Abstract:According to a common view, prejudice always involves some form of epistemic culpability, i.e., a failure to respond to evidence in the appropriate way. I argue that the common view wrongfully assumes that prejudices always involve universal generalizations. After motivating the more plausible thesis that prejudices typically involve a species of generic judgment, I show that standard examples provide no grounds for positing a strong connection between prejudice and epistemic culpability. More generally, the c… Show more
“…I will not evaluate whether the resulting view can qualify as a species of evidentialism, but it certainly differs from how evidentialists have hitherto understood the view. 23 See, for example, Appiah (1990Appiah ( , 1995, Begby (2013), Mills (1997Mills ( , 2003Mills ( , 2007, Ikuenobe (2011), Clough andLoges (2008), Gordon (1995Gordon ( , 2000, Shelby (2002Shelby ( , 2016, Memmi (2014), Lengbeyer (2004) Arpaly and Schroeder (2014), Arpaly (2003), Fricker (2007) and the discussion of 'restricted accounts' in Basu (ms a). See also Munton (ms), who describes an underappreciated epistemic error commonly infecting racist beliefs about statistics.…”
Section: The Inadequacy Of Merely Statistical Evidencementioning
Moral encroachment holds that the epistemic justification of a belief can be affected by moral factors. If the belief might wrong a person or group more evidence is required to justify the belief. Moral encroachment thereby opposes evidentialism, and kindred views, which holds that epistemic justification is determined solely by factors pertaining to evidence and truth. In this essay I explain how beliefs such as 'that woman is probably an administrative assistant'-based on the evidence that most women employees at the firm are administrative assistantsmotivate moral encroachment. I then describe weaknesses of moral encroachment. Finally I explain how we can countenance the moral properties of such beliefs without endorsing moral encroachment, and I argue that the moral status of such beliefs cannot be evaluated independently from the understanding in which they are embedded.2
“…I will not evaluate whether the resulting view can qualify as a species of evidentialism, but it certainly differs from how evidentialists have hitherto understood the view. 23 See, for example, Appiah (1990Appiah ( , 1995, Begby (2013), Mills (1997Mills ( , 2003Mills ( , 2007, Ikuenobe (2011), Clough andLoges (2008), Gordon (1995Gordon ( , 2000, Shelby (2002Shelby ( , 2016, Memmi (2014), Lengbeyer (2004) Arpaly and Schroeder (2014), Arpaly (2003), Fricker (2007) and the discussion of 'restricted accounts' in Basu (ms a). See also Munton (ms), who describes an underappreciated epistemic error commonly infecting racist beliefs about statistics.…”
Section: The Inadequacy Of Merely Statistical Evidencementioning
Moral encroachment holds that the epistemic justification of a belief can be affected by moral factors. If the belief might wrong a person or group more evidence is required to justify the belief. Moral encroachment thereby opposes evidentialism, and kindred views, which holds that epistemic justification is determined solely by factors pertaining to evidence and truth. In this essay I explain how beliefs such as 'that woman is probably an administrative assistant'-based on the evidence that most women employees at the firm are administrative assistantsmotivate moral encroachment. I then describe weaknesses of moral encroachment. Finally I explain how we can countenance the moral properties of such beliefs without endorsing moral encroachment, and I argue that the moral status of such beliefs cannot be evaluated independently from the understanding in which they are embedded.2
“…It will help us in what follows to fix our attention on a question addressed by Arpaly (2003), Fricker (2007), and Begby (2013):…”
Section: Some Quick Clarificationsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…First, the term 'intelligence' can be used in different senses insofar as it has become customary to speak of different kinds of intelligence (emotional intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, etc.). The target notion of intelligence in this paper is whatever notion involves or is most closely related to a thinker's abstract reasoning abilities-since that's the notion Arpaly (2003), Fricker (2007), and Begby (2013) have in mind. Being more specific than that won't make a difference to the general lessons in what follows; what matters is that our judgements concerning this sort of intelligence are meaningful and that our evidence can support such judgements.…”
Section: Some Quick Clarificationsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The reason for this is that statements about averages are mathematical functions over a population, but generics are about kinds. Begby (2013) sometimes wrongly treats generic claims as claims about averages. dence of female intelligence in a university setting.…”
Section: Three Problems For Epistemic Alliesmentioning
“…It is, rather, to deny that they must always or necessarily involve some such distinctive and specifiable manner of epistemic culpability. (Begby , 97)…”
Section: Idealization Dogmatism and Belief Changementioning
Feminist epistemologies consider ways in which gender (among other social factors) influences knowledge. In this article, I want to consider a particular kind of feminist empiricism that has been called feminist radical empiricism (where the empiricism, not the feminism, is radical). I am particularly interested in this view's treatment of values as empirical, and consequently up for revision on the basis of empirical evidence. Proponents of this view cite the fact that it allows us to talk about certain things such as racial and gender equality as objective facts: not just whether we have achieved said equality in our society, but whether we are, in fact, all equal. I will raise the concern that the way in which they model the role of values in epistemology may be a problematic idealization of the open‐mindedness of human agents. In some cases, resistance to value‐change cannot be diagnosed as a failure to respond adequately to evidence. If so, the strategy of empirically testing our values that some feminist radical empiricists suggest may not be as useful a tool for social change as they think.
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