice, people are wronged specifically as epistemic agents, i.e., agents of the production and distribution of knowledge. We suggest that epistemic agency relies on different resource- and uptake-related preconditions which can be impacted by the functionality of passive self-tracking apps. We consider how this can lead to different forms of epistemic injustice (testimonial, hermeneutical, and contributory injustice) and analyze the influence of the apps’ use on epistemic practices on an individual level, in mental healthcare settings, and on the structural level. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There is growing interest in epistemic injustice and its connection to education. However, the relation between social studies and epistemic injustice has not yet been adequately explored and this topic has been given insufficient attention by social studies educators. But it is regarded as an important resource for students who are socially disadvantaged to render their experiences intelligible. However, due to its unique status, it has also been an effective tool for those who are in power and (...) want to maintain social inequalities. For that reason, social studies is the subject most likely to give rise to epistemic injustice in the classroom. In this paper, we address this issue that is currently coming to the fore in social studies. We argue that cultivating moral sensitivity plays a substantive role in overcoming epistemic injustice and this cultivation comes with shaping student’s schemas by integrating the interpretive resources into social studies. (shrink)

The rapid development in healthcare technologies in recent years has resulted in the need for health services, whether publicly funded or insurance based, to identify means to maximise the benefits and provide equitable distribution of limited resources. This has resulted in the need for rationing decisions, and there has been considerable debate regarding the substantive and procedural ethical principles that promote distributive justice when making such decisions. In this paper, I argue that while the scientifically rigorous approaches of evidence-based healthcare (...) are claimed as aspects of procedural justice that legitimise such guidance, there are biases and distortions in all aspects of the process that may lead to epistemic injustices. Regardless of adherence to principles of distributive justice in the decision-making process, evidential failings may undermine the fairness and legitimacy of such decisions. In particular, I identify epistemic exclusion that denies certain patient and professional groups the opportunity to contribute to the epistemic endeavour. This occurs at all stages of the process, from the generation, analysis and reporting of the underlying evidence, through the interpretation of such evidence, to the decision-making that determines access to healthcare resources. I further argue that this is compounded by processes which confer unwarranted epistemic privilege on experts in relation to explicit or implicit value judgements, which are not within their remit. I suggest a number of areas in which changes to the processes for developing, regulating, reporting and evaluating evidence may improve the legitimacy of such processes. (shrink)

Epistemic Injustice The term “epistemic injustice” refers to the existence of a distinctive type of injustice in which a wrong is done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower. Philosophers working at the intersection of epistemology and ethics under the general umbrella of virtue ethics have recognized that individuals are not given adequate … Continue reading Epistemic Injustice →.

We expand on Della Croce’s ambition to interpret “epistemic injustice” as a specification of non-maleficence in the use of the influential four-principle framework. This is an alluring line of thought for conceptual, moral, and heuristic reasons. Although it is commendable, Della Croce’s attempt remains tentative. So does our critique of it. Yet, we take on the challenge to critically address two interrelated points. First, we broaden the analysis to include deliberations about hermeneutical injustice. We argue that, if due consideration (...) of epistemic injustice is to require more than negative ethical obligations in medicine, dimensions of hermeneutical injustice should be explored as an avenue to arrive at such positive duties. Second, and relatedly, we argue that this may encompass moral responsibilities beyond the individual level, that is: positive obligations to take action on a structural level. Building on Dotson’s concept of “contributory injustice” and Scheman’s concept of “perceptual autonomy,” we suggest that the virtues of testimonial and hermeneutical justice may provide additional content not only to negative prohibitions of action (i.e. non-maleficence) but also to positive requirements of action, like respecting patient autonomy. (shrink)

The papers collected in this book share a common motivation: All respond to certain kinds of injustice that unfairly and unreasonably prevent the insights and intellectual abilities of vulnerable and stigmatized groups from being given their due recognition. Most people are opposed to injustice in principle, and do not want to have mistaken views about others. But research in the social sciences reveals a disturbing truth: Even people who intend to be fair-minded and unprejudiced are influenced by unconscious biases and (...) stereotypes, as well as social structures and institutions that lead to unjust judgments. We may sincerely want to be epistemically just, but we frequently fail, and simply thinking harder about it will not fix the problem. -/- This volume collects 17 new essays that draw from cutting-edge social science research, to suggest how we can better manage our own unjust reactions, as well as resist patterns of epistemic injustice that we may face. The volume concludes with an afterward by Miranda Fricker, reflecting on these new lines of research and potential future directions to explore. (shrink)

The practice of Emergency Management in Michigan raises anew the question of whose knowledge matters to whom and for what reasons, against the background of what projects, challenges, and systemic imperatives. In this paper, I offer a historical overview of state intervention laws across the United States, focusing specifically on Michigan’s Emergency Manager laws. I draw on recent analyses of these laws to develop an account of a phenomenon that I call epistemic redlining, which, I suggest, is a form (...) of group-based credibility discounting not readily countenanced by existing, ‘culprit-based’ accounts of epistemic injustice. I argue that epistemic redlining plays a crucial role in ongoing projects of racialized subordination and dispossession in Michigan, and that such discounting tends to have structural causes that can be difficult to identify and uproot. Contrary to the general thrust of recent work on the topic, I argue that epistemic redlining ought to be understood as a form of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

The present paper argues that the standardised treatment of disaster research and practice perpetuates the production of systematic epistemic injustices against victims of disasters. On the one hand, disaster victims are often prevented from contributing with their opinions and knowledge to the processes of disaster mitigation and disaster conceptualisation. On the other hand, disaster victims tend to lack the hermeneutical resources to make sense of their experiences intelligibly, due to the existence of significant hermeneutical gaps in the hegemonic terminology (...) on the matter. I argue that both forms of epistemic injustice, the testimonial and the hermeneutical, are sustained by an epistemic privilege between the Global North and the Global South in matters of disasters. The second group comprises what I categorise generally as ‘disaster victims’. I identify two forms of structural prejudice that operate against disaster victims: one is the ‘non-expert’ prejudice, and the other is the colonial prejudice. Finally, because of the intercultural nature of disaster environments, I discuss the field of ‘multicultural competencies’ as a useful form of unveiling and counteracting the epistemic injustices contained in both disaster theory and practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider how the discourse on global epistemic justice might be approached differently if some contributions from the African philosophical place are taken seriously. To be specific, I argue that the debate on global justice broadly has not been global. I cite as an example, the exclusion or marginalisation of African philosophy, what it has contributed and what it may yet contribute to the global epistemic edifice. I point out that this exclusion is a case (...) of epistemic injustice. I observe that the absence of a philosophical technique that prevails on philosophers to engage with others from other traditions might be responsible for this epistemic lopsidedness and marginalisation. I go beyond the re-statement of this problem of marginalisation of African philosophy to point out relevant doctrines from the African place. I show how they are united under the methodological and ideological disposition of conversationalism. I argue that this ideology might be a better model for realising the goal of global epistemic justice which is the overcoming of all forms of exclusions and lopsidedness in global epistemic discourses through fair allocation of intellectual spaces. (shrink)

The notion of epistemic injustice was first applied to cases of discrimination against women and people of color but has since come to refer to wider issues related to social justice. This paper applies the concept of epistemic injustice to problems in the therapeutic relationship between psychiatrists and psychiatric patients. To this end, it is necessary to acknowledge psychiatrists as professionals with expertise in treating mental disorders, which impair the patient’s rationality, sometimes leading to false beliefs, such as (...) delusions. This paper classifies the characteristic features of the therapeutic relationship in psychiatry into three stages: those of a professional–client relationship, those of a doctor–patient relationship, and those of a psychiatrist–psychiatric patient relationship. Epistemic injustice is prevalent in psychiatric care owing to prejudice against patients with mental disorders. However, it is also predisposed by the roles that psychiatrists play in relation to psychiatric patients. This paper suggests some ameliorative measures based on the analysis. (shrink)

Genocide denialism is an understudied topic in the epistemic injustice scholarship; so are epistemic relations outside of the Euro-American context. This article proposes to bring the literature into contact with an underexplored topic in a ‘distant’ setting: Turkey. Here, I explore the ethical and epistemological implications of the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide as a pervasive and systematic epistemic harm. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, I argue that a philosophical exploration of genocide denialism requires examining the role (...) of institutions and ideology in relation to the epistemic harm done by individual perpetrators. More specifically, I suggest that the individual, ideological, and institutional roots of genocide denialism constitute a regime of epistemic injustice in Turkey. (shrink)

In this paper, I make explicit some implicit commitments to realism and conceptualism in recent work in social epistemology exemplified by Miranda Fricker and Charles Mills. I offer a survey of recent writings at the intersection of social epistemology, feminism, and critical race theory, showing that commitments to realism and conceptualism are at once implied yet undertheorized in the existing literature. I go on to offer an explicit defense of these commitments by drawing from the epistemological framework of John McDowell, (...) demonstrating the relevance of the metaphor of the “space of reasons” for theorizing and criticizing instances of epistemic injustice. I then point out how McDowell’s own view requires expansion and revision in light of Mills' concept of 'epistemologies of ignorance'. I conclude that, when their strengths are used to make up for each others' weaknesses, Mills and McDowell’s positions mutually reinforce one another, producing a powerful model for theorizing instances of systematic ignorance and false belief. (shrink)

Environmental ethics is a critical study of the normative issues and principles relevant to the relationship between humans and the natural world. It covers various fields, ranging from the welfare of animals versus ecosystems to theories of the intrinsic value of nature. There are various approaches to environmental ethics. This paper examines some of the key positions presented by different environmental ethicists and their impacts on the natural environment. Some writers maintain that environmental ethics does not (...) have a major contribution to make to the solution of environmental problems. However, this study and the contribution of many scholars show that environmental ethics has much to contribute to the solution of global environmental problems. Various governments and policy makers can bring the insights of environmental ethics into various natural resource management settings. The ideas of environmental ethicists have had an impact on the natural environment. Among others, the “Precautionary principle” is an ethical principle that is increasingly being embodied in the legislation of various governments. If environmental ethics broadens its scope and addresses the injustice done to the majority of poor and powerless people and to nonhuman species, it will have a paramount role in creating awareness within countries and globally about the actions of transnational corporations, irresponsible capitalist countries and local industries which damage the environment. Environmental ethicists may alert peasant farmers, pastoralists and other indigenous people to understand the long range effects of environmental degradation that are beyond the purview of local people and otherwise unavailable. Environmental ethicists with varied backgrounds can join peasant farmers and pastoralists who have multidimensional knowledge of the natural environment and help them develop further knowledge of it. The efforts of many people will one day bring change in favour of the majority of the people, nonhuman species, and the planet Earth. In fact, the paper stresses that environmental questions are not simply ethical. It suggests that the present power relations at the local and international levels should be changed in the direction of just and environmentally and socially sound development.EJOSSAH Vol.1 2003: 63-88. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that nonhuman animals can be subject to epistemic injustice. I consider Miranda Fricker’s (2007) account of the nature of the harm of epistemic injustice and highlight that it requires that a knower be invested in being recognized as a knower. I argue that a focus on know-how, rather than testimony or concepts for self-understanding and communication, can serve to highlight how nonhuman animals can suffer epistemic injustice without an investment in recognition, by (...) focusing on distributive justice concerning epistemic goods. Drawing from work in animal ethology and movement ecology, I argue that human interruption of animal lifeways has negative downstream effects on nonhuman animals’ ability to acquire ‘answers’ to ‘questions’ they have an interest in answering: namely, acquiring both true beliefs about conspecifics and their environment, as well as acquisition of behaviors and skills that enable everyday successful coping, and that these interruptions can constitute epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Lookism refers to discrimination based on physical attractiveness or the lack thereof. A whole host of empirical research suggests that lookism is a pervasive and systematic form of social discrimination. Yet, apart from some attention in ethics and political philosophy, lookism has been almost wholly overlooked in philosophy in general and epistemology in particular. This is particularly salient when compared to other forms of discrimination based on race or gender which have been at the forefront of epistemic injustice as (...) a topic of research. This paper argues that lookism is associated with various forms of epistemic injustice. In the specific case of lookism, hermeneutic injustice takes the shape of the taboo of acknowledging that unattractive people are unattractive. This, on the one hand, results in a hampered understanding of one’s own situation insofar as one is deterred from seeing one’s looks as one major factor for one’s social position. On the other hand, this hermeneutic injustice serves as the backdrop of instances of a special kind testimonial injustice in which the ugly person’s burgeoning realization that their looks influence their social standing detrimentally is discounted due to the pejorative nature of ascribing someone the property of being unattractive or ugly. (shrink)

The 2007 publication of Miranda Fricker’s celebrated book Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing gave way to a burgeoning area of study in philosophy of education. The book’s arguments create a context for expanding the scope of work on epistemic issues in education by moving beyond direct explorations of the distribution of epistemic goods and the role of power in curriculum development. Since that time, the rich scholarship on epistemic injustice in philosophy of education (...) examines a variety of topics, including the impact of epistemic injustice on the experiences of teachers and learners more broadly (focussing mostly on students who are marginalized along lines of race, gender, class, and ability, amongst others) and the implications of epistemic injustice for educational research, policy, and practice. This special issue extends this line of work by compiling a set of articles that address a broad range of topics, some of which are well established in the literature and some of which open new lines of inquiry in the field. In doing so, the issue aims to establish the intersection of epistemic injustice and education as a distinct area of study that holds great significance and potential. In this paper, A. C. Nikolaidis and Winston C. Thompson introduce the issue by discussing these contributions, explaining why education is central to the study of epistemic injustice (and vice versa), and exploring the complex nature of epistemic injustice and education as revealed in the articles that comprise this collection—namely, education’s simultaneous complicity as a perpetrator and promise as a disruptor of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Epistemic injustice is a kind of injustice that arises when one’s capacity as an epistemic subject is wrongfully denied. In recent years it has been argued that psychiatric patients are often harmed in their capacity as knowers and suffer from various forms of epistemic injustice that they encounter in psychiatric services. Acknowledging that epistemic injustice is a multifaceted problem in psychiatry calls for an adequate response. In this paper I argue that, given that psychiatric patients deserve (...) epistemic respect and have a certain epistemic privilege, healthcare professionals have a pro tanto epistemic duty to attend to and/or solicit reports of patients’ first-person experiences in order to prevent epistemic losses. I discuss the nature and scope of this epistemic duty and point to one interesting consequence. In order to prevent epistemic losses, healthcare professionals may need to provide some patients with resources and tools for expressing their experiences and first-person knowledge, such as those that have been developed within the phenomenological approach. I discuss the risk of secondary testimonial and hermeneutical injustice that the practice of relying on such external tools might pose and survey some ways to mitigate it. (shrink)

In this chapter, we take stock of existing critiques of contemporary migration research and bring these debates into contact with ongoing debates among decolonial scholars and in feminist social epistemology. We illustrate how the ethical and epistemic concerns voiced by migration scholars in regard to the socio-epistemic functioning of their field can be understood using the conceptual apparatus that has been developed around the notions of epistemic injustice and oppression. In so doing, we illustrate the relevance and (...) usefulness of both feminist social epistemology and of decolonial theory for theorising the socio-epistemic challenges that migration scholars face. The conceptual framework of epistemic injustice and oppression not only offers clarity in what is at stake within migration studies both ethically and epistemically, but also elucidates moral and epistemic reasons for why these issues should be addressed. This framework both calls attention to issues of undue epistemic marginalisation, and centres these issues as a core concern as migration scholars critically reflect upon the knowledge production and dissemination practices of their field. Understanding the processes through which this happens, rather than just the epistemic outcomes, can help us to identify ways to address the structural inequalities with which the production of migration knowledge is often associated. (shrink)

The notion of recognition is an ethically potent resource for understanding human relational needs; and its negative counterpart, misrecognition, an equally potent resource for critique. Axel Honneth’s rich account focuses our attention on recognition’s role in securing basic self-confidence, moral self-respect, and self-esteem. With these loci of recognition in place, we are enabled to raise the intriguing question whether each of these may be extended to apply specifically to the epistemic dimension of our agency and selfhood. Might we talk (...) intelligibly—while staying in tune with Honneth’s concepts and their Hegelian key—of a generic idea of epistemic recognition? Such an idea might itself be seen to apply at the same three levels to indicate: first, basic epistemic self-confidence; second, our status as epistemically responsible; and third, a certain epistemic self-esteem that reflects the epistemic esteem we receive from others. The papers in this volume surely sound a chord in the affirmative, and together they steer us towards a multifaceted conception of how epistemic injustice is related to epistemic misrecognition, and indeed how we might construe a positive relation of epistemic recognition. (shrink)

In the era of information and communication, issues of misinformation and miscommunication are more pressing than ever. _Epistemic injustice - _one of the most important and ground-breaking subjects to have emerged in philosophy in recent years - refers to those forms of unfair treatment that relate to issues of knowledge, understanding, and participation in communicative practices. The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject. The first (...) collection of its kind, it comprises over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, divided into five parts: Core Concepts Liberatory Epistemologies and Axes of Oppression Schools of Thought and Subfields within Epistemology Socio-political, Ethical, and Psychological Dimensions of Knowing Case Studies of Epistemic Injustice. As well as fundamental topics such as testimonial and hermeneutic injustice and epistemic trust, the Handbook includes chapters on important issues such as social and virtue epistemology, objectivity and objectification, implicit bias, and gender and race. Also included are chapters on areas in applied ethics and philosophy, such as law, education, and healthcare. The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice is essential reading for students and researchers in ethics, epistemology, political philosophy, feminist theory, and philosophy of race. It will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as cultural studies, sociology, education and law. (shrink)

This paper explores the philosophical concept of epistemic injustice and contends its significance and relevance to mental health nurse education and clinical practice. The term epistemic injustice may be unfamiliar to mental health nurses, yet the effects are readily visible in the dismissing, silencing, and doubting of service users’ knowledge, testimony, and interpretation. Existing professional values and clinical standards lack depth and critical exploration pertaining to epistemology and associated ethical concerns. Despite central tenets of person-centred care and valuing (...) the service users’ voice, epistemic injustice continues to occur. Epistemic injustice cannot be summed up merely by asking nurses to listen to service users. This represents an oversimplification of epistemology, ignoring the complexities of social influence and knowledge exchanges. Epistemic injustice brings something new and innovative to the nursing curriculum and fits within the principles of heutagogy. It encourages deep reflexivity surrounding the ethical issues of power inequalities and intersectionality. Inclusion in mental health nursing education allows for the social and political powers of psychiatric diagnosis as a form of silencing and stigma to be examined. Practical application is made to mental health nursing education and practice with epistemological values and ethical reflexive prompts. These can be utilised by educators and lecturers for pre-registration mental health nurse education, post-registration, and continued professional development. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that pragmatic encroachment—the idea that knowledge is sensitive to the practical stakes of believing—can explain a distinctive kind of epistemic injustice: the injustice that occurs when prejudice causes someone to know less than they otherwise would. This encroachment injustice, as we call it, occurs when the threat of being met with prejudice raises the stakes for someone to rely on her belief when acting, by raising the level of evidential support required for knowledge. We (...) explain this notion of encroachment injustice, connect it to the empirical literature on implicit bias, and defend it against important objections. (shrink)

Democratic legitimacy is often grounded in proceduralist terms, referring to the ideal of political equality that should be mirrored by fair procedures of decision-making. The paper argues (§1) that the normative commitments embedded in a non-minimalist account of procedural legitimacy are well expressed by the ideal of co-authorship. Against this background, the main goal of the paper is to argue that structural forms of epistemic injustice are detrimental to the overall legitimacy of democratic systems. In §2 I analyse Young’s (...) notion of political powerlessness and claim that in structurally unjust social contexts members of powerless groups often are not properly acknowledged as functioning members of the polity, hence being jeopardized in their ability to develop part of their personal identity. In §III, I define gerrymandering as an example of political disempowerment that involves an epistemic harm for oppressed citizens, namely, to be prejudicially excluded from the community of epistemic trust. My thesis is that being epistemically disempowered has a negative impact on the way in which citizens understand themselves as political actors, since they suffer a lack of social recognition that may impede a proper development of their reflexive agency. In §IV, I discuss the proposal of granting epistemic privilege to members of oppressed groups, given their specific experience of social injustices. I introduce two concerns about this proposal, one morally grounded and one pragmatically oriented. Finally, in §V, I briefly sketch some institutional remedies that can be employed in order to politically fight systemic forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)