The Powers of Individual and Collective Intellectual Self-Trust in Dealing with Epistemic Injustice

ABSTRACT

The literature on epistemic injustice is increasingly turning to the question of countering epistemic injustice. But few authors note that the strategies against epistemic injustice are complemented by a more fundamental disposition, intellectual self-trust. Most of the time, intellectual self-trust is merely mentioned as an individual disposition that is harmed by epistemic injustice. In this article, I argue that intellectual self-trust as an optimistic disposition is a central tool for countering epistemic injustice. Both individual intellectual self-trust and collective intellectual self-trust, as well as groups and communities themselves are central in obstructing the effects of epistemic injustice and engaging in resistance against epistemic injustice. I start with an overview of the effects of epistemic injustice. After that, I spell out the powers of individual intellectual self-trust, then move from the role of communities for individual intellectual self-trust to collective intellectual self-trust, i.e., intellectual self-trust of collectives. Finally, I outline the function of collective intellectual self-trust for obstructing and resisting epistemic injustice.

KEYWORDS:

• Intellectual self-trust
• collective intellectual self-trust
• epistemic injustice
• collective support
• obstructing and resisting epistemic injustice

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Yarran Hominh and Leo Townsend for valuable written comments on this article. I am also grateful to the members of the research colloquium of the Chair for Philosophy with Particular Emphasis on Practical Philosophy at ETH Zürich and to the audience at the workshop ‘Epistemic Injustice in the Aftermath of Collective Wrongdoing’ in Bern for their discussion of previous versions of the article. Thanks also to an anonymous referee for their perceptive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. There is an inverse story of what happens to the intellectual self-trust of those who commit epistemic injustice, but this requires a different approach and, therefore, I do not discuss it in this article.

2. Congdon (2017) presents an important overview of different approaches to the wrong committed by epistemic injustice, but I do not discuss these conceptions because I want to look at how the specific effects of epistemic injustice can be addressed.

3. As Pohlhaus emphasizes, such distrust by minorities is often warranted, e.g., distrust of African Americans in medical institutions or distrust of women in psychological authorities.

4. Self-doubt can also be epistemically rational, e.g., for members of the dominant group who doubt their own perception of things because they have realized that their views are prejudiced self-doubt is epistemically rational. But self-doubt in marginalized subjects that is caused by epistemic injustice is most often epistemically irrational. I focus on such self-doubt that is an effect of epistemic injustice.

5. Cf. Medina (Forthcoming), Lackey (2020) for epistemic injustice in the US criminal justice system.

6. Of course, intellectual self-trust is not the only tool in resisting epistemic injustice. Intellectual distrust may also be called for in resisting epistemic injustice. But since this is an attitude towards others, rather than towards oneself, I do not discuss it in this article.

7. If we take a broader perspective, we recognize that intellectual self-trust itself is not intrinsically valuable. A subject’s intellectual self-trust can be infiltrated by prejudice and bias about themselves; in such cases intellectual self-trust contributes to internalized oppression. And intellectual self-trust can also keep a subject from recognizing their own faulty recognizing, e.g. when participating in epistemic injustice and dismissing critical outside voices because they have too much intellectual self-trust. The intellectual self-trust of an individual who experiences persistent epistemic injustice is likely to become deflated. Conversely, intellectual self-trust can also be excessive if one has too much intellectual self-trust. Yet, neither deflated nor excessive intellectual self-trust are intrinsically vicious. A member of a dominant, oppressive group may be warranted in having deflated intellectual self-trust after understanding the pernicious effects of the epistemically unjust system they participate in. And members of a dominant group who think that their biased, oppressive beliefs are justified and reject well-founded criticism have excessive intellectual self-trust that is vicious. Marginalized subjects who work on blocking the effects of epistemic injustice may appear to possess excessive intellectual self-trust, but most often this impression is due to the epistemic injustice that has infiltrated their society and their intellectual self-trust is, in fact, just right.

8. Thanks to Yarran Hominh for these observations.

9. For some diseases, practitioners continue questioning whether they are really diseases, cf. Wolfe (2009) for fibromyalgia.

10. But note that collective intellectual self-trust, like individual intellectual self-trust is mostly domain-specific.

11. For reasons of space I do not discuss the nuances of the terms ‘group’, ‘community’, ‘collective’.

12. Moderately collective groups may also possess collective intellectual self-trust. Members of moderately collective groups are merely privately committed to a shared concern, e.g., unorganized fan groups, and so they can individually decide to change their commitment to the concern (Salmela and Nagatsu 2016). Their collective intellectual self-trust is weaker than that of strongly collective groups because they have less cohesion.

13. Some strongly collective groups may also be characterized by radical self-doubt and suspicion and thus less likely to develop collective intellectual self-trust.

14. Of course, not all families are strongly collective groups.

15. Salmela and Nagatsu (2016, 36) similarly argue that mutual awareness is a condition of two or more subjects having a collective emotion.

16. That is also why a particular identity, a particular interest is not enough for group membership: one may be an undocumented immigrant and yet not be a member of a strongly collective group that is based on being an undocumented immigrant. It is only actual members of a particular group who can develop the collective intellectual self-trust that has behavioral, affective and cognitive manifestations as well as mutual awareness.

17. Such groups do not have to be made for eternity; developments and events may drive them apart again, but this is irrelevant for the present context.

18. See also Srinivasan (2018).

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Nadja El Kassar

Nadja El Kassar is visiting Professor at Freie Universität Berlin in the academic year 2020/2021 and a lecturer at ETH Zürich. In August 2020, she completed her habilitation on the epistemology of ignorance at ETH Zürich. She received her PhD from the University of Potsdam. She has published articles on ignorance and intellectual self-trust and a monograph Towards a Theory of Epistemically Significant Perception (DeGruyter 2015). Her current work focuses on issues in the epistemology of ignorance and social epistemology.