Redefining the Wrong of Epistemic Injustice: The Knower as a Concrete Other and the Affective Dimension of Cognition

ABSTRACT

This paper offers an analysis of the primary wrong of epistemic injustice, namely, of the intrinsic harm that constitutes its action itself. Contrary to Miranda Fricker, I shall argue that there is an additional, overlooked dimension of this harm, which consists in a failure to perceive the knower as a concrete other with distinctive needs, features, and perceptions that are always implicit during her epistemic contributions. I shall name this dimension ‘affective’, and I shall consider the harm of epistemic injustice in the broad as simultaneously ‘epistemic-affective’. In Section 1), I explain what I understand as a lack of individuality within feminist epistemology and in Fricker´s theory of epistemic injustice. As a result, in Section 2), I derive my notion of the affective dimension of the knower by drawing from Seyla Benhabib´s notion of the concrete other. Finally, Section 3) and 4) redescribe the primary wrong of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice respectively in terms of the affective wrong of having one´s specific needs and particular contribution as an individual unfairly diminished and downgraded. Overall, this shows that the harm of epistemic injustice should be reconceived as ‘epistemic-affective’.

KEYWORDS:

• Testimonial injustice
• hermeneutical injustice
• epistemic-affective wrong
• individuality

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to my supervisors Katharine Jenkins and Francisco Javier Gil Martín for their invaluable help and support throughout the writing process of this paper. I also thank Paul Giladi for his useful suggestions and Sanford Goldberg for his illuminating reading recommendations. An original version of this paper was shortlisted and presented at the online workshop on ‘Themes from Testimonial Injustice and Trust’ on the occasion of the Robert Papazian and PERITIA Essay Prizes (June 2021), and I thank all the participants and organizers for a very warm and productive discussion on the matter. Finally, the production of this paper has been financially supported by the regional pre-doctoral scholarship “Severo Ochoa”.

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1. In fact, Fricker´s definition of epistemic injustice revolves around her notion of ‘identity prejudice’, an operation of power resulting from different relations of social power and domination.

2. Although in this paper I will be discussing exclusively Fricker´s conceptualisation of epistemic injustice, I take it that the ‘structural focus’ is shared by almost all important authors on epistemic injustice today. See, for instance, Medina (2013).

3. Interestingly, this claim has also been made by the following author before: Wanderer (2012) criticises how most analyses of epistemic injustice tend to move away from the specific interpersonal encounter to focus on broader systematic instances of interactions of the kind, thus missing a fundamental aspect of its wrong, namely, that the victim of epistemic injustice is personally harmed in a way in which she could not be substituted by anyone else of her social type (2012, 153).

4. The interplay of brain areas associated with cognition, such as the prefrontal cortex, and with emotion, such as the amygdala, has been widely assessed even in the simplest cognitive processes like perception and selective attention, working memory and cognitive control: see e.g. Phelps (2006); Anderson (2005); Barrett and Bar (2009); Damasio (1994, 1999); Duncan and Barrett (2007); Pessoa (2008, 2009, 2013).

5. Epistemologists of testimony agree that the act of telling is not the same as asserting something in someone´s presence, but rather to directly address someone by inviting her to believe something (Hinchman 2005). This sets a fundamental difference between testimony and other forms of stating truths, given that in the former, the evidential aspect of the speaker´s content is not independent from the fact that the speaker is choosing to present it as a reason. In this sense, the content of the testimony is always connected to the subjective intention of the speaker (Moran 2006).

6. I would like to clarify that saying that the affective dimension is always present in cognition should not be confused with the idea that speakers are always necessarily emotionally invested in everything they say. There might be cases in which speakers are very sensitive about the content of their speech – and in these instances, if there is an epistemic injustice at play, its impact in individuals might be even deeper than in other more trivial cases-, but most of the time speech is automatic and unreflective. When I say that speech acts like testimony are always ‘affective’ I am merely noting that the ‘evidential’ and the subjective content of epistemic operations are always interrelated. Forgetting this could make us neglect an essential dimension of the wrong of epistemic injustice.

7. Again, by ‘affective’ I do not mean that the wrong inflicted on the speaker is always necessarily emotional, nor do I want to suggest that epistemic injustice takes place immediately whenever someone feels hurt in their sensitivity. I believe that the affective wrong of epistemic injustice is conditioned to the existence of an epistemic offense: namely, when the hearer is not rationally justified to mistrust the speaker. Interestingly, Wanderer (2012), Anscombe (1979) and Hinchman (2005) have also stated the existence of ‘affective’ obligations to the a speaker during an interpersonal testimonial act- and, according to them, not believing someone when it is appropriate to can constitute an ‘insult’ or even a moral injury. However, these obligations can be suspended- and will not be considered as instances of epistemic injustice or insult- if the hearer has some find of evidence of the untrustworthiness of the speaker.

8. Some might argue that this example does not represent a relevant instance of testimonial injustice. However, literature on implicature shows that speakers tend to base their conversational interventions in the intuition that they can produce some positive cognitive effects in the general conversation, such as improvements or true contextual implications of the existing knowledge (Davis 2019). In this sense, Kitty´s contribution could reasonably be interpreted from her willingness to add what she, according to her communicative abilities and preferences, took as relevant new facts and perspectives in support of the general conversation. Then, from a Gricean perspective, she was trying to be cooperative with the conversational principles that govern our everyday communication. And by being unjustly dismissed from this participation, she had her credibility undermined in at least two senses: one, as a rightful conversational cooperator, and two, in having denied the implicature of her speech, namely, that she believed she was providing relevant information.

9. Although Fricker´s exact phrasing in this part says that a hypothetical victim of testimonial injustice would be ‘blocked from becoming (…) the person that she is’ (2007, 55), I find this sentence problematic and confusing, as it is contradictory to say that someone has become someone she is not. Hence, I suggest a new way of understanding this, which I think is compatible with what Fricker might have really intended to say.

10. Again, I have resignified Fricker´s words in this point into a less problematic expression. Her original phrasing said: ‘that someone is socially constituted as, and perhaps even caused to be, something they are not, and which it is against their interests to be seen to be’ (Fricker 2007, 168).