Margot Witte

Sometimes, it is simply too costly to use a concept. This paper offers an account of the epistemic harms incurred when we can’t use the concepts we possess. I use the example of unacknowledged rape, where the victim faces undue social, practical, and psychological costs in using the concept to identify the nature of their own assault. I argue that one consequence of these costs is that a person’s ability to use the concept can be compromised. When such costs unjustly impede a person’s ability to use concepts they possess, the harms are uniquely epistemic. Discussions of epistemic injustice have largely focused on developing and distributing necessary conceptual resources or ensuring that a speaker’s testimony is heard by competent audiences. These interventions are crucial, but they do not exhaust the demands of epistemic justice. As this paper shows, using the concepts that we already possess, regardless of audience competence, can come with serious costs, some of which are epistemically unjust. To recognize these harms, epistemic justice requires attending to, and sometimes lowering, the costs of using our concepts. I discuss some practical ways we might do this.