Trust, distrust, and testimonial injustice

Abstract

This essay investigates an underappreciated way in which trust and testimonial injustice are closely connected. Credibility deficit and credibility excess cases both (in their own distinctive ways) contribute to a speaker’s being harmed in her capacity a knower. But moreover, as we will show—by using the tools of a performance-theoretic framework—both credibility deficit and credibility excess cases also feature incompetent trusting on the part of the hearer. That is, credibility deficit and excess cases are shown to manifest qualities of thinkers that are inconducive to trust’s being reliably fulfilled. What this implies is an interesting result about testimonial injustice: to the extent that we want to mitigate against testimonial injustice—one promising way to do so will be to target incompetent trusting of the sort that underlies it. We conclude by outlining and defending what we take to be a promising substantive version of such a mitigation strategy, one which is centred around the cultivation of higher-order trusting competences.

Keywords:

• Trust
• epistemic injustice
• distrust
• virtue epistemology
• Fricker

Notes

1 See, for example, Kidd, Medina, and Pohlhaus (2017), Maitra (2010), Wanderer (2012, 2017); Pohlhaus Jr (2014), Medina (2011, 2013, 2017); McKinnon (2016), Coady (2017), Bondy (2010), Luzzi (2016), and Battaly (2017).

2 See, in particular, the essays in Sherman and Goguen (2019).

3 For some recent discussions of epistemic injustice and bias, see, e.g., Goguen (2016) and Peet (2017).

4 For an important though different take on the relationship between epistemic and trust than we are pursuing here, see Origgi (2012).

5 Both species of epistemic injustice, testimonial and hermeneutical, involve one’s being harmed in her capacity as a knower, with the latter species being due to unfair deprivation of concepts necessary for the expression of one’s ideas. For some representative recent discussions, beyond Fricker’s own, see, e.g., Beeby (2011), Crerar (2016), Medina (2012), and Simion (forthcoming).

6 For some other discussions of credibility excess, see, e.g., Emmalon Davis’s (2016) discussion of typecasting/spokesperson cases Hypatia paper and Jennifer Lackey’s (2020) discussion of false confessions.

7 The performance normativity framework has been pioneered in work by Ernest Sosa (2007, 2010, 2015, 2017), both as a framework for evaluating performances in general, and epistemic performances in particular. For further discussion, see, e.g., the essays in Fernandez (ed.) (2016), as well as Carter (2016, 2019, 2020a,b, forthcoming) and Kelp et al. (2020).

8 An example of a performance that is successful and competent but not apt is the following: suppose you fire a shot from reliable form, which is blown off target due to a surprise gust of wind—and then—blown back on course due to a second fortuitous gust of wind, such that it hits the target. This kind of shot is competent, and it is also successful, but the success is not because of the competence, but because of luck. For discussion of this and similar cases, see, e.g., Sosa (2010) and Pritchard (2012, 2015).

9 See, along with Sosa, Greco (2003, 2009, 2010, 2012), Turri (2011, 2016) and Zagzebski (1996).

10 See Carter (2019, 2020a).

11 For a discussion of this difference, see, e.g., Holton (1994) and McLeod (2015).

12 It is worth registering that while Fricker focuses on the individual virtue of testimonial justice as a response to both testimonial and hermeneutical epistemic injustice, Anderson (2012) argues for a systematic perspective - that some epistemic harms must be corrected at a collective, structural level. Similar proposals have been put forth by Maitra (2010), Langton (2010) and others. Langton raises concerns as to whether individual efforts (in the form of individual virtues) can remedy the structural problem of hermeneutical injustice, which is notably both an individual and structural vice. Finally, Ishani Maitra questions whether we should accept the asymmetry between Fricker’s understanding of testimonial injustice as a matter of individual identity prejudice and hermeneutical injustice as a matter of structural identity prejudice. She argues that both kinds of prejudice can contribute to each kind of epistemic injustice but with varying degrees.

13 For other philosophical approaches to metacognition outside of virtue epistemology specifically, see for example Proust (2013) and Morton (2012).

14 Compare here with a similar case familiar from the assertion literature, which is Lackey’s (2008) RACIST JUROR case. In this case, a racist juror votes and asserts in accordance with what they know the evidence requires, while at the same time, harbouring private beliefs that align with racism.

15 See especially Sherman and Goguen (2019) as well as Meehan (2020).

16 Carter’s work on this paper is part of the ‘A Virtue Epistemology of Trust’ (#RPG-2019-302) project, which is hosted by the University of Glasgow’s COGITO Epistemology Research Centre, and he is grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for supporting this research. The authors would also like to thank Gerry Dunne and two anonymous referees for Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Leverhulme Trust (Grant number: RPG-2019-302).

Notes on contributors

J. Adam Carter

J Adam Carter is a Reader in Epistemology and deputy director of the COGITO Epistemology Research Centre at the University of Glasgow. His latest book is Autonomous Knowledge (2022), with Oxford University Press.

Daniella Meehan

Daniela Meehan is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, working mainly in social epistemology, virtue and vice epistemology, and on epistemic blame.