Post on 09-Jan-2023
transcript
1
Epistemic Injustice: An Analysis
Kathryn Pogin
Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice: The Power and Ethics of Knowing is persuasive, interesting,
and has important implications not only for the intersection of ethics and epistemology broadly and
the epistemology of testimony in particular, but for the epistemology of peer-disagreement, action
theory, and self-deception as well. However, though Fricker, at times, gestures at the psychological
literature, much of her argument relies on fictional literature and film to illustrate her conception of
epistemic injustice. For example, she takes the jury’s prejudice against Tom Robinson in To Kill a
Mockingbird as a paradigm case of testimonial injustice. In this fictional story, a white jury could not
perceive, even in the face of countervailing evidence, that a black man was innocent of the crime he
was accused of. The truth did not fit the jurors’ prejudicial perception of the world around them,
and so they rejected Tom Robinson’s truthful testimony as false, rather than alter their own false
beliefs. While Fricker’s account is intuitively plausible, her theoretical claims have empirical
implications and hence we must ask: Does prejudicial bias actually have the sorts of epistemic
consequences she outlines? Are her recommendations for reducing epistemic injustice supported by
the data we have on reducing bias? To understand the accuracy and value of Fricker’s account, these
questions need to be answered.
In this paper, I explore the philosophical implications of certain empirical data, particularly
findings of social psychology, for Fricker’s view that injustice inhibits the proper exercise of
epistemic agency. In the first section, I introduce some concepts that are critical to Fricker’s account
of epistemic injustice, i.e., social power, identity power, identity prejudice, and stereotypes, so it will
2
be clear in the following discussion how, precisely, the empirical data relate to her account. In the
second section, I explore the role prejudicial biases play in credibility assessment. Here, I provide
some evidence that supports Fricker’s thesis that identity prejudice produces credibility deficits thus
inhibiting proper epistemic practice. In the third section, I discuss some complications that arise out
of that data set for her theory but conclude that these complications are not definitively problematic.
In the fourth section, I examine the epistemic consequences of internalized prejudice and note that
there is a correlative gap in her account of epistemic injustice. Finally, I explore Fricker’s notion of
intellectual courage as an epistemic virtue, its relationship to epistemic injustice, and the problem
this poses for her view when we consider the epistemic consequences of certain cognitive biases. I
argue that cultivating intellectual courage (as she defines it) is very likely to perpetuate epistemic
injustice rather mitigate its effects.
I. Conceptual Starting Points
Fricker begins with a socially situated conception of epistemic agents. While she
acknowledges that there is value in the more traditional philosophical approach (i.e., one that begins
with a more abstracted and individual conception of epistemic agents) her aim is to explore how our
epistemic practice might become “at once more rational and more just.”1 Beginning with a socially
situated conception of human knowers allows her to explore the ethical aspects of actual epistemic
practice. Thus, her work makes use of concepts essential to understanding how epistemic agents
operate in a social context: social power, identity power, identity prejudice, and stereotypes.
Fricker defines social power as “a practically socially situated capacity to control others’
actions, where this capacity may be exercised (actively or passively) by particular social agents, or
1 Fricker, p. 4
3
alternatively, it may operate purely structurally.”2 Social agents exist in networks of practical co-
ordination. We depend on others for practical purposes, but others also depend on us. We have
certain social abilities in virtue of those networks (e.g., the ability to vote, to participate in public
discourse, etc.). Social power is exercised when the exercising of social ability is able to effect social
control. For example, law enforcement officers have social power insofar as they are able to enforce
the rules and regulations of the legal system.
Identity power, on Fricker’s view, is a sub-species of social power. It involves practical social
coordination, but also a “collective social imagination.”3 That is, identity power is a kind of social
power dependent on a shared concept of social identity. For example, gender, race, class, ability,
sexual orientation—individuals are classified as belonging to certain social groups based on
perceived similarities in some aspect of their identity. Social identity might be rooted in material
similarities (e.g., sex) or more purely conceptual similarities (e.g., race) between individuals. When
the exertion of social power relies on some form of social identity, identity power is at work.
Prejudice enters into epistemic practice when preconceptions affect how agents perceive
testimony and the credence they assign to it. It can have either a deflationary or inflationary effect
on perceived credibility. Identity prejudice, then, is prejudice toward members of a particular social
group or groups (e.g., racism). Fricker takes credibility deficits produced by identity prejudice—
where testimony is not assigned as much credence as it deserves owing to identity prejudice on the
part of a hearer—to be the primary case of epistemic injustice. Thus, she is principally concerned
2 Ibid., p. 13 3 Ibid., p. 14
4
with identity prejudices that have a negative valence, resulting in a tendency to deflate credibility,
rather than those with a positive valence that tend to inflate credibility.4
Stereotypes are an important kind of heuristic; they preserve mental economy. Fricker
conceives of ‘stereotype’ as a neutral term, and understands it as “widely held associations between a
given social group and one or more attributes.” They are, in essence, mental shortcuts. Stereotypes
are prejudicial, for Fricker, when they are maintained without proper regard for evidence; they are
unreliable and unresponsive to evidence of their own unreliability.5
II. Prejudice and Credibility
Fricker argues that when bias interacts with identity power and prejudicial stereotypes to
adversely affect the credence assigned to testimony from members of the social group against whom
bias operates, there are epistemic and ethical matters at stake. These practices generate ignorance
insofar as the hearer of testimony might fail to gain knowledge if they undervalue the truthful
testimony of those whom they are prejudiced against. These practices generate injustice (at least)
insofar as the giver of testimony is not accorded their due credibility on account of prejudice. In
addition to the example from To Kill a Mocking Bird, Fricker utilizes a conversation from The Talented
Mr. Ripley to illustrate testimonial injustice. In that conversation, Mr. Greenleaf plays to stereotypes
about women to dismiss the testimony of Marge (his would-have-been daughter in-law had his son
not disappeared): “Marge, there’s female intuition, and then there are facts.” In asserting his
epistemic authority over Marge, Mr. Greenleaf draws on a stereotype regarding women’s knowledge;
4 Elsewhere in the literature it has been persuasively argued that Fricker underestimates the epistemic
and ethical consequences of credibility inflation in testimonial exchange. Exploring this particular dimension of her account is outside the scope of this paper. Cf. José Medina (2011).
5 Ibid, p. 33
5
that is, a stereotype that women’s beliefs are supposedly often the product of an emotive,
intuitionistic sort of agency rather than a cool, intellectual assessment of the facts. Mr. Greenleaf
fails to take Marge’s word with appropriate consideration—he sees her as a hysterical woman rather
than a potential source of knowledge—and so fails to gain knowledge from her testimony when it
was otherwise available to him. This narrative is a familiar one, even if the particulars are fictional.
Appeals to stereotypes of women as dramatic, emotional, fated by biology to suffer monthly bouts
of irrationality, sensitive and mentally fragile, are methods of asserting epistemic authority. These are
ways of suggesting that a woman’s perception of the facts is unduly skewed by irrationality and
illogicality—that a woman’s testimony is suspect.
Of course, there are other familiar ways of undermining authority by appeals to stereotypes
and assertions of identity power. During the 2008 presidential election, for example, Salon ran an
article on John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate that contained at least as many
references to her appearance as to the content of her politics; for example, “What this Republican
blowup doll does with her own insides in accord with her own faith is her business.” Referring to
Palin as the “White House bunny,” a “Christian Stepford wife in a ‘sexy librarian costume,’” the
GOP’s “hardcore pornographic centerfold,” and a “beauty-pageant casualty” serves to undermine
the plausibility of Palin as a legitimate political candidate by playing on a common stereotype that
beautiful women tend to be stupid, and thus incompetent for intellectually-demanding work.6
During the same election cycle, much attention was devoted to Hilary Clinton’s appearance as well,
particularly her pantsuits. The Washington Post ran an entire article dedicated to scrutinizing them:
Women have come a long way from the time when wearing a pair of pants was considered "borrowing from the boys." So it would be highly regressive to suggest that the candidate is using trousers to heighten the perception that she can be as tough as a man. And yet . . .
6 Wilson, 10 Sept., 2008.
6
Should we have had any doubts about the appropriateness of such a discussion the article assures us,
“What would possess a woman to wear a jacket the color of a geranium in full bloom and then
imply she doesn't want anyone to notice or comment on her clothes?”7 Focusing attention on
women’s appearance (be it too sexy or not sexy enough) rather than what women have to say
cultivates a culture in which we are primed to believe that what women can contribute to the
community is primarily aesthetic rather than epistemic.
Examples in which prejudicial assessments of social identity undermine epistemic authority
are plentiful. Fricker’s account of epistemic injustice, though, relies not only on the existence of such
interactions, but also on a resultant decrease in credence assigned to testimony when bias is involved
on the part of the hearer. While precisely determining the extent to which this happens in actuality is
surely difficult, there are two fairly well documented phenomena that indicate Fricker’s view aligns
with epistemic practice: bias in resume evaluation and bias in the evaluation of journal submissions.
Bias on account of social identity appears to be involved in both.8
The presence of a name on a resume, which can reasonably be taken to indicate a certain
kind of social identity (e.g., male or female, white or black, etc.) influences how that resume is
evaluated. In a study by Steinpreis, Anders and Ritzke, 238 evaluators (roughly half of which were
male and half were female) were given one of four possible curricula vitae (male or female, job
applicant or tenure candidate). The curricula vitae both belonged to one scientist, but were taken
7 Givhan, 09 Dec., 2007. 8 The case of bias in the evaluation of journal submission is not as well-documented as in that of
CVs. While the data here supports Fricker, more research is needed for this phenomenon to be deemed conclusive. However, one might reasonably take the case of bias in CV evaluation to support the generalizability of the data here too.
7
from two different times in her career. The curricula vitae were randomly assigned a traditionally
male or female name, and then sent out to academic psychologists for evaluation. Though there was
no significant difference between consequent evaluations of the tenure candidate CV9, both male
and female evaluators tended to rate the job applicant vitae more highly, and were more likely to
vote to hire the candidate, when they were given the CV with a stereotypically male name attached
to it.
Bias in resume evaluation extends beyond gender. A 2004 study by Bertrand and
Mullainathan examined differences in employer response rate between resumes that were assigned
names stereotypically associated with white people and names stereotypically associated with black
people (e.g., Jill vs. Lakisha). The study found that resumes with stereotypically white sounding
names were 50% more likely to receive a call back than a resume with a stereotypically black
sounding name of equal quality. Further, callback rates for resumes with white sounding names were
more responsive to increases in resume quality than they were for resumes with black sounding
names—that is, someone named Lakisha was not helped as much as someone named Jill by an
increase in education, experience or skills.10 The same study also found that response rates were
sensitive to applicants’ addresses. A resume that listed an address in a more affluent, white, or
educated neighborhood was more likely to receive a call back than a resume of equal quality that
listed the applicant’s address as being in a “worse” neighborhood.11
9 There was no significant difference in terms of rating, or likelihood to support tenure application—
it is worth noting however, that questionnaires regarding the female tenure candidate’s curriculum vitae were four times as likely to include “cautionary comments” in the margins, e.g., “We would have to see her job talk.” Steinpries, et al., p. 523.
10 A similar pattern was found in the effects of bias in favor of physical attractiveness in evaluations
of intellectual competence: physical attractiveness has a greater positive effect on perceptions of male than female intellectual competence. Cf. Jackson, et al., (1995).
11 Bertrand, et al. (2004)
8
An examination of journal practices and gender representation in published articles further
supports Fricker’s view that identity prejudice affects credibility. In 2001, Behavioral Ecology adopted
fully anonymous review (viz., the author is unknown to the referee and vice versa) and subsequently
saw a 33% increase in the representation of female authors amongst their published articles over the
course of four years. That increase was greater than the increase in female ecology graduates over
the same time period. Additionally, there was no parallel increase in the representation of female
authors in similar journals that practiced partially-anonymous review (wherein only the referee
remained anonymous to the author) during the same time period. Thus, it is eminently plausible that
an awareness of the gender identity of the author of an article affects the credibility assigned to it by
a referee.12
I take it that journal article submission itself is a kind of testimony, and so a kind of
epistemic exercise. I also take it that a CV or resume is a sort of testimony with regard to one’s level
of accomplishment, and derivatively, one’s level of competence. Further, we use such means to
determine not only someone’s career history, but to examine indicators of intelligence, reliability,
and communication skills. These are some of the very same factors we take to be reliable indicators
of the truthfulness of testimony. Credibility and social identity, then, are plausibly closely linked. On
this count Fricker’s thesis is supported by the findings of social psychology. We have empirical
reasons to believe that actual credibility deficits arise out of prejudicial bias when stereotypes
inaccurately represent the capabilities of epistemic agents with certain social identities. Further, it
seems that her theory gives us an account of the sort of epistemic injustice done in certain kinds of
testimonial exchanges like that of written work.
III. The Complications for Identity Prejudice in Practice
12 Budden, et al. (2008)
9
We ought to be cautious, though, about how far the above data can take us when it comes to
testimony of other kinds. Conversational testimony in live social interaction is quite different from
testimony we read; in the former, but not the latter, we have access to a broader variety of social
cues and markers. For example, a woman might face a credibility deficit on account of her gender,
but that deficit might be offset by a credibility excess on account of her perceived social class. In
studies like those mentioned above, certain social markers are isolated so that bias can be empirically
explored. In practice, social identities are often present in the multiple and are related in complex
ways. How credibility excesses and deficits interact is likely more complex even than merely the
presence of multiple social identities. As already observed above, when it comes to resume
evaluation persons with black sounding names do not benefit as much as persons with white
sounding names from having attained higher levels of education, experience, or skill. It is plausible,
then, that certain kinds of social identity are perceived as more significant and that this affects the
extent to which other aspects of social identity are perceived as salient. That is, a credibility deficit
on account of being female might be offset to varying degrees by a credibility excess on account of
perceived economic status, depending on one’s race.
The varying ways in which social identities, prejudices, and credibility assessment likely
interact is particularly important to note as Fricker holds that credibility excess is not generally a
form of epistemic injustice. If, between the mix of deficits and excesses involved in the prejudicial
credibility assessment of a particular giver of testimony, the overall credence assigned comes out
approximately as it ought to, has an injustice occurred? As we already noted, Fricker writes that the
primary characterization of testimonial injustice is that of a credibility deficit arising out of prejudice.
It is not clear, then, how she would characterize an accurate assessment of credibility that arises out of
prejudice.
10
It might be that to have done someone an epistemic injustice requires more than the
involvement of harmful prejudice in an assessment of her credibility. When otherwise harmful biases
are counteracted by additional factors, perhaps no harm is done. Without a resultant credibility
deficit, then, there might be no epistemic injustice. There are two immediate considerations against
this possibility. First, this approach would certainly commit Fricker to a particular view of moral and
epistemic luck, as it would be a mere matter of chance whether or not mitigating social identities
were present.13 Of course, perhaps that in itself is not troubling to Fricker, but it would leave her
account open to a particular sort of objection (i.e., the sort of objections one might raise to the view
of moral or epistemic luck her account would entail), defense from which requires its own
argumentation. Second, it does seem as though there is something both epistemically and morally
defective about belief-forming processes that involve prejudicial biases, even if those biases interact
to produce accuracy by chance. After all, to be prejudiced is not just to hold a negative attitude
towards something or someone; rather it is to hold an inappropriately negative attitude toward
something or someone. It is, by definition, a sort of inaccuracy; a tendency to approach evidence in
a distorted way. It seems that to approach and evaluate a fellow epistemic agent with an
inappropriately negative attitude is itself a kind of injustice, even if no credibility deficit is generated
by doing so. We owe those who provide us with testimony a certain level of respect and a certain
kind of treatment—not simply an accurate assessment of credibility14
However, regardless of how defective this may seem, if any involvement of harmful
prejudicial bias whatsoever counted as an epistemic injustice it might be that Fricker’s account
13 Further, it could also be a matter of chance which prejudices are present in the hearer. 14 Consider a parallel case: Smith is a racist cashier, who tries to short Jones ten dollars because Jones
is black. Though Smith does not realize it, two ten dollar bills stuck together as Smith was giving Jones change. No economic harm came to Jones on account of Smith’s action, and yet Jones was not accorded the treatment she deserved. (With thanks to Michael DePaul who suggested this thought experiment as an illustration of my point.)
11
would prove too much. It might turn out that a fully just exercise of epistemic agency in credibility
assessment would be nearly impossible, given the role biases play in our mental lives. In-group racial
biases, for example, appear at adult-like levels in white children as young as three years old and can
remain fairly stable throughout development. Bias is deeply rooted in our cognitive activity and
manifests at a young age. 15 One might think given the pervasiveness and seemingly recalcitrant
nature of prejudicial bias, prejudice and social interaction are inextricably and ineluctably linked. If
one subscribes to an “ought implies can” principle, one might also think that if social interaction
cannot help but involve prejudicial bias, then acting justly as an epistemic agent merely requires that
bias, and its effects, be minimized as far as possible.
How biases interact in practice, then, and the extent to which they produce credibility
deficits is an important question. While data supports Fricker’s general thesis that prejudice reduces
the credibility assigned to testimony from those we are biased against, currently, the data on how
biases interact with one another is quite limited. This leaves important questions open about how we
ought to think her theory applies to epistemic practice. Some of these questions indicate that
Fricker’s theory is not fully fleshed out in certain ways (e.g., what is her view of moral luck? How
should we think about prejudices off-setting prejudices?). We do not have a full data set on the role
of prejudice and bias in communicative social interaction to draw from, and this makes analysis of
some of her claims difficult. However, philosophical analysis suggests that as the data from which
we can draw grows, it might turn out that Fricker’s account is as of yet too simplistic to
appropriately deal with testimonial exchanges in which multiple social identities and identity
prejudices are present; this is not yet clear.
IV. Bias and Internalized Prejudicial Norms
15 Dunham et al. (2008)
12
While Fricker focuses on the effects of prejudicial stereotyping on the part of the hearer of
testimony, it is fully plausible that an epistemic agent might internalize larger cultural norms and
prejudices such that an agent similarly discounts their own testimony, or otherwise impedes their own
epistemic practice. For example, psychologists have observed that the intellectual performance of
women is sometimes inhibited by a phenomenon termed self-objectification.
Self-objectification occurs when one adopts an outsider’s perspective of one’s own body. It
can manifest as a trait (when one develops a general habit of viewing the self primarily from a third-
person perspective) or as a state (when one temporarily adopts an outsider’s perspective in a
particular context). In lay terms, self-objectification occurs when one’s focus shifts from questions
like “How do I feel?” to questions like “How do I look?” Those experiencing self-objectification
supplant a sense of self with a sense of being seen by others. Objectification theory suggests that this
cognitive phenomenon arises out of broader cultural practices: When social norms permit or engage
in objectification, those social groups that are objectified learn that looks are of primary importance.
Body-monitoring and concern with appearance are the natural result of objectifying practices. It
might be unsurprising that while men do experience self-objectification, women seem to experience
it more acutely (at least as evidenced by studies done primarily in the U.S.).
Self-objectification has cognitive costs. Frederickson et al. write, “First and foremost, self-
objectification leads to a form of self-consciousness characterized by vigilant monitoring of the
body's outward appearance. This self-conscious appearance monitoring can disrupt an individual's
stream of consciousness, and thereby limit the mental resources.” That is, it seems that when folks
are concerned with how they aesthetically appear to others (i.e., whether or not they meet social
norms for beauty) their cognitive attention is divided between viewing themselves as the object of
the attention of others and the task at hand. This divided attention seems to have a negative impact
13
on intellectual performance when one is experiencing self-objectification during cognitively
demanding tasks.
In a study by Frederickson, et al., two experiments were conducted on a total of 157
participants. The first experiment included 75 undergraduate women; the second, 40 undergraduate
men and 42 undergraduate women. Subjects in both experiments were told that the study was an
examination of emotions and consumer behavior. In the first experiment, participants were asked to
go alone into a dressing room with a full length mirror, try on an item of clothing, evaluate it as if
they were shopping, and answer a questionnaire about how that clothing made them feel. Students
were randomly asked to try on either a sweater or a swimsuit. So that the experimenter in the room
would remain unaware of the condition, this was done by a recording conveyed via headphones. In
the second experiment, participants were asked to spend some time alone in the dressing room
wearing the item of clothing to see if they would become more or less comfortable in it over time.
While participants waited in the dressing room during this portion of the experiment, they
were asked to make use of the time by completing a packet for the Department of Education that
contained a math test. While undergraduate men in the swimsuit condition performed slightly better
on the test than their sweater condition counterparts, the difference was not statistically significant.
However, those women who participated in the swimsuit condition performed significantly worse
than the women who completed the math test while wearing a sweater.16 Trying on a swimsuit
appeared to induce a state of self-objectification, but only for women participants. The
questionnaires filled out by the participants regarding how the items of clothing made them feel
revealed that trying on a swimsuit led women to experience body shame and self-disgust, whereas it
tended to illicit more mild feelings of silliness and shyness in men.
16 Scores were adjusted based on self-reports of prior performance on standardized testing in
mathematics.
14
A similar study was conducted to examine whether or not the purported effects of self-
objectification on intellectual performance might actually be due to stereotype threat–that is, a
lowered ability to perform cognitively demanding tasks at full capacity, so to speak, when one is
reminded of a negative stereotype relevant to one’s identity and the task at hand.17 The experiments
for this study, however, involved a Stroop test rather than a math test. Eighty-three female
participants were presented with words on a computer screen, while wearing either a swimsuit or a
sweater alone in the dressing room. They were asked to identify, as quickly as possible, the color that
the word on the screen was printed in. Reaction times for those women in the swimsuit condition
were significantly worse than those of the women in the sweater condition. Further, this difference
was consistent regardless of participants’ body mass index. Women in the swimsuit condition also
reported more feelings of body shame. As Frederickson, et al. concluded: “The current results
highlight one important negative consequence of living in an objectifying culture: fewer attentional
resources.”18
While Fricker’s account does allow for some of the negative effects of internalizing
epistemic injustice, it is not clear that her account takes full stock of this sort of phenomenon, where
an oppressed social group might be harmed in their ability to exercise epistemic capacities just in
virtue of internalizing non-localized cultural norms.19 This is neither an instance of epistemic
injustice inflicted by some particular external epistemic agent, nor clearly an instance of
hermeneutical injustice as Fricker defines it:
17 Stereotype threat will be discussed in greater detail later in the next section of this paper. 18 Fredrickson, et al. (1998)
19 Fricker does address broader forms of epistemic injustice, e.g., the possibility that sexual-
objectification radically diminishes the credibility of women in general, so and so constitutes a broader form of testimonial injustice (e.g., pp. 137-142). However, this injustice is done by some external agent or agents, rather than resulting from internalized non-localized prejudices.
15
Hermeneutical injustice is: the injustice of having some significant area of one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding owing to a structural identity prejudice in the collective hermeneutical resource. 20
Though it is not yet clear from the literature, it seems possible that one might have the
hermeneutical tools necessary to make sense of the experience of self-objectification, yet still exhibit
a deficit in intellectual performance on account of it.21 The sort of epistemic disadvantage that arises
out of self-objectification is not one of having experiences obscured. Rather, the disadvantage comes
from having the full-exercise of one’s intellectual capacities hindered by distraction.
One might object that Fricker’s account need not count such a broad range of epistemic
deficits that arise out of moral wrong as epistemic injustices per se, but perhaps purely moral
injustices that have some epistemic consequences. For example, epistemic agency will also be
hindered if someone is unjustly harmed and so becomes comatose. It might seem odd to classify this
as an epistemic injustice, though it is surely a kind of injustice that affects the epistemic abilities of
the one who is harmed.
There is, though, a distinctively epistemic aspect of self-objectification. To objectify the self
is to shift from seeing oneself as a subject to seeing oneself as an object. Objects are not agents, and
so neither are they epistemic agents. Self-objectification, then, diminishes the extent to which one
views the self as an epistemic agent. It also immediately diminishes the ability to exercise that agency,
insofar as those who become preoccupied with body-monitoring shift from being active to reactive.
While it diminishes one’s ability to make full use of their epistemic capacities, it does not diminish
one’s epistemic capacities per se. One’s cognitive resources remain intact and otherwise functional;
they are simply divided in attention. Self-objectification is also distinctively epistemic in that it takes
20 Fricker, p. 155.
21 It is at least clearer in the literature that one might have the tools to understand and make sense of
similar cognitive phenomena like stereotype threat, but this is not sufficient to counteract those effects.
16
root via epistemic means. One comes to see the self as an object when one internalizes cultural
attitudes regarding certain social practices—that is, the belief that one’s appearance is of primary
importance. Given that self-objectification is so closely tied to social identity, systematic oppression,
and the proper exercise of epistemic capacity, it is worth addressing.
This is a particular kind of epistemic injustice that Fricker does not account for. Though this
is a gap in her account, I do not see it as an inconsistency, nor do I see reason to believe
inconsistency should result from taking account of it. Rather, this points to the need to distinguish
more precisely what constitutes a distinctively epistemic kind of injustice and to the difficulties
posed by Fricker’s methodology. Starting from what she takes to be a few paradigm cases of
epistemic injustices, rather than more abstract theoretical considerations or a broader survey of the
landscape of epistemic practice, makes it difficult to determine how to apply her theory to the sorts
of social interactions she does not consider.
V. Injustice, Intellectual Courage, and Epistemic Virtue
Fricker argues that those who are regularly subject to prejudicial testimonial injustice might
be harmed beyond the immediate injustice of being treated as less of an authority than they deserve,
e.g., they may have difficulty developing the virtue of intellectual courage.
[L]oss of epistemic confidence is likely to inhibit the development of intellectual courage, the virtue of not backing down in one's convictions too quickly in response to challenge. This is an important feature of intellectual function. . . ‘[I]ntellectual courage’ . . . includes ‘most prominently the willingness to conceive and examine alternatives to popularly held beliefs, perseverance in the face of opposition from others (until one is convinced one is mistaken), and the determination required to see such a project through to completion’. These different virtues relating to intellectual courage require epistemic confidence, and are obviously susceptible to erosion by persistent testimonial injustice. So if a history of such injustices gnaws away at a person's intellectual confidence, or never lets it develop in the first place, this damages his epistemic function quite generally.22
17
Intellectual function might be harmed broadly by epistemic injustice resulting in a lack of intellectual
courage, as those who are subject to persistent prejudice fail to maintain even their own justified
beliefs by giving up on them too quickly when faced with disputants.
Philosophically, Fricker provides good reason to believe her account at least approximates
the role prejudice plays in producing ignorance by eroding intellectual courage in epistemic practice.
That is, it takes a certain amount of courage to maintain belief in the face of disagreement, yet,
giving up on a belief out of pressure to conform or out of fear of intimidation undermines the
epistemic process. Beliefs ought to be given up on account of counter-evidence rather than a mere
lack of intellectual courage of conviction—and yet, intellectual courage will plausibly be difficult to
come by for those whose capacities as knowers are prejudicially and persistently abused.
At first, it seems that the data on stereotype threat might confirm Fricker’s thesis to some
degree. Roughly, stereotype threat is a lowered ability to perform cognitively demanding tasks at full
capacity, when one is reminded of a negative stereotype relevant to one’s identity and the task at
hand.23 For example, being aware of the stereotype that women are bad at math and being reminded
of the fact that you are a woman, can have a significantly negative impact on your performance of an
intellectually demanding mathematical exercise. Stereotype threat is pertinently related to testimonial
injustice insofar as it reflects the cultural prejudices that are likely to give rise to bias against
testimony, and so, to some forms of testimonial injustice. Fricker’s example of testimonial injustice
by Mr. Greenleaf toward Marge, for example, from The Talented Mr. Ripley involves precisely this sort
of prejudice. The effects of stereotype threat are relevant to the effects of persistent testimonial
injustice because the phenomenon involves well-known and broadly held prejudicial beliefs. That is,
22 Ibid., p. 49. 23 Nadler and Clark, p. 873
18
stereotype threat is reflective of what exposure to persistent testimonial injustice might be like given
the comprehensive and recalcitrant nature of stereotypes.
When operating under stereotype threat, it does appear that people do not place as much
trust in their own intellectual abilities as they otherwise would—just as Fricker suggests those subject
to repeated testimonial injustice might begin to doubt their own epistemic capabilities, i.e., lack
intellectual courage. When faced with a stereotype threat inducing situation, intellectual performance
suffers precisely because one is unusually anxious about performing the task at hand.
Yet, there are two important differences between stereotype threat and the effect that
Fricker is suggesting. First, when operating under stereotype threat, it appears that performance
suffers because of the divided attention rather than because of the lack of trust in self that gives rise
to that division in attention. Second, despite presumably persistent exposure to negative stereotypes
related to one’s identity, the effects of stereotype threat on intellectual performance might disappear
when one’s social identity is not emphasized, or when the task is reframed in a way that does not
relate to a negative stereotype pertinent to one’s social identity. For example, while I might be
perfectly aware that women are stereotyped as being less skilled at some particular task, so long as
the stereotype is not made salient to me in the moment, data on mitigating stereotype threat suggests
that my ability to perform the task need not be diminished.
Recent research suggests that the effects of stereotype threat can be mitigated in at least two
ways: values affirmation and presenting “gender fair” information. Both of these methods seem to
involve some form of confidence building. As Fricker notes, confidence is integral to intellectual
courage. Perseverance in the face of dissent (be it from an interlocutor or doubts in oneself), until
one is appropriately convinced otherwise, is, on her view, an important feature of thoughtful
consideration and proper judgment. This requires some level of confidence.
19
The values affirmation approach to mitigating stereotype threat was shown to be effective in
a classroom study with 399 physics-student participants. Students in the test condition were asked to
write short essays about values that matter the most to them, twice during the semester. Students in
the control condition were asked to do the same, about values that matter least to them. The gender
disparity between men and women students in the control condition was significantly greater than
that of the affirmation condition: “After controlling for prior background (prior SAT/ACT Math or
beginning of semester FMCE scores), the affirmation closed the ‘residual’ gender gap on in-class
exam scores by approximately 61% and entirely eliminated the gap on the FCME.”24 The study’s
authors explain why they believe values affirmation is effective as follows: “When they affirm their
core values in a threatening environment, people reestablish a perception of personal integrity and
worth, which in turn can provide them with the internal resources needed for coping effectively.”
Essentially, values affirmation allows one to diversify the sources for self-esteem; it is a reminder
that you are not only your test score, but a person with important self-defining values. Restoring that
confidence in oneself improves intellectual performance.
“Gender Fair” information interventions also mitigate the effects of stereotype threat. This
involves the presentation of information that men and women perform equally well on a task prior
to asking persons to complete it. When this kind of information is presented, even after stereotype
threat has been induced, gender differences in intellectual performance significantly diminish. This
has the greatest effect before learning begins and a lesser effect if the information is presented
24 Miyake, et al., p. 1237
20
during a task or after some instruction has already taken place. This suggests that stereotype threat
inhibits learning as well as performance on tests.25
Intellectual courage is important, then, but it is also complex. It seems a certain amount of
confidence is fundamental to epistemic agency, and an increase in confidence can help mitigate the
harmful effects on intellectual performance of stereotype threat inducing situations. Note, however,
that the sort of mitigating confidence provided by stereotype threat interventions does not provide
intellectual confidence specifically or directly. Confidence in oneself more generally is also effective.
Moreover, when it comes to the suggestion that “perseverance in the face of opposition
from others (until one is convinced one is mistaken)” is part of courage as an intellectual virtue,
there are two other psychological phenomena that suggest epistemic confidence is not always
anything close to epistemically virtuous. Rather, it is often an epistemic impediment: the Dunning-
Kruger effect and the illusion of asymmetric insight.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein ignorance begets confidence. The
unskilled tend to be over-confident in their abilities, and gaining competence in a particular area
actually weakens self-confidence given that with skill comes a more discriminating ability to
recognize one’s own failures. When we lack knowledge of a particular field we also lack a meta-
cognitive ability to evaluate our own performance relative to that field. For example, it takes a
certain amount of knowledge of the rules of logical reasoning to accurately assess how well you
abide by them yourself. Sometimes those who are least accurate in their beliefs express the greatest
level of confidence in them.
For example, in a survey of opinions about welfare, Kuklinksi and colleagues found that the most confident respondents thought that 25% of families received welfare in
25 Boucher, et al. (2012)
21
the United States (the figure is closer to 7%) and that 80% of those receiving welfare were African-American (the reality is less than half). Respondents who thought that 15% of the federal budget went to welfare were just as confident as those who expressed the truth (1%).26
When we are ignorant of our own ignorance, it is all too easy to develop an inappropriately high
level of confidence in false beliefs.
Studies demonstrating this effect often compare students’ performance on tests with
reported self-perceptions of that same performance. The phenomenon has been demonstrated
several times; in general, those whose scores place them in the bottom quartile tend to over-estimate
their own performance by 40-50 percentile points. Conversely, those in the top quartile tend to
slightly underestimate their own performance. All students tend to believe that their performance
was above average.27
Another instance of inappropriate levels of confidence is reflected in tendencies regarding
inter- and intra-personal knowledge claims. The illusion of asymmetric insight reflects a difference in
how we assess our own knowledge of self and others relative to that of our peers: that is, we appear
to make assessments about our own inter- and intrapersonal knowledge with a disproportionate
degree of confidence.
We have grave doubts that anyone can know us who has not ‘walked in our shoes,’ ‘seen the world through our eyes,’ or ‘looked into our heart and mind.’ At the same time, while we know from experience that we sometimes misjudge our peers, we continue to feel that there are at least some important respects in which we may know them better than they know themselves.28
26 Dunning, p. 257 27 Ibid., pp. 262-263 28 Pronin, et al., p. 639
22
When it comes to knowledge of our peers, we seem to believe that our own outsider perspective
provides special insight, but deny that others have that insight when it comes to their knowledge of
us.
In a study done by Pronin, Kruger, Savitsky and Ross participants estimated that they knew
and understood their friends better than their friends knew and understood them. Additionally,
participants were asked to indicate, by way of selecting representative pictures of icebergs
submerged in water to varying degrees, how much of themselves and their friends are visible to
others. Participants regularly selected more deeply submerged icebergs as representations of
themselves than as those of their friends. They seemed to believe that their friends’ true selves were
more observable than their own.29
A second experiment in the same study examined assessments of interpersonal knowledge
between same-sex pairs of college roommates. The resultant data showed that the greatest
differences occurred with respect to negative character traits. That is, study participants thought that
they knew their roommates better, and with the greatest difference in accuracy as opposed to their
roommates own self-conceptions, when it came to negative traits, e.g., that the roommate
sometimes does things just to fit in. It does not appear that a self-serving bias was at play:
participants were just as likely to say that they had those same negative traits as they were to say that
their roommates did. They believed they were more self-aware; not that they had better character.
Pronin et al. hypothesize that these asymmetries reflect something other than simple self-
enhancement; rather, they reflect the narrow value of introspection:
29 Ibid., pp. 641-642
23
Although the unique and rich set of information available to the actor can foster self-insight, it can also foster error—insofar as such information generates possible “red herrings,” or clues about possible motivations that are more salient than probative. These introspective shortcomings compromise the accuracy of our self-knowledge more than most of us recognize.
These introspective shortcomings leave epistemic agents with a disproportionate degree of
confidence in our abilities to know our selves and others, and a disproportionate lack of confidence
in the abilities of others to know us and themselves.30
As an epistemic virtue, intellectual courage ought to involve an apt attitude and aim at truth.
If intellectual courage consists in epistemic confidence insofar as it provides “the willingness to
conceive and examine alternatives to popularly held beliefs, perseverance in the face of opposition
from others (until one is convinced one is mistaken), and the determination required to see such a
project through to completion’31 then, in general practice it seems often to neither manifest as an apt
attitude, nor direct us towards truth. When it comes to epistemic practices socially situated,
epistemic humility might well be more important.
When epistemic agents are cognitively biased such that they are disproportionately confident
in their ability to accurately form beliefs about others, even their friends, how much might this bias
be exacerbated by the interplay of in-group out-group, racist, sexist, and other prejudicial biases?
Further, when the widest array of counter-evidence to prejudice lies precisely with those whom we
are prejudiced against, we are likely to underrate the very evidence we ought to take most seriously if
our aim is justice. When it comes to testimonial exchange, then, it seems that epistemic humility
30 The predictive self-assessment of an individual is, in fact, less accurate than the combined predictive assessment of two acquaintances. Cf. Koler et al.
31 Fricker, p. 49
24
ought to take priority over courage; particularly, as Fricker’s concern regards precisely the epistemic
consequences of prejudice.
None of this is to say that intellectual courage itself is not an epistemic virtue. One might
naturally think that courage must contain a sense of appropriateness built into the concept, i.e.,
courage is by definition an appropriate attitude, and so over-confidence does not constitute courage.
This does, however, raise serious questions about what courage does consist in, how it could be
better defined, and whether courage can be useful if it is difficult to subjectively detect the
difference. As it stands, Fricker’s definition is problematic for her broader account. Courage, so
construed, should not be thought integral to the proper exercise of epistemic agency. Perseverance
in the face of opposition will be an inapt norm to follow in much of epistemic practice. If, as socially
situated epistemic agents, we tend toward over-confidence—and further we tend to be ignorant of
our own over-confidence—then to aim at more just epistemic practices we ought to be concerned
with cultivating epistemic humility first and foremost. Intellectual courage (as she takes it) is very
likely to perpetuate epistemic injustice rather mitigate its effects.
VI. Conclusions
While the empirical data supports Fricker’s view that identity prejudice produces credibility
deficits, it does this just to the extent that certain kinds of testimony tend to limit the salient social
identities of our interlocutors, and in those contexts, certain social identities tend to illicit prejudicial
credibility assessments on the part of our interlocutors. When it comes to conversational testimonial
exchange, it is not yet clear if her account is sufficiently developed or complex to apply to actual
epistemic practice. Further, Fricker’s theory, as it stands, is unable to account for the epistemic
consequences of internalized prejudice and the epistemic consequences thereof. Finally, Fricker’s
notion of intellectual courage as an epistemic virtue and its relationship to epistemic injustice, poses
25
a problem for her account. If, as socially situated epistemic agents, we tend toward over-
confidence—and further we tend to be ignorant of our own over-confidence—then to aim at more
just epistemic practices we ought to be concerned with cultivating epistemic humility first and
foremost rather than courage. Confidence may be necessary for the proper exercise of epistemic
agency, but such confidence in our beliefs themselves is not. Given our biases, cultivating a practice
of steadfastness in our beliefs is epistemically and ethically risky: Is it precisely those beliefs which
results from our prejudicial biases which we are least capable of recognizing to be false.
26
Bibliography
Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination." American Economic Review 94.4 (2004): 991-1013.
Boucher, Kathryn L., Robert J. Rydell, Katie J. Van Loo, and Michael T. Rydell. "Reducing
Stereotype Threat in Order to Facilitate Learning." European Journal of Social Psychology 42.2 (2012): 174-79.
Budden, A., T. Tregenza, L. Aarssen, J. Koricheva, R. Leimu, and C. Lortie. "Double-blind Review
Favours Increased Representation of Female Authors." Trends in Ecology & Evolution 23.1 (2008): 4-6.
Dunham, Y., A. Baron, and M. Banaji. "The Development of Implicit Intergroup Cognition." Trends
in Cognitive Sciences 12.7 (2008): 248-53. Dunning, David. "The Dunning Kruger Effect: On Being Ignorant of One’s Own Ignorance."
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2011): 247-618. Fredrickson, Barbara L., Tomi-Ann Roberts, Stephanie M. Noll, Diane M. Quinn, and Jean M.
Twenge. "That Swimsuit Becomes You: Sex Differences in Self-objectification, Restrained Eating, and Math Performance." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75.1 (1998): 269-84.
Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Givhan, Robin. "Wearing the Pants." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 09 Dec. 2007. Web.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801502.html>.
Jackson, Linda A., John E. Hunter, and Carole N. Hodge. "Physical Attractiveness and Intellectual
Competence: A Meta-Analytic Review." Social Psychology Quarterly 58.2 (1995): 108-22. Kolar, D. W., D. C. Funder, and C. R. Colvin. "Comparing the Accuracy of Personality Judgements
by the Self and Knowledgeable Others." Journal of Personality 64.2 (1996): 311-37. Medina, José. “The Relevance of Credibility Excess in a Proportional View of Epistemic Injustice:
Differential Epistemic Authority and the Social Imaginary.” Social Epistemology, 25:1 (2011), 15-35.
Miyake, Akira, Lauren E. Cost-Smith, Noah D. Finkelstein, Steven J. Pollack, Geoffrey L. Cohen,
and Tiffany A. Ito. "Reducing the Gender Achievement Gap in College Science: A Classroom Study of Values Affirmation." Science 330.6008 (2010): 1234-237.
Nadler, Joel T. and M. H. Clark. “Stereotype Threat: A Meta-analysis Comparing African Americans
to Hispanic Americans.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology. 41:4. 2011.
27
Pronin, Emily, Justin Kruger, Kenneth Savtisky, and Lee Ross. "You Don't Know Me, but I Know You: The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81.4 (2001): 639-56.
Steinpreis, Rhea E., Katie A. Anders, and Dawn Ritzke. "The Impact of Gender on the Review of
the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study." Sex Roles 8th ser. 41.7 (1999): 509-28.
Wilson, Cintra. "Pissed about Palin." Salon, 10 Sept. 2008. Web. <http://www.salon.com/2008/09/10/palin_feminism/>.
Wise, Tim. "White Kind of Card is Race? The Absurdity (and Consistency) of White Denial." Counter
Punch. 24 Apr. 2006. Web. < http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/04/24/what-kind-of-card-is-race/>