Let’s now consider how this notion of epistemic injustice intersects with our dis- cussion of ignorance, starting with hermeneutical injustice. Going back to our pre- vious discussion of ignorance, one question we might ask is whether someone who is experiencing hermeneutical injustice, and so lacks knowledge because they lack the conceptual resources to properly identify their experiences, is thereby ignorant.
According to the traditional accounts of ignorance, they would be ignorant, but I think that this conclusion sounds very odd. In particular, it seems to fail to capture the particular nature of the subject’s situation, given that their lack of knowledge is the result of social structures (usually themselves a product of previous injustice) that are generating an unjust epistemic outcome for our subject. In contrast, the normative account of ignorance seems on stronger ground in this regard, as it can explain why such subjects are not ignorant, even despite their lack of knowledge.
This is because their lack of knowledge is not due to an intellectual failing on their part, but rather the result of wider social structures. In fact, the victim of hermeneu- tical injustice may exhibit no intellectual failing at all in their lacking knowledge.
The same applies to testimonial injustice. We noted that testimonial injustice can lead to people lacking confidence in their opinions, and hence lacking knowledge of propositions that they are in an excellent position to know. As with a lack of knowl- edge that is due to hermeneutical injustice, however, it would be odd to regard this lack of knowledge as ignorance, even though this is precisely what would be predicted by traditional accounts of ignorance. Moreover, the natural explanation of why this is so is that this is not a lack of knowledge that is the result of the subject’s intellectual failings but rather reflects unfair social structures.
Epistemic injustice is clearly something that we should aim to rid ourselves of. We don’t just want to live in a just society but also a society that is epistemically just,
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where everyone’s word has the epistemic credibility that it warrants. Fricker’s own solution to this problem is to argue that we need to help people develop the intellec- tual virtues so that they can avoid falling into this predicament. That will certainly help, as the intellectually virtuous subject will be such that they will be alert to how prejudices can infect one’s judgements. Note, however, that our characterisation of how epistemic injustice relates to ignorance highlights something interesting about how the intellectual virtues are relevant here. As we have noted above, intellectual virtue helps us to avoid having an ignorant, and thus viceful, intellectual character, which in turn helps us to avoid being propositionally ignorant. One way of avoiding propositional ignorance is thus to develop one’s intellectual virtue. In the cases of epistemic injustice that we have looked at, however, the subject who lacks knowl- edge is not ignorant. It is thus not they who need to develop their intellectual virtue in order to fix this problem, but rather the people who are involved in the unjust social structures that lead to epistemic injustice, such as the people who unfairly downgrade someone’s testimony because of prejudice.
Fricker’s focus in her book was on epistemic injustice as it applies to gender, but clearly the diagnosis she offers generalises to any marginalised group. Think, for example, about how people from certain underrepresented racial groups might be systematically treated as lacking in epistemic credibility, or how working class peo- ple can often be automatically regarded as less intelligent. Often this results from the prejudicial stereotypes that inform our society and which generate this kind of unfair differential treatment. Fricker’s innovation is to show that the kind of thinking that underlies this form of bias also has important epistemic ramifications.
We thus have a way of explaining how such factors as race or class (to give just two examples) can have a bearing on how, epistemically speaking, we are treated, and thus on how kinds of epistemic injustice can arise. Moreover, by embedding the notion of epistemic injustice within a normative account of ignorance, we are able to show that the burden of resolving this problem lies not with the victims of epistemic injustice, but rather with the perpetrators. While everyone can benefit from developing their intellectual virtue, in terms of correcting epistemic injustice, it is the perpetrators of the unfair social structures in play who need to work on their intellectual virtues in order to resolve this issue and make society epistemically more just.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
• According to traditional views of ignorance, ignorance is to be understood as sim- ply the absence of a positive epistemic standing. For example, one popular view is that ignorance is lack of knowledge. One problem that faces understanding igno- rance as lack of knowledge is the Gettier-style cases, as they don’t seem to involve ignorance, even though they do concern a lack of knowledge
• An alternative proposal along the same lines to the view that ignorance is lack of knowledge is that ignorance is lack of true belief. This proposal doesn’t face the difficulty posed by Gettier-style cases, as on this view the subject, since she has a
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ignorance and epistemic injustice 179 true belief, isn’t ignorant. The proposal does face the different problem, however, of making it seemingly too easy to avoid a charge of ignorance. Any true belief, no matter how it was formed, and even if it was formed in an epistemically inappro- priate way, would thereby not be a case of ignorance.
• It was suggested that what is missing from the traditional accounts of ignorance is the idea that ignorance involves a normative dimension, in the sense that one’s lack of knowledge (say) is the result of an intellectual failing. This is the normative account of ignorance. For example, one straightforward version of this view is that ignorance is a lack of knowledge that is the result of one’s intellectual failing. In short, one fails to know what one ought to have known.
• The normative account of ignorance can explain why the subjects in Gettier-style cases are not ignorant, as they have not exhibited any intellectual failing. More- over, it can also explain why there are lots of other cases where subjects lack knowledge where we wouldn’t treat them as ignorant. For example, that one doesn’t know a trivial claim, such as concerning how many spoons are in one’s cupboard, doesn’t amount to ignorance, as there is no intellectual failing involved in not knowing such trivialities.
• The normative account of ignorance can account for the close relationship between character ignorance and propositional ignorance. Character ignorance is when we charge a person with being ignorant – i.e. we are saying that they have an ignorant character. Propositional ignorance is concerned with a person’s igno- rance of a particular proposition. While these are two distinct notions, there does seem to be a close relationship between them, in that someone who is character ignorant is disposed to be propositionally ignorant. On the normative account of ignorance, character ignorance involves the failings of intellectual character that are manifestations of intellectual vice (as opposed to intellectual virtue). That’s why someone who is character ignorant will be disposed to be propositionally ignorant, as they will tend to fail to have knowledge as a result of intellectual failings.
• The normative account of ignorance explains the social dimension to ignorance. In particular, whether one has exhibited an intellectual failing in not having knowl- edge can depend on what one was in a position to know. This is why children are not treated as ignorant of claims that their parents might be treated as ignorant of. It also explains why we might treat someone who has specialised expertise as being ignorant of claims that they really should know, in their position, even though we wouldn’t consider a layperson to be ignorant of those same claims.
• The normative account of ignorance can be integrated within a branch of vir- tue epistemology known as vice epistemology, which focusses on the intellectual vices rather than the intellectual virtues. For example, vice epistemologists are very interested in how conspiracy theorists exhibit intellectual vices, such as by being dogmatic, uninterested in evidence that doesn’t fit their views, and so on.
On the normative account of ignorance, the problem with such people isn’t just that they lack knowledge, but rather the intellectually viceful way in which they lack knowledge. It is this that makes them ignorant. Understanding why they are ignorant is important to knowing how to respond to this problem. For example,
one is unlikely to persuade a conspiracy theorist to change their mind by offering them evidence against their view; one rather needs to help them to change their viceful intellectual character.
• Epistemic injustice is concerned with the social dynamics that unjustly prevent agents from fully participating in social epistemic practices. Epistemic injustice comes in two forms: hermeneutical injustice and testimonial injustice. Hermeneu- tical injustice is concerned with how social structures can prevent someone from being able to properly identify their situation, thereby epistemically disadvantag- ing them.
• Testimonial injustice is when the credibility of someone’s testimony is down- graded as a result of prejudice. This can lead to some people not being treated as knowers even though they have knowledge (conversely, some people who don’t deserve to be treated as knowers will be treated as knowers). Even worse, since one is systemically not treated as a knower, one tends to downgrade one’s own confidence in one’s opinions, which means that one (improperly) doesn’t treat oneself as a knower either.
• Epistemic injustice can be understood in terms of the normative account of igno- rance. For while the victims of epistemic injustice often lack knowledge, this is not because they are ignorant, as it doesn’t involve an intellectual failing on their part. Instead, the cause of this lack of knowledge are unfair social structures.
Relatedly, while everyone can benefit from developing their intellectual char- acter, the responsibility for eliminating epistemic injustice lies with those who perpetrate epistemic injustice rather than its victims, as it is their intellectual vice that is playing an important part in generating the epistemic injustice.
STUDY QUESTIONS
1 Why might one hold that ignorance is simply the lack of knowledge? How do Gettier-style cases pose a challenge for such a proposal?
2 Why might one hold that ignorance is simply the lack of a true belief? What do you think is the main objection to this proposal?
3 What is the difference between character ignorance and propositional ignorance?
How are these two notions related to one another?
4 What is the normative account of ignorance, and how does it differ from the traditional accounts of ignorance in terms of a lack of knowledge or true belief?
How does such a proposal deal with Gettier-style cases? What other kinds of case where lack of knowledge (/true belief) doesn’t amount to ignorance does it claim to be able to capture?
5 What does the normative account of ignorance say about the distinction between character ignorance and propositional ignorance?
6 What is vice epistemology? How are the intellectual vices displayed by conspir- acy theorists? How might it help our understanding of conspiracy theorists to cat- egorise their propositional ignorance as arising out of their character ignorance?
7 What is epistemic injustice? What are hermeneutical injustice and testimonial injustice and how are they both forms of epistemic injustice?
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ignorance and epistemic injustice 181 8 Give an example of either hermeneutical or testimonial injustice and explain
how this leads to the subjects concerned lacking knowledge (or being unfairly treated as if they lack knowledge).
9 Why might we hold that when a person lacks knowledge due to epistemic injustice that this isn’t a case of ignorance? How might the intellectual virtues be relevant to eliminating epistemic injustice?
INTRODUCTORY FURTHER READING
Cassam, Quassim (2019) Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Cassam is one of the pioneers of vice episte- mology, and in this book, he makes an accessible case for using it to understand some important contemporary political issues.
Tanesini, Alessandra (2010) ‘Feminist Epistemology’, Routledge Companion to Epis- temology, S. Bernecker & D. H. Pritchard (eds), Ch. 78, pp. 885–95 (London:
Routledge). A helpful overview of contemporary work on feminist epistemology, written by a leading epistemologist.
ADVANCED FURTHER READING
Fricker, Miranda (2009) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford:
Oxford University Press). A seminal book in epistemology making the case for epistemic injustice.
Medina, Jose (2012) The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
An important recent work that extends the notion of epistemic justice beyond its use in debates about gender to other areas, particularly race.
Mills, Charles (2017) ‘White Ignorance’, Black Rights/White Wrongs, Ch. 4 (Oxford, Oxford University Press). A classic treatment of the topic; highly influential. Note that this paper is reprinted in several other volumes, if you’re struggling to get hold of it.
Pritchard, Duncan (2021) ‘Ignorance and Normativity’, Philosophical Topics, 49, 225–43. This recent paper offers a defence of the normative account of ignorance.
FREE INTERNET RESOURCES
Grasswick, Heidi (2018) ‘Feminist Social Epistemology’, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-social-epistemology/. An excellent overview of contemporary work on feminist epistemology that includes a section devoted to epistemic injustice.
Janack, Marianne (2017) ‘Feminist Epistemology’, Internet Encyclopaedia of Philos- ophy, www.iep.utm.edu/fem-epis/. A useful overview of contemporary work on feminist epistemology.
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Part V
how can the theory of knowledge be
applied to particular domains?
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DOI: 10.4324/9781003356110-21