Abstract:Individuals can do a broad variety of things with their words and enjoy different degrees of this capacity. What moderates this capacity? And in cases in which this capacity is unjustly disrupted, what is a good explanation for it? These are the questions I address here. I propose that speech capacity, understood as the capacity to do things with your words, is a structural property importantly dependent on individuals' position in a social structure. My account facilitates a non‐individualistic explanation of… Show more
“…As a number of Fricker's critics have pointed out, this explanatory approach ignores the possibility that it is not always and only a lack of conformity to operative epistemic norms, but rather the skillful conformity to those norms that can result in unjust patterns of discrediting, silencing, and epistemic exclusion, regardless of whether prejudice is also in play (see Dotson 2014;Ayala and Vasilyeva 2015;Ayala 2016;Doan 2017). If the principal problem is that the operative norm of credibility is itself epistemically dysfunctional in ways that predictably give rise to "pernicious ignorance" (Dotson 2011, 238), contributing thereby to the epistemic marginalization of groups along lines of gender, race, class, and other dimensions of identity, then solutions focused solely on the psychological constitution of individuals will only scratch the surface of a far more complicated situation.…”
What form must a theory of epistemic injustice take in order to successfully illuminate the epistemic dimensions of struggles that are primarily political? How can such struggles be understood as involving collective struggles for epistemic recognition and self-determination that seek to improve practices of knowledge production and make lives more liveable? In this paper, I argue that currently dominant, Fricker-inspired approaches to theorizing epistemic wrongs and remedies make it difficult, if not impossible, to understand the epistemic dimensions of historic and ongoing political struggles. Recent work in the theory of recognition—particularly the work of critical, feminist, and decolonial theorists—can help to identify and correct the shortcomings of these approaches. I offer a critical appraisal of recent conversation concerning epistemic injustice, focusing on three characteristics of Frickerian frameworks that obscure the epistemic dimensions of political struggles. I propose that a theory of epistemic injustice can better illuminate the epistemic dimensions of such struggles by acknowledging and centering the agency of victims in abusive epistemic relations, by conceptualizing the harms and wrongs of epistemic injustice relationally, and by explaining epistemic injustice as rooted in the oppressive and dysfunctional epistemic norms undergirding actual communities and institutions.
“…As a number of Fricker's critics have pointed out, this explanatory approach ignores the possibility that it is not always and only a lack of conformity to operative epistemic norms, but rather the skillful conformity to those norms that can result in unjust patterns of discrediting, silencing, and epistemic exclusion, regardless of whether prejudice is also in play (see Dotson 2014;Ayala and Vasilyeva 2015;Ayala 2016;Doan 2017). If the principal problem is that the operative norm of credibility is itself epistemically dysfunctional in ways that predictably give rise to "pernicious ignorance" (Dotson 2011, 238), contributing thereby to the epistemic marginalization of groups along lines of gender, race, class, and other dimensions of identity, then solutions focused solely on the psychological constitution of individuals will only scratch the surface of a far more complicated situation.…”
What form must a theory of epistemic injustice take in order to successfully illuminate the epistemic dimensions of struggles that are primarily political? How can such struggles be understood as involving collective struggles for epistemic recognition and self-determination that seek to improve practices of knowledge production and make lives more liveable? In this paper, I argue that currently dominant, Fricker-inspired approaches to theorizing epistemic wrongs and remedies make it difficult, if not impossible, to understand the epistemic dimensions of historic and ongoing political struggles. Recent work in the theory of recognition—particularly the work of critical, feminist, and decolonial theorists—can help to identify and correct the shortcomings of these approaches. I offer a critical appraisal of recent conversation concerning epistemic injustice, focusing on three characteristics of Frickerian frameworks that obscure the epistemic dimensions of political struggles. I propose that a theory of epistemic injustice can better illuminate the epistemic dimensions of such struggles by acknowledging and centering the agency of victims in abusive epistemic relations, by conceptualizing the harms and wrongs of epistemic injustice relationally, and by explaining epistemic injustice as rooted in the oppressive and dysfunctional epistemic norms undergirding actual communities and institutions.
“…Another set of critiques has focused on more widely applicable criteria of psychometric strength, such as how well the IAT and other implicit measures predict behavior, whether they have acceptable test–retest reliability, and whether changes in implicit bias cause changes in behavior (e.g., Forscher et al, ; Machery, , ; Oswald, Mitchell, Blanton, Jaccard, & Tetlock, ). At the same time, some philosophers, political theorists, and other social scientists have developed various “structuralist” critiques of implicit bias research (e.g., Anderson, ; Ayala, ; Ayala‐López, ; Dixon & Levine, ; Dixon, Levine, Reicher, & Durrheim, ; Haslanger, ; Mallon, ). The core idea here is that disparate social outcomes and ongoing intergroup discrimination—the phenomena implicit bias research putatively aims to explain—are caused by structural features of society, not by biased individual minds.…”
We identify several ongoing debates related to implicit measures, surveying prominent views and considerations in each. First, we summarize the debate regarding whether performance on implicit measures is explained by conscious or unconscious representations. Second, we discuss the cognitive structure of the operative constructs: are they associatively or propositionally structured? Third, we review debates about whether performance on implicit measures reflects traits or states.Fourth, we discuss the question of whether a person's performance on an implicit measure reflects characteristics of the person who is taking the test or characteristics of the situation in which the person is taking the test. Finally, we survey the debate about the relationship between implicit measures and (other kinds of) behavior.
“…19 See McGowan, 2004McGowan, , 2009, for a framework of how enactment of oppressive facts can occur in casual conversations. 20 I take this example from Ayala, 2016, p. 4. 21 See Vasilyeva, 2016ms., for an analysis of structural explanation that influenced this work.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Having access to affordances means having access to the relation ‘between an ability we have and the situation out there in which our ability can be exercised’ (p. 10). This is a possible way to define what is involved in speech affordances: Relevant abilities: A general ability to communicate with others according to the norms in that context and a more specific ability to perform, exploiting the norms governing discourse in that context, a particular action with our speech acts.Situational features: These are properties of the social environment that solicit both the general ability to communicate and the specific ability to perform a specific speech act (Ayala, , p. 10).…”
Section: Norm‐conforming Behaviormentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Situational features: These are properties of the social environment that solicit both the general ability to communicate and the specific ability to perform a specific speech act (Ayala, , p. 10).…”
In contrast to individualistic explanations of social injustice that appeal to implicit attitudes, structural explanations are unintuitive: they appeal to entities that lack clear ontological status, and the explanatory mechanism is similarly unclear. This makes structural explanations unappealing. The present work proposes a structural explanation of one type of injustice that happens in conversations, discursive injustice. This proposal meets two goals. First, it satisfactorily accounts for the specific features of this particular kind of injustice; and second, it articulates a structural explanation that overcomes their unattractiveness. The main idea is that discursive injustice is not the result of biased interlocutors, but of problematic discursive norms.
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