Essay: Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing – Miranda Fricker

In her book “Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing” Miranda Fricker attempts, within a framework of ethics and epistemology, to give birth to terms that describe how one might be wronged in her competency to pass on information. (Fricker 2007, p.1-3) She manages to track down two basic injustices we tend to pull off in our everyday epistemic conduct. Testimonial injustice and Hermeneutical injustice but for this essay the focus will be on answering what is the first of the two. In the first part of the essay I will be in pursuit of presenting Fricker’s analysis of testimonial injustice and in the following second part I will attempt to describe and comment on Ishani Maitra’s critical evaluation found in her article “The Nature of epistemic injustice”.
Fricker’s central case of the prime epistemic injustice can be summed as “identity-prejudicial credibility deficit”. (Fricker 2007, p.28) Testimonial injustice then occurs when a speaker keeps receiving an insufficient amount of credibility from a hearer for knowledge she is sharing with him due to an idea he has of people in a certain category that she belongs, a prejudice based on a part of her identity. (Fricker 2007, p.17). In order to exhibit different sorts of testimonial injustice, Fricker moves further into each component of this equation, the degree they can be found and their occurrence. Before one might think that dysfunction in credibility proportionality could result in testimonial injustice both ways, Fricker rushes to clear that in the pursuit of defining one’s undermined capability of being a knower, credibility deficit is the one most possible to come to that. Any other sort of injustice that could be produced by a case of credibility excess will most probably not involve the speaker himself or it will not disrespect him and if it appears disadvantegous then one can accept the possibility of an instance of testimonial injustice. (Fricker 2007, p.20-21)
Fricker takes a certain interest in social power but more specifically she identifies a sub-category, that of identity power. Identity power’s stronger influence comes through its tool of identity prejudice. On Fricker’s view there are numerous kinds of prejudices that can result in a lack of credibility but whenever identity is not involved these would be examples of incidental testimonial injustice, that are localized i.e. limited in a specific event or framework, and not the ones our focus should be on. (Fricker 2007, p.27) On the opposite what she terms as systematic cases of testimonial injustice are the ones that are based on prejudices that have a significant skill to damage a speaker’s life in all domains whether it is professional life, economic life, legal life etc. The main or maybe the only according to Fricker kind that can do that is no other than identity prejudice. (Fricker 2007, p.27) The prime example she uses to present testimonial injustice at its most severe form is that of once again a fictional character, this time in Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Tom Robinson a black man in the 1930’s was accused for the rape of a white girl. Despite the counsel for the defence Atticus Finch’s dramatic appeals to the jury to believe in Robison’s innocence and the apparent evidence that proved it, they went on to convict him. The reason they failed to do their duty was that they couldn’t see through their prejudicial perception of Tom Robinson as “just another lying negro”.  Their epistemic false was accompanied by the ethical false emanating from racially moved hatefulness. In this type of cases then, the impact of the identity-induced prejudice against a speaker and the credibility deficit It brings about, conclude a testimonial injustice so systematic as to put an innocent man in prison for a crime he didn’t do. This is what Fricker tries to achieve, to give to epistemic injustice its place in the broader map of social justice. (Fricker 2007, p.23,24,29)
However, there can be incidental and not systematic testimonial injustices based on identity-prejudicial credibility deficit. For Fricker the fact that they can be incidental does not necessarily render them as more ethical as especially in the case where they are persistent, repeated frequently, they can be just as damaging. In a case where you have both persistence and a systematic breadth you get testimonial injustice at its maximum severance and significance. (Fricker 2007 p.28)
What Fricker marks as the ingredient of prejudice that helps it make its way into a hearer’s credibility judgement is that of a stereotype. Stereotypes are used as heuristic tools in everyday testimonial exchanges in order to socially classify speakers between them. That is why reliable stereotypes or the ones that are widely accepted and fairly attributed to certain classes of people, constitute key logical resources for judging someone’s credibility of words. The sort of stereotypes that are connected with Fricker’s central case of testimonial injustice are those that are associated with false characteristics of a given social group especially those within an identity context. Women or black people were often undermined for their intellectual abilities for example. Nonetheless it is important to distinguish them from those that amount to a completely non-culpable mistake in the sense that a hearer with a certain wrong generalization in mind, changes her point of view when faced with evidence that prove otherwise. Therefore, you will only meet prejudice when a pre-judgement, based on a collective epistemic idea combined with an immoral affective investment, is maintained after exposure to contradicting proof. (Fricker 2007, p.30-32)
Fricker finds mitigating factors, innocent errors and cases of circumstantial epistemic bad luck. Further support for this claim comes from Nomy Arpaly’s example: Solomon grew up in a small isolated community with zero exposure to capable women of abstract thought and shaped the analogous generalised belief for all womankind. (Arpaly 2003, p.103) This belief would turn out to be an honest mistake if when entering university and being around this sort of women changes his mind. When it comes to epistemic bad luck, she gives a series of examples in defence of hearers that could be accused of doing testimonial injustice without any use of immoral prejudice. First she begins with an individual that during a testimonial exchange has all the shifty characteristics to pass as deceitful and the hearer makes an accordingly negative judgement while in reality he was just being shy. She then mentions the exceptional case of an honest second-hand car salesman that the client can’t help but being suspicious of. Then she ends with Matilda who has in the past said so many lies that when she claims there’s a fire in her house the outside hearer does not believe her. She concludes about all three of the hearers in these cases that they haven’t been at fault since there was no epistemic or ethical culpability on their part. They made their judgements according to the reliable evidence in front of them and the fact that they constituted exceptions to well established rules does not make them instances of testimonial injustice because that would make the injustice too often of an occurrence. In order to clarify her position on what she considers testimonial injustice and to pre-answer to possible objections to the dismissal of credibility deficits based on innocent errors and not based on culpable prejudice, Fricker claims that those can be considered as cases of testimonial injustice of a weaker degree. (Fricker 2007, p.41-44)
We have just seen what Miranda Fricker calls testimonial injustice so we move on to what Ishani Maitra had to say about Fricker’s work. While arguing that not every credibility deficit based on identity prejudice leads to an injustice, she also claims that testimonial injustice can occur even where there is no identity prejudice or at least the kind presented by Fricker. By using her own examples and variations of the examples used by Fricker she tries to show how the latter’s account can be too broad or too narrow depending on certain aspects. (Maitra 2010, p.195-196)
First of all, to show how she considers the account too broad she gives the example of Zara who goes through her everyday newsfeed and while she is usually interested in items from across the political spectrum there are exceptions, one of them being the “tea-party movement”. When she opens a piece from a member habitually deletes it as she doesn’t expect to believe much of it. Maitra argues that Zara is not guilty of doing testimonial injustice to that writer in a world where we have testimonies thrown at us every day from every possible direction without our will. We should consider instead when we do actually have an obligation to start the process of matching relevant evidence with our credibility judgement. Two conditions that could be found in Fricker’s central cases according to Maitra and should be used to suggest when a hearer has that kind of duty are when there is a special relationship between hearer and speaker and/or if harm to the speaker could result from a credibility deficit. (Maitra 2010, p.198-200)
She then goes on to say how in her opinion Fricker’s theory can be too narrow. First she claims how in the cases of “epistemic bad luck” we shouldn’t be too hasty to vindicate the hearer. She provides alternative versions of Fricker’s example of the individual with the shifty behavior mentioned above, one is an alleged crime-victim that reports to a policeman. Maitra proposes that before dismissing him because he didn’t believe because of a reliable stereotype we should apply the conditions of obligation. In that case concentrating on what is at stake for the speaker then the police officer would have to take every possible step towards finding the truth. A second way in which she finds Fricker’s account constricted is when it comes to the notion of prejudice and stereotypes which are made or maintained without proper regard to the evidence. She gives the examples of David and Paul to compare with Fricker’s Solomon. Maitra’s David has the stereotype of black people being lazy because of the ones staying at his building that rather collect unemployment cheques. Even though he is open-minded enough to change his view if met counter-evidence simply by observing the hard-working black people in his neighbourhood he doesn’t want to because he dislikes them in general and so based on the evidence he has he is at no fault to think otherwise. Paul is in the same situation with Solomon but had he met capable women he would have changed his prejudicial thinking, but until he resides at the remote village, his stereotype is maintained.  Maitra argues that one can fail to have proper regard to the evidence in further ways than just by dismissing counter-evidence. What emanates from these two examples is that generalizing based on a small sample or refusing to get a hold on easily tracked counter-evidence would still make a hearer epistemically culpable. (Maitra 2010, p.202-207)
Now considering both of their views I would align my position with Maitra’s account. Firstly, regarding the too broad characterization I would focus especially on the second condition she gives for having an obligation to give credibility to a speaker that of what is at risk after a deficit. In today’s world from online bloggers to social media commentators it would be inevitable to stop and consider whether you’re doing a good job giving every one the chance to convince you over something. I do’nt think that everyone that gets in the process of sharing widely ideas with the world expects to be heard and accepted nor that they would be harmed if not. Maitra in Zara’s example teases the subject of politics. In the world of politics of course dialogue is a developing mechanism but so are different opinions. Zara probably until that point has shaped her political beliefs and knows generally what to expect in arguments from an opposite direction. If she does injustice to someone that is probably herself maybe not giving her access to opinion on an objective matter but you wouldn’t say that the speaker would be harmed if Zara dismissed his opinion even before hearing it. He will still believe what he wrote is true. Where a problem could be found is when as both theorists said harm will be a possible consequence, but in my opinion only then.
That is spread in examples across the history of human existence which leads me to completely agree with Maitra as to when a hearer has a guilt-free pass according to his surrounding norms. If we even focus just on oppressed women, Frederick Douglas, Hugh Franklin or John Stuart Mill are strong examples of men that in a male-dominant social context overcame society’s pressure and form and stood by women to help them be heard. To agree with Fricker’s definition of prejudice would mean that being indifferent about collecting proof against our beliefs would result to an evolved and just society remaining an illusion. Testimonial injustice then so as not to become a common habit and set aside like many ongoing injustices had better be limited as to remain fundamental and broadened as to recognise all possible wrongdoers and victims.