Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: Epistemic failings can be ethical failings. This insight is owed to Miranda Fricker who explores this idea in developing a theory of epistemic injustice. A central type of epistemic injustice is testimonial injustice, where there are two components to this. A knower suffers a testimonial injustice when she is not given due credit and is thereby prevented from doing what is fundamental to being a knower, which is inform others of what she knows. This is the first component, which is epistemic: a testimonial injustice starts with a misjudgement of a knower’s credibility; it starts, in Fricker’s terms, with the knower suffering a credibility deficit. The second, ethical, component is the explanation of this credibility deficit. There is a testimonial injustice when the cause of this credibility deficit is not innocent error but some form of prejudice. Here Fricker wants to draw our attention to one pervasive prejudice, which she calls identity prejudice. This is the prejudice that attaches to a person by virtue of their social identity and which thereby tracks that person through the multitude of social activities, economic, political and so on. Thus the paradigm case of testimonial injustice is identity-prejudicial credibility deficit.
Author: Paul Faulkner
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2557865792