Contribution
It tests Fricker’s two kinds of epistemic injustice against cases of the author’s own, and asks why some credibility failures are injustices and others are not. It accepts Fricker’s central cases and argues the account must be complicated: too broad for testimonial injustice where the hearer owes the speaker nothing, too narrow where bad luck or carelessly kept stereotypes wrong a speaker, and wrong to tie each kind to one sort of prejudice. For this record it is mainly a report of the book’s definitions, with page numbers.
Key insight
An injustice is a wrong done to someone, so a credibility deficit is an injustice only where the hearer owed the speaker a credibility judgement matched to the evidence. The juror and the near relative owe it; the newsreader and the commuter do not (draft pp. 4–6). What makes Fricker’s central cases injustices is not prejudice alone but prejudice in someone under that obligation.
Assumptions
- Fricker’s account is taken as Maitra reports it. “All page references, except where otherwise indicated, are to Fricker (2007)” (draft p. 1, n. 1).
- Intuitions about cases settle whether a wrong is done. The Zara, commuter, police officer, Simon and Arthur, David and Paul cases are judged by intuition.
- Identity prejudice is individual unless said otherwise. Maitra stipulates this after n. 2 (draft p. 2).
Key results
What Maitra reports of the book (book pages in parentheses):
- The project. “a distinctively epistemic kind of injustice”, each kind consisting in “a wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower” (1) (draft p. 1).
- Testimonial injustice. A speaker suffers it when she suffers a credibility deficit due to an identity prejudice on the hearer’s part. A credibility deficit is credibility below “the evidence that they are offering the truth” (19). An identity prejudice is a prejudice against or for people qua members of a social group (35). It may be individual or structural, and “on Fricker’s view, however, it’s individual identity prejudice that’s implicated in testimonial injustice” (draft p. 2).
- Central cases. Tom Robinson’s trial (23–26) is a central case because the prejudice is systematic, tracking its targets “across several aspects of their lives” (27–28), not incidental. Incidental prejudice also yields testimonial injustice, but the systematic kind matters most for social justice (draft p. 2). Marge Sherwood in The Talented Mr. Ripley is the second central case (14–15, 86–89; draft p. 3).
- Identity-prejudicial stereotype. Quoted: “a widely held disparaging association between a social group and one or more attributes, where this association embodies a generalization that displays some (typically, epistemically culpable) resistance to counter-evidence owing to an ethically bad affective investment” (35). Identity prejudices in general are judgements “which display some (typically, epistemically culpable) resistance to counter-evidence owing to some affective investment on the part of the subject” (35) (draft pp. 2, 10). And: “The idea of a prejudice is most basically that of a pre-judgement … made or maintained without proper regard to the evidence” (33) (draft p. 11). The Solomon case is at 33–34.
- Harms and the virtue. Primary and secondary harms (43–59, 129–46). The virtue of testimonial justice neutralizes prejudice in credibility judgements (86–92, 92), “reliably enough” (98) (draft pp. 3–4).
- Epistemic bad luck is not testimonial injustice. A hearer relying on a reliable, non-prejudicial stereotype “has not put a foot wrong” (42). The three cases, the shy speaker (41), the honest used car salesman and the liar who cries fire, are continuous, all “innocent error” (42–43); counting them would make the injustice too easy to commit (42) (draft pp. 7–8). Fricker also holds there can be testimonial injustice without the hearer’s epistemic culpability, in the Greenleaf case (98–108) (draft p. 9).
- Hermeneutical injustice. Carmita Wood (149–50, 150). Hermeneutical injustices are suffered “when some significant area of their social experiences is obscured from collective understanding by hermeneutical marginalization (158)”. “A group is hermeneutically marginalized when their hermeneutical participation with respect to significant areas of social experience is unequal to that of other groups, and that inequality redounds to this group’s disadvantage (153).” It is “a matter of structural identity prejudice (155)” (draft pp. 12–13).
- Systematic or incidental. “As was the case for testimonial injustices, hermeneutical injustices can also be systematic, or incidental.” A central case is one where the marginalization is systematic, like Wood’s (draft p. 13). Harms at 162–69; the virtue of hermeneutical justice ameliorates them.
Maitra’s own arguments:
- Too broad (§3, draft pp. 4–7). Zara deletes a news item because the writer is a “committed tea-partier”; her stereotype is identity- prejudicial and her deficit real, yet intuitively she does him no injustice, as Maitra does none to a commuter with a Southern accent. Hearers have “no general obligation to match our credibility judgments to the evidence in every case”. Fricker’s account needs a condition on when the hearer has that obligation, from a role (the juror) or a relationship (Greenleaf and Marge), or from what is at stake. That condition also explains why the jurors wrong Robinson even by switching off. Fricker’s own worry that the injustice must not be too easy to commit (42) supports it.
- Too narrow: epistemic bad luck (§4, draft pp. 7–10). A police officer who dismisses a rape victim for her shifty manner, on a reliable stereotype, seems to wrong her where a neighbour excusing a missed lunch does not. Simon, in a segregated world, rejects Arthur’s claim to numeracy on a stereotype reliable there, and Arthur suffers every harm of the central cases. The continuity argument fails.
- Too narrow: stereotypes (§5, draft pp. 10–12). David avoids black neighbours out of dislike and so never meets the evidence that would change his mind; Paul generalizes about all women from a handful. Neither resists counter-evidence, so neither is identity-prejudiced in Fricker’s official sense, yet each lacks “proper regard to the evidence” (33). Failing to gather easy counter-evidence and generalizing from a tiny sample should count.
- Individual and structural prejudice (§7, draft pp. 14–15). Whether the stereotypes behind Robinson’s and Marge’s cases are available and powerful is a structural matter, and a derisive colleague could add individual prejudice to Wood’s hermeneutical injustice. Token injustices of either kind mix the two in degrees, so the Simon and Arthur case, with structural prejudice and no individual prejudice, can be a testimonial injustice after all.
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Fricker defines testimonial injustice as a credibility deficit caused by the hearer’s identity prejudice, and excludes epistemic bad luck | strong as a report | book pp. 19, 28, 35, 42, as cited (draft pp. 2, 7) |
| C2 | Fricker defines hermeneutical injustice through hermeneutical marginalization, systematic or incidental, and ties it to structural identity prejudice | strong as a report | book pp. 153, 155, 158, as cited (draft pp. 12–13) |
| C3 | A credibility deficit owed to identity prejudice is not always an injustice; it is one only where the hearer owes the speaker a matched judgement | moderate | the Zara and commuter cases; intuition |
| C4 | Some epistemic bad luck is testimonial injustice, against Fricker’s continuity argument | weak to moderate | the police officer and Simon and Arthur cases |
| C5 | Fricker’s official notion of identity prejudice is too narrow: careless evidence-gathering and hasty generalization can be prejudice | moderate | the David and Paul cases, and Fricker’s own gloss of prejudice (book p. 33) |
| C6 | Both kinds of epistemic injustice can result from both individual and structural prejudice | moderate | the availability of stereotypes; the derisive colleague case |
Concepts
- Credibility deficit — credibility below the evidence that the speaker is offering the truth (book p. 19, as reported).
- Identity prejudice — a judgement for or against people qua members of a social group, showing resistance to counter-evidence owing to an affective investment (book p. 35, as reported); individual or structural.
- Systematic against incidental — prejudice or marginalization that tracks its target across several spheres of life, against prejudice that does not (book p. 27, as reported).
- Hermeneutical marginalization — unequal participation of a group in the practices that generate social meanings, to its disadvantage (book p. 153, as reported).
- Hearer’s obligation — Maitra’s condition: a duty, from a role, a relationship or what is at stake, to match one’s credibility judgement to the evidence.
Connections
The record holds Fricker’s précis (NOTE-832, Skimmed), from which THEORY-317 states the two definitions, and her 2006 paper “Powerlessness and Social Interpretation” (LIT-1046, NOTE-859), drawn from the book’s last chapter, from which THEORY-326 states a generic definition of hermeneutical injustice through hermeneutical marginalization, systematic or incidental. Maitra’s report of the book agrees with NOTE-859’s reading of the paper on that point. Langton’s 2010 review in Hypatia and Alcoff’s unpublished comments are cited (draft p. 14, n. 9) and not held here.
Bearing on the record
- THEORY-317, partly, and against its definitions as stated, at second hand. Its promote_when asks whether the book requires identity prejudice for testimonial injustice, and whether hermeneutical injustice requires a lacuna owed to a group’s powerlessness or admits local gaps; it is refuted as a statement of Fricker if the book differs from the précis on either point. On the first, Maitra reports that the book requires identity prejudice, individual, defined at p. 35, and excludes innocent error at p. 42, so THEORY-317’s “prejudice” should narrow to identity prejudice, as its own caveat anticipates. On the second, she reports a generic definition through hermeneutical marginalization (p. 158) that is systematic or incidental, with the systematic case only as the central one: that differs from the précis, as THEORY-326 says. Marginalization is still defined for groups (p. 153), so local or institutional gaps that fall on no group are not shown to be admitted. The promote_when says secondary summaries cannot settle it, so this is evidence for where the book’s definitions are (pp. 28, 35, 42, 153, 155, 158), not a ruling.
- THEORY-326, the rival, is corroborated at second hand: a second source reports the book’s definition in its terms.
- QUESTION-072, part 2, asks whether a project memory’s failure to file a contributor’s move could be a wrong in Fricker’s sense. Maitra’s condition adds a question: does whoever files owe the contributor a matched credibility judgement? A role, such as reviewer or curator, would supply one on her account.
- No instruction for machine-learning practice; nothing for the anthology.
Limitations
- A draft, read in place of the published text. The published version was not seen; wording, pages and arguments may differ, and the draft asks not to be cited.
- Second hand. Every claim about the book rests on Maitra’s paraphrases and quotations, which were not checked.
- Intuition-driven. Each of Maitra’s own claims rests on judgements about her cases, which Fricker or a reader may not share.
- Hermeneutical injustice gets one section, as Maitra says the book’s treatment is “much briefer” than its treatment of testimonial injustice (draft p. 1).
Open questions
- Does the book, read first-hand, give the generic definition at p. 158 and treat the systematic case as a sub-case, as reported here and in NOTE-859?
- What fixes the hearer’s obligation on Maitra’s account: role, relationship or stakes? She leaves it open (draft p. 6).