‘The Ethics of Attention to Language’ Introducing Conceptual Injustice

Abstract

What is conceptual injustice, and how can it supplement hermeneutical injustice? By bringing feminist epistemology, in particular Miranda Fricker’s notion of hermeneutical injustice, into dialogue with conceptual ethics and conceptual engineering, this article sheds light on what conceptual injustice is and how it can supplement hermeneutical injustice. What needs to be understood is how concepts can be advantageous to some and disadvantageous to others. For this, I propose approaching language in its relationship with ethics: something I call the ethics of attention to language. By combining a Wittgenstein-Murdochian approach to concepts with the ethics of attention, I try to demonstrate how an ethics of attention to language can counter cognitive disabilities or forms of cognitive blockages constituting experiences of oppression and how it can be an antidote to conceptual injustice. I argue that this ethics of attention to language can be especially beneficial to feminism.