Source
- Fricker (2003), “Epistemic Justice and a Role for Virtue in the Politics of Knowing”, Metaphilosophy 34, LIT-1049, read in full in NOTE-860, from the author-posted manuscript.
- Fricker (2017), “Evolving Concepts of Epistemic Injustice”, Routledge Handbook, LIT-1048, read in full in NOTE-853, from the author-posted manuscript.
The book (LIT-1004) was not read. Page references are to the manuscripts.
What was actually shown
The core definition (2003). Testimonial injustice “happens when a speaker receives the wrong degree of credibility from his hearer owing to a certain sort of unintended prejudice on the hearer’s part” (introduction). It arises because credibility is judged through a socially trained “testimonial sensibility” that relies on stereotypes of intellectual authority. These are a legitimate heuristic where founded, and prejudice where not (pp. 9–12). Two cases illustrate it. Tom Robinson’s jury is culpable. Greenleaf, dismissing Marge as “female intuition”, is offered as plausibly non-culpable (pp. 14–18).
Not deliberate (2017). “In testimonial injustice the absence of deliberate, conscious manipulation is definitive, at least in my conception” (p. 1). The argument is from the concept’s point: “the point of the concept was to bring into focus a certain class of epistemic misjudgements, and Ripley does not epistemically misjudge Marge at all” (p. 3). Ripley, who deliberately works on Greenleaf’s prejudice, does a different wrong (“intentional gaslighting”). Greenleaf, whose judgement Ripley’s manipulation clouds, does the testimonial injustice. “Non- deliberateness does not entail non-culpability” (p. 4).
Structural and pre-emptive (2017). Following Anderson: “a list of expert witnesses that no one has refreshed for a good while, so that (through no one’s fault, let us add) the same old white male witnesses tend to be drawn on”. The others “are effectively silenced”. “Their views are not sought, and this is owing to a structural prejudice (the un-refreshed list).” Any structural testimonial injustice “would have to be pre-emptive”. Once anyone speaks, “it would become transactional as well as structural”. Fricker calls the extension “very helpful” (pp. 8–9).
What could have come out otherwise: Fricker could have counted deliberate discrediting as testimonial injustice, which is the wider use she says the concept has partly drifted towards. She argues against it and keeps that use for a “related but distinct” wrong.
What this does not say
- Not that every credibility deficit is an injustice. An honest mistake, or a stereotype that is “empirically founded”, does not qualify (2003, pp. 10–12).
- Not that every unsought speaker is wronged. The structural case needs a “structural prejudice”. An omission from a list for reasons that track no misjudgement of the omitted is not covered. Whether an arrangement can be a prejudice without anyone’s misjudgement is left open: the 2017 text calls the list itself the prejudice.
- Not “identity prejudice”. Both texts say “prejudice”. The 2003 paper speaks of stereotypes of social types and of “social identity”, but never uses the book’s term, if the book uses it.
- Not a claim about the book. It is held at the strength of two of her papers, one of which is a short retrospective. Whether the book states it so, and whether the account is right about the wrong, is QUESTION-322.
- The virtue is not filed. Reflexive critical openness and its historically contingent availability are in NOTE-860. No question in the record asks for them.
Connections
- THEORY-317 holds the précis’s two definitions. This account refines its testimonial half: “prejudice on the hearer’s part” becomes unintended prejudice that causes a misjudgement, and a structural, pre-emptive form is added. They do not conflict, so no relation is declared.
- QUESTION-072, part 1. The question’s case is a filing practice that
makes some contributors’ moves addressable and leaves others’ as
unfiled turns. On this account it is testimonial injustice only if the
difference comes from a prejudice, that is, a misjudgement of those
contributors as epistemically lesser. That includes a prejudice built
into the arrangement, as in the un-refreshed list, when no one means
it. A filing grammar that leaves out a kind of move whoever makes it is
not covered. It may be the hermeneutical kind (THEORY-326). No
answers:is declared, because whether the record’s practice meets the condition is QUESTION-072’s empirical part.